the second time, i discovered a piece of a spam that my filter had somehow missed. fate, i'm assuming. it consisted of a two-paragraph entry from some mildly intriguing prose, which, of course, i immediately had to google. the author is haruki marakami, and the book is entitled dance dance dance. i think i'll buy it today.
could someone please explain to me the logic behind creating spam with random bits of text? or, wait a minute. damn, they're good. maybe someone was trying to sell me this book. i suppose it worked.
anyway, here's the e-mail:
-----
from Rosanne
reply-to Rosanne Smith
to benpettis@gmail.com,
date Fri, Apr 25, 2008 at 8:30 AM
subject «Three in the afternoon?» I repeated. It didn't make much sense even to me. «Why?» I asked myself.
mailed-by gmail.com
signed-by gmail.com
22
Yuki shrugged. «He's not such a bad person. No talent though.»
The reason was simple. I was never choosy about the jobs I did. I was willing to do anything, I met my deadlines, I never complained, I wrote legibly. And I was thorough. Where others slacked off, I did an honest write. I was never snide, even when the pay was low. If I got a call at two-thirty in the morning asking for twenty pages of text (about, say, the advantages of non-digital clocks or the appeal of women in their forties or the most beautiful spots in Helsinki, where, needless to say, I'd never been) by six A.M., I'd have it done by five-thirty. And if they called back for a rewrite, I had it to them by six. You bet I had a good reputation.
239
We'll work on the brother later. The Pharaoh's got to go to Laurence Olivier. Always got a migraine, always pressing fingers to his temples. Throws anyone who gets on his nerves into the bottomless pit or makes them swim the Nile with the crocs. Intelligent, cruel, and high-strung. Digs out people's eyes and throws the poor souls into the desert.
«If she doesn't want to go to school, then maybe you should think of an alternative,» I said. «Sometimes it's bad to force school on a kid, especially a kid like Yuki who's extra sensitive and attracts more attention than she likes. A tutor might be a good idea. I think it's pretty clear Yuki isn't cut out for all this cramming for entrance exams and all the silly competition and peer pressure and rules and extracurricular activities. Some people can do pretty well without it. I'm being idealistic, I know, but the important thing is that Yuki finds her talent and has a chance to cultivate it. Maybe
I looked up and gazed again at the shadow on the wall.
Time to return to Tokyo. Nothing more for me here. The Dolphin Hotel had fulfilled its purpose. Once I got back to Tokyo, I'd have a lot of knots to untie.
---
i have this daily ritual of web sites i must visit. it started out as a routine to quell the boredom i met daily from 6:30 to 7:30 before the calls started rolling in. i would visit drudgereport (even though i think matt drudge is a closeted douche bag), digg.com, and the bloomberg energy report. now it has become second-nature every time i find a connection.
the reason i visit the bloomberg energy report is to check out the current price of oil. as of now, the wti crushing spot index is 120.17. it's not that i'm even remotely interested in investing. hell, i can't even keep a hundred bucks in my savings. it's more like i'm this sadistic little rubbernecker of the economy. it's like driving past a horrible wreckage, only to discover the driver was none other than the next-door neighbor who molested you as a child. that kind of gratification.
while i am a bastion of technology, i have to admit that i have this secret desire to see it crumble. i would put flowers in my hair and dance around naked, because, sadly, that's just about the only thing most of us would know how to do without it.
cheers.
