Press 1 if...

[Vito]

Hello, and thank you for calling Faaftipone Medical Group. Life begins when (meaningless platitude). If you are calling about a life threatening emergency, please hang up and die. Calls are answered in the order received. Your call is important to us. Please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed.

Si habla Español, la pudiamente se huevos por el gato de Maria con queso y bonito por comer mi abuela, y andate a la mierda.

Press 1 if you are a Doctor.

Press 2 if you are a pharmacy or someone you know is a pharmacy.

Press 3 if you are a new patient.

Press 4 if you are an established patient or a loser.

Press 5 if you are a moron.

Press 6 if you live in a state that is mostly populated by morons.

Press 7 if you think there must be some kinda way outa here, said the joker to the thief.

Press 8 if you want to speak to an actual human who will say “Please hold” and immediately place you on interminable hold with stupid music so loud and distorted it will make you want to drive a railroad spike through your skull, and then automatically disconnect you.

Press 9 if you still haven’t pressed a number by now.

Press 0 to repeat these menu options, or stay on the line to go directly to the stupid hold music to provide you with plenty of time to realize that you’re just another meat sack to us and we don’t care.


Thank you for calling. Goodbye. (click)

 

[Timbo]

Sounds like most places I call these days sadly.

You forgot the pause in the on hold muzak, where you think you're about to speak to someone, then "your call is important to us"... then back to the interminable muzak.

Plus the muzak is getting far worse, it used to be a bunch of 10 or 20 odd songs on a loop. Nowdays you're lucky to get one entire song on a loop, often it's just a few bars of pap cycling to "your call..." then back to the start of the few bars of muzak.

Harrumph and get off my lawn

 

[Singed]

I always love listening to "The girl from Ipanema". I will ask to be placed on hold if that is part of the playlist.

 

[Balisong]

@HRPufnstuf
One of my favorites too!

 

[Timbo]

Was going to post a doco on the writing and musicology of the Girl From Impanema that I watched on youtube a while back but can't find the particular one I was after so as it's on topic, I'll leave this instead.

 

[Vito]

Press 1 if you knew that Astrud Gilberto (née Astrud Evangelina Weinert) stepped off this mortal coil on June 5 of this year (2023)...in Phila-doggone-delphia, of all places.

Press 2 if you think the first verse on the Getz/Gilberto album version (in HRPufnstuf's post, above), sung in Portuguese by Astrud's then-husband, João Gilberto, sounds like Japanese, especially the part where it sounds like he sings "Okinawa".

Press 3 if Helo Pinheiro, the actual girl from Ipanema (about whom the song was written) looked pretty darn good in 2006.

Press 4 if you knew that The Girl From Ipanema is the second most widely recorded song in this sector of the galaxy (after The Beatles' Yesterday).

Press 5 if you make it all the way through this video and your head hasn't exploded:



(...but if you're a musician, it's pretty fascinating stuff...and even if you're not, it'll give you an idea why the song is so different from everything else you're likely to hear if you live in the English-speaking world, where American-European musical sensibilities are predominant.)

Press 67890 to descend to the Secret 10th Circle of Hell, where pipe tobacco has been outlawed in the name of The Greater Good.

You prolly don't wanna go there.

 

[Balisong]

Interesting analysis of "The Girl from Ipanema"!