*Hi! I’m Troy McClure! You might remember me from such films as "Hitler Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, and …
[blank] is not home, why don’t you leave him a message…*
For a while my cell phone said “I have issues so I’m not answering the phone right now”
My brother got tired of hearing it and told me that I didn’t have any issues, so I changed it to “My brother says I don’t have issues anymore so leave a message”
About ten years ago my girlfriend (at the time) and I had the message “Holly and Kricket aren’t answering the phone right now, but leave a message and if we deem you worthy enough we just might consider calling you back…maybe”
My dad used to leave us some wild answers to that.
Anyone who has Aqua teen hunger force vol. 3 should check out the extras with the answering machine stuff. Carls are funny as heck!
I bow in the presence of such answering machine message creators.
My message was a humble
“Hello?.. Oh… It’s you. You got a lot of nerve calling me after what you pulled you worthless piece of BEEEEEP”
When I was in my first year of university, we called our friend, Rich. He wasn’t in so we left him a message. But my other friend said “There was something weird about his message.” So we called back to listen again.
“Hi, this is Rich. I’m not in so please leave a message.”
Hm. Nothing strange there, but yes, I had to agree, there was something odd. Somehow… Just couldn’t put our fingers on it…
After a few more calls, we figured it out. Now, you have to understand that Rich had a sick and twisted sense of humour. “Dark humour” was what he relished in particular. We finally realized what he had done: he had a subliminal message in the backkground. Very quietly in the background of his bland, boring, ordinary message was a voice:
“Kill your neighbour… Kill your neighbour… Kill your neighbour…”
Well, my voicemail currently is Adam West spewing out about good citizens and whatnot. Freaks some people out.
As for the weirdest message I’ve heard someone leave?
Well, one day I was at my girlfriend’s, and the phone rang. No CID so they screen their calls. Someone unfamiliar comes on and starts…reading. On the phone. It’s not just a recording because you can hear them russling the pages and stuff in the background (well, it may have been pre-recorded but it wasn’t a book on tape). It was quite odd because they had no clue who it was. It wasn’t like the passage was anything significant or humorous either…just like someone picked up a book, turned it to a random page, called some random number, and started reading.
Hmm…maybe Andy Kaufman IS still alive.
These are hysterical!
I’ve been inspired by this to put “The Room” 555-3750 on my outgoing. If ever you dial a number and get a growling/screaming/chainsaw noise followed by a BEEP hang up, you’ve gotten me!.
(For those that don’t know, there is a game where you are stuck in your dream/nightmare of your apartment and when you dial the # of the bill board outside(a bar) you are treated to a nightmare of noise)
/side question, what timezone is this board?/SQ
I’ve never called anybody that had an interesting message, but racinchikki and I try to make ours as weird as possible. Some of the ones we’ve had:
“Hewwo? This…uh…this is the toaster. The answering machine is bwoken, but if you talk weawwy slow I’ll write down your message and stick it on the fwidge.”
Done by racinchikki in a voice that sounded just like a very small child. She should get into radio. She can do all kinds of voices and accents.
“Hello? (3-second pause) Oh, I’m sorry, this is the answering machine. We’re not in right now. Please leave a message.”
It makes people either really annoyed or really confused. The first time my mom called and got this one, she asked if it really was the answering machine, despite the fact that I put that message on her answering machine once.
“kzrk Hello, and welcome to the answering machine. We’re not home right now, so please leave a message after the beep. And don’t forget to experience the fury of our gift shop. kzrk”
Said in the weird singsong style used by theme park ride operators and parodied by Stong Bad on the Riverquest Safariventure (keep watching after the paper comes down. Also where we got the “fury of our gift shop” line [after the paper comes down the second time]).
“Iiiiiiiiiii am the ghost who liiiiiiiiives in the answering machiiiiine. Please leave a message and I’ll wriiiiiiiite it in bloooooood on the living room waaaaaaall.”
Current message.
My favorite was actually a corporate message.
My friend directed me to the 800 number (wish I still had it) of manufacturing company. They had the standard automated greeting system
“If you know your partys extension, press x”
“For sales Operations press x+1”
“For Humran Resources pres x+2”
.
.
.
I am thinking this is really not very interesting until I get:
“If you would like to hear the sound a duck quacking, press 8”
I’m thinking, I have to hear this.
Press 8.
“Quack Quack”
Returns me to the main menu. “if you know your partys…”
I love a company with a sense of humor.
A co-worker (at a previous employer) had something like this on his cellphone:
[Sleepy voice]“Huh? Yeah?”
(2 seconds pause)
“Sleeping, sleeping”
(2 more seconds)
“Wha…? Huh? Just leave a message, mkay?”
I naturally fell for this first time around - asking “Did I wake you up?” on the first pause, then “Oh, sorry…” on the second. I only realized it was his message when the dang thing beeped at me :smack:
(of course, it was much funnier before I butchered it in translation [from Hebrew]… :()
Dani
Look just above the “Contact us” link at the bottom of any page.
A friend in college had one that started out with him yelling, “Hello? Hello?” In the background, you could hear a bird chirping. He’d keep yelling “Hello” louder and louder, then he’d say, “Just a second, I can’t hear a damn thing.” Sound of gunshot, and silence. Then he’d come back on and say “I’m not here, leave a message.”
He assured me that no actual birds were harmed during the making of the message.
Not as good, but a roommate of mine had a boss with a Porsche, and he once had reason to call a Porsche dealership somewhere in LA. The guy who answered spoke fluent surfer-stereotype: “LA Porsche, what can I do you for?” Boss asked his question, surfer-guy went to check on the answer, and came back with, “Grim outlook, dude, we don’t have it in stock…”
So after hearing this, we immediately changed our outgoing machine message to “Grim outlook, dude, Kat and Roommate aren’t home…”
My best outgoing message was:
“Hi, this is Zjestika! The more profanity in your message, the more likely I am to call you back. Go!”
It was awesome, everyone who called took the bait. The best was when my mom called. “Um, okay… um. Ass. Shit. Um, just call me back, okay?”
ZJ
My current message is bogarted from the simpsons:
(to the tune of the hustle) “Do the message! do do do do do do do do do do…”
Classical music playing in background
[spoken in monotone]
“You have xxxxxxxxx crematorium.
If you have a body press 1.
If you want a body press 2.
If you have a complaint press 3…” [music stops-silence and ages before beep]
Hehehehe.
My cellphone voicemail message used to say ‘Oh boy… where could manx be?’, but that, plus my habit of bing late to places, led to far too many messages that said ‘I dunno. where the hell are you!?’ So now it says ‘I know, I know. I’m late. I’m sorry. I’m probably on a bus. Or asleep…’
But Zjestika, your message is brilliant. Can I steal it?
About 15 years ago, when my family was in some financial difficulties, and most of the calls we got were from collection agencies, I called home to hear that my sister had left this message, in an operator voice so perfect I have to think some half-paying-attention callers actually followed it, given some of the really angry messages we found on our machine:
“If you would like us to give you money… pleas hang up… now.
If you would like to give US money, please leave a message, and we’ll be SURE to call you back.”
And I’ll show this next one, even though it will forever cement my geek cred here on the board. In college, I helped run the Monty Python troop at my school. I also had my dad’s old work answering machine, a pro model that taped the beep as soon as you released the Record button for the outgoing message. I gathered my hallway together, and taught them to sing background to this parody of the choir song in the “Summarize Proust” sketch (this was much funnier heard than read):
ME: Scott isn’t home right now, home right now, home right now…
Hallmates (in really bad pseudo-canon): Scott isn’t home right now, home right now, home right now… (Fa la la etc.)
ME (one key higher, over this): Scott isn’t home right now, home right now, home right now…
Hallmates: Scott isn’t home right now, home right now, home right now…
ME: He isn’t home…
Hallmates: …he isn’t home…
ME: …he isn’t home…
Hallmates: …he isn’t home…
ME(higher): …not home right now…
Hallmates: …not home right now…
ME: …not home right now…
Hallmates: …not home right now…
Tutti: Scott isn’t home so…leave a message…meeee-saaaaaage aaaaat theeee…
<BEEEEEEEEEEEEP>
For months, most of my messages consisted of strangers’ voices laughing hysterically, then hanging up.
Two good ones that I remember…
One stolen from The Kentucky Fried Movie:
“Hello, This is Dr. Klahn. I’m not home right not. leave a message when you hear the beep. You have our gratitude.”
And the other was me screaming a blood curdling high pitched squeal for 30 seconds. For some reason I was the only one that found that one funny though… most people were mad when they left a message. Go figure.