Sleepless in Seattle?

[Background note: I wrote the below some months ago, and never got around to posting it. It is no longer current, including as it does topical references to such things as Hillary Clinton’s appointment as Secretary of State, but some might find it amusing; so I have decided to post it for the record.

In view of the lapse of time, some explanation is called for.

The Vadney had sent me an email purporting to be from the New Baltimore Town clerk. This forged email asked me if I could be contacted on my parents’ telephone number. Clearly the Vadney was hoping to “prove” something he knew to be false: that I was living with my parents. This in turn was a pathetic attempt to retrospectively validate his “service” of a summons on me at that address. Having been discovered and exposed, he tried to have it both ways, calling my revelation an “invention” in his own blog, and posting comments to my blog claiming to have cleverly entrapped me into admitting I had received his emails....]

First of all, I would note that the Vadney seems to be once again showing symptoms of multiple personality disorder. We all know how he refers to himself as “we” with alarming frequency. But now it seems there are two distinct Vadneys. Vadney₁ accuses me of lying (doesn’t he always?) in the last-but-one posting to his blog [Note: now last but two]. There was only one matter mentioned in the blog entry he refers to [Note: my posting “A minor curiosity...&rdquo]: his puerile attempt to deceive me with a forged email address. So, in accusing me of “invention”, he must have been referring to this, and denying that he ever sent me the email.

At the same time, Vadney₂ has attempted to post a long string of comments to this blog, trying to create the impression that his painfully obvious fake email was in fact a cunning ruse to entrap me into admitting that I received his emails in general. Well, the fact that he was able to get past my filters (actually only one of them) by fraudulently altering the originating address does not in any way prove that his other alleged emails got through. And it is perfectly reasonable of me to filter out his emails, given the personally abusive and threatening nature of some of those he sent me in August 2007. Either way, he can’t accuse me of “inventing” the pathetic attempt at email forgery and at the same time use it as evidence of my having received anything. And, equally, it is too late for him to remove the posting in which he claims that the fraudulent email was my “invention”. It’s already been archived.

Now you may be wondering what this has to do with Sleepless in Seattle. Well, I’m coming to that.

Vadney back at a “low place”?

Over ten years ago, the Vadney succeeded in having published a puff piece in the Schenectady Daily Gazette, under the by-line of Cheryl Clark, although who actually wrote the sickening sycophantic bilge and how much money, if any, changed hands is anyone’s guess. This is what “Cheryl Clark” had to say about the Vadney’s attitude to the Albany region back then:

"When I was really at a low place, I was saying this place is never going to make it -I'm going down to Washington, boom," Vadney said with a cultured European tinge that belies his Albany upbringing.
But "this place" does seem to be making it. The house [...] is not Vadney's home, but the hub of an international technical translation business he calls BioMediTech - "The Foreign Language Doctors."

Although folks in the Capital Region may snicker a little when they use the new names "Albany International Airport" and "Tech Valley," Vadney is betting the bank that the global commerce here is growing fast enough to make him a very comfortable living.

[...]

Last year, he moved the business from New Jersey to Albany, because he saw the expansion of the airport here as a sign that more businesses would be needing translation services. His partner stayed in New Jersey and another principal joined Vadney after he opened the office in Albany's South Pearl Street Economic Development Zone.

Daily Gazette, 25 April 1998, p. B-11

Now here’s what the same Vadney has to say about the same Albany region in a recent blog entry:

You'd think they'd have contacted AJ with at least something of an apology, even a free car wash? No. But that's the way businesses are run (into the ground) in the Capital District (for those of you who are not aware, Albany is the capital of the bankrupt--or nearly so--state of New York), so-called Tech Valley (also known as Yeck! Valley).

Vadney’s blog, 6 February 2009

So it seems the Vadney is back “at a low place”, and thinks that “this place is never going to make it” again. Of course, he is no longer actually in Albany, but he is still in the Capital Region. And his bet seems to have failed, if you believe some of his recent depositions. He has described himself, under oath, as a “poor person”, and denied having any assets at all. I am not so sure what has happened to the much-vaunted “assets in Europe” and in particular the “apartment in Italy”, but the Vadney, a wannabe deacon, would never lie under oath, would he?

So it looks as though the long-postponed trip to Washington may well be back on the agenda. Did he mean the state of Washington or Washington, DC? If he moves to Seattle, for example, I am sure the New Yorkers will not lose any sleep over it. The Seattle-ites might, of course. Or did he mean Washington, DC? What could a failed translator hope to gain by going there? Perhaps he could run for Congress. I mean, we know he only managed to get 17 votes when he ran for Town Justice, but then people actually expect their politicians to tell lies. They require more ethical conduct from judges. His best hope might have been to lobby for the Senate seat Hillary vacated: after all, no voting was involved; but he has left his run too late. So far, the exercise of the Vadney’s political cunning has been limited to seeking endorsement from some radical right-wing ratbag rabble, and, on getting it, repudiating it. Given the extent to which he has alienated the major parties, it is most unlikely he would get anywhere in “real” politics, any more than in the one-horse-town variety.

So it seems he’s stuffed. By his own account, his business is a total failure. After 25 years, the last few of them spent living rent-free in some guy’s house, he hasn’t, by his own account, got anything to show for it. (His repeated jibes about my “origins”, about which he knows nothing, betray a deep sense of shame at his own. You’d think he would buy his mother a house with all this money he claims to have made over the years, having been spared the expense of paying for his own accommodation (his brother owned his previous place) for all these years. It’s rather hard to cover up your trailer-trash origins when your mother still lives in the trailer.... But then, Vadneyoid self-obsession is supposed to be due to maternal rejection...and who can blame her? So maybe he would rather go on punishing her than cover up his shame at his background.) He apparently can’t even afford to pay a $1600 costs order. That’s how bad it is. He can’t go to Washington, either of them. He may soon be bankrupted. He can’t even buy a used Suzuki without getting into trouble.

A minor curiosity...

The other day I received an email apparently emanating from the office of the Town Clerk of the Town of New Baltimore, NY, population three-and-a-half thousand. I have never set foot in New York state, and would probably not have heard of the town if not for the egregiously disreputable activities of one of its most justly reviled residents, recently an aspirant to the Roman Catholic diaconate. So I might well have wondered why the Town Clerk of this bustling metropolis, a Ms Janet Brooks, would want to write to me. I might have, but I didn’t: it was obvious to me straight away that the said wannabe deacon, wannabe judge, wannabe consumer advocate and wannabe translator was behind it.

Here is the full text of the email (telephone number masked):

Can you be reached at 08 xxxxxxxx?

Thank you

No name, no signature, no suggestion of a reason for wanting to contact me by telephone. Nothing. Now how stupid does Mr Wannabe think I am? More to the point: How stupid is Mr Wannabe? But it gets funnier. Out of curiosity, I made as if to reply, just to see what the return email address was. Any guesses? Would you believe <hvadney@mhcable.com>? You couldn’t get much more inept an attempt at email forgery than that! (For the record, here are a few things he could have done differently, without any additional technical knowledge: choose a more plausible alleged sender, write a more plausible email giving some reason why the alleged sender wants to contact me, set up a freemail address that looks as though it might belong to the alleged sender and is not obviously connected with the real sender....)

The telephone number was that of my parents in Adelaide, without the country code. This guy seems determined to prove that I am still living at my parents’ house, thirty years after I moved out (it was November 1976, in fact), even though he knows it isn’t true.

There was another dead giveaway. According to the header, the email was addressed to two recipients. One was my normal email address, for which email from the wannabe Ralph Nader’s address is filtered; the other was to the address given at the top of this blog (<Richard_Benham_AU-StopVadneysLies[at]yahoo.com>), which I have instructed Mr Wannabe to use if he feels he absolutely must contact me. Of course, I only received one copy, and that was the one addressed to the “StopVadneysLies” address.

On the subject of consumer advocacy: I thought the whole idea was to make a fuss about other people’s being hard done by!

ΔOKEI ΔE MOI KAI TON ’OYAΔNEION MH ’EINAI