Washblog

TLS: "Hello?"

Phone: "Is this the The Left Shue?"

TLS: "Yes. Who is this?"

Phone: "This is the NSA. We are just doing a check of your line."

TLS: "The NSA??? What the hell are you doing on my phone line?"

Phone: "Why we're protecting America Mr. Left Shue."

TLS: "How are you protecting America by listening in on my phone line?"

Phone: "Oh, we're not really listening to your end of the call; that would be against the law. We only listen to whoever may be on the other end of the line, and only if we suspect them of being Al Qaeda."

TLS: "Wait! How does that work? I mean how do you only hear them and not me? Do you have some fancy electronic device for blocking out my end of the call?"

Phone: "Well not exactly. We sorta hum while you're speaking so we can't make out what you say."

TLS: "What?? Does that really work?"

Phone: "Well most of the time. Of course, if you are a loud talker, we sometimes have to do 'la la la la' or some other such thing. If you are really loud we sometimes just set the phone down and turn our backs."

TLS: "Well ok, but tell me, how do you decide if the person on the other end is Al Qaeda? While I'm thinking about it, what would make you think Al Qaeda would be calling me?"

Phone: "Oh, we've read your Blog. Those five hits you had yesterday?"

TLS: "That was you ?" Damn, I thought I was finally getting some traffic." Wait! You haven't said how you can tell if the person on the other end is Al Qaeda."

Phone: "Well, actually we are still working on that part. You see with all the good translators in Iraq, we kinda just listen for code words or suspicious sounding names."

TLS: "Whoa! That means you have to listen to all my calls just to make a guess about who might be on the other end."

Phone: "Well yeah but we really do try to be discrete. I mean we only listened to your mother for a few minutes before realized that she was probably no risk - by the way, you really should call her more often. We did catch that call yesterday from that Minchew guy. We're not too sure about him; what kinda name is Minchew anyway. Oh well, we have him on our watch list for now."

TLS: "Well I am really uncomfortable with this. Is there anything I can do to stop it; like call, or better yet, email my congressman?"

Phone: "No, I think we have pretty much taken care of that angle. We sorta have them convinced that we have super duper secret powers. Now, just between you and me, there is a rumor going around that you could switch to Qwest for your phone service. Apparently they won't give us their phone listings so we're kinda screwed there."

TLS: "Ok, that's enough. I'm calling Qwest. Good bye."

TLS: "Hello, Qwest?"

Qwest: "Yes. Thank you for calling Qwest. This is Emir, how may I help you?"

Phone: "Hmmmmmmm Hmmmmmm Hmmmmmm"

Peace,

Chad (The Left) Shue