Lindsay Lohan, etc.

via th' official Lindsay Lohan website.


As I'm sure you know, today is Lindsay Lohan's 20th birthday. She has gone on record saying she doesn't care to be called a "teen queen", and now she's no longer a teenager. So, if you have been calling her this, cut it out. And this time next year I will no longer have to worry about her calling to bug me about buying her beer whenever she's in Denton, so that will be quite a relief.

In all seriousness, back in May I got some very unusual phone calls of a dubious nature, all in the space of a week. On a Monday, I think it was May 22nd, A man called and asked for me by name, then said nothing else, after I said that yes it was me. Then on Wednesday the 24th I got another call, this time a woman's voice, this time she asked for "Jonathan R. Versen", and I again responded that it was me, and again there was no one there after that. I've heard commercial junk phone calls using recorded voices that sounded almost like they were live before, but I'm pretty sure these were not recordings.

It's disquieting. I find myself wondering if there's a scam going around in which identity thieves try to get people to say "yes" or "that's me", etc. in order to record people's voices to apply for credit in their names. It reminded me of my suspicions about five years ago when I was called by some young person who wanted to ask me a bunch of questions about the Texas lottery and my "awareness" of their advertising pitches, and he had a series of questions in which I was supposed to answer "I understand". I never called the Texas lottery people to see if such polling was legitimately occurring, but the request to have me say "I understand" repeatedly didn't sit right with me.