bobquasit: (Default)
bobquasit ([personal profile] bobquasit) wrote2005-08-05 12:19 pm
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STOP CALLING ME!

Yesterday evening was odd; one of the very rare evenings that I didn't get to see Teri or Sebastian. They were going out with Teri's mother, so they left the car at the station for me.

I have to admit, I hate it when I don't get to see my little guy.

But there wasn't anything I could do about it, so I drove home for a quick dinner before the game.

As I was cooking, the phone rang. It was a woman who told me that her company was handling the remortgaging for all of Pleasant St. "We're on the Do Not Call list," I said, "so thanks anyway."

A little later, I was about to sit down to dinner when the phone rang again. The voice on the line was male, and sounded rather contemptuous.

"Yeah, is this Peter Maranci? I'm calling from the Rhode Island Police Safety Association. We-"

Now, there are few things I like LESS than the cops asking for me for money. I figure they owe ME at least $1,000 from crooked tickets; they once put up a "NO PARKING" sign directly in front of my house and ticketed my car, which had been legally parked at the time. And don't even get me STARTED about that moving violation (or whatever the hell it was) a few years ago! Traffic cops and the courts are corrupt as hell, particularly in Rhode Island - but probably everywhere.

Not to mention that they have never ONCE been able to help in ANY WAY when I've been a victim over the years...usually, they don't even pretend to be trying. And that time I was falsely arrested as a kid: they never even bothered to clear my record when I came to them with proof that I'd been at a piano lesson at the time of the crime, and the name of the kid who'd actually done it.

That's not to say that there isn't a single honest cop out there. I know there are, because I've met a few. But when I'm dealing with a cop that I don't know, my first instinct is NOT to trust them.

And this guy on the phone really pushed all my buttons. I find it EXTREMELY disturbing that every time a cop calls asking for money, they know my full name and address, and make sure to TELL me so. One time in Malden I was told to leave a check in the foyer of my house, and a cop would be around to pick it up soon. Smug, crooked, intimidating bastards!

So I told him we were on the Do Not Call list and hung up.

Hmm. Think I'll split the rest of my evening into a second post. Stay tuned!

[identity profile] klyfix.livejournal.com 2005-08-06 12:16 am (UTC)(link)
There are some exceptions to the "Do Not Call" list, aren't there?

On "remortganging"; I wonder how many people they'll get suckered into that? That might be unfair, but off hand I'm guessing that they're not trying to get people to take fixed rate mortgages that are significantly cheaper than the present ones, but are either pitching those "Free Money!" type things or some floating rate thing. Could be wrong, of course.

On cops: We need them of course; any modern society does. But yeah, people are getting put into a postion that has power and is high stress. The best people for the job are surely not always the people we're getting there. And even in the best of circumstances you can't necessarily count on their protectionl that's part of why I have the view that people should have the right to bear arms although I don't go for the psycho libertarian view that people should be able to do so without any regulation. It is not a good situation to have the entire law-abiding population be sheep trusting the government to protect them while criminals have no such limitations on them.

But I might be crazy; keep that in mind.