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Showing posts from February, 2013

Spam email of the week

Subject: Classified Ads !! LET'S PLACE SOME CLASSIFIED ADS!! YEA!!! FEW THINGS EVOKE SUCH A LEVEL OF EXCITEMENT Dear Sir/Ma, DEAR SIR OR MY MOTHER I will like to place an Ad with your company and i want you to  get back to me with the total cost for the adverts to run for 6 weeks and below is my Ad text : JIMINY CHRISTMAS TAKE A BREATH *************************************************************** THIS LINE WILL SEPARATE MY EMAIL NONSENSE FROM THE NONSENSE I AM REQUESTING YOU OFFICIALLY PUBLISH Ad Text : Barry & Associates, Inc....Full-time & Part-time/Accounting Managers & Sales Representatives. Requirements - Should be computer Literate, COMPUTER LITERATE. YES THAT IS A PHRASE MANY COMPANIES USE THESE DAYS. "POTENTIAL EMPLOYEE TELL ME CAN YOU READ A COMPUTER?" "Ummm, not quite sure what that mea--" "NEXT APPLICANT PLEASE" Full charge bookkeeping experience. Reception and basic accounting knowledge needed. For mor

Willing your will and trusting your trust

My wife and I recently had the joyous opportunity to discuss in detail the logistics surrounding our—God forbid—untimely demise. We figured it’s about time we arranged our wills. Not for us—we’d be dead—but for our daughter, lest our vast, vast fortune get lost in a sea of probate. Our situation is not dissimilar to the one detailed on Downton Abbey , where the Earl of Grantham must ensure he has an heir to inherit his estate. Likewise we felt it necessary to mark down legally who will inherit things like my New York Yankees memorabilia and our printer-scanner-fax machine. In fact, a simple will would not suffice. No, we needed, apparently, a revocable testamentary trust. The cost of that was enough to make me wonder if one could inherit the trust itself. Of course, all of these hypothetical scenarios were prefaced with the phrase “God forbid.” I feel like that should be implied, but everyone involved, including myself, still finds it necessary to verbalize. Say, for example, you

Spam email of the week

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Subject: Re: Custom Swimming Products If there's one thing we're always looking to purchase here - the weekly community newspaper where I work - it's ink paper layout software cameras swimming products. It's like, "Where's that story about the political thing?" and dude be like, "Don't have it yet boss, can't find my swim goggles." Mind you I'm talking about CUSTOM swimming products, not your run-of-the-mill, mass-produced swimming products that you can find at virtually every newspaper. So this email finds me well. Dear Sir/Madam, Dear Man/Woman, We are the producer of swimming products in HK. The thing I like about Hong Kong-based swim product salespeople is that they are direct and to the point. I realize that's a stereotype, but hey - sometimes stereotypes are true. It’s well known that an excellent swimmer needs not only great efforts, but also a set of suitable swimming wear and goggles. Swimmer : Arg! Des

And we’re the ones writing it off

One my favorite all-time Seinfeld moments is when Kramer tries to convince Jerry to blame his broken stereo on the Post Office, which leads to this exchange: Kramer : It’s just a write-off for them. Jerry : How is it a write-off? Kramer : They just write it off. Jerry : Write it off what ? Kramer : Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything. Jerry : You don’t even know what a write-off is. Kramer : Do you? Jerry : No, I don’t. Kramer : But they do. And they’re the ones writing it off. “Write it off what ?” is something my wife and I say to each other every time we hear the phrase “write it off.” We say it a lot to each other during this glorious time of year, tax season. I have no idea what I am doing tax-wise. I realize many people say that, but I truly have no clue. I have no general concept of what “doing taxes” even means, and why a system is in place that requires the taxpayer to personally go back and account for errors pertaining to what he o

Spam email of the week

Subject: Urgent Respond, No. 1: "Respond" doesn't require a capital letter. No. 2: No need for a comma there. The presence of a comma in this instance may not appear like much, but as someone who writes for living I can assure you the comma is insane . This email is from a crazy person. No. 3: "Respond" should be "response." No. 4: Even if the above items were remedied, the subject header "Urgent response" makes zero sense. Is this email an urgent response or does this email require an urgent response from me? If the former - I never sent you an email so you are a sneaky jerkface liar. If the latter - chill the freak out, jerkface. Don't be telling me that something is urgently required of me before I have even read the email. I have enough stress in my life, okay? Hello Am Mr Perry Johnson . No. 1: "Hello" could have used a comma. Your misuse of commas is rampant and disturbing. No. 2: "Am Mr Perry Johnson"

The inescapable stress of leisure

One of the stresses in my life is entertainment. A thing that is literally intended to be a break and distraction from the stress of everyday living is something that stresses me out. Part of this is sports, although I am getting better about that. Sports is the worst. No matter who you root for, you will be disappointed in some regard by season’s end. Throw fantasy sports into the mix—which I do because I am apparently a masochist—and sports becomes one big ball of terribleness and unwanted outcomes. On the rare occasion that sports produce joy, it’s fun to say that all the heartache leading up to it was worth it, but that is totally not true. Also, everything I am saying is in regard to watching sports, like from a couch. But, again, I am gaining more and more perspective and slowly removing the vice grip sports has had on me throughout my entire life. Yet I still have the issue of television to confront. Indeed, television—more specifically the DVR—stresses me out. Recently we

Spam email of the week

Subject: ?????? ??????? ... Great INVENTION Exposed... Please Check... ... ?? ??????????... I just ... I don't understand how the rampant and random use of punctuation is supposed to draw in email users. I feel like over the years the spam bots have gotten a little better -- a bit more refined even -- and so to see something like this ... I don't know. It just kind of sets everything back to 2000. This is like the white trash of spam email. Вашият приятел, ... Great INVENTION Exposed... Please Check... ..., Ви препоръчва да разгледате Бележникът на Микеланджело в магазина ..::Megashop.BG::... That is the introduction. There's a chance this is hilarious and/or important if you happen to speak Arabglish. Dear Electricity User, HOW DID THEY KNOW? This is my most favorite salutation that has ever happened. From 1856-1943, he was an inventor, mechanical engineer, and electrical engineer. Oh cool I'm about to get a history lesson from this email that began "

Husks and clay: my exciting adventure in organic cleansing

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Life is crazy sometimes. Fifteen years ago I imagined that, right now, I’d be nestled safely into that glorious physical time of post-facial acne and pre-having to think about an organic colon cleanse. Welp, that obviously didn’t happen. Ha, ha! Sigh. So yes, I did make the executive decision to attempt an all-natural colon cleanse because: why not? I mean, I am 34 years old, just about that time in life when one should start thinking about the cleanliness of his/her colon, give or take a couple decades. And, you know me by now—I’m not about to put something unnatural into my body. Sure, I could have gone the easy route and purchased something called “COLON BLAST,” which contains 99.9 percent of things I can’t pronounce and also “consult your doctor if COLON BLAST causes your hair to fall out and arms to bleed.” No. Surely the Internet had a more organic method, and indeed that was proven correct. It’s a wonder how people cleansed their colons safely before computers. In fact, all