IPW

Parsing the Spam

Okay kids, I hope you've all done your assigned reading. Here are my thoughts (in parenthesis):

Hi there lovely,

(Ah shucks)

This kind of opportunity comes onesb in a clife.

(You're probably right, wait what? What's a clife? Sounds sharp.)

I don't want to bmiss it. Do you?

(Believe bme, bme bneither, bits bjust bthat bi bhave bthis bheadcold.)

I am coming to byoura place in few days
and I thcough may be we can meet each other.

(Coming to BMYA place??)

If you don't mind I can send you my picture.

(Sorry I do mind. Perfect strangers coming to bmya place is fine of course, personal pictures absolutely not.)

I am a girl.

(Um...really?)

You can correspond with me using my email

-Petra

Despite my request, this young person did send me "Her" picture, which I think explains some things. I am oddly allured. "She" has the smoldering beauty of a mustachioed Scarlet Johanson. I'm not sure if it's the nature of the portrait but I'm not sure if I don't see a beard on young Petra. By the way, this drawing being reminiscent of some of the others we've shown here, I did ask "Her" from whom she received this likeness. I haven't gotten a response.

Obsessed With Spam

I've just received some spam that we should all look at and appreciate. I don't have time to parse it right now, but I'd like us all to read it, like a book club, then we can discuss later.

Here it is, from "Petra"

Hi there lovely,
This kind of opportunity comes onesb in a clife. I don't want
to bmiss it. Do you? I am coming to byoura place in few days
and I thcough may be we can meet each other. If you don't mind
I can send you my picture. I am a girl.
You can correspond with me using my email...

Delinquent

People, I apologize. I know that the four of you who regularly come here looking for a quick pick-me up of folksy black humor, outlandish exaggerations, misogynistic feminism, thinly veiled anti-white racist rants and childishly conceived political theory have been let down lately. I know this, and yet I have been grossly remiss for the past few weeks. In my defense I am extremely lazy and there have been couches to park my behind on.

No, it has been busy, which is good as I like to say, but I've hardly had time to catch you up on what I consider a particularly fascinating subject: me. Let's take it to the lightening round:

1. You'll remember (will you?) that my Mom visited. She then went off to Europe where she had an excellent time.

2. My little niece continues her journey to adulthood, via infancy and adolescence, in high style. She gains weight quickly now, thanks to the devoted attention of her parents. I still haven't seen her in person meaning that she will develop un-sullied by the presence of her bumbling-if-well-meaning Uncle for another few months. She presently has a cold.

3. Our neighborhood burned down, pictures here:

Greenpoint, the Polish neighborhood just north of us, lost seven historic warehouse buildings in this massive fire, the biggest since 9-11 in NY. The owner of the buildings had just been contacted by a preservationist group who was willing to sue to preserve the buildings from demolition in the coming months. They were pushing for renovation. Strangely and completely coincidentally, they caught fire several days later, simultaneously ending the bid for preservation and doing the demolition work necessary to make way for 40 story apartment buildings. Wow! Things REALLY worked out for the owner! Seems like a really lucky guy. It turns out this is second time in ten years he's gotten so lucky, to the detriment of another historically important section of town. Rumor has it that the same guy owns the historic Domino Sugar factory next to us, so I'm hoping he doesn't get lucky for a third time anytime soon. The fire by the way smelled suspiciously like kielbasa which might account for the extreme temperatures at which it burned. No one has ever yet mentioned kielbasa and arson in the same sentence and I'm willing to bet no one will again.

4. We visited my Dad in London where he is staying for three months while teaching a class. We stayed in his spare room, well, he was kind enough to stay in his spare room while we stayed in the bigger main room. We had a great time wandering around the city for five days, which seemed more interesting than ever to me, going to pubs and museums and taking photographs of interesting new buildings (no longer an oxymoron thanks mainly to the new style of building with glass and steel). I think maybe the UK doesn't have the best beer, they might be close, but they certainly have the best drinking establishments in the world. As soon as they ban smoking they will get just that much better. Sorry smokers, but you have to admit you are stinky.

Magda and I spent some time lugging around her 4x5 camera to shoot architecture and much of that time was spent getting yelled at by security men who objected to setting up tripods. You see, tripods are structures and there are strict laws against building structures on through-ways and.... Anyway, a bunch of hoobledy-gibber since while we were getting yelled at (and while we were looking innocent and doe-eyed) a bunch of skatepunks would roll by and do an ollie off some poor old geezer's forehead. Doing ollies off foreheads is okay but setting up tripods is not. Right.

That's all we have time for. Next time, if I am still enraged, I will go on my rant about how Americans should boycott Mexico (and not for the usual reasons).

Until then, I leave you with this portrait of a lady:

A portrait of Ailie L. Silbert, from whom I received an email a few days ago. I was enchanted by her name and requested picture. She responded some hours later with this charcoal sketch with a curiously similar history to that of Mr. Maxim's. She was leaving the Chapel of St. Lucious in Bern, Germany when she was accosted by a gypsy boy of unknown nationality (Portuguese?). He had a box of charcoal made from the stubby burnt ends of wooden toy soldiers and she paid him three shillings to depict her likeness with them. He drew on the back of a manuscript for a play she had been working on called "Color Me Furious". The play has never been published, perhaps because she was so enamored with the little boy's sketch she couldn't bear to part with her only copy.