A couple three basic questions that I'm not willing to test myself.

When pigtailing wires together, you won't get shocked so long as 1) the
breaker to that circuit is off 2) you aren't touching both the neutral AND
the hot wire. Meaning, if I grab two hot wires and pig-tail them (like when
adding in a dimmer) I won't get shocked so long as I'm not touching the
neutral wire AND the breaker to that circuit is off. I'm not trying to be
ultra safe here so much as I'm trying to make sure that in situation where
switching off the breaker isn't a guarentee that power is off for that
fixture.

Second question, if I take the probe leads from my volt meter and jam them
into an outlet, it's not gonna short the circuit but do exactly what I would
expect it to do - read the potential difference between the two sockets in
AC volts (assuming your voltmeter is reading AC volts).

And finally, when splicing phone line, do the wires normally carry voltage
sufficient to shock or could you essentially splice them with your teeth if
you had to?