Psych(ot)ic Influence

So why was Allison obsessing over this O'Leary character? Who knows? My reasoning sounds conceited, but it makes a lot more sense than what follows. You see, when I met her, I was hung up over Juliet, which pissed her off (not bad, eh? meet a woman and piss her off in a week's time). Instead of dropping me like a wet blanket, she decides to be my friend and have her own corresponding long distance relationship. As long as I hung on, she kept doing it... and continued to elaborate the story.

It started to come out that Tom was psychokinetically enabled in that he was able to control his environment with his mind. This was all constructed in a series of building blocks so it all wouldn't come out at once, but little by little to build one item on top of another, from the very simple and even believable to the downright ridiculous.

I'll try my best to get all of this is the order it happened, but it's more to the point that I just get it all out. To begin with, Allison told a story of a former boyfriend she had that was cruel to her in some ways I prefer not to recount because of some of the things she said he did to her (quite against her will). This was just some common boy she knew, and while the tale was on the horrific side, it wasn't unbelievable.

That story was tailor made to anger even the sanest of men since anyone who attacks a woman should be made to suffer. But, of course, this one was long gone. In fact, she pointed out some model in a catalog and said that was him. My belief in the who began to falter, and it was afterward when I started to put all her stories together and realize just how convoluted it all was. It's like trying to make heads or tails out of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and all their sequels.

Let's put a time frame in perspective. She graduated high school in May 1994. I met her in January 1996. That's just shy of two years. During that time, she managed to have two long-ish relationships, live in Oklahoma City (pinpointed this to April 95, as she said the OKC bombing woke her up), and work for Playboy (this is what she told me). When I met her, you may recall, she was working for a hotel as a concierge, and it was a job she'd recently acquired. Is it possible to do all that in two years? Yeah. Is it likely? I don't recall the precise times now, but I knew them well enough then to question that every story was true. Were some true? Sure. Do I really know which ones or parts of ones were true? Nope.

In fact, one of my earlier excursions with her (and Hedy, of course) was to drive past her ex's apartment to see if he was there with his girlfriend. Yeah, she was stalking him for awhile. That stayed with me long enough to warn my groomsmen to make sure she didn't show up at my wedding.

Back to Tom. I would like to mention that Tom O'Leary is the victim of the delusions of a pathological liar, and in no way is any of this a reflection upon him. While the performance I saw actually used an understudy (according to the program), but I saw a clip of his performing, and he seemed quite good.

Walk with me into this fantasy, will you?

The first thing that came out was that Tom had a house in Crown Pointe in Tulsa, which is a big to-do housing addition here in Tulsa. This house had been renovated considerably to resemble the underground of the Paris Opera House to the point that one had to take a boat to cross a small lake inside the house. Why, oh why, would he do this? Well, because he more than just played the Phantom in the show -- no, he was related. You see, the extension to the Phantom story is that Erik, the Phantom -- whose real name was (big surprise) Thomas James O'Leary also -- did have children, but not with the mythical Christine, and Tom's ancestor was one of them.

The Phantom Thomas (who we'll continue to refer to as Erik to keep it straight) acheived his feats by way of psychokinesis, which is the ability to affect your environment with your mind. This isn't just moving stuff around. Here's some info outside of the fantasy. Skilled psychokinetics can do all kinds of stuff such as changing temperatures of items, affecting clouds, slowing their heart rate, and of course, moving items. Back to Tom...

The first thing that actually happened that attempted to prove this was an answering machine message. We got Tom leaving a message, but when Allison tried to play it back, it was gone. Gasp! He erased the message! I commented to her that all she had to do was not rewind the machine, or rewind it to before the message (this was the days of cassette tape answering machines) and play the blank space. She was, of course, deeply offended that I accused her of lying.

So you can see derailing the fantasy wasn't difficult. It was just a matter of whether I would choose to do so, and in retrospect, derailing it would get easier and easier as time went on. Actually, I could have derailed it very early on if I knew anything about cell phones and how they worked. You see, at the time, I didn't know that when you take a cell phone into a different area code that it kept its own number, and not take the area code of where ever it ended up. Allison continually changed up Tom's area code depending on which part of the country his cell phone was in. When I learned the facts behind this, it all started to come together for me.

So we have Tom, the descendant of Erik, the psychokinetic practitioner. What else could the master of mind do with his powers? How about possession? Am I serious? Hell, I really don't know, but it was one of those things that I barely believed, but was intrigued enough to with it. Shoot, it sure felt like I was talking to a different person sometimes. "Tom", while talking through Allison, indicated that he could take over her body from wherever he happened to be at the time to talk to me. After all, he was grateful she had a friend like me around. Sure, whatever.

What else could Tom do? How about some revenge? Remember the guy who did unspeakable things to Allison? Well, one thing to note is that I didn't hear about this character until after Tom came onto the scene, and it wasn't long till I heard she'd told Tom about him as well. This, naturally, made Tom quite upset.

A few days later, Allison got a call from this guy's mother (why she would call, God only knows, but that's what Allison said), and this guy had met with an untimely death while swimming in the ocean. Shortly thereafter, "Tom" popped in and revealed he'd basically astral projected himself to where this guy was and used his psychokinetic abilities to hold him underwater. While I can't say I would have agreed with someone doing what he did to Allison (no matter how warped she was), I don't think that would be the best solution.

What gets me was that all this stuff happened over the course of only about 5 months. She from a nice rebound to someone possessed by the mind of an actor. So what would possess me to hang on this long to someone that warped? There was the hope of one thing; that maybe, just maybe there was a thread of truth in what she was saying. That's all I wanted. Just one iota of truth, since in the beginning of the story, it was at least plausible that she went through some talent agency that was used by the Really Useful Group to fill out some bit parts in a touring production. It was plausible that while there, she charmed some guy who happened to play the lead part; she did have an infectious and outgoing attitude. If she charmed said guy, it was plausible that he would do whatever for her to woo her into his good graces, and he supposed proposed to her after a couple of months while at his home in New York.

So if all this was plausible, since he played the lead in one of Andrew Lloyd Webber's most successful shows, it was also just as plausible that at some point, she would meet Lord Lloyd Webber himself. So went the story over the first couple of months, and if she'd done that, then could it not be said that she might mention that she had a friend who'd gone so far as to have not only purchased cast recordings for every show available but also purchase a biography of his? And who's to say that he and Tom might not be agreeable to meeting said friend on a future occasion, if all of this were true?

She played the one card she had to keep me hanging: the hope of meeting someone who could be considered a hero of mine. I admire a great many people, and it is those who meet with success in what they do. I could not hope for any of that success to rub off, but maybe, just maybe, knowing someone would lead to a glimmer of hope that they might read something I would write and give it a chance.

I believe that it was that more than anything else that kept me hanging on through the insanity, and it was entirely possible that she pulled the insane routine to try and get rid of me. She had a dreadful fear of commitment and anyone getting close to her, so after awhile, she likely went from the anger over Juliet routine to not wanting me to get close to her. It's hard to say, but the only reason someone would go so far as to appear completely off their nut (well, if they aren't) would be to get rid of someone who won't leave.

I should have left. After all, it can't get any crazier, could it? Yeah, it could, but fortunately, this charade didn't last long, and it quickly moved into a span of time in which I was able to be myself for awhile, and it was very nice...

These Are The People In Your Neighborhood

You gotta love people you work with. You see them about as much as you see your own family, but sometimes, they are about as bright as the people who call in for help. Being in a position as a helper of "internal customers," I ran into all kinds of weirdness that one would think these people should know. Not just talking about in-depth info, either. We're talking basic training.

For instance, I took a chance on offending someone with this question:

They said: "I changed the phone's serial number on the customer's account. I made a test call and it didn't work."
I said: "Did you program the phone?"
They said: "Oh, I have to do that."

Yeah, report to HR for a drug test.

Or how about this one. We had someone ask for help finding the international rate to call Albuquerque, New Mexico. We explained that New Mexico was within their calling area and included in the domestic long distance. After a pause, they asked again about what the rate would be since New Mexico is international. We had to recap that Mexico is international, but New Mexico is one of the 50 states, and hence, covered in the plan.

With a huff and puff, the person asked, then, so what part of New Mexico is not covered and what are the rates? We stated that all of New Mexico is covered. Finally, they either took it or just got upset, because they said, "ok, bye," and hung up.

Then there was this highly confusing conversation: This one person called and asked what this oblivious 24.95 charge on a bill was for. I looked at it and saw CLA for an abbreviation among the nonsense. I told her CLA stands for Cigarette Lighter Adapter. Sure, the lights came on, but she said, "Oh, I just answered my own question then!"

Um, how?

So maybe you've noticed that the answers from Help desk people aren't entirely trusted by those who actually call in. Nothing illustrates that better than by this little exile from his high school debate team...

I had a rep call in and ask me why we were charging the customer $121. He wanted to know if it had to do with termination fees, but I quickly determined it did not. He talked about payments the customer made, bills from March, April, May, June, and July, and other irrelevant stuff. I told him the balance was from the april bill and nothing else since everything after april was credited. Overage and Service charges; that's it.

It took another 25 minutes to explain that all the irrelevant stuff was still irrelevant and that the charges were legit and no termination fees were there, etc, etc, etc, and tht the payments would not apply to the april bill because the last payment was before that bill came out, etc, etc, etc, for 25 minutes...

Did he understand when we were done? When I told him ingore all other bills and all other charges and tell her it is for overage and service fees from April?

Maybe, because then he argued about it in the customer's favor. There was a shadow of doubt on the service fees because the number was ported to a different carrier (according to memos) at the beginning of that cycle...not that this topic had even been breached. I gave that to him.

Now charges are only overage from April. Overage and taxes. Real easy right? WRONG! We had to go over it again! And again! And again! 40 minutes after the call began, he was satisfied and went to the customer, miraculously still hanging on.

I just shook my head. I always went for nailing down the problem based on the most obvious information, and then if any further information is needed to explain THAT answer, then we dig. This does not mean the answer must involve extraneous stuff.

To round this out, I'll throw in something that doesn't involve a call in, but cleaning people. You know, those people who always clean the bathroom at 12 and 5? Well, this involves cups, and it started kind of suddenly one month.

We'd gone through quite a few cleaning people, and the one batch did something I really wasn't expecting. I always kept a 32 oz. cup on my desk that I continued refilling with ice water as the night wears on. One day I came in to find it missing. I'm thinking, "who in the world would steal a cup?"

Well, I learned that the cleaning people had (without warning) begun bussing our desks and removing cups that appear disposable. I actually had one on my desk one night, and it was gone the following day. I was wondering, where in their job description it includes bussing cups off of desks?

They cost me 75 cents...

Cat Woman

You know, sometimes when you hear a story, it's way too good to pass up. Usually it's because it sounds so unbelievable that it simply can't be real, but you are assured that it is. I'll have to keep the source on this one anonymous since I want to make sure no one is unduly humiliated (not that I give away a great deal of names anyway, right?).

I grew up with cats -- lots of cats. But despite having an upwards of sixteen cats at one time, it never possessed me to personify them a great deal. Sure, I talked to them, but it was obviously a one sided conversation unless they reacted in some clear way. This is normal, and one way, I don't mind being normal. After all, animals are living creatures, and talking to them enough might actually induce some kind of understanding between you and them. But that's where you end it. You don't go to "the next level."

What is this "next level," you ask? Well, hold on to your seat.

There is a woman out there who had two daughters and a husband and lived out of town on some farmland. As time wore on, her daughters grew up, got married, and moved out of the house, leaving the woman and her husband alone to live out their days in the silence of the country. The husband worked, as most do, so he is gone during the days, leaving her by herself completely.

Her daughters urged her to get a job so she can get out of the house and earn a little money. Well, she refused stating that she was afraid to drive since (because they live in the country) she was afraid she'd hit a deer. So she had another idea: she'll raise cats and sell them. This went on for a couple years, and apparently, she made some decent money doing it...but she got attached to the cats, so she had to stop.

Well, she decided to move from raising cats...to raising chickens. This went on for a year or two, but again, she had to stop, because...yeah, she got attached to the chickens. So now she is in a house with the occasional husband, the leftover cats, and the leftover chickens. What's a woman to do?

Obviously, conversing with the cats isn't totally out of the question, but what do you do when Puss doesn't respond? Well, clearly, you assign a voice to Puss and answer for him. This way, you are talking, and Puss is responding in a different voice, so now, you can converse with someone. But oh wait, Boots is out of the loop. Boots gets his voice, too, and now you can have a three way conversation over the dish-washing. That works.

But what happens when Boots gets attitude and starts calling you fat? And Puss has been sleeping around with more than one of the other cats in the house, so clearly she's a slut. And now, the chickens want to get in on the conversation, so they (naturally) get their own voices and let's not leave out the other cats as well.

After a short while, now the cats and chickens all have their very own voices, first and last names, and complete family histories. Conversations are flying all over the place with everyone trying to talk over each other (though curiously, no one manages to talk over anyone).

So one day, Nixon decides he's gonna get a little lip with the master and he and the woman launch into this hellacious argument. Names are tossed back and forth. Nixon calls her fat and ugly. She knows he's a whore with his manhood and has been overeating lately. It's too much, and word comes back to the others that Nixon has left, going into the field behind the house. He doesn't return.

Several days later, a cat's body was discovered in that field...decapitated. Poor thing must have committed suicide.

One thing you would never do to the cat woman is suggest that the cats are not talking to her. This would, of course, be foolishness, since since she (and you) is clearly hearing their voices, they simply must be talking. If she sits in her chair and starts in with a thousand mile stare, let her go. The conversations will start, and the cats and chickens will start talking. Just let it go.

I hear that if you were to have the honor of staying over at her house, and you wake up and you're alone with her...pretend to be asleep. Apparently, the occasion has arisen that you've had a conversation with the cat woman and it didn't go so well.

It would suck, after all, to wake up in the field and discover you'd lost your head.

Sometimes, There Are No Words

So we had survived the wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony, the reception was great, and we were officially married and ready to start our lives together. We had stayed the night at a Day's Inn in Sand Springs, and our intent was to leave from there to go on our honeymoon, which was going to be in Colorado. But early the next morning when we were going to leave, we hit a snag of some kind, and had to head back into Tulsa briefly to retrieve something from our apartment.

I don't remember what it was, but it did give me the opportunity to give the Queen her wedding present. She loves the Cherished Teddies figurines, and I had found a newlywed couple on top of a wedding cake music box that played the wedding recessional. She loved it.

She had given me a pair of cuff links that had built in watches; I loved those, but they met with an unfortunate end. You see, at the time and for several years, I had the unfortunate habit of leaving stuff on the roof of the car. Lost several drinks, some to-go boxes, and even my CD player hit the road at one point (but it was retrieved). These cuff links were left on top of the car outside a hotel when I drove off, thunking them on the ground in the parking lot. Didn't notice this until a couple hours later, and when I ran back, the front desk had the studs that went with the cuff links, but whoever had turned them in had stolen the cuff links themselves. These were somewhat unique, and I've never seen another set like them. I was rather upset at myself for losing them, and my setting of things on the car subsided considerably after that time. Anyway...

Once we got whatever it was I'd left, we set off to Colorado Springs in April of 1999. I give the date because it will be very shortly revealed exactly the time frame we're in here. You see, we were married on the 17th, and left town on the 18th. We got to Colorado Springs that evening, and drove around looking for a place to stay, eventually ending up at a Motel 6 or something.

Once we got settled, the Queen went in for a shower, and I was chilling out when the power went out in the hotel. Never heard of this happening before, but it sure enough did. Everyone was looking out of their rooms to see if there was any word of what was going on, but not much was known. About this time, the Queen thought the joke was so funny, and it was time to turn the light on (she was still in the shower). I let her know about the situation, and our only answer was to open the curtains to let in what moonlight existed and shut the door, so she could at least get out of the shower.

We endeavored to do as much as possible in Colorado Springs during the week we planned to be there, but the first thing we wanted to do was get into a different hotel. We tracked down a Howard Johnson that was more centralized and still reasonably priced, and ended up staying there the rest of the week. One added bonus to this place was that we got a copy of the newspaper every morning, so we actually knew what was going on in the area.

One thing I had wanted to do, but turned out to be not possible was see Les Miserables, which was playing in Denver the week we were there. Unfortunately, when I called the month before for tickets, they were already sold out completely. Oh well.

I showed the Queen around town for the most part on the first day. We hit some tourist places, but it was mostly just driving around. She loved the town. What's not to love? It's got great scenery. The air is pristine.

I took her onto Fort Carson, where I'd been stationed nearly five years before. It had changed a bit. The band room was gone completely. It looked like it had been demolished recently. It was a fairly quick trip on and off base. After all, you can't do anything on a military base without a military ID, so it was a tour and little more, but it was enough.

One thing I wish I could remember clearly was the sequence in which we did things, because we did a lot of stuff that week. We rode the tram up Pike's Peak, but couldn't get to the top due to there still begin snow at the top. We went through Garden of the Gods and marveled at the natural beauty. We went to Seven Falls. We went thru Cave of the Winds, where we got to experience the classic of cave tours: total darkness. I know the Cave of the Winds happened on Friday before we left because it snowed our last day there, and I do remember snow coming back to the hotel from there.

But there was one event that overshadowed us for a little while, and caused a few extra calls on my cell phone. It was Tuesday, and we had gone to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo followed by a drive through the zoo (which was wild) up to the Will Rogers Shrine of the Sun. When we got up there, there was a news report on about an incident in Littleton, CO, which is outside of Denver, some 70 miles North of us. The police were out at Columbine High School because of a shooting incident.

Yup. April 20, 1999 brought us the worst school shooting in American history, and forever changed the way we look at school security. We wanted to have children, and the thought of something like that happening at a school was horrifying. Twelve students, one teacher, and the two gunmen themselves died that day, and twenty-four others who were injured in the attack. You may recall I mentioned that we got the newspaper at the Howard Johnson we stayed at, so our honeymoon newspapers (which were the Denver Morning News) were plastered with the incident for the rest of our stay there.

We still have these newspapers, and they paint a grim picture of introversion and pent-up anger gone horribly wrong. Today, schools have a lock-down policy because of this. The school where the princesses go (and will go) had an incident just recently with a BB gun where the kids were rapidly shuffled in from recess and locked in the rooms. Some foolish kid from the school next door thought it would be a good idea to take that to school.

But it's still very scary, and don't misunderstand me, we had a blast on our honeymoon. We want to head back up there at some point so the girls can see the wonders of God's creation for themselves, but events like that don't leave you. It lets us know that we must be ever vigilant in paying attention to what goes on around, and teach our children how to watch for these frightening things as well.

We keep ours quite sheltered for their young lives, but we know that at some point, we'll have to open that last door and let them see just how bad things can get. When do you show them that the world isn't all castles and unicorns? When do you take that dream away and introduce them to the darkness that's really out there? I know for Rock Girl, the time is coming soon, and while I want to procrastinate on it, that won't do her any good at all.

When we left Colorado on Saturday, the blanket of snow from Friday was still on the ground, and while we didn't want to return to reality, we were also starting a hopeful new life. One with many thoughts from the previous week, but also one that we knew we would face together. No one has clear sailing, but so far, we're doing quite awesome.

Someday, we'll go back up there with the princesses. But we''ll make sure it's over the summer, so next time, we can go all the way up Pike's Peak and see what the world looks like from God's point of view.

Another Long Weekend

Today, I'm tired. Tired because I'm still trapped at the world's largest retailer for just a few more weeks. Six, to be exact. Well, six plus one. I know that seems like a weird way to say it, but I'm working for six out of the next seven weeks because I'm taking the weekend following our anniversary off to spend some quiet nights with The Queen. So I've got two weeks before then, and then four weeks after to make my last night May 18-19. It won't come soon enough.

This whole thing makes us crazy in so many ways. First, there's the time factor in that we lose spending time together because I am working all three weekend nights and sleeping during the day. This means we don't get as much time together, we don't talk as much, and communication breaks down causing a bit of strife here and there.

Come Saturday, the Queen was quite upset over not getting much of any time at all with me, much less quality time. Not that it's completely my fault, mind you, but I could have made it a little better. The problem is that there are just not enough hours in a day. On Saturday morning, I came home, took care of the princesses for a moment and then passed out. At 3 or so, I was awakened so I could help The Engineer further trim the trees in my yard to get over the whole ice storm fiasco. After that, we went to dinner, and upon coming home, The Engineer and I talked about the older car in my driveway in getting it going.

Now, after this, he and I played Guitar Hero where we should have played something to involve the Queen too. Is it any wonder she felt ignored? I finally talked to her on a break from work on my cell phone and vowed to try and get a little more talk time in.

When it comes to this car, this is a bit of a drama in and of itself since this car can take a bit of the blame for what happened at my last job. You see, I was on the chopping block to be written up for being late too often (apparently, they had issues with late time frames such as 1.03 minutes -- that's 1 minute and 1.8 seconds late, and yes, it was on the form), and I was warned that one more day late that month, and I'd be written up.

I left in plenty of time that morning of the 29th of December, but the car wouldn't shift out of first gear (it's an automatic), and as a result, I couldn't go faster than 20 mph. I hoped that the car would "wake up" as it had before and shift, but it didn't. After a mile of this, I turned around and went home to get the other car. I was eight minutes late. At the world's largest retailer, they allow a leeway of ten. At that job, it was one. You got one minute, and only because the report didn't show anything until that first minute elapsed.

That action caused a downward spiral which lead to my eventual termination, because I felt the disciplinary action was unjust and I wasn't afraid to let them know. Their answer? A write up for failure to accept accountability. Heh.

Anyway, this car won't shift, so the Engineer and I discussed it at length last night. The Queen had offered her suggestion for previous problems the car had, and we tossed around that and a dozen other things while paging through the repair manual (which, incidentally, doesn't list the exact problem it has). We have some ideas, but before we can do anything, we need to get it started. Well, guess what...it hasn't run since December 29, 2006, so the battery is dead. We tried to charge it, but it won't go. He suggested I take battery to my weekend workplace to charge it, but I remembered later that that department isn't open overnight to actually do the charging, and I can't stay late on Mondays for them to do it. Oh well.

I'm sure the drama of fixing the vehicle is just beginning.

Last night came the other issue with my working overnights. The Queen heard some weird noises coming from inside the house. It made only the second time since I started working over the weekends that she called me, but she values my presence to protect her, you know, from the weird noises. I came home over my lunch break to provide what comfort I could, and she said she rested well for that period of time, but went back into panic mode once I left again. So, again, the sooner it's over the better.

It also sucks that through the entire weekend, I've got nothing on stories of the Queen and Princesses -- mainly because I hardly saw them. I'm also not too thrilled about my hands being mostly numb all day on Monday.

What else is out there? Well, the last bit I have is concerning that Guitar Hero game. You see, one thing I considered before getting it is the fact that on the PS2, there are several games and even custom versions out there, where with the Wii, there is one. Well, I've been doing some reading and learned that the way the Guitar Hero game is designed is to read "chart" files, and interpret them as the song you play. They are also manufactured so that all of games on all the platforms use the same basic chart files, even though the game's programming is different. Reading this between the lines, it may be possible to create a custom version of GH3 using the PS2 files from GH, GH2, and GH 80's along with the custom versions I've also come by.

Here's the hiccup, though. the Wii is designed to read only its own optical game discs, not DVD-R backups of them, which is what a custom GH3 game would amount to. I've read some things on "modding" the Wii console, but I don't want to change the console, when the culprit is the game itself. I figure there must be a way to make the code on the disc work so that the console will read it.

It amounts to a very geeky project, which is exactly what I would enjoy doing...very much. Step one is getting the Wii to recognize and play the DVDR version of the straight, unmodded game. I own the game, so my backup copy is completely legal, and having a backup of your media is also completely reasonable. But getting it to play will be an adventure, I'm sure. Can't wait.

What does the Queen think? As long as I don't screw anything up, she's kind of excited to see if I can get the 80's version to work. The big thing everyone complains about with the Wii is that there is no downloadable content. Well, if I can get these older game loaded in, who needs it. Custom versions mean that there is no limit to what you can do; all I need to do is get past the built in restrictions.

For a final bit, I'll throw out a short conversation I had with Optimus Prime. Around here, a masseuse comes in every Thursday for a dollar a minute. Last week, they came on Friday, which sparked a short little dialogue between us. He openly wondered if this masseuse was a Japanese lady with too much lipstick; he said would be disturbing.

I just commented that if it were, you could probably get off cheap.