Phish Phry with a side of Spam

I seem to be getting less spam since Operation Phish Phry wound up, but a few spammers out there are still trying to scare me into opening their messages. Sadly for them, I don't scare easily; I get nervous easily, but that's different.

Let's see:

• "You're in blacklisted IP lsit (sic)". Coming from someone like you, that's a good thing.
• "Unpleasant news". I know -- you're not going to stop this till I open one.
• "Big deal". Here we have something that may be trying to scare me, or just convince me that this is, you know, a big deal.
• "Terrifying kid". I'll put my two up against him anytime.

I knew it wasn't just because I was the oldest

Some things haven't changed since I was a girl:

by the time they're 10 years old, girls are doing more chores around the house than boys . . . girls in this latest study spent an average of 50 minutes more on chores each week than boys.

Supposedly, I was "better able" to do challenging tasks like dusting our ugly end tables. Well, I'll admit that, as the big sister, I thought I was the only one who really knew how to do anything right. Still, some things don't have to be done exactly right -- they just have to be done.

It goes on:

"We expected that as a generation or two of women have gone out into the labour force, the gender differences would have faded in their children, but that's not happening."

No, it takes more than a generation or two to get over the deep-rooted idea that the males have to save their energy for plowing the fields, chopping down trees, and doing anything that involves getting shot at.

Not quite in time for the Day of Atonement, but . . .

We live in an unlikely world.

Awhile back, Jon Stewart said the story of "el presidente Gutterball" going bowling on his birthday was about as believable as President Ahmadinejad spending his birthday seeing Fiddler on the Roof.

Now we get this.

Okay, he still probably wouldn't go to see Fiddler on the Roof.

But, to paraphrase Barbara Kay, "please don't call him a self-hating Jew; he adores himself."

Photo: Office of the President of Indonesia

Lost and found

Meant to be read in side-by-side columns, but I think it's okay anyway:

LOST

1200 block Wasteland St, Thursday, FAKE “threatening” letter, handwritten, slightly soiled paper. Pls call if found – was just a JOKE, btwn FRIENDS, still shouldn’t fall into wrong hands.







DOG, large brown and white mongrel, skinny, pointy ears, answers to Bud, missing Weds night. Will reimburse finder for dog food.


SKETCHBOOK, green cover, has a few diagrams of nothing in particular. URGENTLY NEEDED! Generous reward – even more if you can prove you didn’t look inside.










FOUND

On my doorstep, Wasteland St, a filthy scrap of notebook paper partly covered with incoherent scrawls apparently threatening me (by name) with being rendered “so dead”. If the legal guardian of the child or mental patient who obviously “wrote” this text wishes to see it, please contact me before Monday morning, when I plan to take appropriate action.

DOG, wire-haired Ibizan hound, healthy appetite, probably wants to get back to winning medals at shows? Call to ID.



SKETCHBOOK, green cover, with detailed plans for car engine that runs on tap water (?).

Few people are aware of . . .

. . . the 19th-century origins of the Teletubbies. But here's proof they do go back that far.

(from Dover)

"Animal hoarding? No, we're not being hoarded . . .

. . . Not yet."

eRejection

"We cannot bring you aboard at this time."

It sounds like an announcement in an airport departure lounge, but it's actually from an email turning me down for a writing job.

(At first, I took it more dramatically and had a picture of myself, on a makeshift raft, getting turned away from a passing ship.)

Yes, I took a risk, and it could have turned out a lot worse. There was a guy who got his first submission to some syndicate mailed back unopened, with a note on the envelope: "I told you to stop sending us your ****!"

Still . . .