Someone could straight up ask me, or do some old fashioned legwork, but no one does. Not that I'd be inclined to help.
Instead, a myriad mathematical formulas and equations roam the intersecting planes that exist behind my computer and yours, countless Rowling-like Death Eaters extracting information, relentlessly scratching, scratching.
This would all be over, I suppose, if I would just finish my facebook™® profile, which consists now of name, rank and partial serial number. As a result, facebook©™ is frequently left to wonder if I'm from a certain town, and like a lawyer with no more than circumstantial evidence and misanthropic hope for the human condition, points to others with whom I have made a tenuous connection with that same town.
But then, seemingly distracted, it shows me others from another town, and wonders if I'm from there instead. It wants me to give in.
I've written about my town. Just ask, algorithms. I'm not gonna tell you now, though.
Nor has it seemed any good to declare the books I read or music I listen to or TV I stare at. The profile questions may seem at first like ways for the ever growing network of facebook®™ users to connect with one another — hey, you love Terry Jacks too!? — but they are really one more clue surrendered, one more wedge with which sellers of things can prop my wallet.
It's Tom Sawyer whitewashing the fence and making you want to take his place. It's Michael Jordan making you think Hanes®™ removed the annoying tags from its cotton shirts for your comfort, when really it removed all the annoying tag-sewing jobs that used to chafe shareholders while they counted profits.
So, unwilling to type in my preferences or play the online quizzes — which Canadian province are you? — designed to ease my inhibitions about volunteering information, I watch the bots circle around me, scratching, ever scratching.
You probably get these too: You so much as half-click on a product, exhibit the the merest glancing interest on some brand, and an ad for that brand follows you everywhere on the Internet — atop each page you visit, over to one side of facebook™®, in a commercial before listening to a You Tube® cover of "Seasons in the Sun."
I am reasonably certain that in many cases I simply thought of these products, or dreamed about them, and in no way indicated through finger tap or eye movement, no physical motion in front of my computer of any kind, that I was interested. Yet, the ads trail me in sticky luminescence.
Lately too, my junk emails have become more personal. Really personal.
One's titled "Small Business Loans shawn" and the subject is "shawn Oops! Do you need help with small business loans?" "Small Business Loans shawn" is also part of the email address that sent me this wonderful offer. Maybe I'm supposed to be charmed by this "accidental" email. Oops!
Many fine business leaders are anxious that I respond to "Whos Who_shawn" because I have been accepted to the 2014 edition of Who's Who Among Executives & Professionals. Announcements arrive daily. Won't the fine business leaders be embarrassed when I appear at their next Tux & Tennies mixer and they discover my paucity of executive experience. Perhaps then they will resolve to choose more wisely.
Even the more personal pitches have gotten more personal.
Blanca pointedly advises in her email, "Never disappoint her again, Shawn …" Such come-hither heat, these ellipses.
The text of her message is:
SnçdĮQÇMZEÐ5Ȅ»SH 2çjMîCaȺA³ÙTûMuTÎ8¡E581RËèoSR⌋7 ∀℘vTª6ΞOe8y Èc2ҮBÀºOD½4ȖQËEЯ2ΩN 7Æ8GUM5І1∠rЯS³PĹæ9ESome time the soî blue eyes. Yeah well he saw her car keys.Most of the letters are printed in white on my message, secret and monochrome yet unintelligible in their revelation. Interspersed in this gobbledygook are larger colored letters — more symbols than Roman letters, almost Cyrillic, just recognizable enough — that spell: "SIZE MATTERS TO YOUR GIRL. CLICK HERE."
Ethan gave cassie looked back pocket matt.
Guess we both of sleep. l13 С Ƚ I Ϲ Ϗ Ȟ Ě Я Ȇ F·’
Eve and knew about as though.
Someone else even have diï erence.
Just the others to leave. Lott said folding his shoulder.
Julieta just gives it to me straight. Her subject: "Shawn I'm so sorry.. Sylvia Sidney loves 8" + organ.." I didn't know that about Sylvia Sidney. Of course, I didn't know about Sylvia. An actress by that name died in 1999 at age 89, I just discovered. She was in "Beetlejuice," but flashed the flapper look in her youth.
Ever tantalizing, the bots test the parameters: Maybe the guy's into married women? I get emails from such as "Mrs. Hyacinthia DiPaola," who reminds me "True masculinity is not complete without a big rod, Shawn."
Similarly, folks pitch me for online dating services in the specific niche of spouses who want to cheat.
Another, offering a pipeline to my Viagra®™ (or Vigaara, Viargaa, or several other variations) and Cialis™® supplies, explains, "When you are happy, the people around you are happy as well, Shawn .."
Which is universally true, I would think.
The stake of my manhood, so to speak, has gotten even more direct than that. An email from "Brees M-Patch shawn" with shawn in the email address and the subject "Improve your Sexual Performance Instantly. g" doesn't prevaricate with odd-looking letters. It clearly shows a photo of a woman pushing up her red push-up bra, and tells me exactly what happens when I use its product.
It left out "Sproing!"
Yet in the same day I'm relieved to find out, "shawn it's not too late to learn about sleep apnea management," from someone with my name again in its email address.
Someone named "Walk-inTub shawn" with my name in its email address (uncanny coincidence!) doesn't want me to miss the point of its message, so reiterates in its subject, "shawn Walk-in tubs here."
The bots are trying sooooo hard: A rookie geezer on the cusp of long-awaited adulation for his professional status, who deserves to perform sexually commensurate with his lofty status, but still can't lift his gams over the bathtub wall — which may be in this town, or in that other town over there — to snore in sudsy bliss.
They know me so well!
It's only a short matter of time, though, before they really will.
I'm Nova Scotia, by the way.
No comments:
Post a Comment