PRIVACY MANAGER ROCKS!!!

So the Holidays are once again upon us and, uh, well, not surprisingly my mom is going through one of her, oh, let's be generous and call them EPISODES.

She's having one. Not as bad as the one that caused her to try to ruin my wedding (to the point my father removed every phone from their house but one and then took that one with him whenever he left. The few times he forgot I’d receive insane escalating messages on my answering machine until the tape reached the end… good times...) but still attempting to drive me nuts via the phone.

I only recently was able to convince her, while we were visiting her in lovely Bakersfield last weekend, that when she leaves me VOICEMAIL I cannot hear her, “Laurel if you’re there pick up the phone… Laurel? Pick up the phone. Fine” messages as she’s leaving them. I had to argue with her about this. Explain voicemail. Explain I have to call in with a password to hear it. I’m still not sure she fully believed me.

So now she has a new pattern…It goes something like this:

The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it back down.
I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
15 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it
Back down.
 I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
22 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I pick it up, see that it is “Private Name, Private Number”, and carefully put it
back down.
I check back a few minutes later.
No Message.
I say a few bad words.
8 minutes pass.
The phone rings, I don't even bother picking up the phone because I assume it is my mother.
I check back an hour or two later
There is a message!
A message from someone I actually DID want to talk to.
I say more bad words.

REPEAT endlessly, sometimes several times in one day, with the occasional alternate ending of it being someone else who goes by the alias “Private Name, Private Number” that I did want to talk to.

This problem has been exacerbated by the fact that sometime in the last month my call waiting ID just sort of stopped being there (thus tricking me into clicking over, expecting someone else and finding my mother) and our regular caller ID wasn’t a terribly effective screening tool since MANY people we know show up as “Private Name, Private Number.”

So I called SBC (and for the record I HATE SBC, in the last year they screwed up my installation leaving me without phone or Internet for a week and a half, made our DSL act like it was on heroin and flat out eaten my voicemail so that I only got the first seven seconds [remember that band… ah punk, I miss it… and I digress] of my messages and had to try to deduce from that snippet who was calling and what they wanted) they apologized about the call waiting ID problem, fixed that immediately and then hooked me up with PRIVACY MANAGER the “you paid for your number to be blocked but I paid MORE to see who you are anyway so you can either unblock your number or you can go away” service. For only $3.50 more a month.

So Saturday morning the phone rings at 9:00 am and it is a computerized computer courtesy call letting me know my new service is in place. 18 minutes later the phone rings again… I lean over, look at the phone and yep… there is my mother’s name and phone number.

Worth every penny. SBC, I almost forgive you for everything you’ve ever done to me. Almost.

VoiceMail for the Dead!

I'm gonna be rich! Well, not now, because I was stupid enough to post this on the internet instead of rushing of to PATENT the idea but I have hit upon a winner: voicemail for the dead!

It came to me, after in quick succession I got my mother off my phone, made another call to a friend that turned into a quick Christmas party clothing consultation (no, that will look cool, no really) and then left two voicemail messages of the imploring "call me" variety. I hung up the phone and then yelled up into my ceiling, "Tommy, I really freaking wish you weren't DEAD because I really need to talk to you!" and it hit me. Yes, I felt DAMN stupid yelling at my ceiling, but what if I was speaking into a phone? When communicating, we need to feel like we have an audience, whether it is someone in the room with us or someone we’re writing e-mail to or leaving a voicemail for.

My friend Evelyn and I have talked about this. How sometimes if a lot is going on and we are really stressed we can feel much better just after leaving a long rambling message for the other person. Almost like we'd talked to them. All we did was ramble into their answering machine but we know they’ll hear it eventually and we feel like we’ve made a connection.

Why shouldn't this principle apply to dead people? I know I feel DUMB talking to the ceiling (if for no other reason than I figure the odds of the spirit I am wanting to talk to being RIGHT OVER MY LIVING ROOM at the exact moment I want to talk to them are really REALLY minute because, well, at least in Tommy's case, I'm sure he's dancing in assless chaps in the hereafter gay bar) and writing a letter that I KNOW isn't getting mailed anywhere doesn't work.

In general letter writing is a great tool for catharsis because of the possibility of actually sending it. You write your boss a letter explaining to him how much easier it would be to drive and tie his shoes and how much better food would taste if his HEAD wasn't up his ASS and part of what makes you feel SO much better after you've written it is that you COULD send it. You won't. But you could.

But writing a letter to someone who’s dead is like writing a letter to Santa, you KNOW it isn't going anywhere even if you address it to:

Tommy Griffin,
The Hippest Gay Bar,
Hereafter, Heaven.

Or, if my church was right:
Tommy Griffin,
Slowly turning on a spit over an open flame,
Gay Section, Floor 793, Hell.
But VOICEMAIL! Who’s to say dead people CAN'T pick their messages up? And you'd be talking into a PHONE which feels so normal and not like you are just talking into space. And with the technology available today, you could create an a outgoing message with that person's voice, either by using a previous recording of an old phone message, or by using technology to piece together recorded words and sounds captured of that person (for an additional fee – supply all known vocal recordings, a request for what the message should say "Hi this is Tommy and I'm too dead to pick up the phone right now so please leave a message and I won't call you back!"  for example, and a check for $499.99 -- Either way, you'd actually be speaking TO them.

PURE FUCKING GENIUS. I need to log off and get on this because I have a fortune to make and a really long message to leave for Tommy.