Mass Email for New Years 2001

[When it was still an art form]

Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 07:36:33 -0500 (EST)
From: ##### <####@qlink.queensu.ca>
To: ##########
Subject: Mass email for New Year's

Dear People On This List,

I swore I'd never do it again, but newly ingrained habits die hard, harder than old habits die hard. Yes, this habit of making everyone feel depersonalized via the odious mass email is dying hard with a vengeance.

I blame the cold weather. You might say it has frozen all the human feeling that is left in me. Some of you might also say that I was a soulless monster anyway, what with already having sent three other de-individualizing mass emails out in the past eight months anyways (I reluctantly recall a May 6 mass email and September 8 mass email, and a short, some would say nasty and brutish Dec 13 mass email). If you have already dialed up your OPP bureau, asking for my head on a plate, and demanding that my email-writing fingers be cut off and preserved in a jar as a symbolic act of retribution, then I understand.

Yes, I understand if you would do that. Just know that I am wilier than any of you.

Yes, I am both foxy and wily, and if you think I will lie down and let you cut my fingers off without some evil payback of my own somewhere down the line, then think again, peasants! I will reveal nothing more. Revenge is a dish best served cold. With a side order of humiliation. Go ahead, enjoy my severed fingers preserved in a jar! I still have my very capable and evil reptile brain to plot and hatch future machinations (indeed, the brain is the root of all email, 'mass'ive and otherwise, and even a stumpy-fisted evil mastermind can have tricks up his sleeve, though there be no mittens on his on hands). Maybe you should be thinking long term with your acts of retributive justice, instead of scheming these near-sighted and downright petty digit-severing childish acts of vengeance. You ought to think these things out before you start brandishing a saw willy-nilly and demand my fingers in a jar. I just admitted (my facade of wiliness breached in a moment of openness andtruthfulness, probably sparked subconsciously by the one remainingcompassionate sector of my brain, the one part not yet wholly consumed by reptilian evil, the one part of me fighting to break free from the rest and proclaim itself human, and good), that my brain is reptile. If my brain is evil and reptile, why wouldn't my fingers be reptile as well?

Like the wily salamander who's had its tail cut off in a life-or-death 'imbroglio', why couldn't I simply regrow my fingers in time and recommence writing mass emails, continuing the evil all the more, adding to it like a small child adds Lego bricks to a castle, until the castle (and, in my case, the evil) reaches the heavens and thereupon only God Himself can stop me! Oh, the wickedness of it all!

If the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything (and they rarely teach me much--indeed, the sub zero extremities of the season usually slow down the blood flow in my brain to a Saharan trickle, resulting in an evil mastermind who, though wily, is at his most relatively dull-witted in winter-time, hence the possibility of having his fingers cut off and preserved in a jar becomes a veritable concern, whereas in other climates an evil mastermind of comparable scale would never have fear of getting part of him amputated, because the warmer weather would allow blood flow in the brain to be at maximum, and such finger-chopping conspiracies would be nipped in the bud, perhaps by an evilly-masterminded pre-emptive counter-offensive, plotted and hatched by a smoothly functioning reptile evil brain. For example, before you had the opportunity of dialing up your local police bureau and calling for my head on a plate and my fingers separated from my hands and displayed, label and all, in this now-clichéd finger jar, a warm-weather, brain-well-lubed evil genius would have done something evil to prevent you from accomplishing your goal of retributive mass-email penance, before you even picked up the phone. Say, for example, that I fire-bombed your house. Good luck amputating my fingers then! I would think that rescuing your cat and your loved ones from the charred inferno would be higher up on your 'to do' list than making examples out of workaday evil masterminds! But I am completely abusing this parenthesis. Remember, I was trying to make a point before all this talk of how a warm weather evil mastermind would fend off a finger-chomping conspiracy much better than I would be able to, in my frigid 'lukewarm if I'm lucky, blood flow at a trickle' state...here goes what's on the other side of this bracket. Props to my friend ####...'if the harsh Canadian winters have taught me anything..') it's how to die hard with a vengeance.

Wow, I have now been writing this email for an hour and a half. That's how much this topic concerns me.

To sum up my introduction to this email: All of you can kiss my ass!

ON TO THE REST OF THE EMAIL:

I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everybody on this list, and Happy New Year to everyone else too. I hope you still love me. Forgive my hair-trigger tangents. Let this be my belated XMAS
present to you. I know mass emails aren't a unique gift, but at least you don't have to fight off crowds in the GAP to exchange it. Small consolation...

Lata

####

11 Tantalizing Headlines (for future posts)

1. 1 Year Plan for World Domination (including mid-plan sabbatical because it's really easy)
2. I'm Actually Not As Crazy As I Was Five Minutes Ago (and other discouraging trends)
   
3. Words I Will Now Refuse to Read
4. What Mild Rejection Has Taught Me (aka 1 year plan to settle for a boring desk job)
5. If Only I Could Hear at Canine Frequencies ...
6. Beyonce Is My Cousin?? Eww, That's Travolting!
7. I Never Wash My Hands (But I Do Wash My Fists... With The Blood of Aliens!)
8. How I Greened My Nightmares
9. Facebook, The Movie? Meet Cupcake Man, The Smiling!
10. Ear Wax: Why Those Who Have It Just Don't Care, And Those Who Don't Are Jealous
11. Please...Talk To Me When I'm Listening

This blog

is a detailed survey of invisible cracks.

To find invisible cracks, you have to listen.

You listen for echoes.

To make an echo, you have to speak.

Speak what?

Anything.

As long as it's out loud.

But, if there is too much noise, you don't hear anything.