Idiot Award For November 2017

“As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.”  ~ John Lennon

Well now, look what we have here!? Looks like I haven’t given out the last of these awards.

Hang on because this one is very frustrating.

http://whnt.com/2017/11/08/alabama-woman-sentenced-to-prison-for-faking-terminal-cancer-to-collect-over-260k/

A woman in Alabama got herself caught dealing with donation fraud.

She was able to collect over $264,000 in donations and checks when she lied to family and friends about having terminal cancer and went to GoFundMe to share her “story” about wanting to take a trip to Disney.

It is really sad and disgusting at the same time that she did this. Many people use GoFundMe in their desperate hour of need. I used it when my wheelchair broke and I was unable to even get out of my home. And now, I may have to use it again because the wheelchair that I was able to buy due to the overwhelming generosity of over 100 people has been broken down and fixed three times already! And I have exhausted all the funds that I had received by those kind and generous people in order to do it. I did the best that I could.

I’ve been in contact with a medical supply company and surprisingly they were able to work with me to measure me and find out just exactly what I am needing and it is not going to cost as much as I thought it was going to. But the only way that I am going to be able to get it is through crowdfunding. And hope that it will take longer than seven months to break.

Now with this turd waffle getting HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars and using it to fuel a drug addiction, it makes it so much harder for people to be just as generous as they were once before. I certainly do not need $264,000 but with that kind of money I would never have to worry about buying another wheelchair again for the rest of my natural life!!

It is stories & people like these that make others less generous.

When Perjury Isn’t Enough

“Crazy people don’t sit around wondering if they’re nuts.”~ Jake Gyllenhaal

It is hard when you watch someone that you’ve become to know for so long start to lose their marbles… in the most literal of sense.

Such is the case for the one that I will refer to as Super C.

Super C moved here to this complex around the same time that I did my first time in 2005.

Like many who live(d) here: Quiet, shy, withdrawn, anti-social.

But Super C was actually cared for by a few others and eventually Super C would see the errors of her ways and how life was just slipping away from her by her sitting inside of her dwelling day and night. She was shown the light that her ex-husband was a complete and total douche nozzle and she finally learned how to stand up to him and tell him where to go and the quickest way to do it.

She participated more and more and suddenly found herself with FRIENDS. WOW!! Who would have thought it?!?

However, Super C just like everyone else around here has her own sets of challenges and problems. Medicines and appointments with doctors and things to keep up with in her life.

As of lately the rest of us neighbors are finding that she’s unable to control it all. Either that or she just does not handle it well at all.

How many times has she had to go back somewhere because she left her glasses or wallet or purse or keys or cell phone???

A few years ago she suffered what the doctors called a mini-stroke. But she was back at home within a week. Her best of friends are no longer living. Her attendant has come to end of her rope with Super C. Her children do not visit. Her medicines are often rumored to be scattered everywhere in a pile of atrophying disarray and indecency.

The worst of it is not yet to come. I think that the worst of it has arrived and is living among us within Super C.  It is also safe to say that everyone has made an effort or two or twelve to get her life back on track where its not so much a disaster. As soon as one person fills in with a complete system that is going to be helpful in the end, Super C slips up ONCE and then she’s back where she started. 

I can see the will to help her has left the building. Or property in this case. Its no longer there within anyone.

People are literally afraid to deal with Super C any more. They are afraid that if they get involved too deep that they too will “end up just like her” and as shitty as that is to think or say… it is what it is around here.

Some say that the mini-stroke doomed her. Other people had faith in her that she would recover from her mini-stroke. And even more people seem to think that she might be too far gone because she lost her best friends in the world in the time span of about a year and a half.

It appears as if the simplest of life’s tasks has become monumental for her. As if she was looking at an entire valley of mountains and instantly believing that she will never make it.

Her latest tale is her supposed journey of walking in the pouring rain one morning where she began to tread with a walker 3.7 miles (5.95 km) by herself to return home from an appointment in which she was denied because she had an outstanding balance. And she had gone that far without her wallet.

She’s been called out on it and other alleged activities that she has been telling everyone who would listen to her.

A 70 plus year old woman with a walker isn’t going to walk nearly 4 miles…. in the rain. And then expect us to believe it when she’s not soaking wet, dragging in water with her shoes and her walker and just have a few raindrops on her back. She should have been drenched and dripping. But she was not.

Everyone tends to want to run away from her when they hear her begin a conversation with the words DID I TELL YOU…..??

Plus the fact that you and another person could be holding your own conversation and she’s going to chime in. Just like her friends did before they both died. In this case, it was something she was taught that she never should have been taught. 

This morning’s episode was all about standing water in the rain water collection barrels. And that just isn’t possible as all of the barrels have screened filters on them. So there’s no standing water anywhere. She was quickly called out and she left the community room rejected and denied.

Calling her out isn’t going to help her state of mind. All it does it automatically say to her that people think she’s lying.

I don’t know though. It is just really really difficult to watch this progression. I am sure there are people out there who know what I am talking about. And probably deal with worse circumstances as they have watched a loved one slip away like this. I do not envy anyone of this.

What Happened To Good Old Fashioned Truth?

“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”~ Buddha

The Truth. Where did it go? Has anybody seen it? Does anyone speak it? And why all of a sudden are MEN coming to me, during this short time period of a post-Valentine’s Day???

Women: You’re severely dropping the ball here!!

In the past five days alone, two men have sat there, afraid that they were about to lose their masculinity because they cried on my shoulder. Why? Because women, of all people, have not been telling them the truth.

Male victim #1 came rushing after being what he called “blind-sided” by a woman that he had been chasing for the past year. She said to him that she was unavailable for dating until she got her feet on the ground and her life turned around in a better and more positive direction. She had in the past been going through some hardships and it was because of her own choices. He didn’t push as hard but he kept himself in her circles so that she would not forget about him. And apparently he would be a little flirty and what not just to keep the lines of interest open. He was expected to “wait out the storm” for about a year to a year and a half. And somewhere in the middle of that time period, he was being flirty to the one he liked and she came back with “I don’t think that my boyfriend would like that too much.”

When he asked how long that she had been dating… her answer would literally turn his stomach into knots to the point where he was literally crying in my presence. Holding his stomach, and getting the dry heaves.

Male victim #2 had a similar case of the fibs. His “dream girl” told him to wait for her too. Different situation and different reasons why to wait. Until he too came by very recently, drunk as a skunk and cussing like a sailor because of his anger and frustration over the fact that there are rumors that the woman he had waited for had been involved with another man the entire time.  The only difference is that victim #2 is battling rumors and has no way of finding out for sure whether or not what he’s been told is truthful or not.

Until the stress from the situation got him to a dark place. So he had no choice but to confront and ask. And of course, his dream girl denies everything…. but in his eyes he felt something was wrong. The next morning, the dream girl changed her Facebook relationship status to “in a relationship with ________” and it wasn’t his name.

I’ve been where victim #1 has been. I’ve personally been there once before. It was not fun at all. In fact, it was torture. On the odd side of things it did make it easier for me to just walk away from her. That was the unusual part.

So here’s the question: Why not tell the truth from the beginning? Who cares about whether or not you are afraid its going to hurt someone, would you rather hurt them with the truth than KILL them with lies?

Two things are going to happen in this arena when it comes to lies and deception:

#1- Once a person believes in a lie, they are going to live their life as if that lie is the truth because they are not going to think or believe that the reality is any other way. And that’s going to cause the liar to have to keep up and remember all the lies they’ve told … just to keep the lies going.  So once the lie is exposed, depending on how much time has gone by and how much that person who was lied to, believed in it…. will determine how much damage there’s to come of this. Again, why lie when you just hurt someone’s feelings and be done with it? Because feelings will heal and we will move on. Becoming damaged on the other hand, is totally different.

#2- No matter what you say, no matter what you do. Lies will ALWAYS be revealed. Truth trumps lies!! It doesn’t matter what you do or what you say…. in time (or I should say IN ITS OWN TIME) the lies will unravel and your deception will be in the spotlight. And you’ll have nothing left to hide behind but your own sadness. Not because of guilt but because you got caught. Just telling someone a bunch of crap because that’s what you think that the other person wants is not being so honest. And quite frankly if you have been lying, you deserve the reaction and consequence that will come forth.

WHY HAVE WE STOPPED TELLING THE TRUTH TO ONE ANOTHER?? Especially when it comes to relationships and how we treat one another. Telling the truth might be a new concept in 2014, but good grief!! That’s the way it used to be. So, why not go back from where we came?

We as human being needs to do one another right.

 

Dancing Into War

“The tongue like a sharp knife… Kills without drawing blood.”~Buddha

A lot of people have been testing my patience as of late. And sadly for the rest of us, it does a number on my head and it does lead to fallout of some sort.

Most recently with this rumor extravaganza that I endured, until I had the strength and the smarts to investigate the roots of these rumors and find out where they were being bred.

I had to do so, because it had caused me a great deal of pain and I ended up losing quite a bit of sleep over it.

Sadly, I would come to find out that not all of the information was rumors and that a number of pieces of information were actually true. But a majority of what was spoken to me was false. And as I confronted that which was true, I had actually received a personal apology, and the rest was just lies.

And after countless people that had been involved with these rumors that I went to them personally to find out what was going on, I was able to decipher on my own which was real and which was not.

The most common rumor that was being spoken was that there’s a huge circle of people that know me on Facebook, and that they do not like me. But they just “put up” with me. And when specific names were dropped, I went to them and asked. Most of them getting very upset and angry that these words were even spoken and it did not represent how they felt about me at all.

Most of them had a desire to kill the person responsible for those words. And I think that was just a natural reaction to the situation.

All of them were super pissed off. All but one. That one did get defensive but did not show the signs of the outrage that others immediately fell into.

After gaining “the other side of the story” I went back to the original tale tellers and told them that I wanted to speak to them again about the situation that they created. Little did they know that it was a trap. And little did “I KNOW” how things were going to turn out.

They had changed their name on Facebook, but their photos were the same, their information was the same. The only thing different was their name. Almost too easy to relocate them again.

I was able to convince the main person responsible for all of this to actually talk to me over the telephone to discuss the situation and to see what other kinds of information that they might have on colleagues or acquaintances of mine.

Once I got them talking on the telephone, they started to drop names again. The same ones. And more stories and tales about them. But I had stopped them in mid-sentence and warned that I had already spoken to those people and right now…. they were pissed off that these words were spoken about them.

If what they were telling me was so in-depth and true… why would there be such an outrage??

After a few minutes though, I began to listen to their tone and quality of voice. And it didn’t seem all that right to me.

So I asked how old they were.

14 years of age.

That young and already knowing so much dirt about people and creating even more bullshit to compile onto it. Knowing so much already about people, getting others to earn their trust and let them speak personally… only to have it backfire and their words twisted around and their trust shattered, by someone so young.

I finally had the upper hand and had them admit that they had lied to me to begin with. However, they were most adamant about NOT lying about one particular individual and kept up with their stance on them. And it just so happens to be the one person who didn’t show emotions of rage like the others. And I wonder if there is any validity to it at all.

The person that they were talking about kept denying things, saying things were untrue. But they weren’t so upset that they were wanting to kill those responsible for the vicious lies. Defensive for sure, but not wildly emotional.

It just really makes me wonder.

People hide behind their Internet connections every day. And in this case, the teenager thought that they were going to be able to hide behind their keyboard and be safe. I proved them to be wrong. And now their Facebook accounts are disabled, with a promise never to come back. Coming from a teenager, I don’t believe that. What I think though is that they’ll start over and try something new.

I don’t know if this child did it for attention, or just simply to start shit with me and other people, or just started it to get a reaction. I honestly don’t know why it was started. But you better believe that I had finished it, for sure.

I am still the kind of person that will stand up and fight for those I care about. And this was obviously made clear today.

Things I Don’t Understand Make Me Angry

“I know all about cheating. I’ve had six very successful marriages.”~Bobby Heenan

People often get excited when they enter into a full blown new relationship. I know that I do!

I witnessed one shouting from the mountain tops this afternoon of her new found love that was right under her nose! And was feeling pretty silly for not considering the guy to give him a chance at something more long term.

So I inquired. After all, this was a person that I had thought I had a few years to go before I earned “tenure” and going one on one never seemed to go wrong. With a few obvious and constant exceptions that were just mind meltingly annoying.

As expected, more details were being handed out as I was in a private conversation with her. But she could not restrain herself from being so damned bubbly about the new prospective relationship.

Okay, I get that. Nothing to get annoyed about.

Until I learned of their history together. It was someone that has been around in her life for a very long time. Just that he came in and out of it at certain points.

You see, I had met this person from the Internet over a decade ago. But at the time she was married with children. So I backed off knowing that even trying to attempt anything wasn’t going to get me any where.

“She’s single now. Go get her!!!”

Fast forward all that time and our paths crossed again. This time, she was divorced with children. I attempted to make my move and woo her as much as possible without having the fault of the Internet make me sound like some gushing pervert.

Needless to say that I failed. And realized that a factor in this problematic situation was the very large distance. And probably the age difference as well as she was a few years elder than I. But hell, age is nothing but a number. But the miles in between I was believing would be an issue.

So I almost gave up.

Besides, the annoying habit was that each and every time I corresponded with her online and I said something wooing or flirtatious or whatever, her response was always to hand over an emoticon of a smile.

🙂

Wait. What? Seriously?? How was I to win at anything when combating those stupid smiley faces???

Fast forward again back to present time. The “hero of her heart of the day” was a person that she had cheated with on her husband back during the days when she was married.

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And to think I was attempting to take a shot at her, now that she was untied, unkept, and single.

I spent all that time flirting and complimenting and chatting, but for what? Absolutely nothing. Unless she just absorbed that kind of attention.

And I wondered what kind of major bullet did I dodge by actually LOSING the  task of winning her heart and/or affection?

Cheating is nothing that I understand. I do not understand why people do it. Although I have been the person that someone cheated WITH on a number of experiences in the past. Of course all of those just about ruining my life in the long run.

So yes, cheaters make me angry. And to believe that even if I would have won the affections of her… how long before she would have cheated on ME?!?!?!?

I’m pretty sure that science and history come together that when a person cheats, that it makes it just that much easier to do it again and again and again. And who needs that? Cheating is lying and lying is cheating. And I don’t know of anyone who wants to be lied to or cheated on. 

I suppose that in some twisted way, I should be thanking this woman for being honest with me about her past. I couldn’t help but be frustrated at her la-de-da attitude about what she had done, but then again… those are NOT my consequences. It was still shocking nonetheless. 

So here’s a lifetime of being spared the agony. The finances. The emotional turmoil. And the realization of being cheated on yet again as it has happened to me in my lifetime, by my first ever serious girlfriend.

NOT cool.

So yeah, I’m angry. Angry to know what she’s been through. Angry to know what she’s done. And angry to know what she is absolutely capable of!!!!

The question is, now that she’s falling for the man that she cheats with when she is with other men, who is she going to cheat with on THIS guy?!?!?!?

Doesn’t sound fair, does it?? 

There are no mistakes in cheating. It only causes damage of magnitudes that you never thought possible.

It turns the strong into fragile beings. It turns the faithful into the untrusting.

Worlds crash, people’s lives are changed forever, and for what? Because you decided to find happiness elsewhere and hide it. If you’re not happy ….. don’t freakin’ cheat.

 

 

 

 

Numbskull Award For September 2013

“I’m living life as best I can – but I’m not exempt from failure and making bad choices.”~ LeAnn Rimes

YOU’VE GOTTA BE KIDDING ME?!?!?!??!!?!??!??

So apparently whatever-genre-singing-star-she-is-now LeAnn Rimes went on a feudal tidal wave on Twitter over the weekend.

She’s apparently had enough, and now wants “her truth” to be known. That’s right, HER truth. Not the truth of anybody else.

What the heck is that supposed to mean?!?!??

I have no earthly clue. But its HER truth.

And wouldn’t you know it, a few of her Twitter followers attempted to help her in her posting fury.

Some even made neutral comments, but LeAnn Rimes just would not let it go. Because its HER truth.

Ladies and gentlemen, subscribers, blog readers, and visitors…… THIS IS A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE OF THE DEFINITION A ROLLER POSTER!!!!!!!!

Instead of realizing that what she was doing was only hurting herself, she continued on in the same behavior to garnish attention to whatever it was that was bugging her. She wants attention to HER truth.

I understand that Rimes has a ton of problems and issues, but get off the cross, we need the wood. There are people in this world who have far worse problems than LeAnn Rimes. Since I made the choice to NOT follow her any more, I have no idea what’s going on with her and her issues. And secondly, I do not care. 

In a world where people who are in the limelight are always screaming bloody murder about their privacy being invaded and what not, LeAnn Rimes takes her situation and pulls it inside. Instead of telling people to leave her alone and allow her to handle her problems…… she GOES to people with them!!

LeAnn Rimes is losing it more and more each and every time that I hear about her. The news NEVER gets any better for her. And that’s partly due to the fault of the media. The other part is LeAnn HERSELF!!!!

Damage Control is nothing but a dream by now. Unless she hands over her Twitter account to some publicist or something. Nobody is honestly interested in HER truth. Not when she lies to herself.

Poor LeAnn Rimes and her antics.

http://www.fishwrapper.com/post/2013/09/22/leann-rimes-twitter-tweets-brandi-glanville-feud-dumb/

Just The Facts

Leptospirosis anyone? NOT so much!

“The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.”~Bertrand Russell

I have literally reached a point of exhaustion when coming across certain warning e-mails that provide certain information. And such information is just passed on as truth because it sounds so good that it has to be true.

I am exhausted with the fact that time and time and time again when I see these false and incorrect articles about health, politics, society, and historic events. And they are shared and forwarded countless times over again.

But they are untrue. And its been proven so.

Time and time again, I’ve had read something and it doesn’t quite sound right and so I go on a rush of research just to find out that I have been interrupted with garbage. And I grit my teeth at these people so much that I’m surprised that I have any teeth at all remaining.

Now I have fallen for it numerous times. There was a quotation that was talking about politics shortly after the school shooting Newtown, Connecticut supposedly said by actor Morgan Freeman. And I didn’t research it. So I posted it as well. But I would soon be shown that it was NOT something that Freeman had said, but rather someone not famous, not an actor, almost a nobody by comparison.

Its driving me insane that I am seeing the SAME hoaxes over and over again. Even though there are places like “Snopes” and “Fact checker” readily available for your knowledge and information pleasure.

Why aren’t people using this? To use the excuse that you don’t have the time to check into things like that is just a bunch of crap used by those who are totally lazy! If you have time to check your e-mails, sign into message board and social networking sites where these things are commonly showing up, you have the time to second guess what you are reading and look to see for yourself whether or not its actually true.

When I found out that the quote from Morgan Freeman was false, I immediately deleted the post and apologized to anyone who had stumbled across it.

I would be more forgiving for someone to admit that they made an error rather than giving the excuse that they don’t have the time to look things up.

YOU CANNOT BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ON THE INTERNET 100% OF THE TIME!!!

It’s just not intelligent!

 

A Dying Breed

“I would prefer even to fail with honor than win by cheating.”~ Sophocles

As I sit here waiting for my nighttime medicines to kick, I had the television on but really it was only white noise.

But then some story caught my attention. The reporting was about cheating and those who cheat.

They made an example out of General Petraeus and his scandalous affair and how he was caught.

And it really started to make sense. If the Director of the CIA can get caught in cheating due to a ton of e-mail correspondence that was exchanged between himself and his mistress, what makes anyone think that they could get away with doing it??

Twitter, Facebook, e-mails, and everything in between from letter to cell phone calls are all easily tracked down. Even though you think that you may have deleted certain messages that would prove you of cheating, they don’t really just go away. Your digital fingerprint, so to speak, is still there. 

Private Investigators now are using these tools to track down people who are cheating, and sadly enough its no longer a challenge for them anymore. All that they have to do is go to the Internet and see what has been going on.

Cheaters are becoming a dying breed. But rather the fact of them getting away with their cheating is what is fleeting. People are going to cheat. To some its just like the need for food and water. But they are getting caught more often than not nowadays.

So you can delete any and all messages that would link you to your indiscretions  but in this day and age of technology you’re not really going to get away with it. Especially if someone has been looking  into it. 

Tiger Woods got caught using Twitter and the internet with his affairs. And other “famous” people have gone down in a blaze of well… not exactly glory. They were all caught, someone found them out and exposed their cheating affairs.

Cheating is never a good idea to begin with. I have my own thoughts about cheating, liars, and those who are unfaithful. But you can find some of those thoughts within this blog if you look hard enough.

Yes, studies are still finding that men cheat more than women. And of course, men are pigs for doing it. But I never really cared for the gender stereotypical double standard because it does takes TWO to cheat.

If you are thinking about cheating, you had better think again. You may not be found out right away, but the truth will always come out in one way or another. And besides, if you are cheating already…. then why you are still with the original person with whom you entered a relationship with? Its not fair to them what you are doing.

Don’t cheat. Its dangerous. Its dumb in the first place. And you’ll get caught.

 

From Sims To Scam?

“The money’s the same, whether you earn it or scam it. “~ Bobby Heenan

Throughout much of 2007, I was introduced to a brand new addiction of playing Sims 2. It was in the most purest definition an addiction for me as I played night and day.

I remember splitting some of the costs to buy each and every expansion pack that was released. And somehow, I knew when each one was coming out. I think it was an e-mailing list. I don’t remember any more as I no longer receive them. Plus, they have Sims 3 out to play currently.

Between myself and my ex-girlfriend, we pretty much had each and every expansion pack known to exist.

But it didn’t stop there. There were websites in which you could download modifications to the game. Different styles of different items that was just simply modified. I remember there was even one website that had thousands of downloads for the game that were…. shall we say… x-rated? But those mods were a constant annoyance as it was virtually just a bug on the computer. And most of that had to be deleted in order for the modifications to all work and I could play the game.

We would get character modifications that looked like Hollywood celebrities. Or certain buildings and houses, such as the Amityville house to live in, and so on.

My ex loved to build homes from scratch. But on the other hand, I enjoyed both creating homes and characters and then playing them out until they were either dead or I got bored with what they were doing.

We had so many modifications and cheats on one computer that whenever I started the game, it literally took 18-22 minutes to load to the point where I could begin creating or playing.

As I said– addicted.

And then I remember creating a male character named Sleuth. I started him out as a single person, then got him married, gave him the best of the best of created houses that I could think of, and I think throughout the course of playing out his character… he had children that grew up and about to move on to higher education.

Then suddenly the Sleuth character was “sick” and it was suggested that he rest. And so as Sleuth laid in bed, he suddenly got up in the middle of the night. The lights turned on, and his wife and  children were surrounding him, wailing and crying, and I had no idea what was going  on. The Sleuth character had actually died.

Suddenly I would learn about how to “KILL” a Sims character, as there were over a dozen ways in which one could die.

I played for weeks and months. Learning the game, learning how to not get caught doing something naughty or wrong (such as cheating on another love interest) and everything else.

With the ending of Sleuth, I believe that I just moved out the remaining members of his family and never played them again, and started over.

I created another male Sims character that would end up being married to at least ten different other female characters, had children with them all, and moved in and out of households like it was nothing. Soon, I would have an entire cast of characters to deal with. Mothers with children and no love interest and everything else in between. The male character simply was horrible as he went from one female to the next. 

And then I got bored with it all, and used the knowledge that I had to get rid of characters by having them die in unusual ways.

About this time, my ex had been on my back about how she never was able to play any more and that I was hogging the computer. So then she had her turn to play. But as I stated, all she did was create homes and characters and virtually did nothing with them.

In the meantime, I remembered the story for each and every character that I had played through until I decided to knock them off. I began to write about it. Weeks later I had a rough draft of a story that was nearly 200,000 words in length. I gave detail to each and every person that was involved, talked about all of the children that were born, and how each character had met their fateful ending. But I fictionalized most of it by writing that the main male character had a sexually transmitted disease and was not aware of it. And so with all of the women that he hooked up with and the children born to him, they were infected as well and it caused everyone to go to their end.

The thing of it is that Sims 2 doesn’t have the option to “DIE OF AN STD”. So it was something made up.

Fast forward all that time until this weekend when I was talking about it with someone that I had played this addicting video game for months and it was enough of an idea for a story of fiction. A few hours later, I was told that they were in contact with a publishing company and that they had talked about my story to the company and now the company wants to re-write the story (as I have lost the original document) and they want to publish it.

As someone who has taken a lot of time to write both in this blog and as creative projects on my own, hearing something like that was definitely music to my ears.

However that was all that I was told. Until I started asking questions about which publishing company and what not. And that’s when things started to not add up.

After asking so many questions, I looked up the name of the publishing company. It existed, but no longer. Its not in conjunction with any other publishers either. The names of people and places, also were not to be found.

I immediately began to think that this was all just a lie, a scam. And because of the fact that I had fallen victim to nasty and vicious scam by rapunzelmodels.com over a year ago, I knew better this time to research what I had been told. It just sucks to know that I heard something I’ve thought that I would love to hear….. only to find out that its a lie. 

I went back and told the guy via e-mail that if this publishing company wanted to publish my story, that I wanted a contract. Which probably would have to happen in the first place. And until I actually SEE that contract, I will not go back and re-write anything.

Although I have always thought that the story that I was able to write that came from the experiences of playing Sims 2 would always make for a fantastic story as it had just about everything in it. Betrayal, love, harassment, revenge, and everything else. It was not the similar kinds of stories that I had been writing at the time which was just a short story of one or two scenes, riddled with a bunch of sex.

When I left my ex-girlfriend and came back, I ended up with a $100 gift card, and I wanted to see if I could play Sims 2 yet again. I bought the game and as many expansion packs that I could with the plan of collecting them all eventually. But the computer that I had bought from craigslist didn’t have the sufficient video card or whatever in order for me to be able to play it correctly.

I was hoping to go back and use all of the modifications that I had used so many years ago, but it was not to happen. And now there’s Sims 3 which I understand is far different than Sims 2. But until I find myself with a new machine, I’ll simply have to do without. And if I decide to re-write the story, it will be only for recreational purposes and practice in my writing abilities. Wish me luck!!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Catfished

Is she who she really says she is?

“Unfortunately, I ended up kind of getting sadly duped, in a way. I haven’t had an agent in 10 years, and now I’m doing some of the most interesting films I’ve ever had an opportunity to play in.”~ Daryl Hannah

There’s this television commercial where a woman is talking with someone and she says that she is on her way to meet her boyfriend that she met online, who is a French model.

Out pops this homely looking guy who looks quite nerdy and awkward and he forces a French accent when saying “Bonjour!” and they walk off together.

Lately though a different story has come up in the news. Notre Dame football star, Manti Te’o evidently has been ‘catfished’ in a recent relationship that he had with a woman. Yet now there’s speculation in this unusual story of whether or not he was in on the entire deception because he had said that this woman had died. And the photograph that she used, was actually someone else’s identity of someone who is in fact, still alive.

urbandictionary.com defines ‘catfished’ as “Being deceived over Facebook as the deceiver professed their romantic feelings to his/her victim, but isn’t who they say they are.”

This kind of thing happens on a daily basis to many people. We just do not hear about it as much. Now its a hot topic. But honestly, deception via the Internet is more commonplace than one would like to think. We may not fall victim to someone who is lying about a relationship, but lies and deception are everywhere!

The Internet has become a safe haven for those who are callous in their desires to keep their lives secret. I am not saying that it is a bad thing to keep things your private life private, but these people who are duped by others are nothing but victims because the perpetrating person INTENTIONALLY lies and makes up this fictional characterization of themselves and professes intimate and romantic feelings to someone who is unsuspecting of their lies.

I was once a victim of this scheme a long time ago.

I was in communication with a woman who was professing romantic feelings towards me from west central Iowa. She claimed to care about me, and told me that she was someone who used to be in the medical field and therefore she would know how to take care of me and all of my needs, since I was in a wheelchair.

She taunted and teased about driving to where I lived at the time, to see me. But I called her bluff. Not on what she had been telling me, but rather the fact that she and her roommates were going to just drop everything in Iowa and drive all that way to see me in person two states away.

Little did I know that this woman and her roommates were notorious for spontaneous road trips like that. So when I called them out on it in the chat room, the following morning, they were on the road.

She and her roommates actually started the long drive to find me. And I thought that I was only moving the relationship to the next level since we were about to meet each other face to face. She and her roommates took me back to their place and allowed me to stay for a week. And that week actually ended up being ten days, due to heavy snow that fell in the area.

But the woman honestly had no interest in me. I spent more time talking with the others who lived with her in the house. They would hold a house party for many people to come by and meet me, since I was not from that area. Keep in mind, these people were all found in a chat room for people in Iowa. Which I probably should’ve mentioned earlier, but they didn’t discriminate against you if you were not from the state. The house though was legendary for their chat room house parties. People sleeping where they had passed out from a night of drinking.

After the first party in the house, I would learn really soon that the woman who had professed a romantic feeling was in a contest to see how many men she could convince to fall in love with her. I wouldn’t actually say that I had those exact feelings, but I was interested at the time to have “someone special” in my life. And knowing that she was not going to discriminate against me because of my physical disability was a winning factor.

The ride home was terribly excruciating as she had brought her TRUE boyfriend with her, who was also in on the game of seeing how many women he could get to fall in love with him via the chat room on the Internet. By the time I had arrived at this woman’s house, I was number six, and she had been working on two other men… numbers seven and eight. And her true boyfriend was way behind with only four women that he had deceived.

Is she too good to be true?

Then less than two months later, I was in communication with a woman from Des Moines, Iowa and she professed romantic feelings towards me and the desire to meet face to face.

I was to spend Friday evening through Sunday morning with her at my home, then for two weeks I would travel back with her to Iowa and spend more time with her. It would end up that this woman was not really who she said she was at all. And instead of spending two weeks in Iowa, I spent three weeks there. Trapped in her house without any means of escape or rescue.

But there were definite red flags that I failed to recognize, along with her lies. I knew that she had two children, and I knew that her mother was still alive. But I did not know that they were all living in the same house together. If it wasn’t for her mother spending hundreds of dollars for a plane ticket back home for me, I probably would’ve been held captive for much longer than three weeks. I felt horrible that this woman’s own mother dipped into her retirement funds to get me the hell out of town.

I knew that she was working at a hospital. But I didn’t realize that she would work every day for twelve days straight for 12 hours. And there other things about her that I THOUGHT I knew, but didn’t know the full story or the entire truth of what she had told me.  Of course, she would only tell me the things that she believed I wanted to hear.

Probably the only great thing that came out of the three weeks of imprisonment was that during one afternoon on one of her days off of work, I got to meet several members of the heavy metal band, Slipknot, without their masks on.

Needless to say with those two experiences, I highly doubt that I will ever return to the state of Iowa again.

As I said, there were warnings and red flags.

If you can learn to recognize them early, then you can help protect yourself from being catfished.

If for whatever reason, you are in communication with someone that interests you and you have spent a lot of time talking on a personal level with one another, and they refuse to show you a photograph of themselves… that’s a dangerous sign. Either they are extremely insecure on their looks OR they are not who they say they are.

That was one thing that this woman kept from me, until about two days before we had decided on meeting one another. Instead of calling the whole thing off and walking away from it all, I thought that I would be nice and carry on with the meeting and travel. Clearly, that was something I shouldn’t have done.

I’ve also requested a photograph before and I would be deceived by receiving a photograph of some random model that I was not aware of until it was almost too late.

This is why I’ve made it a rule when it comes to interacting with someone that you have involved yourself in a relationship with. And it doesn’t matter whether or not if its romantic or just a friendship. With the invention of video chat programs, such as Skype, you are able to see one another and communicate. If what you are seeing during your video chat session does not add up or equal to other photographs that you have been told is that person, chances are that you are being lied to.

Another way to tell that you are communicating with someone who just wishes to deceive is the lack of personal information. If you have expressed feelings for one another, there’s no excuse to keep secrets from one another.

I came pretty close last year on Facebook to being deceived when I added a woman to my Friends List. But once I sifted through her photographs and none of them were matching up, and I was asking questions that were random and not really all that personal…. she blocked me, saying that I was being too pushy for information.

Another way that you can tell that you have been victimized by someone is a faked death. Or in some other cases, that person up and suddenly took an extremely long “vacation” and by the time they return, you’ve almost forgot about them.   This tactic is used when the person who is supposed to be the victim of being catfished is getting too close for comfort for the liar, and its their way of getting out of their sticky situation. They fake their own death and they disappear from the Internet and just start over again with a brand new identity and hope that you are not able to track them down again.

There are some really sick people out there on the Internet. And there’s honestly nothing you can do about it once you’ve realized that you have been duped. Well, the only true thing that you can do is walk away from that person and refuse to let them continue to spin their web of lies and have you believe them. Its not easy to swallow when you realize the truth. I know, I’ve been there. But at that point, the damage is done.

Keep in mind that there are so many other danger signs when it comes to finding people’s true virtues or their desires to be deceitful. Knowing them and recognizing them can save you a lot of heartache, and in some cases, it can save you a lot of your personal time, energy, and yes…. even money. 

I do not know the whole truth behind the sensational story of Manti Te’o. And we may or may not ever really know. If he was behind it all, then he will have deserved the scrutiny that comes with it. If he was a victim, then I am guessing that sympathy towards him will come pouring.

Know your boundaries. Figure out the warning signs. If something seems weird, then it probably is deep down. And there’s nothing that says that you cannot investigate and ask questions to the other person. If they are unwilling to answer your questions about them and their life story, then do you really need them in your life??? Probably not.

You actually deserve someone in your life at that magnitude who will be completely honest with you, and you should be completely honest with them in return. Life is far too short for lies and speculation and distrust.