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![[the evil phone]](img2/tonguephone.gif)
Like Swine Flu or the Symbionese Liberation Army, obscene telephone calls seem
like one of those quaint menaces that never made it out of the 1970s. After all, who's
got time to worry about heavy breathers in the age of Richard Allen Davis,
weapons of
mass destruction and curbing?
A few weeks ago this creaky old crime raised its cordless receiver once again, with
the
arrest
of 28-year-old Simone Rene Posada, the San Mateo, CA resident who - under the
lecherous-sounding alias "Oscar" - allegedly made several hundred dirty calls to
women at Stanford University. Posada's four-year reign of terror came to an end,
predictably enough, thanks to Caller ID. And while his long crime spree suggests women
should still take precautions against unwanted phone calls (It's no accident that the
phone book still teems with people whose first name is "A" or "D" or "J"), the relative
ease with which he was finally captured indicates the steady diminution of this once
high-profile crime.
Common sense would indicate that the obscene phone call is dwindling as a means of
communication. The steady expansions of Caller ID, call blocking, *69 and countless
other tricks have given the sport of lewd cold calling an element of pointless risk it lacked in the
days when you supposedly had to keep a caller on the line for two minutes in order to
trace the call. This diffiuculty naturally forces the one-handed demon dialer
onto the expanding frontier of 540 and
900 numbers, where what is lost in free usage and predatorial gratification is made up
for in variety and friendly badinage. Email too has carved out opportunities
for harassment - although, as the following sticky message from
LMo4620882@aol.com indicates, the obscene emailer
must be more creative than his fiber optic peer:
the only one I remember was from someone
whose voice I recognized - he owned an
antique shop in Ventnor called "[name withheld]".
I forget his name but I think you knew his
daughter. She was very nice and very pretty.
He was a total WEIRDO!
He came to one of my yard-sales (oh, I'll bet
those rich neighbors LOVED me!). In fact,
he wanted to know if I had anything else -
in addition to what was out in the yard - and,
of course, thanks to dad and his collecting
binges, I had plenty of stuff in the basement (this
was long after the split with dear of dad). Oh, God -
I was ALONE with this guy in the basement!!! Anyway,
he saw a couple of things down there that he said he
would buy but he said "I have to tell you, these things
are worth money - these 2 paintings are original Louie
Icartz and this vase is a blah blah blah. The vase is
worth about $60 and I don't know the value of the
paintings".
I later sold the 2 paintings through a Sotheby's auction
and netted about $1500. I still have the vase.
Anyway, after that call - oh, by the way, it came about
11 p.m.; he sounded drunk; and all he said was "do
you like to fuck?" Pretty creative, huh? I think
I just said "who is this?" (pretty intelligent, huh?)
Do you remember the night the 2 drunks walked up on the porch?
If you have relevant information about obscene calls, please
send it to me.
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![[simpleton]](img/thesimp.gif)