Jesus' Phone Number

I was suggesting local restaurants to a Portuguese friend. Suddenly, he had an idea to bounce off of me.

"Isn't it a shame there's no app that gives you surefire food tips wherever you go?"

I winced painfully and told him that I'd created that once. I gathered an unusually expert group of food lovers to swap tips and answer questions, and it eventually scaled so large that a staggering number of obscure nooks and crannies were explored and accounted for. He asked me for a download link, and I told him this was all a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

It would never work for Portugal, I explained, because here people mostly eat at the same lunch hole for decades, and the same special occasion place their parents and grandparents frequented. Lunch is at the place closest to home or work, and no one here would ever try the place two corners down. I work very much against the tide by exploring the full landscape of options. Since hardly anyone chowhounds (understandable, given that no country more richly rewards dining complacency), there are no savvy opinions to create an app around.

I didn't expect him to register that he'd received a reply from perhaps the most qualified person to answer that particular question. But I figured my response was reasonably interesting and persuasive. And here's how he responded:

After listening politely, he waited a beat and continued. "But, yeah, no, wouldn't it be great if there was an *app*—you know, like a smart phone app!—which would tell you the good places to eat?"

Is this mic on? Can anyone hear me? Did I not just say words? I could swear I just said words!

This, alas, seems to be the new normal. Not just with food, I mean with any topic. Way back in elementary school, I recognized that communication was a suspension-of-disbelief proposition. But over the years, it's either decayed still further, or else I'm noticing more clearly what was always true.

In either case, I've reached an extreme Twilight Zone scenario where it feels as if the humans were swapped out with insensate wraiths so lost in inner fog that they can't parse a word. No one seems able to process new information. Like early computers, we reply only to stock statements phrased within rigid semantic constraints—and then output pre-fab answers. It's like punch cards (and it's hilarious that we find chatbots—which can actually take a point and reply on-track—fakely superficial).

If I were to offer a devout Christian Jesus' personal cellphone number, he'd stare blankly as I spoke the numbers, not bothering to write them down. Then he'd graciously thank me for the information with the words he customarily uses for gracious thanks, going on to say some of the canned things he always says...like a video game character ("Evening, friend! What's your pleasure?" pipes up the burly bartender as you scour his medieval tavern for hidden treasure maps).

I haven't had a conversation that could pass a Turing Test in a very long time. To be sure, I've exchanged stock statements within rigid semantic constraints and been offered pre-fab replies, whereupon I feigned pleasurable engagement. More often, people drift entirely past my point as I offer them exactly what they'd professed to be interested in. Even if they'd hit a sweet spot where I could offer an authoritative reply. Or Jesus' phone number.

Happily, there's a lot of delicious food out there. And terrific movies and TV. Plus all the free sunlight and oxygen we could possibly want. We are so free and safe and healthy and comfortable and entertained as to be the envy of our ancestors, who sigh from their graves at our good fortune. But even in their repose, they're better conversationalists than we are.