#fargal

Y'know how when you find free money on the ground it just puts you in a good mood? For me, it doesn't. I'm a little concerned about the person that lost the money. I mean, sure, they were careless its their own fault... but what if? What if this belonged to a small child, 8 years old, not too small and they're even big for their age but they're still a small person and maybe because they're big for their age some other kids in their class feel threatened and even though this big kid is a gentle giant, a John Ridd, these other kids gang up on this one kid and when the big kid is running home they dropped their loonie; the money they were taking to the corner store to buy some candy. And even though its a big kid its not an obese child, so its not like the run home and the loss of candy money was doing this kid any favours. And maybe it wasn't candy money at all! It was money for a stamp, a single stamp their ailing grandmother (who is raising this orphaned child on the pension left by the grandfather who was killed by a health condition he aquired while earning that very same pension) sent the child out for a stamp so the grandmother could mail a letter - a medical form to the insurance company for reimbursement of bills already paid - and lo if that letter never gets mailed! Eviction starvation destitution all hinge on this loonie, but I should pick it up before someone else does. Those bully kids will probably end up coming back for it anyway. I'll use this money for great good, to save everyone and in turn save that grandmother and her abnormally tall grandchild which all the money and goodwill on Earth could not do without this impending phone call. Or someone else will get spam emails requesting their assistance to save the world... maybe there'll be a lineup at the phone. Even if we save the lives of grandma and company they're still doomed to eviction destitution starvation. Sorry grandma, I got a call to make. I actually didn't make the call until the next day, I was still mulling over the pros and cons of this odd task/almost quest, there was also the detail of figuring out what time of day would be best to go to a pub to make a strange phone call; I decided on after lunch because I'll have eaten and the pub would probably not be too crowded. Assuming the pub was open at all, I was guessing they served lunch and would be open from then until the end of the day, but it was a weekday so maybe they only open in the evening, but if I'm there in late afternoon I could find a way to occupy a couple of hours until they opened presumably for the afterwork crowd. I wasn't overly concerned with my appearance on the best of days, and I was only making a phonecall, but my presence at a pub did leave the opening for the possibility of attractive females so I wore my vest, nor a 3-piece suit formal vest, the vest I wear over my hoodie, it has a lot of pockets and it zips up to just under my chin. On the whole I don't find vests easy to wear because they don't warm the arms and my arms would get colder than my torso and thus I'm needlessly layering my torso but it wasn't too cold out and I figured my sweater had it covered. I had changed the loonie into four quarters at my place of residence and carried a quarter in each pocket of my pants so they wouldn't jangle together while I walked. I decided on bringing two sets of 50 cents just in case something went awry with the first phonecall and I needed to make a second call. Additionally, that potentially condemned child/grandmother were footing the bill anyway. I arrive at the pub at around 3:55pm and as I enter the dimly lit building (there are large front windows but the day is grey) I notice there is no one around. No one sitting at any of the tables or at any of the booths, which isn't totally strange because I can't think of a particularly good reason to be here at 4pm on a weekday but it is strange that there is no one behind the bar, or walking around doing whatever a waitress would do if there would even be a waitress at this time - probably not, I guess. Then I realize there are no cars in the parking lot out front, but employees might park around the back. Maybe they are all hanging out of sight in the kitchen, did the door ring a bell when I entered? I can't remember. I'm usually an observant person, I pride myself on it, I dream of being a spy in a movie where they know what everyone in the room is wearing and watch all the exits off the reflections of their silverware, I don't mean that I'm like that I'd just like to be like that, that would be the ultimate, I'm more of a, "You forgot to lock the car" as we're walking away from the car you forgot to lock kind of observant, I notice some useful things. Maybe I've been so fixated on this call that I gave myself tunnel vision, or maybe I'm not as observant as I think I am. I try to get my head screwed on straight because I start to get the feeling I"m about to get jumped for $1 in change but I don't hear anyone sneaking up on me and I take a look around and confirm there is still no one. I realize that the sun is going to set in about an hour and it will get colder and it was already kind of cold to walk here so I should probably jog home to help stay warm but I should make this call first. I've been looking around for the payphone but I haven't seen it, I get the sudden feeling that this is a trap there was never a phone I try to remember if I brought the number I'm supposed to call yes its in the right breast pocket of the vest and if this is a trap its probably best if I don't let on that I know its a trap so I maintain a cool demeanor. I consider calling out to see if anyone is there, but its also kind of fun to just stand in the middle of an empty room, unless someone I didn't see is watching me and they're wondering what is the matter with me, just standing here looking around. I could go try to find the kitchen, or bang around and make some noise or try to find the washroom just as an excuse for being here. I decide maybe I'll just abort this mission, I could always come back another time, while I'm wearing a jacket, when maybe there will be some cute professional girls my age getting a drink waiting for a mysterious stranger to talk to them. I turn to leave and as I'm reaching the door, still waiting for a sneak attack, I notice the payphone. The payphone, is, of course, located near the exit, was it going to be located in a corner? Maybe, I've seen it on TV. I reflexively lift the phone's receiver and replace it, this is a habit of mine because after a second the display will read out the time: it's 3:47. So maybe it wasn't 3:55 when I walked in, I was just guessing, or maybe I've started going backwards through time, unlikely, or maybe the clock is wrong, although I personally believe payphones across the continent to be on the same clock, I have no idea if this is true. I guess I walked here faster than I thought. I retrieve the phone number from my pocket and fish out 2 of the quarters, the one's from my back pockets. I dial the number and I hang up. I try to collect myself and really focus on this call. I have NO IDEA who is going to pick up the other end of this phone, if they pick up at all, that would be anticlimactic. Maybe it is good that the pub is empty because I start psyching myself up to be ready to yell into the phone. I get my blood flowing, I jump up and down and shake my head around like a boxer before a fight. This could be a confrontation, this could be a chance to tell the person sending me spam/hacking my computer (not 100% they're related, but 83% sure). The person on the other end of this line might not even speak english, judging from the composition of their text so far they might be hard to understand and not understand me, then why am I here? To find out. Okay, let's do this. I feel like barking, or maybe howling, depending on how this goes I will howl outside afterwards, especially if I get thrown out for making too much of a fracas with the phone. Ideally, there will be no police involved, ugh I dislike the police and their guns and their bulletproof vests and me with nothing to defend myself and the assumption I'll submit and my only recourse to complain later to the very system that can treat me however they like. I'm not sure if this train of thought is calming me making me less likely to act out or boiling my blood further. I dial the number, I drop in 50 cents, I'm snarling quietly privately but I also don't want to start with agression I just want to be sharp, razor sharp or diamond sharp? Or do diamonds cut because they're the hardest? Be both, be ready. The line is ringing. One ring, two rings. Pick up, if I get an answering machine I'm going to lose my 50 cents. My clenching the receiver pretty hard and I'm holding it right up against my ear and cheek not even considering that might be unsanitary and I'm not sure why my face is getting so hot, I must be pressing the phone really hard against myself but then it starts to hurt and I'm not even trying to recoil, I'm just stunned by the heat on my face and I'm being pulled, my face is being pulled against the phone. I'm not sure if the searing was in my ear too, but my cheek was being pulled into the phone. I don't even know what it felt like, It just hurt a lot but I couldn't even make a sound, I think my head went first followed by my body, or maybe it was all at once, in an instant, in a flash it was over.

Figuring I had already established contact with this email spammer, and they couldn't really infect my computer because I was on a public one, and they had already kind of infected my own computer anyway, I replied in the positive to this cry for help to sav [sic] earth, I casually inquired what I could do and how long it might take. The reply was soon to follow. I was to go to a particular pub and make a phone call with the pay phone inside, the number I was to dial was given in the email which failed to mention a time frame for the saving of earth. I don't know if I wrote down the number at that point or walked home and used my own computer to check the number, but I logged off and thought about if going to a pub at the behest of a complete stranger was such a good idea. Couldn't this be Natasha's plan all along? And 50 cents to save the planet? This was getting expensive! Easily, I'd do it for 25 cents, but ever since payphones doubled in price I've been leery of their use. Here are a few reasons I decided it wasn't a totally awful idea to go to a strange bar to make a phone call: 1 - There was no time given for when I had to make the call. So was someone going to be watching it 24/7? Just to jump me for 50 cents? Unlikely. 1a - I was only going to carry 50 cents so I couldn't possibly be robbed anymore than any other time of any day. 1b - I invite the opportunity to physically confront someone who sends me spam email (same to you telemarketers). I don't want to lead with physical violence, I just want to ask how it makes them feel. Is it a good feeling or does it make you feel like a bottom-feeder of the sea? And maybe you aren't even as good as bottom-feeders because I imagine bottom-feeders serve a purpose. And if you just do it for the money because you have a family to support then maybe you should... its too much effort to rant about and its complaints like this that make me not want to blog; its my fault for answering the phone. 2 - I was curious how exactly I was going to save the world by making a phonecall. 3 - I considered it too elaborate for the phone to be a bomb. 4 - It would be a new experience because I never go to pubs. 5 - It might be fun and why do I have to try to overthink everything? For safety! And yet, safety is an illusion. 6 - On the way home, sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, I found a loonie. [That's right internet, you got saved by a Canadian, a loonie is a one dollar coin, called a loonie because it features a picture of a loon {the bird, not a crazy person}] Even if I had considered 50 cents a steep price for planetary salvation, I'd just made twice that! The universe was giving me the green light│Or it was selfishly trying to save itself.

I was contacted by a group of interdimensionary beings inquiring if I would be interested in prolonging the existence of this dimension; ultimately I said yes, obviously (obvious because you're here to read this not so much obvious because of my personal enthusiasm). In my defence, I didn't really believe the request at the time. I thought the message was fake, it was actually in my email account filtered into the spam folder, but sometimes I like to read my spam emails because they intrigue me. How did Natasha-new to the country-looking for a friend-likes to party, find my email address out of all possible character combinations? How did she know that I'm single? Who is this mysterious 55 year-old spam male artist who thinks he can prey on me? And where can I find him so I can punch him in his fragile neck? Backtracking to the world saving spam, it wasn't eve that believable because there were typos and what they were asking wasn't even clear. That email has since been deleted but it read something like "CAN YOU INTEREST TO SAV EARTH?" What does that even mean? Probably some phishing scam appealing to environmentalist soft spots. THEN they hacked my computer. Which really just freaked me out. The mouse was moving on its own (the onscreen pointer, not the physical mouse itself) and that's not a good sign, as I was unplugging my internet cable it had opened a new text document and began typing (again, I did not save this document because I believed it to be malicious and I was pressing alt+F4 a lot) before I shut down the computer the text was something like "hello do you sav earth help for everyone if" and I didn't turn my computer back on for a few days. A lot was going through my mind, mostly, how was I going to get rid of this computer virus? It seemed like a bad one because even after I unplugged from the internet it was still operating, so was it embedded in my system already? And if so, is it possible that a running process could control the pointer like that? It was shades of The Matrix and "Wake up Neo" but that character was really good with computers and I'm not so skilled so a virus was going to be a hassle/reinstall. Also on my mind was the mention of earth, which had come up in that spam email. I ended up checking my email from another computer and, in my spam folder, was another 3 emails regarding "SAVING EARTH" "PLEASE TO HELP" and "Buy cheap CIALIS VIAGRA xxx meds". The cheap 'meds' was an obvious scam but I did deign to reply to the saving earth message. I worried that by replying I was consigning myself to an endless list of emails-to-spam but I already worry that by even reading the spam emails that somehow the spammer knows that someone checked it and thus the account is active and thus must be spammed moar than eva. My reply was along the lines of "What do you want? Can we be friends?" (the suggestion of friendship was an intended ruse because I didn't want them to delete all my digital information, and I figured if I was aggressive and replied with "I hate you" that would almost certainly happen). While I emailed a friend, I received, in my inbox, presumably because it was a reply to my reply, that "YES FRIENDS PLEASE TO SAV EARTH WE NEED YOUR HELP"