Stock Footage

A telephone conversation skill that involves giving the impression of listening to one's interlocutor's monologue while actually focusing on a separate unrelated task that demands all of one's conscious attention. This technique allow one to focus on one of the myriad tasks that demand our time in this Information Age such as checking email, reading product labels, console video games, television subplot hermeneutics, etc. The effective Stock Footage skill set includes (at least): 1. Subliminally registering important words, 2. Following the tone and cadence of your partner's voice while ignoring its content, 3. Judiciously interjecting soothing phrases when appropriate, 4. And, (the most expert skill) responding to the dreaded "Are you even listening to me?" or somesuch query by reconstructing from one's subconscious mind enough of the meaning of the fellow communicant's narrative to prevent a highly undesirable incidence of Color Bars.