We recently sent out about a zillion invites to the press to invite them to our luncheon in LA during Siggraph.
Aside from finding out who’s not working (out of the office till…) and who’s not employed (permanent failure party does not exist) we also learned that there’s a whole bunch of press people who just can’t cope with email, especially from strangers (given such an attitude, I would guess their friends list is small) These timid and violated poor souls seek refuse from the onslaught of email from strangers offering millions from Nigeria, sex forever, and new hair in places you didn’t know you had, and have put a firewall up to block the spam that any semi intelligent Outlook user can do with his or her Junk Mail function.
Their robots says things like:
* I apologize for this automatic reply to your email. To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders I have approved beforehand. This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (TMDA).
* Your message attached below is being held because the address
* I’m protecting myself from receiving junk mail. Since I have a simple email address, the spammers have flooded my mail box – I need to invoke this challenge in order to read messages from real people (like yourself) that need to communicate with me.
I wonder if they have a cutout service that goes through their newspapers and magazines removing all the unwanted ads, and another robot that operates the TiVo so they never have to watch an unwanted, and certainly unrequested ad. Then there’s the junk mail robot that carefully and cleverly filters all their post mail, strangely and ironically never having anything left – gee, no birthday card from mom again this year.
Such a clean, pristine and unmolested life they lead, one of their robots runs ahead and rips down all billboards, ads stuck on the side of telephone poles, and each and every banner in front of every shop – such offense shall not invade the virgin minds of our pampered press corps.
I laugh at them as I cash the checks from the Nigerian bank of the West Nile, and go off to Scotland to collect my lottery winnings, I actually don’t even have time for the $1,000 gift card at BestBuy someone sent me, and as for never being incapable of sex any time anywhere, well, what can I say, I grin a lot now. The hair thing is a bit annoying, what with a trip to the barber every other day, but with all the money I have coming in from the Bahamas, it hardly matters. And the fact that I no longer have to work for living since I took up that offer from Sam Smaltz to be my own boss, just makes my life as a real estate magnate all the more sweet. Of course I am annoyed with the offers to refinance my credit cards, house, and car, since I’ve long ago paid them off with the money that was left to me by an uncle I didn’t know I had in Egypt.
Alas, I feel sorry for the poor protected and persecuted press that deny themselves this richness and wealth, and I’ve tried to do something about it, but every time I send them a few hundred thousand dollars it comes back.
