An email I received on one of my alternate email accounts:"This message was sentt by the Citibank-Online serevr to veerify your email
addres. You must copmlete this prceoss by clicking on the link
below and enntering in the litle window your Citi-bank Debit
Card number and Card Pin that you use on Atm.
That is donne for your ptceortion -K- becaurse some of our memebrs no
lengor have acsecs to their email adeesrdss and we must verify it."I'm shocked that I would receive a message like this, not because of its horrible spelling, grammar, and syntax, and obvious phoniness, but because apparently people are falling for it if it keeps getting sent out. I mean really, is the writer of this message hoping to connect with other drunk, non-English speaking Citibank customers? The only odd thing is that the link provided does go to the Citibank site, and nothing in the HTML code is different from the Citibank page's site. Still, I think it's a pretty hilarious email. The way it's written, I can only imagine a drunk stumbling out of a bar saying this. It looks like the financial world equivalent of a drunk email you'd send your ex.
Here's something I noticed a lot in the past week: With Pete Rose's recent admission of betting on baseball, and the perceived lack a true apology, the word being used to describe what has been missing from his statements is "contrition." Or that he has not been "contrite." This word has been used in almost every article and news piece I've seen. I mentioned to Miss Charming Melodee that I'd guarantee that this word would start popping up all over the place, as the new sort of descriptive buzz words. People will use it everywhere, and largely out of context. It'll be one of those words people use to try to sound educated or something, like "proactive." So what do I see when i check ESPN this morning? "Contrite Clarett pleads guilty to lesser charge." Of course, it's possible that the word was just used for the sake of aliteration, but I doubt it. Watch the news or Sportscenter in the coming months, and I'll bet you dollars to donuts that you'll hear people, athletes in particular, talk about how they were wronged by so and so, and how the apoligies they received lacked the proper amount of contrition. Few things bug me more than when new buzz words are made from already-existing words. Can somebody please open a thesaurus? How about "remorse" or even modifiers like "sincere" or "heart-felt"? Are people just too tempted to flex their literary muscle by dropping in three-syllable words? Anyway, this really bothers me. A lot.
I've been going around sampling a lot of web journals lately (I still hate the term "blog") and one thing that is noticeable to me is the length of various people's entries. Also noticeable is the format people use. Most people who have been doing this for several years still write very long entries, with each entry consisting of a different page. And they've created the page themselves. Most newer journals are relatively brief, and a lot of them are hosted on services specifically dedicated to blogging, like livejournal or blogger.com or something. Anyway, I never really thought about it before, but there's a noticeable difference between the old and the new. I'd put the split around mid-2001 I think. You see very few journals lately where every entry is a single page I think. Too much work I guess.
Just reading my own older entries, I'm struck by how much more coherent and interesting things were a few years back. Of course, back then fewer people knew about it, and I was less concerned and careful about what I wrote. Now, I know a lot more people who read it and I really don't want this causing any more difficulty in my life than it has in the past. The flip-side of course is that it's much less interesting. Not that it was all that interesting to begin with. I mean, I don't know how many regular readers I get, but it can't be that many. I get about 50-70 hits a day, but most of them are through random searches. I personally know of only about 5-10 regular readers. So who am I doing this for? The only real benefit that I've seen lately is that it's just a good way to document what I was doing at a certain time. Like when I'm looking at pictures, and think "Where the hell was this? And who's that?" I at least have a reference. But it's also frustrating how cryptic some of the older entries were, because in a lot of cases I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about. Still, it's odd to me now when I try to look back and read about something I did in college, then remembering that this journal only started in 1999.
Anyway, it's hard to believe that I've been keeping this for almost 5 years now. The writing really has gone downhill. Though I've been saying that for about four years. Still, the difference is noticeable. Whereas in the beginning I put some effort into the ramblings, these days I'm just pleased if I can squeeze in a semi-(or quasi-)clever turn of phrase.
Another sad fact: whenever I look at the referral logs of the site, I can almost always tell what page a certain keyword search points to. In retrospect, I think the lack of interesting writing really stems from a few key factors. Mainly, many more people know about this than I would hope, and the regular cast of recurring characters has dwindled down to an all-time low. So basically I have less to write about, and I have to do it with more discretion. Which really isn't that interesting for anybody.
Also somewhat noteworthy (again probably only for me): Yesterday was that rare New York day, in which I spent no money at all. Not a single cent. Naturally, I wasn't very happy all day.
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