"Go on, go on scream and cry"

The living room was a coffin-in-waiting with full digital cable and a cordless phone that rang a deafening ring that no one seemed to want to learn how to answer in haste. Political pundits, ripped from headline police dramas, and home shopping networks ran round the clock on the nearly exhausted 32 inch television, volume turned high enough to drown out the telephone ring. People no longer asked. No longer spoke. It was a long and agonizing death of thought. Of soul.