A portable phone? C’mon! Lift? was easier when people wrote letters, columnist says Cman named Kent, who works for Motorola, was nice enough to send me a note about one of their space-age products. “You know the importance of dead lines," Kent said, “and the importance of being able to be in immediate con tact with people and they with you. “Consider a Motorola factory direct mobile or portable cellular telephone (or a combination of the two). “Do you carry a pager? Why, when you can easily carry a phone? "Take it to work, to play, to lunch and still keep up with your customers, your suppliers, your life.” And he invited me to phone him so we could talk at greater length about this wondrous device. I have to admit that I am a wondrous device freak. I have a wristwatch that is combination calculator, data bank, stop watch and alarm clock. I have an elec tronic gizmo that tells me if there is a nsn unaer my ooat. 1 nave a car witn buttons that tell me how long I’ve been gone and when I can expect to get where I’m going and when I’ll get back. I have a personal computer that has a button I hit to find out if I have any money left after buying so many won drous devices. However, I’m not going to call Kent from Motorola, because if there is one wondrous device I don’t want, it is a portable telephone. Sure, I know the importance, as Kent said, “of being able to be in immediate contact with people and they with you.’’ But I know something of greater importance — being able to hide from people. And to do that, you must main tain a safe distance from telephones. I hate telephones. 1 have one in my office only because it’s necessary for my work. I have one at home only because I can’t order out for pizza without it. Life was better before telephones became common. Back then, if some nuisance wanted to say something stupid to you, he had to sit down and write a letter or get on a streetcar and ride several miles to your home. This took considerable effort. And there were defenses. Even today, if someone rings my doorbell, I can peek through a hole in the door and see who it is. If it’s someone I don’t want to talk to — which would include about 99 percent of the human race — I just remain silent and eventually the in truder goes away. He might ring the bell one more time, but that’s about it. But now, because of the telephone, all he has to do is hit seven numbers Mike Royko and he can come crashing into your life. He can keep ringing dozens of times. Or call back every five minutes. The only defense is that truly humane device — the recorded message machine. Naturally, I own one. And I don’t care who knows it — when my voice says: “Hi, I’m not in now ...” I’m lying. I’m probably there, but I don’t want to talk to you. If I did, I’d have called you in the first place. That’s the kind of message I wanted to put on when I first got the answering machine: “I’m right here, but I don’t want to talk to you. And please don’t leave a message. Send a brief postcard.” But my wife wouldn’t let me, the wimpette. And Kent from Motorola wants to make a phone my constant companion? Consider just one terrible conse quence of owning a portable telephone and people knowing your number and being able to make immediate contact. You are sitting in a bar after work, rewarding your frayed nerves for having earned another day’s pay. Suddenly your portable phone rings. You answer it and the familiar voice says: “I was about to put dinner on. Are you on the expressway?” “Yes, yes, that’s where I am, on the expressway, but traffic is terrible. Must be a big accident up ahead.” “What’s that noise?” "All those voices. I thought I heard someone shout ‘bartender, another round.’ ” "Oh, that? Yes, traffic is so jammed up that drivers are leaning out of win dows and shouting things like ‘we bet ter go around.’ ” “I hear a juke box.” "That’s my car radio.” "Turn it down.” “I can’t, it’s jammed.” “Are vnn reallv on the pvnrexswav?” “1 can’t hear you, we have a bad connection.” “You aren’t on the expressway.” “Hello, hello, I can’t hear you. Good bye.” Life is so less complicated, relation ships are so much more stable, if the bartender answers his phone and simply says: “No, he ain’t been in this year.” So I wish Motorola or someone would invent the kind of phone I’ve been yearning for. It would work this way. It would have a little screen on it. And after one ring, the screen would show the name of the person making the call. It would also have a button. And when I pressed the button, the caller’s phone would emit an ear-shattering obscenity. Call me, Kent, when you put that on the market. Better yet, drop me a brief postcard. ©1987 By The Chicago Tribune Royko is a Pulitzer prize-winning col umnist for the Chicago Tribune. The tale of plagiarist Malott Biden’s historical counterpart Sen. Joseph Biden may take conso lation from the story of another plagiarist, as related to me 30 years ago by the late screen actor Adolphe Mer\jou. The spiffily dressed, urbane actor, best suited for roles either as urbane blueblood or as urbane blueblood’s urbane butler, was a gentleman of con siderable learning who attended Cor nell University. The crisis arose when Dean Malott was inaugurated as president of Cor nell in 1951. A few weeks later, The New Yorker magazine ran one of its devastating “Funny Coincidence Depart merit" pieces. In the left hand column, it reprinted a few hundred words from President Malott’s inaugural address. On the right, a few hundred words from an essay published in the 19th century by an obscure British scholar. The left hand column and the right hand column were for all intents and purposes iden tical, and quickly Cornell became the laughingstock coast-to-coast. "The board of trustees called an emergency meeting to fire Malott," Mei\jou related. "And when they walked into the administration building, Malott said he had one request: He wanted the board to meet in his private study instead of in the cabinet room. They said OK. "Then he turned and said, ‘That wall of books over there is books I haven't read but hope to get around to reading. That wall over there’ — he pointed to the left of the room — 'is for books 1 have read."’ Then, Meqjou said, Malott asked the chairman of the board kindly to pick up some of the books from the shelves on the left. The chairman did so. ‘"Now please pick out a book — any book — open it, and read from it.’" The board chairman dumbly did so, and began reading. "‘Stop!’ Malott said. And then, 1 kid you not, my dear Bill, the president proceeded to recite word for word the ensuing three paragraphs. Then he shrugged his shoulders and said, 'You see my problem, gentlemen. I have a photographic memory, and I simply cannot recall with confidence whether what 1 am writing is or isn’t original.’’’ The trustees, duly impressed, kept the president on. Such a happy-ending story was briefly available to Sen. Joseph Biden, but then came his fateful encounter with "Frank,” the legendary figure who asked him last April quite innocently where Biden had attended law school and how well had he done. Biden greeted this rather innocent query with a vitupera tive kick in the groin (‘‘I think I have a much higher IQ than you do") and pro ceeded to describe an academic career William Buckley that would have made Erasmus proud. And ... of course, it turned out not to be so. It is somewhere recorded that at age 13, when asked what he wished to be when grown, Joseph Biden responded, "Orator.” That exactly is what he grew up to be. But he should have taken his gift to the stage rather than to the Senate, where it is expected that the senators will acknowledge whose words they are using, except when those words are their ghosts’. The crowning difficulty came when it was suspected not only that Biden was using other people’s words, but other people’s per sonae. He became Robert Kennedy, Neil Kinnock and Hubert Humphrey, but now finds himself in their company only in that all four of them can claim to have passed unpleasantly from the political scene. Biden was one of the majority who voted to introduce television to Senate proceedings. Witnessing last week the philistine rage at the expense of Robert Bork, one knew that the tormentors were (for the most part) camera-orien ted, mulcting every dormant passion in America, declining only to denounce Bork as an enemy of the redwood tree. It is perhaps for that reason a nice poetical coincidence that a little tele vision camera was grinding away when Biden was explaining to “Frank” what he and Sir Isaac Newton had in com mon. Attention suddenly turned to the question: Who supplied the press with a copy of the C-SPAN tape? The statis tical probability is that it would have disappeared with the rest of the day’s detritus. Robert Bork needs to live with essays written in 1971. He has coexisted with such over a long period and is no more disdained for the evolution of his thought than Rubinstein for the differ ence in the way he handled Chopin 15 years after he began. But Joseph Biden came face to face with material only a month old, and it proved mortal; in his case, suicide. In the matter of Bork, Biden plans homicide. © 1987 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE Editorial Policy Unsigned editorials represent official policy of the fall 1987 Daily Nebraskan. Policy is set by the Daily Nebraskan Editorial Board. Its mem bers are Mike Reilley, editor; Jeanne Bourne, editorial page editor; Joan Rezac, copy desk chief; Jann Nyffeler, associate news editor, Charles Lieur ance, assistant arts and entertainment editor; Scott Harrah, night news editor and Linda Hartmann, wire editor. Editorials do not necessarily reflect the views of the university, its em ployees, the students or the NU Board of Regents. The Daily Nebraskan’s publishers are the regents, who established the UNL Publications Board to super vise the daily production of the paper. According to policy set by the regents, responsibility for the editorial content of the newspaper lies solely in the hands of its student editors. (10 School une-Up ecial $15.00 Includes: Lube, Truing Wheels,