I’ve had several phone calls in the past week from someone claiming to be from the Police Athletic League. Normally I joke around a bit with these callers saying that I’m not going to donate until policemen’s wages are raised, or that giving my husband is all the charity I can afford at the moment, and they’ll understand and stop calling, but PAL weren’t, or so I thought.

But it turns out with a bit of digging that this was not actually the real Jacksonville Police Athletic League but an extortionist of some sort. They’re using a number which just pops up saying “St. Johns FL” on my caller ID which may mean they’re actually using a cell phone. 904-547-0514 is the number which shows up when they call me.

Today I asked them if there was anyway I could be taken off the list because with my husband being a police officer, they should realize that we’re too broke to donate, I was told, “Oh, well, my wife’s a teacher, so you should know how broke I am too,” I said, “Touche, but seriously, how can I get off your list so you’ll stop calling me because this is getting ridiculous,” “Send $25 and we’ll stop calling you.” Well, that got my back up, understandably so, I would think. After I hung up on them I realized that was a kin to blackmail or extortion and wondered how many other people they’ve gotten to donate that way, that’s just shoddy business practice and despite his insistence that the PAL was a legitimate organization I figured I would do some digging.

First I tried calling back the number to speak with a manager, but all I was getting was the busy signal. Googling the phone number itself gave me several listings like the one I’ve linked above saying that the number was people saying it was PAL or saying they were other things, but often times when people called back they got a recording saying the number was disconnected.

I wasn’t about to wake my husband up with this so I instead googled the Police Athletic League to check if it was a legitimate place and found the Jacksonville PAL’s main office and called them. I spoke to a lady called Vicky who works there was mortified that someone would be calling me in such a manner. She said that whenever PAL calls someone it’s going to show up “Police Athletic League” or PAL or something like it which makes it clear, and they would never tell someone such a thing. She suggested if I get another call that I tell the person I’m recording the call and will be passing it on to the proper authorities.

I’ll have to check with my husband what the legalities on that are but you can bet I’m going to be a bit more harsh with them from now on because that’s ridiculous. It’s one thing if he was from the charity and just needed to be educated on call etiquette, but to be masquerading…that’s a whole other level of illegal.

When you have a business that’s actually registered with a license bureau you get a lot of people calling offering you supposedly great deals on things that aren’t all that great. You get credit card machine offers, those are consistently the ones that I get, those and the online yellow pages. They’re always wanting you to upgrade listings that you didn’t even ask for and half the time they don’t even exist.

A gentleman called me just now from local.com wanting to “update my listing” at first I couldn’t tell what the name was he was using it sounded like loco.com and when I googled that given he caught me when I was sitting at my laptop it wasn’t a listing, so that got my ire up a bit and I asked him to spell the name of his company and looked them up. He was telling me that they had me listed under “lodgings” and I told him I was a psychic and a clairvoyant and I googled psychic’s in my area through their service and came up with three listings the first of which was me, but was using my old number from before we moved. I told him I could see that I was already listed, and that he should just edit that listing to reflect the new phone number, rather than putting in a separate listing.

He seemed a little put off that I was looking up the site. I told him that I get a lot of phone calls from companies essentially trying to extort money from me for services which are relatively useless, so I make a habit of checking up on them when they call.

He continued on explaining that they were just interested in putting me ahead of the competition and that if I was able to they could upgrade my listing to help me rise above everyone else. Now I was looking right at the listing for all the psychics within a certain area of my zip code and there’s only three others, and they’re listed alphabetically so I’m actually the top listing. I told him that and hung up.

I understand that he’s doing his job, but it frustrates me that they do these things. I’m already paying $20 a month for a listing in our local yellow pages which is both in the book and online, and you know how many interested client calls I’ve had brought to me by that? One. One call, and I’ve been listed since last October.

Other calls I get are either crank calls from people who think it’s funny to recite lines from Snow White to me, or people who think that I’m some sort of hardware store even though I’m listed under “psychics” and get all huffy when I can’t sell them doors or windows or cut glass for them.

I have an advantage really because I automatically know that they’re not someone whose a client because when they call they ask for me by my first name, and I use my middle name in the adverts I put out, on all my business cards and here on the website. It’s like when people call and ask for my husband by his full first name rather than the nickname that anyone else uses.

I lost a very meaningful necklace, and it’s been hard to find another one. I used to have a necklace which was an ankh in a pentacle a friend got it for me because I couldn’t afford to get it the tattoo of it I wanted. My husband got me the tattoo as a late mother’s day/early birthday present, and the clasp breaks on my necklace. I guess someone else needs it more.
It’s still rough.

I advocate prayer, spellworking, hypnotherapy, but always, always would say to go to a doctor first and foremost.

It’s like if we need lights outside sure I could go get one of my candles and use that or we could get Kichler lights out on the patio instead, less wax, less chance of fire and less maintenance overall.

I’m on herbal supplements right now for my ongoing health condition, fibromyalgia, but I’ve gone through various other kinds of treatments first. In this instance taking melatonin if I’m having a hard time sleeping and having gingko, ginseng and st. john’s wort in the morning are helping me a lot, but I do discuss these things with a regular doctor as well. I think it goes back to something my husband and I had talked about a while ago. Yes, there is merit to doing things naturally, but before the advent of modern medicine human’s overall lifespan was about 30 years less than it is now.

Like all things it’s about finding balance.

I’m not sure it’s quite a def-com 3 threat yet, but it was interesting to see that one of the most popular myths especially around this time of year is a possibility. My husband often jokes that zombies are his favorite apocalyptic idea and now I can share with him that he just might get his wish after all.

I recieved an IM this afternoon that I felt from the get-go was someone trying to scam me, but I persisted in the conversation for a while just to see what would be said, and how things would go, and then it was revealed that it was in fact the same text, for the most part, as those Nigerian Bank Scam emails that I still receive every once in a while on the gmail and yahoo accounts I retain as backups.

[15:01] anthoniowill: Hello,I am Mr Anthonio Williams by name.I have a business proposal for you over a mutual interest.Can you honestly handl the business for me???
[15:03] catriona_tarot: I’m sorry. What company are you with?
[15:03] anthoniowill: Standard trust bank of nigeria

At this point I’m looking up the bank name in Google to see if it red flags as a scam bank and I find this site with some helpful information on it.

[15:04] anthoniowill: Ok?
[15:04] catriona_tarot: standard trust bank of nigeria ceased to exist in 2005…so I’m not certain at all that I could honestly handle business for you.
[15:05] anthoniowill: Listen
[15:05] anthoniowill: It is true
[15:05] anthoniowill: But we have not fully merge
[15:06] anthoniowill: It is due to this business proposal i am telling you
[15:06] catriona_tarot: aside from the fact that someone contacting me randomly for business over an IM seems a bit…weird.
[15:06] anthoniowill: That uis the reason why we have merge with UBA plc fully
[15:07] catriona_tarot: So what is this “business” that is so urgent that you would do such a thing?
[15:07] catriona_tarot: My main business is reading tarot, so it seems a little strange.
[15:07] anthoniowill: Hmmm…..
[15:07] anthoniowill: To be faithful,it is a bank business
[15:08] anthoniowill: It is only a foreigner like you can handle it
[15:08] anthoniowill: Ok?
[15:09] catriona_tarot: You’re not racking up any legitimancy points here.
[15:09] catriona_tarot: legitimacy even.
[15:09] anthoniowill: Ok
[15:09] anthoniowill: Should I tell you the details of the business then?
[15:10] : Buzz!!
[15:11] catriona_tarot: I admit to being morbidly curious until the point when you “buzzed” me.
[15:11] anthoniowill: Sorry.I thought you werent there
[15:11] catriona_tarot: To be honest, it feels to me that you’re endeavoring to recruit me for some sort of scam.
[15:11] anthoniowill: No,not at all
[15:11] catriona_tarot: I feel that someone who had legitimate business would have some sort of other business contact they could make in a foreign nation rather than randomly recruiting someone over an IM.
[15:12] anthoniowill: I only need a foreigner to handle the business
[15:12] catriona_tarot: And that they would have enough sense of decorum not to resort to a “buzz” in conversation such as this.
[15:12] anthoniowill: As i have told you,i thought you werent there
[15:12] catriona_tarot: Go ahead and spell it out to me then, if you like and if I continue to feel it is a scam I will have no choice than to report things to the proper authorities.
[15:12] anthoniowill: I am truly very sorry
[15:13] anthoniowill: Ok
[15:13] anthoniowill: But try and beleive me
[15:13] anthoniowill: Now listen
[15:13] catriona_tarot: and if it is not then I will owe you the apology.
[15:13] anthoniowill: There is an American oil consultant that works in an oil company as a contractor
[15:13] anthoniowill: His name is Mr Rick Dixon
[15:13] anthoniowill: Ok?
[15:14] catriona_tarot: okay, does this oil company have a name?
[15:14] anthoniowill: Yes
[15:14] anthoniowill: NNPC
[15:14] anthoniowill: National Nigeria Petroleum Company
[15:14] anthoniowill: Ok?

As you can imagine again I have google clicking away and it’s coming up with tons of sites that are all about scam emails, scam job offers and all sorts of things. I’m also at this point explaining things to my husband who has just come into the room, and reading to him certain things that the guy is saying, and my husband is concurring that it sounds like a scam. I’m internally wondering if I should bother to mention to the guy that I’m married to a member of law enforcement or not, and wonder is it really going to do anything?

[15:16] catriona_tarot: okay, and what does this have to do with anything?
[15:16] anthoniowill: Just keep listening
[15:16] anthoniowill: Mr.Rick Dixon made a numbered time (fixed) deposit for twelve Calendar months, valued at USD$4000,500.00 (Four million five hundred thousand us dollars) in my Branch. Upon maturity, I sent a routine notification to his forwarding address but got no reply. After a month, I sent a reminder and finally I discovered from his contract employers, Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation that Mr. Rick Dixon died from an automobile accident
[15:16] anthoniowill: Ok?
[15:20] anthoniowill: Hello
[15:20] anthoniowill: You still there?

At which point I said “No” and blocked the IM. The one thing that annoyed me is that because I got the message through meebo I have no real way of saving the log properly, or reporting it directly through the system (that I can see).
I thought about spewing back to him the text of one of the scam emails I got, and all the rest of it, but again what would it really do?

From what I’m seeing there isn’t really anywhere that the information can be actively reported. The sites I was looking at were saying they could no longer send things to the government because there weren’t options for it on the government websites any more.

I’m going to look anyway, and will edit and update this entry if anything new comes to light.

He is doing very well right now considering the trauma we all went through. He is healing up very quickly and we’re hoping that by the end of this week we will be able to take off the bandages and proceed with the next phase of his treatment.

I feel as though I didn’t pay enough attention to my little inkling. I dislike the second guessing. I know that accidents happen. The important thing is that he is alright; but I feel guilty all the same.

I have a few other numbers I’m going to look-up because they keep calling for “other people” who no longer have our number but hanging up before I can ask them to remove the name from our list and try to track them down.

Now I just tell them that I’m listed with RH Donnelly and I don’t care about being listed with them. They’re generally the sort of racket that hook you in telling you that the listing is free, but try to get out of telling you that it’s free and if you don’t call back within the first month they start billing you $27.95 a month. Thankfully I saw enough of the issues our Assistant Director got in with those places while I worked at the library to know not to agree to ANYTHING to do with any yellow pages that isn’t tied in with the local phone company and who I called first.

When a hypnosis session is being conducted it works by dealing directly with the subconscioius mind. That portion of your brain is the on which takes on tasks that are known by rote. You don’t think about putting your glasses on, fastening shoes, brushing your teeth; but for reading you do have to think.

Someone who is asking to be hypnotized over the internet, via instant messenger is going to be required to read what is being typed, therefore they will not be able to achieve that subconscious state that is needed for hypnosis to work. I was glad to hear that I’m not the only person who feels this way, even if the fellow I was talking to was in Italy. I’m not alone!

It’s also hard for me in public some times because people automatically assume if you’re a hypnotist you must be able to make their friends quack like a duck. I had a hard time at a party recently because I was discussing with someone what would be involved in hypnotizing them to help them to quit smoking and someone over heard and produced a very drunk volunteer to have me use my ‘hypno-powers’ to make them hop on one foot, or something equally embarrassing for the volunteer. There was a whole crowd gathered and stirred up, going, “Oh, come on! Do it!! Do it!!” Each drunker than the next.

I had to shout to be heard over them, “I am NOT that kind of hypnotist! I do work which helps you to quit smoking, to lose weight, to break bad habits!” and then I had about four people volunteering for that as well. Considering it was a very loud, flashy disco party at this point there was no way any of that could be done, aside from the moral and legal ramifications that I dread to think about from working with a bunch of drunk people, when I don’t have any of my paperwork, consent forms, and all the rest of it, and none of them would probably be willing to sit through the pre-work interviews that I need to do in order to be able to do my job properly.

It was a very frustrating situation. Thankfully I was able to dissuade them, but I doubt any of them will follow through with their wishes to call me to set up legitimate appointments. I’m holding off re-licesnsing through the county at the moment anyway, because we’re going to be moving next month, and I don’t know yet if the city we’re moving to will allow me to do hypnosis work out of my home or not. I need to call them and check.

My husband’s helpful suggestion as we were leaving the party before someone else came up and asked to be turned into a frog, was that I should go ahead and get the ’stage hypnosis’ training just so I could do these things; but I don’t want to work that way. I didn’t get into this to do things like that. Stage hypnosis is, correctly, viewed as entertainment. I have a hard enough time getting people to understand the difference between clinical hypnosis and stage hypnosis as it is I don’t need to blur the lines any further by offering both.