I've never 'got'

Lineman's handset
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineman%27s_handset

The song writer jimmy Webb saw a man in Oklahoma up the line making a phone call.

17 things about analogue telephone systems only pre-90s kids will remember

I don't understand how Oliver didn't know this.

For a while, before I looked it up, I thought the lineman had a device that enabled him to listen in on conversations by attaching it to the wire, but it seems that's not possible. (I don't understand any of the technology.)

UK phones are just using 50V DC across the pair (80V AC to activate the ringer). You can easily patch in to copper pair at any point between phone and termination in the exchange to listen in or speak onto the line. (I used to have to do this when I did some work at BT.)

FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) means the broadband connection is only on the copper between the cabinet and the property, voice is still carried by the original copper pair all the way back to the exchange but the data portion is dealt with my a DSLAM in the cabinet and then data flows via fibre back to the exchange.

I am the lineman of the cabinet doesn't have the same ring.

The song writer jimmy Webb saw a man in Oklahoma up the line making a phone call.

It seems it was originally about Washita County, Oklahoma, and not Wichita, Kansas.

This not getting Wichita Lineman horseshit has actually got me cross. The only positive is that it was my riding earworm for 5 hours today, and a hell of a step up from B*witched for a longer ride (or at least it seemed that way) on Monday.

I could never love someone who didn’t love Wichita Lineman, so the best you douches can ever hope for is a quick bunk up. Who’s sorry now?

Sometimes, a quick bunk up is all you need.

Pretty sure GC sang about that too.

That's in the original 'Washita Linedancer'.

You have reminded me of what holes and poles engineers are actually like.

Based on the BT group intranet news page, the Wichita Lineman was either a hero that gave CPR to a granny or was involved in a organised gang of copper thieves

Ah, thanks. I still don't understand the line 'I hear you singing in the wire', although the line 'I can hear you through the whine' must then refer to him eavesdropping on her conversations ...

Ah, thanks. I still don't understand the line 'I hear you singing in the wire', although the line 'I can hear you through the whine' must then refer to him eavesdropping on her conversations ...

The wind will cause the wires to "sing". The whine is just the noise powerful electric equipment often makes, most audible when you're close to it. So the imagery here is of him imagining a link to her through the natural/unnatural sounds of his everyday (and very solitary) work. It's not a creepy song.

Dogs with instagram accounts where the captions are written in the first person in dog speak.

I don't get it.

^^
The trope of finding echoes of a distant love in the local environment is so common among poets and songwriters that I'm surprised this isn't obvious. That said, it's unusual to see it used in such a proletarian and technological setting - probably the main reason the song has a lot of admirers.

@Colm89 Um, you have met dog owners?

I am a dog owner. Am I doing it wrong?

Clearly you're not a Rainbow Bridge believer. (Warning: safe for work but you may vomit)

Wait - so it's a place called rainbow bridge, that has meadows and hills.

But its also a bridge.

I don't get it.

Steve Irwin

The wind will cause the wires to "sing".

Which reminds me of Alan Lamb (not the cricketer) and his recordings featuring the sounds of telegraph wires in the Australian outback.

Most of his recorded work uses a stretch of abandoned telegraph poles that he purchased from the Australian telephone company, christening his instrument the Faraway Wind Organ, on which he made recordings for nearly twenty years before the wires were vaporized by lightning and termites devoured the poles. His recordings were not as simple as putting up microphones to record the wind. He attached contact microphones to every possible surface, capturing ants and spiders walking on the wires, cows brushing against the poles, and eventually interactions of his own devising. He built massive bows for the wires, which he has described, but without providing any photographs.

http://www.sounddesign.unimelb.edu.au/web/biogs/P000277b.htm

https://classicaldrone.blogspot.com/2009/05/drone-classics-night-passage.html

Fucks sake man. Its a metaphorical bridge. Jeeeeeeze.

So what happens if the owner dies before the pet? Does the owner have to hang around rainbow bridge enduring other people's yappy dogs and avoiding the small mountain of dogshit that will clearly be everywhere?

Clearly, you all need to watch "a dog's purpose".
With Dennis Quaid and a dog on a reincarnation tip.

Just going to leave this here.

You might not have but the stingray certainly did.

Kármán vortex!!