It occurred to me that the ubiquity of spam is slo…
It occurred to me that the ubiquity of spam is slowly but surely training us, conditioning us to automatically disregard anything written with more than one exclamation mark. Every day millions of people open up their email program and go down the list, the process of deleting all of the subjects written in bold and/or involving some arrangement of exclamation points or question marks not even entering conscious thought. The spammers are slowly catching on to this, however, using subject lines such as “Delivery error” or “re:hi”. Before long they’ll realize that words like “prize”, “urgent” and “now” get the automatic boot as well.
One of two things can happen at this point: either action will be taken to prevent spammers from continuing their evil work, or the effected programs, by being rendered completely useless, will just stop being used. Services like Hotmail and Yahoo are pretty much useless already, and many other services are following. If no alternative is available, email itself could fall by the wayside, perhaps in favor of instant messaging, although even ICQ is becoming unusable due to people using it for advertising.
I work in advertising, but more and more I wish I didn’t. Advertising is evil. It used to consist simply of people making other people aware of their products via comically rendered figures on large signs along the highway, but like a TV show that has run too long, it kept trying to take “the next step”, and, just as we knew the Happy Days was dead when Fonzie jumped the shark, just as we knew that Scooby Doo was wormfood with the arrival of Scrappy Doo and all the other Doos, advertising has become an infestation of corporations trying harder and harder to get your money without having to go to jail over it. Just as they cross the line, the line is moved. That’s their job: moving the line until there’s no such thing as theft or perjury any more. Any creative endeavor is sullied by its presence, or succeeds despite it. Those are the good commercials, but they’re so rare people don’t even associate them with advertising, and rightly so, because they actually deliver something of value: entertainment.
It’s quite hot these days in Taipei. I can almost smell the baking Vampire flesh (not unlike bacon, actually). While I’m glad I’m not working as a construction worker these days, I do miss the beach and the sound of gentle waves gurgling around my hot feet. But in the city, heat is an entirely different animal; it’s jumping on my black motorcycle and then immediately jumping back off again in a flash of heat-inspired movement; it’s sitting in unmoving traffic and watching, through sweat dripping from my brow, the woman putting on makeup in the silver Benz next to me. It’s straining to hear the cicadas over the roar of window-unit air conditioners. It’s bare shoulders in blue trucks.
Womble has agreed to help me out on the festival thing; this is good news, not only because Womble works fast, but I think his work is quite suitable. He’s also a mate I feel I can rely on, and since the timing of this whole deal is rather dicey, I’m glad to have him in my corner. Actually it’s quite exciting to see how this will turn out. We’re cooperating online, of course, since the timeframe leaves no room for snail mail. I sent the mpeg to him last night, and he will send the music the same way, and then I will need to find someone with a digital editing setup so I can add the new soundtrack as well as the new credits to the film before I rush it off to Toronto on a DV tape, which is the required format. Not only is this good for me, but Womble will be able to have one of his pieces played and his name shown to a (hopefully) large international audience. And unless he’s wanted for some crime such as Being Stroppy to a Mountie, this is a good thing for him as well.
No counter offer yet from the publisher. My thinking at the moment is that I’ve been treated very well by the publisher I agreed to sign with (but haven’t yet), and so this other publisher is going to have to offer a tempting deal to get me to switch back. In any case, I don’t want to wait any longer. Here’s my damn book; either you want it, or you don’t. Check one box only.
I’m meeting with Peter, who works at the usurping publisher, as well as with Seamus and Dean and who knows else, on Wednesday after work for dinner and stuff, and hopefully Peter will be able to provide me with a clearer idea of what they can offer me. Tonight I am meeting up with Kirk to go see Blade II, since I happen to be in the mood for gratuitous violence being wrought by a well-dressed black man with a sword.
Mindcrime and his girl Janice are planning on visiting the lurvely island semi-state of Hong Kong on the first weekend of next month. They are reserving a seat for me, but I’m not sure yet whether I’ll have time to go just then, with all the film/book stuff goin’ on lately. There’s always next time, I suppose. Dean will be going in a couple more months, I’m pretty sure, and Mindcrime will probably have to make another visa run around then, unless he’s somehow implicated in recent firebombings of coffeehouses in Hsinchu. I wouldn’t put it past him, but I’d be more than willing to visit him on Green Island every so often.
