An open letter to... uhhhhhh--

(No Subject)‏

From: CMJorgensen@health-partners.org
Sent: Tue 4/17/12 6:48 AM
To:

We are loan company. Loan Application at 3% (serious inquiries only). if interested, please contact us at: joshalbert1@sbcglobal.net

Regards,
Carol Jorgensen.
{PUBLICITY SECRETARY}




CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: This message, including any attachments, is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. Any unauthorized review, use, disclosure or distribution is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply e-mail and destroy all copies of the original message.

Dear... Carol...? ...Josh...?

Regular readers of this blog are aware I sometimes raid my spam mail folder for writing material; some of them have even informed me here and elsewhere that they look forward to these letters. Usually, I try to go for some kind of fantastic or fictional response: replies to spam mail from supervillains, time travelers, deranged deceased Victorians, etc.

Your spam mail, simple as it was, broke my brain. Are you happy now?

It begged for a response. And I tried to think of a clever approach to it. But no matter what I attempted, my brain folded like a rusty Chevy Vega.

It's that first sentence that kills me. "We are loan company." Like Bizarro-speak, like a telegram from someone who decided they could save a penny, like a pronouncement from the Borg if they abruptly decided packaging bad loans was a swifter path to universal assimilation. Indeed, it's this last that sticks in my brain: a mental image of Borg drones running one of those shady lending services you often see popping up in former fast-food chain buildings in seedier parts of town. "We are the Borg. Your payday advance loan has been approved. Your wages shall be garnished at a usurious interest rate and absorbed into the Collective. Resistance is futile. Have a nice day."

I dunno, seems like there's a Saturday Night Live sketch in there somewhere.

But then--and this is fractal awesomeness we're talking about--you follow that clipped Borgian "We are loan company" with that parenthetical "(serious inquiries only)" like a Craigslist ad, like somebody trying to sell a bass amp on the dorm bulletin board, like someone trying to get rid of a car (perhaps, y'know, a Vega--maybe we can get a theme going) in the ads at the back of the newspaper. Because, you know, you're not offering me a loan so much as you're letting me know that if I want to offer to borrow some money off you, you might be willing to entertain my bid so long as I'm not screwing around with you.

Then, third fractal level of awesometude, we have the usual mismatch between e-mails, though, really, that's par for the course for these things and by itself wouldn't be an attention-grabber or anything. Are you Josh Albert or Carol Jorgensen, should I be tendering my loan application and attendant personal infoey bits to a Catholic medical non-profit operating in Kentucky and Ohio or should I be sending it off to a loan company ostensibly contacted via someone's personal AT&T e-mail account?

For that matter, why am I being offered a loan by someone from the publicity department? How do I know if I'm the intended recipient when you leave the address blank? This was a confidential offer to lend me money (if I'm really serious about borrowing it, natch)? Am I now in trouble for re-disclosing it? Will the Internet police kick in my doors now and arrest me and post embarrassing videos of my arrest to YouTube before whisking me away to LOLJail (where the prisoners plaintively rattle their tin cups against the bars of their cells futilely asking if they can haz cheezburgerz and a new inmate's ungoatsed ass is worth a number of bootlegged cigarettes inversely proportional to its diameter, where the death row inmate is informed the governor just issued his pardon only to hear the chorus of "Never Gonna Give You Up" just before the warden throws the switch)?

An amusing typo can trigger an entire short story. A single poorly-wrought, grammatically-dubious sentence can lead to an epic. But you, Carol or Josh or whomever you are, have broken my brain in just a handful of sentences. Congratulations.

Sincerely,
R. Eric VanNewkirk
Standing On The Shoulders Of Giant Midgets