This is one of an occasional email that I write to an author after reading their books. I have no idea what possesses me, but that non-reflective stance has never stopped me before. Today, I am writing an email to Bob Servant (or is it Neil Forsythe?) who wrote a wonderful tome entitled: Delete This At Your Peril! that centers on Servant’s email exchanges with spammers who clog our inboxes with harrowing tales of royal riches, Russian brides and other adventures.
Bob, of Scotland, decides to join in the fracas with wit and humor, and I was laughing so hard my children were worried about me.
Here is a blurb from his website:
Delete This At Your Peril features the anarchic exchanges between Bob and the hapless spam merchants. As they offer Bob lost African millions, Russian brides and get-rich-quick scams he responds by generously offering some outlandish schemes of his own. The spammers may have breached his firewall, but they have met their match as Bob Servant rises heroically to the challenge, and sows confusion in his wake.
Also at Bob’s website, I found his email address and wrote him a letter.
Dear Bob,
I am a little reluctant to send you an email, knowing as I now do the possibilities of your replies. I don’t have the time or energy for that kind of relationship. So let me just start out by saying that I do not have a load of cash sitting in a vault in Africa, nor am I the long lost heir to some royal seat in Zambia. I will never be considered a Russian beauty with a well-endowed chest (although my wife thinks I am cute enough for her) who seeks a hubby for love and life, nor will I give you 15 percent profits if my “friends” wire you some cash that the government shouldn’t know about. In addition, Bob, let me make it clear that I have no interest whatsoever in Chinese rubber belts or plastic planter pots of any sort. Neither do I intend to fall for your “Bobby” babe routine.
And, just so we all understand and are on the up and up, I never took your window-washing ladders that day that will clearly live in infamy in your mind, Bob.
That said, Bob, I wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed your book, which I read yesterday afternoon in one long stretch. My kids were running amok, the chores were not being done, and in general, I let the world go to hell as I laughed my butt off about your exploits with email. I may never look at one of those spam emails again without thinking of you, Bob. Come to think of it, though, I had finally found myself not even noticing the spam anymore. Kind of like the kids screaming and you just tune them out completely? You know how that works. It just falls outside your field of vision. Now I will notice the spam again. I’ll see it in my inbox and think, should I forward this to Bob or has he already seen it?
So I am now wondering if I should be thanking you or be getting pissed off about spam coming back into my sight.
Let’s leave it at thanks, Bob. I bought the book, after all. You only wrote it. Staying positive about this whole spam situation keep us on some good footing, don’t you think?
Bob, I want to say that it’s not often that you run across someone who has the intellect to parry with the unknowns of this world, but you, Bob, have done it, with grace and humor and just enough vulgarity to make your adventure fun for the rest of us. I pictured you, with all of your Jazz magazines piled like rocks around you, punching keys in Scotland and meanwhile, somewhere in the world, some other fool was trying to string you along with only one goal: to gain your Cheeseburger Van fortune.
The real question is: are there really people who send along their bank numbers? Is this world littered with such imbeciles? Are we all such fools?
No need to answer, Bob. I think we both know the answer is, sadly, yes.
I come, then, to another sticky matter: Are you real, Bob? Or are you just some imaginary device from your pal, Neil? I guess it doesn’t matter. In the wired world, an imaginary fellow has as much chance to do damage as the real one.
Keep up the good work!
A pal from across the seas,
Kevin
The book can be ordered via Amazon. (Bob promises to ship me two talking lions for promoting his book, so tell them I sent ya)
Just check out these warnings found on products. Is it just because we, as humans, are generally stupid? Or is it fear of litigation? Or maybe something got lost in the translation from the place where things were made to the place where things are sold.
In any event, have a laugh on me and the folks over at Crazy Warnings.
Disposable razor:
Do not use this product during an earthquake.
And:
Furniture Wipes
Do not use for a baby wipe.
Stickers to put on the seat of a potty training toilet
This is not a toy. Stickers require adult supervision.
Lawnmower
Warning: When Motor Is Running - The Blade Is Turning
Instructions on the bottom of a grocery store pizza
Do not turn upside down.
Bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle
Do not open here.
Oh, there is plenty more at the Crazy Warnings site, too.
This video was shared over at the collective Teach.Eng.Us site by Linus but it had me laughing so hard, I just had to share it out. It’s a Dylan homage (does Weird Al do homage or just farce?) and uses palindromes.
In 30 minutes this morning, my three kids barraged with me these questions (I actually wrote them down once I realized the question attack was on, although it was a coordinated venture, as far as I can tell):
Can you get me a bowl (me: cereal)? Can you get the milk? Is that a spoon? (7 yr old)
My pajamies has milk on it. Can you get it off? (3 yr old)
This spoon is too small. Can you get me a big spoon?( 3 yr old)
Can you read me a book? (10 yr old)
What’s that right there? (me: it’s a crock pot) I don’t like crockpots. (3 yr old)
What’s chili? (me: kind of like soup, but spicy) It’s not soup! I don’t like chili. (3 yr old)
Can we see Lord of the Rings? (me: no, too scary) You always say that! (10 yr old)
Can you help fix my shade? (me: your shade? what’s wrong with your shade. Who yanked it all the way up?) Me. (me: why?) Don’t know. (7 yr old)
I don’t have my other sock. Daddy, can you find it? (3 yr old) — sock found in bed.
Daddy, when you are done, can I go on NBA.Com? The Celtics play tonight. (7 yr old)
I just read the book Rock On by Dan Kennedy, which is a humorous and scathing look at the music industry from inside (Kennedy worked for a major music company as a mid-level manager). It is a fun read and full of interesting bits and pieces of humor writing (such as top lists, such as Ineffective Names for a Hardcore Death Metal Bank — ie, Light Tropical Storm). He includes his email address at the end, so I wrote and sent him this letter:
Feb. 8, 2008
Dear Dan,
Thanks for writing the book, Rock On. It made me laugh until I realized that what I was laughing about was the complete commercialization and destruction of the music industry that was my lifeline as a kid. Like you, I remember sitting on the floor with my old vinyl albums on the Radio Shack stereo, looking over every last bit of the cover and even reading the names in fine print at the lower right hand corner. Photographer, engineer, snack-man, whatever. I read them all as the tunes were blasting. Imagine seeing your name like that on a Led Zep album? Even if you were a water carrier, it would still be a thrill. Today, there wouldn’t be room for those names and if the names were there, they would be so friggin’ small in print that you would need to steal your grannie’s eyeglasses just to read it. And let’s face it - no one bothers to read the fine print on anything anymore anyway. I don’t consider myself a craggy old dude but I do miss that feeling of discovering rock and roll. I know there is still great music out there but it is not in the halls of the office building where you found yourself working for those 18 months, that’s for sure.
You know, it amazed me that you put your email address in your book. How many people have written to you? And do you write back? I ask this because I read through John Hodgeman’s book, The Areas of My Expertise, and he gave out an email. When I wrote him a letter (I was arguing that his name and my name are close and that maybe we were related somehow — not really, but, you know, all in fun) and I never heard a peep out of him. Maybe he thought I was just another nut job (I proclaim: I am not a nut job).
Back to your book: I was really struck by two images. The first is the entire Iggy Pop show. Man. That must have been something and I got great joy out of visualizing that madman stomping into the corporate seats and just going crazy on them and then leaving such chaos and wreckage in his midst. There was a ferocious energy about him that you captured in your writing. (Don’t you wish you were on the stage, with your camera, for that one, Dan? Instead, you were stuck with the spandex boys). And then there was the ending, with Jimmy Page, walking in a suit and his helpful assistant carrying his guitars. I agree that we expect our heroes to stay the same and never change. Reality is different. Still, it was a symbol for the industry. Like you, I remember watching every note in The Song Remains the Same movie (in a smoky movie theater, at the midnight showing) and thinking, these guitar soloes are like a symphony in itself. And you are right, Dan. Page would never be allowed to let rip such solos these days. Crap, his solos are longer than most songs (not that I am against short songs — Elvis Costello did it magnificently).
I really loved your final email that you never sent and I kind of wished you did send it (don’t you? Why not send it? Were you still hoping to make your way back into the business?). You bluntly put the difficulty of the entire industry on the place where it belongs — in the upper management of the big companies. You know they are desperate when they start paying people to be “cool barometers” in the world. Cripes. Maybe they should just kick back with a six pack (I would have Sam Adams, but they would prob have wine coolers) and put on some of the crap they are putting out in the world and get numbed over like the rest of us. The radio sucks, doesn’t it? It’s like strip malls — every suburb you go to looks exactly the same. And every radio station in big markets seem to sound exactly the same. (Thank god for smaller stations in smaller markets). I am thinking of this as I hear yet another commercial for the Grammy Awards, which have to be one of the biggest crocks of crap to ever infect our ears. Sure, a few artists who are really musicians slip through now and then, but the Grammy is not even on my musical radar. I see it for what it is — another shilling of product by the corporate entities (notice, I didn’t use the word “people” there).
Anyway, I will keep an eye out for your byline in the various McSweeney family publications (sounds like a mob, doesn’t it) and I wish you best with whatever venture comes your way.
My top five list for why the current music scene completely sucks:
DRM (digital rights management)
Are you telling me it costs a company $18 to produce a little metallic circle of data? Please.
Producers who put together bands based on marketability and not musicability
No patience to allow a band to build a following — it’s “get a hit” or “hit the road” and not much in-between
Artists who don’t write their own songs
My top five reasons why good music will still survive:
Low cost of recording software and music publishing
Pirate radio stations
The need of kids everywhere to hate the expected and rage against the machine
Friends talking to each other (yep, it still is the most effective marketing)
Ability of musicians to collaborate on the Web
Thanks for reading my letter, Dan.
Sincerely,
Kevin
PS — the book group questions at the end were a nice touch.
So I send the email last night and Dan Kennedy (give him credit for replying at all) sent me back this reply via email:
Kevin — what a great note to get, I’m damn glad I put my email address in the back of my book. I
I also have to tip my hat to you for using the word “cripes” in your note; it made me feel like maybe we grew up in the same damn family.
At any rate, glad as all hell that you got something out of Rock On. Thanks for your time spent reading it and glad it was worth it.
Goodbye from a damn internet cafe thatch hut thing off the coast of Honduras, where I’m writing something new amidst a thick school of sunburned and leathery desperados next to bon fires and the whole thing feels like every Steely Dan song I’ve ever heard.
OK-
My response back to Dan:
Hi Dan
Thanks for the reply.
Instead of hearing Steely Dan in my head, for some reasons, I had the Eagles. That happens every time I hear or read the word Deperadoes. (not really my favorite song, either, but it gets stuck like velcro).
It’s nice to know that your writing is taking you to some different places other than NYC (on vacation? or on a book tour? either way, have fun) and I will be sure to pass along the praise for your book to friends.
Peace,
Kevin
Peace (in music and in writers who make themselves accessible to their readers),
Kevin
I’ve shared this comic before but the very inept space pioneer Brewster Rockit is running for President and this one just hit me in the right spot this morning:
(This is probably like some chain letter, as I borrowed it from my friend, Maria. I’m not much a Jeff Foxworthy fan, but this list had me smiling.)
HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE A TEACHER?
by Jeff Foxworthy
1. You can hear 25 voices behind you and know exactly which one belongs to the child out of line
2. You get a secret thrill out of laminating something.
3. You walk into a store and hear the words ‘It’s Ms/Mr. _________’and know you have been spotted.
4. You have 25 people that accidentally call you Mom/Dad at one time or another.
5. You can eat a multi-course meal in under twenty-five minutes.
6. You’ve trained yourself to go to the bathroom at two distinct times of the day: lunch and prep period
7. You start saving other people’s trash, because most likely, you can use that toilet paper tube or plastic butter tub for something in the classroom.
8. You believe the teachers’ lounge should be equipped with a margarita machine.
9. You want to slap the next person who says ‘Must be nice to work 7 to 3 and have summers off.
10. You believe chocolate is a food group.
11. You can tell if it’s a full moon without ever looking outside.
12 You believe that unspeakable evils will befall you if anyone says ‘Boy, the kids sure are mellow today.
13. You feel the urge to talk to strange children and correct their behavior when you are out in public.
14. You believe in aerial spraying of Ritalin.
15. You think caffeine should be available in intravenous form.
16. You spend more money on school stuff than you do on your own children.
17. You can’t pass the school supply aisle without getting at least five items!
18. You ask your friends if the left hand turn he just made was a good choice or a bad choice.
19. You find true beauty in a can full of perfectly sharpened pencils.
20. You are secretly addicted to hand sanitizer and finally,
21. You understand instantaneously why a child behaves a certain way after meeting his or her parents.
In 30 minutes this morning, my three kids barraged with me these questions (I actually wrote them down once I realized the question attack was on, although it was a coordinated venture, as far as I can tell):
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