Yes I know Britain is an island nation, but it didn't fit the rhyme

[spatch]

Thank you by the way for the comments on my post about Amy. I haven't been able to reply to some just yet, it's a little difficult, but I want to let you know that I really appreciate your words of support.

Well! Looks like I got me a spam email from an actual spam email company offering to sell me the opportunity to let them spam email for me. (And what're the odds that I'd ironically receive one of my messages, whatever the hell I needed to say, as spam? Anout as close to 1 as you can get, my friend.)

This would hardly warrant a mention were it not for their special Christmas message for me:

Ho Ho Ho...
Jingle bells, email sells, lead-gen is the way
Let us fill your order book with clients every day
Jingle bells, each sale tells, emailing will pay
Oh what fun it is to sell, on a cold sharp Winter's day

[Mr. S]: I don't know whether to be amused or highly aghast.
[Miss J.] Why not both?

Yes! Let us strive for that dichotomy. Such opportunities are rare indeed.

I am thinking of actually responding, but not replying directly to the sender nor through the "Unsubscribe" link which is actually run by a third party "unsubscriber" service which, of course, solely exists to verify that hey, this email account is active, let's sign it up for more. I'll use the sales contact email they left. I should point out by the way that based on the phone number they also left, they are located somewhere out of the UK which make them doubly useless to me.

You know, I bet they get a lot of "U SUK" kinds of messages. Don't you? And for all that work! Maybe I should repay this gesture back in kind, and bounce some of their Christmas cheer over to them. Maybe it'd reach that someone who believes they have some kind of a sense of humor. The author! Maybe we'd have one of those amazing moments of connection you can only get on the Internet! Or maybe they'd just continue to spam me and I would end up blocking them, the end.

Hmm. Well, it couldn't hurt to try:

Good derSpatchel just looked out¹
On his box of email
There the junk mail lay about
With one for this here spam sale

Replying to this note you sent:
Though the thought was Yule,
I'm on another continent;
I've no use for your tool.

(Man. The first time around I was trying to rhyme "inbox" and it was just not happening.)

Anybody wanna join the carolling party? Got any holiday cheer I might could spread their way?




1. I'd actually send them first initial, last name, but you get the idea.

Comments

[ron_newman]

Is 'lead-gen' their cheapest level of service, as opposed to silver-, gold-, or uranium-gen?

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

Red-olph the rude old spam bot
Sent some junk to my inbox
And every time I saw it
I yearned to give him chicken pox

All of the other spammers
Get filtered and moved to my trash
But Red-olph was mighty sneaky
He slipped by and got in my cache

Then one spam-filled afternoon
My ISP did say
Spatchel with your box so full
Won't you route it to /dev/null/

....

Boy, it's a good thing I have no ambitions to be a lyricist.

[thespian.livejournal.com]

for the record 'inbox' rhymes enough with 'Firefox', when writing geek songs.

[eeka13.livejournal.com]

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

Or, for a more old-timey Christmas feel, "flintlocks".

Just sayin'.

[eeka13.livejournal.com]

I'm not as cool as the rest of you, so I'm just singing "PE-NIS EN-LARGE-MENT X X X" a la Barenaked Ladies "Deck the Stills."

[plumtreeblossom.livejournal.com]

I had to sing that last lyric word "tooo-OOOO-el."

[ratatosk.livejournal.com]

It's no worse than the accentual-syllabic gymnastics an English speaker has to go through to get "Good King Wenceslas" to scan. In both cases it's amazing that your brain can do it so well.

At least in derspatchel's case he is playing, perhaps unconsciously, off of the ridiculousness of having to sacrifice innocent dipthongs to the original secular dance tune. Couldn't the Victorians have just rewritten the tune so it wasn't so awkward? No, no, can't have that, wouldn't be authentic.

[spatch]

If anything, I'm remembering how, when singing, people tend to stretch "fuel" out into three syllables, much like when you're at Myrtle Beach you can stretch "hey" into a five-syllable word. I could add more ooooos to "tool" but too many would make it sound like Beany & Cecil were singing it.

[greenlily.livejournal.com]

Ooo, thank you for the link. We're not singing GKW in the Revels this year, so I can safely earworm my castmates with the Latin version instead. :)

[muffyjo]

Oh, the spamming outside is frightful
And this filter's so delightful
And since I've no object to sell
fare the well, fare the well fare the well

Oh with you here to find a sap
I just know I could make millions mo'
but since spam is annoying crap
back to the drawing board I go!

The viagra and all's amazing
As I do my navel gazing
I realize I've naught here to tell
fare the well, fare thee well, fare thee well.

[meedja.livejournal.com]

The first gen'd lead, so my user stats say
Was a couple of children with no cash to pay
With no cash they could not buy all my crap
And I started to wonder just who was the sap.

Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell, go to hell
I don't want to send spam, so just go to hell.

I looked through, all the rest of my leads
And saw dole scum and jokers, and rubbish indeed.
And to my surprise, I gained an insight
That no-one responds to spammers selling shite

Go to hell, go to hell, go to hell, go to hell
I don't want to send spam, so just go to hell.


(Translation for USAnians - Dole scum = people on welfare. It's a British company, they'll understand)

[batyatoon]

Stealing the first line from Tom Lehrer, because one should always steal from the best:

God rest ye merry, merchants, may ye make the Yuletide pay
I know to you the internet looks like the perfect way
But I won't buy your spambot and I'm throwing this away...


I can't think of what to put for "tidings of comfort and joy".