M'am, How About A Free Travel Voucher?

Are you like me? Have you ever missed a flight? Maybe you got to the airport a few minutes too late, ran into a logjam in the security line, or went to the wrong gate? I'll bet you were pissed, at least for a little while. But I'll bet you never reacted like this:



Sheesh. Mom, I'd like you to meet Imelda. Imelda, Mom. (Ma, Meldie gets a little emotional sometimes, so don't make any sudden moves.)

Stalker Insanity

Well, it took 39 years, but it looks like I've finally got me a stalker. Yes, indeedy. I remember whining a few months ago about the fact that no one had been pissed off enough about my opinions on here to get all freaky-deaky on me. It was tongue-in-cheek of course. Now that I have someone who is injecting herself into my daily life in unwanted fashion, it's not nearly as entertaining or flattering as I thought it would be.

Strangely, my new stalker -- I like to call her CrazyBitch -- didn't find me through this blog, which is where I would have expected a stalker to come from. I lean to the left, so I figured maybe there'd come a point where Ann Coulter, or one of her underlings, decided to come after my ass. But that's not how it went down. I found CrazyBitch online, in that cyberspatial forum we call Yahoo. Aptly named, Yahoo is, as it seems to be a breeding ground for nutjobs. You can hide your psychosis a long time behind a profile and a screen name. It all started a couple of weeks ago when some random woman who I'd long ago deleted from my Yahoo buddy list emails me from out of the blue. I don't recognize her email address, so I write back with a "Hi, who is this?" She responds that we'd chatted a long time ago, and her name is "Lisa," as if I don't know any other Lisas and I'm supposed to remember her. We have a few more back and forth emails, and eventually, we get on Yahoo IM, where we talk some more and eventually exchange pictures. When I see her picture, I vaguely recall her from a couple of years ago. She's Asian, young, and attractive, assuming of course, that she sent me a real picture, which is by no means assured. This is Online Pitfall Numero Uno.

We chat on Yahoo IM a couple of more times, and it goes reasonably well, so we agree to meet for a drink after work at some undetermined date in the future (which leaves me wiggle room to change my mind should the need arise). Due to the way she contacted me out of the blue, I'm a little paranoid that she's someone I know who's playing games with me. This has happened to me 2 or 3 times before. Someone I know in real life makes up a fake name and profile and chats me up to get certain information out of me. Well, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me four or five times, shame on me. So I tell her before I meet her, I'd like a couple more pictures please, and I want to talk on the phone. She agrees, I give her my cell number, and she calls me. This was last Saturday. I answer my cell and hear nothing. This happens like three more times, and I start to get annoyed. Then she emails me and accuses me of not picking up. For you, the viewer, this is the first clue that I'm dealing with someone who is five marbles short of a full bag.

I call her back on my cell and I get her voice mail. "What's wrong with this girl?" I'm thinking. She emails me again and tells me that she got my voice mail, but she has a lot of things going on in her life and isn't sure if she wants to meet, but we can continue chatting. (I'm getting all these Yahoo emails on my Blackberry). I find this funny -- it never ceases to amaze me, the assumptions people make so soon after you meet them -- and I respond that it's totally fine, I wasn't expecting anything from her, whatever. (What I didn't say is that because she was acting like such a loon with her silent phone calls, I wasn't sure I wanted to meet her myself.) Then she says she gets a lot of dropped calls and that's why she's not able to connect on her cell. Then she asks for my home number. Indignant and defensive about her earlier accusations, I stupidly give it to her. So she calls me from her home phone this time, and the same thing happens, I pick it up and hear nothing. Now I'm seriously annoyed, and this is where I fuck up. I call her back on her cell from my home phone, and I forget to block my i.d. Dumb, dumb, dumb. So that's how CrazyBitch got my name.

Anyway, we finally connect on the phone and speak for a few minutes. She sounds normal, but her voice is halting and nervous, and her English sounds a little broken. For some reason, she won't stay on the phone long, and then she directs me back to the computer, which I'm not interested in doing because the phone was working perfectly well. So, I decline and go to watch a movie. She doesn't seem pleased by this, and I get a couple of pissy emails on my Blackberry afterwards and some other weird shit happens that cements my view that this girl is Looney Toons.

Before I go to bed that night, I log on and there are a couple of angry IMs she sent me on Yahoo that pop up. They are threatening, but I can't remember exactly what they said. In speaking with her earlier, we'd discussed some dating experiences we'd both had before (that's when she told me about her engagement crashing and burning). When I told her a couple of dating anecdotes, including a brunch date I'd had that same afternoon, she sounded jealous, which I found strange, but then again, I thought she was kidding, so I didn't take it too seriously. Well, now that her true colors are coming out, I can clearly see that she was NOT kidding. Before bed, I email her in a nice way that I'm not interested in meeting her, and it was nice chatting, and thankyoubye. I thought this would be fine, since, as she said, she has a lot going on in her life right now.

Um, no, it wasn't fine.

In this age of the Internets, once you have a person's name, it's not that hard to get a whole host of other information, including, but not limited to, where they work. CrazyBitch did some quick research (she's quite resourceful) and found my office address. In the ensuing days, she proceeds to threaten me with silly punishments if I refuse to meet her. She knows where I work, she's going to show up at my office, she's going to find my parents and call them, blah, blah, and blah. Given the four layers of security in my office building, I'm not too worried about her coming to see me at work, but it's still annoying to be threatened with an unsolicited visit from a crazy person. If she's unlucky enough to locate my mother and actually talk to her, then she's royally fucked. My mother will verbally rip her throat out. She doesn't know my mother.

Before long, she threatens to send around a picture that I sent her of me in my Boo-Berry t-shirt -- the one that I took in Maui a few months ago. (I had it posted on here until recently.) I actually think I look pretty good in that picture, so I don't much care if she distributes it to the Pope and Santa Claus; it doesn't bother me a bit. But the mindset underlying CrazyBitch's threats do start to get me pee-ossed. Blackmail, no matter how trivial the threat, is a transgression worthy of the most extreme punishment. Not waterboarding -- I would never advocate torture -- but maybe some really hard hair-pulling, and definitely some openhanded, or even backhanded, bitchslapping. Until the time I'm presented with such an opportunity, I figure the best course is to make CrazyBitch feel irrelevant by ignoring her messages.

Sadly, this only worked for a couple of days. Upping the ante, as stalkers are wont to do when you ignore them, she starts doing things right out of Sleeping With the Enemy or Single White Female. Like sending me creepy emails along the lines of "I'll see you when you get home, honey." And calling my office. I hear my secretary answer my phone and then tell me that Lisa is on the line to talk to me. Well now, that's just creepy.

Initially I tell my secretary to take a message, but ten calls and hangups later, I decide I have to out myself about CrazyBitch. So I tell her about my little stalker issue. I work on a small floor where people hear things and everyone pretty much knows everyone else's bidness. So once my secretary learns of this mess, I figure I need to tell a few other people to minimize the gossip damage. Now it's a bit of a running joke, which isn't all bad. If CrazyBitch decides to mass email my entire office with some lie about me -- ah yes, a fucking nightmare that would be -- at least a few people will have early awareness about this insanity, and they can vouch for my ass. After she started calling me at work, I figured it was time to start using words like "lawyers" and "police" and "prosecution." Since then, she's quieted down with the emails (she's apparently not stupid enough to continue to leave a paper trail), but her annoying phone calls have increased.

As you might imagine, apart from the obvious embarrassment, I find all this quite unbelievable. Not that someone would stalk me, of course -- I mean, you've seen me, what's not to stalk? -- but it's CrazyBitch's mentality that has me incredulous. I just can't understand the mindset of someone who refuses to take no for an answer. Where's their fucking pride? I don't like to brag, but in my life, I've had plenty -- P-L-E-N-T-Y -- of women who were not interested in me after I showed some initial interest. If you stay single this long, it's going to happen. Did I pursue them once their apathy was made clear? No. Did I tell them, in a voice tinged with Patrick Berginesque obsession "I can't live without you, so I won't let you live without me!" Um, no.

What I do in such situations is leave skidmarks on the driveway. I believe in myself, who I am, and what I have to offer someone. I believe I'll eventually find someone who I click with on many levels, and vice-versa. And if I don't, I'm actually pretty fine by myself. I'll just travel more, take more pictures, and write more stories. The bottom line is, I have zero interest in pursuing, much less obsessing over, someone who isn't interested in me. Why would I? You can't force someone to want to be with you. Getting together with someone is a mutual choice. That's "mutual," as in TWO people have to want it. If one of them doesn't, well, it's a big world out there, with lots of people in it. Somewhere out there is someone who is more compatible, who will see you for the great person you are. Or in CrazyBitch's case, someone who will appreciate you for your "quirky passion." So get over yourself. There's no need to fixate on one person for anything. Ever.

The other thing I've learned from all this insanity is maybe I need to cut down on my online interactions. Just a tad. I think it's time to turn more of my focus to ladies in real life 3-D. Maybe I'll start asking women out on the subway, or if I can't get up the nerve, I'll create a website dedicated to them to get their attention. Hey, it worked for this guy. Then again, that does sound a bit.... stalkerish.

Hmmm, I'll figure it out. In the meantime, friends, Romans, countrymen (and women), please watch my back.

Merlin & Guastavino

Once upon a time, Merlin -- King's confidant, wizard, advisor, whisperer, magicmaker, blood brother -- decided that something was wrong in the Land. Something had gone horribly awry. It seemed to Merlin that there were 8 Knights of the Roundtable who had become traitors to the King. 8 Knights who had shown that they were not loyal to the throne, that their fealty was hedged.

Though the Knights had been handpicked by the King upon his ascendancy to the throne, Merlin had decided that they were not wholly, unfailingly, and completely devoted to the perpetuation and extension of the King's power. He deduced this because, among other things, the Knights were not slaying the right dragons (Democrats and their ilk), and oftentimes, they were slaying the wrong dragons (fellow Republicans and their ilk). Exercising their own independent judgment, these 8 Knights freely pursued the enemies of the Land at their own pace, with careful contemplation, and without political purpose.

Merlin, who had the King's ear (the King was not very bright and thus relied upon Merlin a great deal), was greatly disturbed by this, which he viewed as a form of political impotence and apathy. The 8 Knights were not moving quickly enough against the enemies of the King. Indeed, some of them had quit pursuing the King's "most wanteds" entirely, which was unacceptable to Merlin.

"This disloyalty to the King must stop!" screamed Merlin to Guastavino, his young apprentice/lackey.

While a mere lackey in relation to Merlin, Guastavino was in fact the Head Knight of all the Knights of the Roundtable. He did not attain this position by his experience, mind you. Guastavino had never bled on the battlefield as had most of the Knights who served under him. He had never had his helmet punctured by an errant sword, or his nose shattered by a chainmail fist.

Rather, the chubby, young, bespectacled Guastavino had been appointed to his position by the King. Most residents in the Land surmised that the King favored Guastavino due to Guastavino's previously demonstrated, unwavering servitude to the King, when the King was merely a Lord in the feudal state of Illiterate. (The fact that Guastavino derived from the southern feudal state of Rosa Espagna didn't hurt either. The King loved those Espagnic votes.)

But now, NOW, Guastavino had attained the position of Knight of Knights! It didn't matter to him how he got there. He now possessed all of the powers associated with his new, exalted status: the Power of Subpoena; the Power of Incarceration; the Power of Eavesdrop; the Power of Knight Appointment; and last, but not least, the Power of Political Recrimination. Drunk with power, Guastavino used his new weapons with little discrimination, and often, with little common sense.

It didn't matter to him that the Landsfolk complained that his decisions curtailed their freedoms. Guastavino had one goal and one goal only. He wanted to be like Merlin. He wanted to be a King Whisperer. Maybe even become King himself one day! The first Espagnic King! So, with these ends in mind, he followed Merlin from place to place, harkened whatever advice and counsel he could, like a good apprentice, and repeatedly did Merlin's bidding without complaint and without conscience.

"Yes, sire, what shall ye have me do?"

"I want the 8 Knights eliminated. Gone, do you understand? They are traitors, all of them. Their loyalty to the King is as weak as the stem of a wilted flower in a cold rain. I need you to be the spring storm that snaps their heads off. They are of no use to us any longer."

"Yes, sire."

"We will replace them with more loyal servants who will do our bidding."

So, as he was instructed, Guastavino summarily dispatched the 8 Knights. Each of them was told (not by Guastavino himself of course, but by one of HIS lackeys, of which there are too many to count) that their services were no longer needed.

Both Merlin and Guastavino thought that the episode would end there, for no one seriously questioned the authority of the King to choose his own Knights. Surely no one would dispute his selective elimination of 8 of the 93 Knights who refused to bend to his political will. Indeed, the prior King, King Wilhelm Clintonian, III had himself terminated all 93 Knights who served under HIS predecessor when HE assumed the throne. It was common practice for kings to throw out the garbage and pick their own people, so to speak.

But then, much to everyone's surprise, a strange thing happened. The 8 Former Knights did not go quietly into that good night. No, they did not. They began to speak out. They held press conferences to tell their side of the story. They talked to newspapers, television shows, magazines, anyone who would listen. They complained that they had been wrongly dispatched for political reasons, not for lack of competence. Their professional reputations forever besmirched by the humiliating demotion to serfdom had left the 8 Former Knights with nothing to lose. And everyone knows that a knight with nothing left to lose is a dangerous lion indeed.

Needless to say, the Landsfolk were quite upset to learn that the 8 Former Knights had been fired for reasons other than incompetence, and that Merlin and Guastavino may have been behind a secret campaign to make the Knights appear hapless. The fact that each of the Former Knights had obtained excellent reviews during their tenure made things quite sweaty for Merlin and Guastavino. Indeed, it appeared that the typically untouchable Merlin had miscalculated this time. He hadn't sensed every variable. Perhaps he had lost his ability to remain above the political fray?

It was not long before governing Vicars and Drakes ("VDs") were calling for Merlin and Guastavino to explain their misdeeds to the Landsfolk, under oath. In fact, a number of the VDs were quite upset that Guastavino, who it seemed was called to appear before them every other week for various transgressions, had misled them during a prior hearing. This time, the VDs wanted to hear from Guastavino AND Merlin under oath. While the inhabitants of the Land held nothing sacred, most everyone in the Land still respected the B-I-B-L-E, even Merlin.

Ah, but Merlin had no intention of testifying under oath. Even though he had orchestrated the entire episode (along with many others from which he had escaped scrutiny, including the ill-advised public disclosure of the name of one of the Land's secret agents, Valencia Ploomage), he had no desire to have this come to light. And he had no interest whatsoever in sitting on the VD hotseat, answering difficult questions from pompous VDs, all under the glare of a white hot television spotlight. No, no, no, this was not for him. Merlin operated best BEHIND the scenes, where he could pull the King's ear and whisper into it.

And so it was, one cold, March evening that Merlin said to the King:

"Why don't you have Guastavino testify under oath about these matters? He is already in bad favour with the Landsfolk. Things cannot get much worse for him than they already are."

"Hmmmm, you have a point, Merlin," said the King.

"Yes, sire, we have far more pressing matters to attend to, with the war in Arabica, ongoing negotiations with Kouria del Nord, and your legacy, of course. We cannot be bothered with these trivial fights with VDs. You are KING of all the Land, after all."

"Yes Merlin, your words make much sense. Guastavino will testify. I am so glad to have you here when things take a negative turn. I don't know what I would do without you."

"You will never have to worry about that, sire."

So, at Merlin's urging, the King threw Guastavino to the dogs. He directed Guastavino to testify before the VDs, and, like a good soldier, Guastavino did not divulge anything that would cast a scent upon Merlin and the King. He did so even though he knew he would lose his title as Knight of Knights before a fortnight was out. The people simply wouldn't have him any longer after this, another messy debacle on his watch.

But the VDs were not satisfied with just Guastavino. They wanted Merlin. And they wanted him under oath.

"Sire, this won't do, this won't do at all! We have to fight this, we must!"

"But what shall we do, Merlin? They are picking a battle over this, and the entire episode does not bode well for us. Everyone holds Knights in high esteem, and as you know, things in Arabica are not going well, and this is the last thing I need right now."

The King had a point. Though he was dimwitted, he was not wholly stupid. Neither was Merlin. So they came up with a plan. You see, both the King and Merlin had learned from the nefarious exploits and ensuing turmoil that had plagued the prior King, Wilhelm Clintonian, III.

Unfortunately, King Wilhelm had been prone to philandering. It was his Achilles heel, a fact that was well known even before he assumed the throne. So it was one starry night, that King Wilhelm made the mistake of getting his Royal Knob shined but good by a young, ambitious, moon-eyed lass who had been working as an apprentice in the White Castle. After having received numerous sceptre polishings from the young woman for many months, King Wilhelm got uh, a bit cocky (no pun intended, heh heh), and stopped taking precautions. Eventually he was caught red-handed, after having left his Royal Seal on the apprentice's blue dress.

Before long, King Wilhelm had so mucked up the situation that he found himself testifying under oath before a Grand Jury of Landsfolk. Rather than confess to his right good knob-waxing (a situation that all the menfolk in the Land surely would have understood, wot wot), King Wilhelm attempted to dance around the Inquisitor's questions with carefully parsed answers.

Oh, that was his downfall, it was! Soon after, the poor King was disgraced and impeached for lying to the Grand Jury. Though he still retained his Kingship, it was not quite the same thereafter. While some (including this Author), viewed the entire lurid episode as a political assassination that did nothing to further the Land's interests, others saw the King's downfall as his just desserts.

The point of all this, of course, is that the current King and Merlin (and likely all future Kings and Queens) have learned a great deal from what transpired with King Wilhelm. But mostly, they have learned thus: If one wants to engage in misdeeds while not suffering a similar fate as King Wilhelm, one has to AVOID testifying under oath at all costs. One has to AVOID placing one's hand on the B-I-B-L-E whose holiness and sanctity are beyond question. One must avoid swearing to tell the truth.

THIS way, no one can be prosecuted for perjury.

THIS way, one can lie and get away with it.

Oh and one more thing, one must avoid televised public hearings before VDs. Those just make you look stupid.

"Make them a proposal," said Merlin to the King.

"What kind of proposal?"

"A reasonable proposal. Tell those arrogant VDs that you don't want a fight over this. Tell them that you are prepared to fight, to assert the King's Privilege. Tell them you will consent to have me testify, but ONLY if (1) I do not have to testify under oath, and (2) I can testify in private."

"Do you think they will accept that?"

"Sure they will. What choice do they have? Otherwise, you can threaten to assert the King's Privilege, and I will not have to testify at all."

"But what if this dispute ends up in the Judicia Supremus?"

"Not to worry, sire. Remember, the majority of the judges in the Judicia Supremus are well positioned in our favour. Nearly all of them are Republicans, and you personally appointed two of them, including the Chief Justice. Moreover, the Judicia Supremus is largely responsible for your original ascension to the throne, do you not remember?"

"Ah yes, you are right again, Merlin! Sometimes I forget and think that I ascended the throne of my own doing!"

(Raucous laughter ensues between Merlin and the King)

"Sire, just remember to keep saying that you are offering them a REASONABLE proposal. Keep using the word REASONABLE as often as possible. We must appear that we are being REASONABLE. They are the litigious ones. The ones who are UN-reasonable. Turn the tables on them."

"Yes, yes, I think I can remember that."

"Sire, our political future depends on your remembering that one word: REASONABLE."

So how will this free-write of a story end? Will Merlin testify? Will he testify under oath? In private? Never?

Good Landsfolk, you must stay tuned for the answer.