The Hobart Chronicles XXIV: Don’t Want To Live In Captivity

“I don’t want to slide into apathy (shut me out)
And I don’t want to live in captivity”
- Something For Kate, Monsters, 2001

“I wish I could sleep like a baby
I wish I could sleep like a stone
I wish that I could not remember”
- Paul Kelly, Night After Night, 1999

Sin City, day 7 minus 2
18 degrees and pouring, humidity 150%

At the pickle factory HQ recently, someone installed a new spam filter. It’s a lot more energetic than the old filter, and more polite – in that when it detects ‘possible spam’ it puts them in captivity and sends a little note to your inbox to see whether you would like to unlock any of the ‘quarantined emails’.

Amazing what these new-fangled gadgets will do for you. I used to have my Mum to correct my spelling and grammar, and my Dad to pick which friends were suitable (he occasionally still tries, but I think it’s just a token effort designed to remind me I am still someone’s daughter). Now the box on my desk will do the lot.

I am in the habit of checking my captive email as the filter occasionally catches legitimate communications. Also I suspect the filter ‘learns’, so I need to be vigilant if I am to teach the software to recognise friend from foe. Kind of like puppy school except with Terminator overtones. Besides, despite what all the tech-gurus like to tell you, spam can be good: entertaining, surprising and even revealing.

What the box, even with well-taught filters, apparently can’t do is recognise ‘entertaining’, 'surprising' and ‘revealing’. I am not sure the box knows what art is, let alone what it likes – and never mind what I like.

I reckon those spam-generating programs are like the 21st century version of the metaphorical thousand monkeys banging away at a thousand typewriters. Here, the other day I received this spam email, which may not be Shakespeare but does have some sonnet-like qualities. Is it a poem? You be the judge.

Subject: So now she uses a broom.

Hello!

Don't pull that stuff on me today.

I wasted through the night.
I didn't wash the dishes.
No, I really don't see how.
And then I felt a third and fourth.
He greets me at the door each day
I'm sure my heart will break.
And when he's done I give him
I have a brief confession
You guessed it-on my rear.
A kid who sat in front of me
That I have ever had!
and there won't be no more tests.
and itchy skin with blisters-
That I have ever had!
Just think of all the energy
and itchy skin with blisters-
a million, more or less.
If I don't get it off my chest
I had nosebleeds, measles, heat rash,
I couldn't do my homework.
I felt it on my ear.
I didn't clean the mess.
a million, more or less.

Art imitates life imitates art: just another chicken-and-egg story? Do these random lines speak to you?

It reminded me of one of my favourite bits of email trivia, one of those things that you are glad someone sent to your inbox. It's a poem by George W Bush - that is, allegedly constructed by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson, using only Dubya quotations. For my reading pleasure and yours, let me reproduce it here:

Make the Pie Higher
A poem by George Bush
(with Washington Post writer Richard Thompson,
constructed entirely from Dubya quotations.)

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?

How many hands have I shaked?
They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.

I know that the human being
And the fish can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope,
Where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize Society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!