Then Sunday rolled around... well, Sunday was an odd day. That afternoon I was in the living room chatting with Laura, who was busy on her laptop and perched comfortably just under Mojo on the sofa. I was kind of mindlessly moving some things around on my TV stand, and while moving some DVDs away from in front of the DVR/satellite receiver I gently bumped one of the little buttons on front... then it happened. A little male voice said "Hello? Hello". I looked around to see if maybe Chaz was outside the door or something, but no Chaz... still puzzled, I said "Hello?", to which the little voice replied, "Hello" from inside my satellite receiver!  I looked at Laura and we were both dumfounded. "What the hell??!!! There's a tiny little man in my satellite receiver!", I exclaimed to my equally stunned cousin. I leaned down close to the receiver and said "I think I accidentally hit a button - sorry." Then nothing. The "hello's" stopped. 

OK, you might be thinking that this is easily explainable... that either the sound was actually coming from elsewhere, or there's simply a direct connection to some "help center" type thing at Dish network through your satellite receiver, allowing you to just sit there and talk into your box and have a conversation with someone in a Dish office somewhere - probably India or a prison in Idaho or whatever... or that we were "celebrating" again and imagined all this, but NO. We were both stone cold sober. And as far as I know, there is NO such function in my DVR/satellite receiver! And furthermore, I don't even have mine hooked up to a phone line since I dumped my land line almost 2 years ago... AND this happened when the TV and the audio receiver were both turned off... so what the hell??!!! I've combed through the DVR/receiver manuals, both physical and online and can't find anything about a two-way speaker or any such thing that would allow you to hear a little voice coming from that box... I don't know. It's a mystery wrapped in an enigma, surrounded by a giant question mark.

I almost called Dish to ask them if this is possible - ie: a little voice coming from my DVR/receiver... but then I considered the possibility that they would think I was, well, "off my nut" or something and send the men in white coats over to escort me to a "quieter place". So I didn't call... 

If any of you can give me a good explanation, I'm all ears and baited breath. I guess it would be nice to know that I haven't finally just gone completely batshit insane.