People! That about sums the whole thing up in a NUT shell. Today, that nutshell has grown from an almond sized, to way past a coconut! I am referring to recent emails and phone calls from people I have know for a short period of time, 3 months or less........ Now it's either me or it's them, and as anyone of you here know by now, it could not possibly be me...!?! Anyway.... Paranoia in an advanced stage has begun to set in.... I have a bad handset phone cord on the old desk type phone...it clicks and cracks and pops, if I dare move when talking on it..... I only use it when the cordless phone battery dies....and in the past week, it has done that a lot, even though I normally get about 4 hours of blabbing before it goes south on me. Those that hear this think it's the "phone police"! Now to me that's hilarious, but they get serious and soon paranoid beyond anything I have ever heard before. They get pretty darned upset when they have me on the phone for hours on end and I'm trying not to nod off, and I'm reading the lips on the guy on the tv.....and the cordless goes off line! That really spooks them! Then there's the emails! I got a nasty email from a person back east that was adamant I had sent one of her email contacts some wacko email/s ( It wasn't me!). I emailed the person back and told them I cannot see into their computer, and IF by chance they had mistakenly had others on the same email they sent to me, I only reply to them directly. End result: I promised to remove them from my email list and delete any and all emails I may have not read or had saved. That seemed to appease them. Evidently this other email person that got some strange communications, was from a neighbor, messing with them. 4 hours later..... I got sort of an apology: " Gee, I guess I was stressed out from being too tired". I can easily see where people today are stressing out over any number of realistic problems: the economy, their jobs, their familes health and welfare, their mortgages, college tuitions, food....it's a disaster! But, (for some inexplicable reason), we as people seem able to magnify those issues into non-real phobias and then to react quite severely and irrationally to them. I found it interesting from a social psychological view, that we seem ready, willing, and more than able, to turn on those that we have come to trust in these trying times.....( or so WE thought) Applying this to a newly formed group, or an association of like minded people, would be a complete disaster, in so many ways. As of late, this phenomen appers to be a run away freight train ... Why then, do we act so arbitrarily, knowing it's wrong to do so, and to make accusations and hurt those that would more than likely feed and house us, in a worse case scenario? ( The old adage about how we always hurt the ones we love, JUST don't get it done!) Maybe, IF there is anyone out there with some psych training, they could enlightem the rest of us on: "how to deal with humanity"? I can only see people pulling further apart, mistrust and paranoia filling in the gaps... Not like it was in WWII, but then we aren't in a world war either...(yet) So, it's interesting, it's strange, and, it's frightening all at the same time!
I laugh at that oh "my line is tapped"....everytime I hear it,"your" line was never really private. A) nobody really cares what most people talk about over the phone. b) Having done technical surveillance sweeps, installed pen registers( electronic device recording phone#'s dialed out ) and other devices in my years in Afosi tech services("pots"Plain old Telephone service)analog phone days : Even then a legal Gov't."tap" was not some trenchcoat spyvs.spy guy hooking wires up to your 66 block"(perhaps a lo-tech cheezy Ace Ventura divorce attorney p.I.)we had a warrant and the phone company programmed an additional line to the target line that terminated in our shop. when the phone rings at 123 commie spy st, it also "rings" in the "back room" of the tech shop.it is as undetectable as a separate line in your housewith the receiver down. and I wont justify arguements about about esoteric sweep methods like time domain reflectometry( cable radar"). The connection is a software switch made somewhere in the exchange. Among the mass of others. The military came to the conclusion there is no100% safeguard against telephone easvesdrop So like: "Every gun is loaded :everyphone is stickered: "Every phone is considered tapped." Quit worrying but If "they" want you they can get you( are you worth the effort and expense?) thats all I haveto say about that..
