Yesterday afternoon my cell phone rang while I was oddly enough working on this blog. I walked into my kitchen where the phone was charging and looked at the caller ID, the caller ID showed my number as the caller. How could I be calling myself? Better yet, why was I calling myself? Obviously intrigued by the phone call I managed to miss my call while thinking through the situation. All was not lost, I left a message.
When I listened to the message left on my voicemail I found that the call from myself was actually a phone call left my Samuel L Jackson (or a digital form of him anyway) telling me to go see “Snakes On A Plane” today with my friend Tim who was so kind as to send me the message.
Some of you may remember Target offering a wake up call from a celebrity for shopping the day after Thanksgiving last year; this call was along the same lines. Individuals can go to the website and enter their friends name and a few details and immediately send them a personalized phone call from Samuel L Jackson telling them to go see Snakes on a Plane. You can enter the number you want to call, as well as the number you want the call to be sent from. Tim imputed by number for both entries, thus my number showing up on my caller ID.
On one hand this was a pretty neat idea, and definitely made me laugh. On the other hand, the whole notion of sending phone calls to whomever you choose via the internet makes me a little uncomfortable. Today it is just friends sending other friends funny greetings, at what point however will our voicemail start becoming like our email where we have to filter through hundreds of spam messages and forwards to get to the messages we want to read?
If you would like to send a personalized Samuel L. Jackson phone call to one of your friends you can do it here. The language may be inappropriate for younger children so be cautious when previewing and sending messages.