Message in a bottle

I recently went through some of the old messages on our home answering machine. Almost none of them are for us. Two are in a very foreign language, and so, to me, sound like genuine threats. Four contain nothing but prolonged and profound silence.

The following are three of my favourites.

Message One:

Ramon — call me at home please.

[I don't know why I like this one — probably because he sounds so certain that Ramon will call him back immediately.]

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Message Two:

Hello, this is a message for Miss Julian Kennedy, um, it's Roland from RUSH at Baker St. Um, you have appointment with us 11 o'clock today, and I'm just wondering what, you are running late or you would like to reschedule it? If you could give me a ring on 020… that would be great, thank you, bye.

[This requires an explanation: A while ago I became mildly obsessed with defrauding London's hair salons. Fed up with high prices, I decided to take advantage of RUSH hair salon's 50% off introductory offer. I took advantage several times, each time at a different branch. However, after a couple of visits I became paranoid that my name might be flagged in the system, so I decided to use an alias: Julian Kennedy. I don't know where the "Miss" came from.]

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Message Three:

Oh Hi, Mr Alby, my name's Aaron Jorgenson.

I — well, I trained as a journalist and I'm responsible for several major investigations, but — serious ones — but I can't practice, really, and I haven't been able to for a while due to poor health.

But, anyway, this unfortunately involves a mistake of you know, kind of, you know [unintelligible].

Um, I wanted to know from you if I could interview the Director of Parking, because, um, it's quite a long story, but they did have me arrested … ah, and, um, decided to deliver into the evidence a large quantity of fabricated material [laughs]-- which could be pointed out as fabricated in a court of law. So, you know, I wanted to know because, like, it's not my usual kind of mode of approach on these things, these days I'm more [unintelligible] if anything and ah, you know, I just wanted to query as to why on earth you'd sort of fabricate a history that doesn't exist; in fact, on the contrary, exists, you know, sort of depicting a different individual. 

And you can ring me back at your leisure on 077… thanks.

I never called Aaron Jorgenson back, and I always felt a little bit bad about it. But really, what was I going to say? You know how you just spilled all that embarrassing information onto an answering machine? well, it was the wrong one. Too-da-loo!