Clear and simple messages from the government

I am sometimes amazed at the way our government succeeds in communicating with us.

You see, I have a secret. I used to work for the government myself. And I recall how adamant the upper levels of our department were, that we give prompt and efficient replies and honest and forthcoming information on all our programs.

Of course, we could not tell anyone of impending changes to the program or any decisions, as such announcements were the prerogative of the Minister. Nor, sometimes, did we know what those were even after someone in the Minister’s office leaked them to the press. And I am afraid we were not allowed to admit mistakes unless such admissions were approved up and down the line through several levels.

As a middle manager, I was constantly reassured that this was meant to empower me. Empowering meant that I would be the one who would speak for my program but only after the briefing notes had been prepared, the communications people had given their advice and made suggested changes to the official line and everyone up to the Deputy Minister had signed off, but, I was told I had total control over what I said to the press, within these bounds.

I recall very well how I was prepared for a 15 minute interview with a community newspaper by first being sent on a two day course, then having my notes reviewed and approved by all concerned over a period of a few short days. There was grave concern that I not fail to deliver the exact message, exactly. It is no wonder public servants put in hours and hours of unpaid overtime as this communications business certainly took a lot of concentrated and extended effort. Apparently I needed all the help I could get as you can tell from my awkwardness with the language.

Sometimes, the attention to detail and procedure has the unfortunate effect of confusing people. I have a friend who ended up in an endless loop bouncing between a supervisor who said she would be mailed her final cheque and a pay clerk who encouraged her to come pick it up. Every time she came in, she was told the cheque was in process and to contact the clerk.

In fact, she was not admitted to the building as she no longer worked there. Then she would go home and contact the clerk who told her to come and pick it up. It took only a few iterations of this routine before she realized she was on a merry go round. On Friday after a brief delay of three weeks, she received her cheque. Her eviction notice still hot off the press, she was able to fix things with her landlord.

And how about that swine flu! I had so much information I was overloaded. The chances of getting the flu was in one in 3,000 but the chances of dying if I got it were one in 3 million; on the other hand the chances of my dying if I took the flu shot was one in 3 million too. I am glad the decision was up to me because it gave me a chance to use my old electronic calculator. Of course only those in the designated groups were to be vaccinated – except if you just showed up or were a member of the Calgary Flames. I am glad that was clear!

So take pity on the poor public servants who try to communicate and be helpful, while not telling you anything that could possibly affect reality. They, like us, are just waiting for the Messiah to come and tell us all what’s what.

How I was inspired by tsedreyte kishkes

Anyone who has been a teenager probably has had some run in with the curse of stomach cramps.  I got nervous every time I went out with a girl.

 

One time, when I was in grade 12, I was invited to a bar mitzvah dance by a very kind Jewish girl.  We were standing at the sweet table eating fruit and cakes when the cramps hit me.

 

“Tell me about yourself,” she said.

 

I turned to answer as I was about to take a bite out of a cup cake when my stomach  rebelled.  My intestines started to twist into knots and I had a terrible urge to let that gas go.

 

I closed all the sphincters in my body tightly.  Unconsciously, I pursed my mouth in a small “o” as if I was about to speak French.

 

She started to have a concerned look on her face.

 

“Are you all right?” she asked.  “You look pale.”

 

“Fine, I’m fine,” I said.  “Just getting a little warm.”  I wiped the sweat from by brow.

 

“Listen, they’re playing a Hora.  Do you want to dance?”

 

The thought of jumping about and shaking up my kishkes did not appeal to me, so I excused myself “for a sec.”

 

When she looked away, I broke into a trot and then dashed to the bathroom, jumped into stall, closed the door and let out all the gas that had been building in my gut in one giant explosion.  My sigh of relief was very loud.

 

As I stepped out of the cubicle, you probably already know, I saw three of the guys who had been sitting at our table looking at me as if I had just descended from Mars.   Then they burst into howls of laughter.   I was mortified. 
 

I returned to the table where I found my date.  She looked up at me smiling. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the guys coming back to the table with their dates.

 

I grabbed my date’s hand and said, “Hey, let’s dance some more.   I pulled her out onto the dance floor.  “But the music hasn’t started yet,” she objected.   “We’ll be ready for it when comes on then,” I replied
 

She came and said, “I haven’t seen you this enthusiastic all night.”  Then, as the music came on, “Let’s rock and roll.” 
 

I managed to keep her from sitting down all evening.  When it was time to go, I went with her and her parents to their car.   I was worried about having to sit in the car with them while my stomach still rumbled.  “You know, on crisp clear evenings like this, sometimes, I just love to run,” I said, dropped her hand and ran the 100 yards to the car where I turned and faced her and her parents and let out as much gas as quietly and quickly as I could.

 

I had a big smile on my face when they reached me.
 

She smiled at me in return.  “You’re such a funny guy,” she said.  “You’re unpredictable, sometimes quiet, sometimes a dancing fiend, sometimes a laid back talker and sometimes so full of boundless energy.”
 

She reached up and kissed me and squeezed my hand.  

 

I think she was admiring my physical energy after dancing all evening.   I owed the whole success of this date to her kindness and to the inspiration I received from what are known in Yiddish as “Tsedreyte kishkes”.

Noah’s hard things to understand

Noah, our 4 year old grandson was here visiting.  He got up every morning early – about 6 a.m.  He was very excited.   But he only woke his sister on one day.   That night his father was very tired.

He went to synagogue with us and wanted to wear a skirt and tights like his sister.  His mother explained that it would not be a good thing to wear.

“Why not?”  Noah asked.  Even though his mother explained several times, he still said, “Why can’t I wear what I want to wear?”

Finally, he made a deal with his mother.  He would wear his pants and shirt to synagogue but could change when he came home.

That is what he did.  But after wearing his skirt and tights for a few hours, he said, “OK, mom, I wore the skirt enough,” and changed into his pants.

Last month, an older relative of his bubie died.  She was sad and Noah wanted to know why.  “Because bubie’s cousin got sick and died,” his mother said.

This seemed to make sense for a while.   Then when his parents visited the Shiva house, he came along.

“Where is the guy who threw up?” he asked.

“He didn’t throw up.  He got sick and died.”

“So where is he?  Maybe I can make him laugh.”

“He died.  He had to go away.  That is why everybody at the Shiva house is sad.   Because they miss him.”

“Where did he go?  When is he coming back?”

“He is in a cemetery.”

“Oh.”

That seemed to be OK for awhile.

Then, a week later, when they were driving by a cemetery, he asked if that was where the man who threw up was.

“He didn’t throw up, he died.  And yes, he’s in a place like this one.”

“Can we go and see him?”

“Well, he is buried.  He’s underground.”

“Underground?  How does he walk around?”

Pause.  “He does not walk around.  He’s not really there, just his body.”

Now Noah started to get exasperated.  “His body is there?  He doesn’t walk around?   Well is he a human or a robot or what!”

This time, there was no answer and Noah had to think about this himself.  It was hard to understand.

Noah has had a friend in his daycare for a few years.  She is a few years older than him and her name is Criscilla.

When Noah turned three, at his birthday, Criscilla who was already over 4, exclaimed, “You mean I’ve spent all this time hanging around with a two year old!”

Noah plays with Criscilla who always tells him what to do.

The other day, when his mother picked him up and asked him how he was, he looked worried.  “I think I did something wrong,” he said.

His mother asked what it was and Noah said, looking at Criscilla, “I don’t know.”

Criscilla put her hands on her hips and said to Noah’s mother, “he never listens!”

“Oh yeah,” said Noah, relieved, “I never listen.”

But when he came to our house, Noah told us he really liked his junior kindergarten class and showed us how he could stand as tall and skinny as a pencil when it was time to be still.

So he is listening to somebody, just not Criscilla.

Will the real bureaucrat please stand up?

Robert, Nichole, Linda, Judy and I, graduate students, were hired in 1971 to study youth culture.   None of us took this seriously and we were sure of only one thing: we would never be bureaucrats.  As rebels from the sixties we knew that was not the way to change the world.  On the other hand, we were thankful for the money and for the chance to play a joke on “the system”. 

 Our office was located in the former buildings of Borden’s Dairy.  Everything still seemed to smell of sour milk although it was large with five desks and a picture window. 

 “First,” said Robert, “I get the desk by the window because I am going to stay and here and write my essay comparing today’s youth culture with the Age of Reason.  The rest of you should go out in the field and research something or other.”   He promptly plopped his books on the desk he claimed.

 Nichole pulled her dark sunglasses down to the tip of her nose.  She usually wore long black hair over long black sweaters over short black skirts with fish net stockings full of rips, a Goth before her time.  She had pale white skin and red lips like Morticia Adams. 

 As we were leaving to go to a café where we would decide what to do, Robert pulled a mickey out of his briefcase.

At the café the rest of us talked about what we wanted to do.

 Linda said, “we should interview young women to find out what their values are, how aware they are of the power struggle against the male establishment.”

 “How are we going to share the tape recorder?  We only have one,” said Nichole.  She had a lazy adenoidal way of talking.  When she laughed, she guffawed and snorted like a man.   Her long slender fingers closed about my arm as I reached for the recorder.  Her touch was like that of an octopus, cold, soft, clammy, clinging and strangely strong.  

 Judy suggested, “We could use it on different days of the week and maybe some of us could work in teams.  We could collect a common information base and each one of us would do our own studies on it…”

 I enthused, “I love it.  We can go to the beach, the park and the mall together.”

 In the end, Nichole was going to look at the structure of sexual fantasies reported to her by the people we interviewed.  Linda was going to do her own study on young women and Kathy and I would collect information on whether “youth” used vocabulary that was unique to them. 

 And so, that summer, after the pleasant revolutionary activity of collecting a pay cheque and talking to people in and around leisure spots in Toronto, my colleagues and I delivered the reports that we had promised while Robert turned his handwritten analysis of the Age of Reason.  We thought all of this would be treated as a lark undermining the whole project.  Instead all the reports were treated seriously.  It proved impossible to subvert the system, which had no sense of irony.

 What is more ironic is that each of us eventually became either provincial or federal public servants.  Instead of undermining the system, we were in it.  I met Nicole wearing a power suit in Ottawa in the eighties.  Roger became a middle manager who tippled.  Judy worked in a Crown Agency and even Linda joined the Women’s Directorate.

 So remember: real bureaucrats are the opposite of what you think they are.  We have met the enemy and they are us.

Our nanny life

Do you realize how lucky I am?  There are so many people, companies and things in the world that are worried about my welfare that I get a warm fuzzy feeling.  I admit, it sometimes feels a little suffocating but in the end what can you do when so many around you want to help?

 I receive oodles and oodles of junk mail, offering to strengthen my manhood, increase my life span, make me a rich man, and give me a firmer bust line.  So many people are moved by the milk of human kindness to take care of little old me.  And all for one low price!

 I receive such generous offers of opportunities to win millions or a free vacation to the Bahamas that I feel truly loved.  These people really want the best for me.  I just have to make this one purchase and the whole world will be at my feet.

 My doctor, the dentist and my car dealership also take care of me.  They phone me to remind me when it is time for the next check up or oil change and lube job – for me or my car.  But their care does not stop there.  If I make an appointment with any of the medical professionals, their office phones the day before to check that I remembered my appointment.  This is what my mother used to do when I was little! 

 But it is not just people and companies who are so concerned to help me out.  No, all the technology around me wants to pitch in.  You have heard of the nanny state.  Nowadays we live the nanny life.

 When I sleep in, my alarm refuses to shut off permanently.  It comes on again in ten minutes to remind me that I have to be at the office on time.  The percolator at the office beeps when it is finished as does the microwave.  My cellphone beeps when there is voicemail I haven’t listened to yet.  The computer beeps when new e-mail arrives which can be reassuring or annoying when 23 messages arrive in two minutes.

 My car beeps when you use the remote to lock it.  You get out of the car and remotely close the car and when it gives that short beep, you get the sense of satisfaction that you used to get when, after your infants ate a meal, you lay them over your shoulder and burped them.  And what if they didn’t burp?  Why something felt unfinished.

 So recently when my car stopped beeping, I felt anxious.   Was it something I did?  The mechanic looked at me strangely when I told him the car wouldn’t burp for me when I used the remote so I laughed and said, “Hah, hah, hah!  I meant beep.”  Still he couldn’t seem to see the gravity of a non-beep as the remote was actually locking the car doors.

 I am really comforted as I walk down the street and watch all the security cameras watching.   Now I know nothing bad can happen.  So when you hear the next beep, be of good cheer.  Big Nanny is watching and you can almost hear her say, “I care.  I really care.”

Inviting disaster

 

Have your ever tempted fate by standing at the edge of a balcony on the 20^th floor of an apartment building and leaning out over the railing?  Really you were resting your midriff on the railing, your feet were still firmly planted on the cement and there was no chance in hell anything would happen except if someone were to push you or the railing gave way or the balcony cement started to dissolve under your feet – all very unlikely as the only one in the room behind you was someone who loves you.

 Still there is that little shiver and the rush of a breeze blowing across your face as if your were actually flying.

 However, sometimes, you know you are carrying things too far.  Like the teenager who does a handstand on the very railing you leaned on.  This is called inviting disaster.

I recently invited disaster while riding first class from Ottawa to Toronto on the train.  I did not know it but the purchase of a first class ticket meant that I was served a meal with a choice of appetizer, one of three main courses and a dessert as well as, any drink my heart desired.

 I was sitting next to a rather frail woman (75+) with white hair, wearing a white blouse in crimped cotton, white Capri pants and white flat shoes.  She had a golden bracelet and several rings.  She wore thick reading glasses, was completely hard of hearing and carried a cane.

 I smiled at her and she asked me if I was going to Toronto.  “I’m going to Union Station,” I said.  “Unionville?” she asked.  “NO, UNION STATION.”  “I’m going to Guildwood,” she said and smiled again.   “Good,” I said.  “NO, GUILDWOOD.” She answered.  I just smiled and nodded and started reading my book in earnest.

 The attendant came by and asked what we would like to drink.  The lady next to me asked for ginger ale.  I paused and looked at the cart and something caught my eye.

“What’s that?”  I asked.  “That’s Clammato.”  Without even a second’s thought, I said, “I’ll have one of those.”   Let’s see: Clammato and white Capri pants.   You probably know the rest of the story.  

 At some point, after drinking about ¾ of my Clammato, I had to reach with my right arm across my tray and down my left side to retrieve another book I was reading when the inevitable happened and glass tipped over spilling its contents onto my neighbour’s tray.   Like a pool of blood in a horror movie it spread slowly across her tray and I could see would eventually spill over right onto her lap.  I used my napkin frantically.  The attendant came and ran off to get towels.  The red pool spread inexorably.  I panicked, not knowing what to do.

 I turned to my neighbour and yelled.  “SPREAD YOUR LEGS!”  The woman behind me stood up in indignation and spilled her own drink.  The elderly lady smiled and said, “yes it is very red.”  A drop fell on the cuff of her pants.  Just then the attendant came and we threw the towels on the little red lake and sopped it up before anything else happened.  The person behind me sat down a little abashed as she had seen what the problem was.

 The attendant then went off and came back with some seltzer water to rub on the pants.

 “I’m so sorry, “I said to the lady.  “Oh that’s okay, “she answered, hearing me very well this time. “You didn’t do it on purpose.  Besides, you gave me a good chuckle.”

 “Maybe not on purpose,” I thought, “but I was sure inviting disaster.”

Meeting Living stereotypes in Europe

We all know that stereotypes are not true.  Still, every once in a while you meet someone who seems to conform to the stereotypes we all have in our heads.  

 For instance, in France, I met many kind and attentive servers and yet the memory that sticks out is the one that fit the stereotype of the rigid French waiter.  In one restaurant, the menu offered for a price of 17 Euros, a choice between an entrée and a main course on the one hand, or a main course and a dessert on the other.  When the waiter came, I said I was not that hungry so could I please have an entrée and a dessert instead.

 “Monsieur, monsieur, I don’t know what to day,” he answered.

 “Is the entrée too small?”

 “Oh no, it’s just unheard of.”

 “As I will pay you the same amount, what difference does it make?”

 “Monsieur, I don’t know what to say.  It’s not done.  I have never done this before.   I am speechless.”

 I myself was sitting there with my mouth open in astonishment.  As my face must have been wreathed with threatening thunder clouds at this moment, he looked back at me with eyes wide open as well.  Suddenly a light seemed to come on and he offered, “Well, perhaps I could ask the chef to make the entrée a little bigger…”

 “Is that possible?”

 “Oh monsieur, this is beyond my experience.  I do not know.  It defies all norms.  But I will check with the chef.”

 And so I got my entrée and dessert, which was quite delicious. 

 A story circulating among French Canadians is that a waiter in Paris told a Radio Canada reporter that he had to have his coffee and dessert in the correct order, regardless of how it was done in the colonies!

 On the Air France Flight to Italy I was asked if I wanted something sweet or salty.  My thought was, “that depends:  sweet or salty what?”   I realized that in order to answer the question I would have to know what it was they usually served.   I English, I am sure the choice would be expressed as, “do you want crackers or cookies?” 

In Italy, the rigidity showed up when I wanted to buy train tickets.  The TrenItalia web site would not give me the schedule of trains unless I first entered the time and number of the train I wanted.    But as I wanted to check the schedule in order to get that very information, it turned out there was no way for me to use the web site! 

 When I went to the wicket at the train station and asked for the schedule for going to Geneva, I was told, “Signore, for that information you have to ask at the information office.  I just sell tickets.”

 Fortunately she made an exception for a poor benighted foreigner!  But at least now I understood the design of the web site!  This way, two people could have jobs instead of one.

 So the next time you meet something stereotypical, have a good laugh at it and at yourself.  After all, makes you wonder what we take for granted when we give others choices.  Will that be “Smoking or non-smoking?”

Meeting a bureaucrat in 1971

When a group of us were hired by the government to work on “Youth Language”, we had no clear idea of what to do.

In the middle of the summer, we were notified that our area supervisor for the Youth Culture Project was to visit us to check up on our progress.  Ooops!

Carly and I were chosen by our colleagues to bite the bullet and meet him at the Bagel Restaurant on College Street at lunch.

We took a seat facing the door.   

A huge wild haired man approached and sat down.  He had a large bushy beard and wore what looked like a yellow undershirt, khaki shorts and lumberjack boots. 

As we sat in complete silence he straddled the chair opposite us and said, “Hi, glad to see you could make it.  Did you order yet?  No?  Well let me get you some stuff.  We’ll put it on my expense account.” 

He called over the waitress and ordered three bagels and three vegetable borsht.  “They make the best,” he explained and licked his lips, or seemed to as there was some movement under his moustache.  

“What a drag,” he said, “I have to haul my ass all over Southern Ontario just to check on these damned projects.  Know where I can get some weed?  Hey did you guys hear what happened out west? 

“Uh, no.” 

“What a pisser.  Some of the participant observers got busted for smoking up; some of their group were undercover pigs who grabbed them after they had a few tokes and it’s this big scandal.  Oh and Georgia Strait did a huge exposé on the whole youth culture project.  What a frickin’ scream.   They hyped it as a government plot, no shite.  The government man they quoted sounded like an idiot, No surprise there.  The guy is lunched out.” 

The waitress arrived with our food.  We watched in fascination as our supervisor slurped up his borsht and murdered the bagel in a few bites.   It was hard to tell how he got the food through the beard.  There was no perceptible opening in the hair.  Maybe he just strained it through, using the hair like a sieve?

He burped, leaned back in the chair and put his arms behind his head, exposing two of the hairiest arm pits I have ever seen. 

“Well, what have you guys been up to?  What’s the story?”

Neither Carly nor I could speak.  We were mesmerized I think by the hair.  Hair here, hair there, hair everywhere. 

He smiled, or at least his beard and mustache seemed to shift and he said, “Look, confidentially, I don’t really give a rat’s ass what you’re doing.   Are you ripping off the Man, that’s all I want to know?  Make it up.  Viva la revoluciòn.  Say are you guys busy today or can we go somewhere and get a joint?”  

I jumped up and grabbed Carly by the arm.  “No, no, we’ve got to go… We said we were going to meet the rest of the team and make plans after this meeting…. and…” 

“Yeah sure, blow me off.  Well I can’t hang in this joint too long anyway.  Won’t stay for a coffee?”  

“No thanks,” we both said at the same time and hustled out of the restaurant. 

Carly looked at the sidewalk, “I had to get out of there.  What do we do?”

I paused.   What could we do for a bureaucrat like that?  And then it came to me.  “I think we just figured out what youth language sounds like.”

We both smiled and laughed.  This would be our report.

The comfort of pet peeves

You are very lucky as I wish to tell you today about my pet peeves.  You know what those are: petty annoyances which you nurture and keep close by so that when you are feeling in a foul mood you can take them out and stroke them and dissipate the foulness of the mood by realizing how really annoyed you could actually be.

 

Driving in Ottawa has its joys.  We are after all not far from the Gatineau Hills and the beauties of nature in the raw.   Among our fellow citizens, we can also find a bit of wild behaviour as we try to follow them down the road.   Have you ever noticed how many drivers will stop at the head of a long line in the left lane at a red light and then when the light turns green, decide to flick on their left turn signals?  I tend to believe this is because we have such highly educated people here that they are constantly thinking of abstractions and forget, occasionally, where they are, or that there are people in the world with them.  Nothing malicious mind you, just being engrossed by the anxieties of national politics and the need to get the kids from daycare on time.

 

This constant preoccupation with the affairs of state has other consequences as everyone is on their cell phone while driving down the road with one hand.  Sometimes such a driver has had their left turn signal on in front of me and then veered into the right lane.  It seems that the high finances and important policies have taken their attention off which direction they actually intended to go in.  This is the case even for teenagers who have occasionally done the same thing.  They do not have enough hands to drive, listen to the cell phone and adjust the radio or ipod simultaneously.  It is fortunate that most cars will continue to go in a straight line, more or less, even if you are using both your hands for something else and besides, you can always try using your knees to steer.

 

And government is an important part of our lives in Ottawa.  We live either in it or beside it for years.  Friends and relatives are often involved in it.  Now public service is an important role and one that is not easy to carry out.  But for those of us who occasionally fall into its machinery, it is like an experience in the theatre of the absurd.  You know, the kind of thing where you are made to feel helpless and in the wrong, no matter what.

 

A few months ago I heard from a government department about a grant proposal I had prepared 8 months before.  Apparently after careful consideration and review (and sitting on various people’s desks for six months) my project had been approved.  We would be getting the final agreement in two weeks. 

 

Two months later and I still had not received the final agreement.  Where was the agreement?  No one knew.  When would we have a final decision?  No one knew.   Check with the Minister’s office.  We checked and no one in the Minister’s office could give an answer.  Someone would say they could not say for sure but they hoped the answer would come in two weeks and every two weeks there would be no answer.  This felt like water boarding.  They have worn me down.  I am ready to confess to anything just to get the damn answer.  My name is Abu Zubaydah and I am guilty.  Will this help?

 

Apparently not.  On my voice mail, I just got a message: “Good news.  Your agreement will be ready in two weeks!”

Instead of holding my breath, however, I have decided to pull all my pet peeves around me, stroke their fur, receive comfort and, if possible, share it with you.

Where is the good spam list?

I must be a very important person.  People want my attention all the time.  I have a blog and every night there are over 150 messages trying to sell me something or encouraging me to just click on a really important web site.   It is strange but according to these messages, I am very needy.  I can find true love, any drug I want, purses, casinos, enhanced personal qualities – and all for a very low price.

 I know when I look in the mirror in the morning, I sometimes feel the need for self-improvement but none of these amazing offers I receive on my web site gives me the opportunity to access more brains or high culture.  “Click here for some fantastic views of paintings by Renoir!”  Now that’s a message I could appreciate.  All I get is access to views of Britney Spears in a thong – or worse.

 Sometimes these mass marketers pretend to be visitors to the site leaving comments like “Great site with interesting content.  Come visit me at Mistressofdarkness.com.” 

First this personal comment comes in the form of a mass mailing.  So apparently the mistress of darkness is saying exactly the same nice thing on every web site in the world.  And am I supposed to be so impressed that someone finally commented on something I wrote that I completely ignore the return address?  For sure.

 And why when I get phone calls from charities or free offers to go on a Caribbean cruise, why is it always when I am eating supper?  Are there cameras watching me so that all the telemarketers know when I am home?  My main tactic has started to be denial.  No there is no one by that name here.  As I get so many calls asking for Robin Fried (as in fried chicken) man, I feel am not lying.

 And it turns out my cell phone number is only one digit different from the number of a car parts service in Ottawa.  The next time some one calls to ask me if I have a transmission for a 1998 Mercedes, instead of referring them to the right place, I will tell them to come right in and ask for Bill.

 So I am already getting unsolicited calls on my  home phone and cell phone.  Now the cell phone companies are going to charge me for receiving unwanted text messages!  It’s as if television broadcasters started to charge you for receiving commercials.  No thanks!  And I have hesitated to put myself on the No Call List.  I have the feeling that I will end up on the No Fly List instead.

 Lately, I have been getting spam that makes no exact sense.  It looks like it is text lifted from many sources, pasted together and dotted with hyperlinks to things like “seestallonenaked.com”.  Sometimes, it has a strange hypnotic quality where you can almost figure out what it means – like a difficult to decode message from another universe.  Here is a small sample where all I have done is insert punctuation and put it into lines.  See what I mean?  It could just about be a poem!

 We know the operation was successful.

The deformity dissolved by letting it disappear.

Whoever takes the (she winced) cork from the bottle,

Take two tablespoonsful three or four times… are you miss driver?

Yes. What’s that about carlotta?

They consent to become merely sectional.

 

Because he’s as dead as a doornail.

It was someone might have done it.

Probably one of them did.

But why a woman and a very dear friend?

 

You know very well.

 This is spam I can live with!  I find it highly entertaining.  Now if I could only figure out how to filter the good spam from the bad spam….Is there a no bad spam list?