Bulk Mail--bwhahaha! (updated with link)

Every once in awhile, one of my newsletters ends up in Bulk Mail, so I do occasionally check it instead of deleting it sight unseen.

I get all sorts of offers: Your Disney Vacation is being sent to your address! Make real money online! Your property is worth a fortune!

The funny ones are the dating ones (Although they do make me a little sad) : "Black and single -- Meet your soulmate!" "Are you over 50 and single?" "Meet someone that shares your values."

But the one I got today beats all: "bolshevism message from Sue Wynn." Um, did it finally get out that I'm a Bolshevik? And I thought I was doing such a good job at hiding my political leanings...

While my Yahoo! bulk mail can get up to 60 if I don't check it regularly, my work email's "quarentine" box grows to 144 overnight and since I don't check it from home anymore, on Tuesdays, it can be in the hundreds. I have started getting spam that is in Chinese characters (well, it could be Japanese or Korean, I can't tell!)

Here's one that went to both my Yahoo! and work emails: "hair transplants get the straight talk." Oh and you've gotta love all the misspellings of Viagra, and in all caps: LEGALLY INVESTIGATE ANYONE!

In March, I heard a radio program on the poetry that is at the end of some spam, to fool the filters. You can find it, here.

It's summer. Everyone's on vacation (it seems). So we haven't had Show and Tell or List Friday for weeks! (or so it seems.)

******

Last night I went to a "singles event." I paid $10 to sit and talk with singles at a bar in Shadyside. There were appetizers but I'd eaten already. I had a Corona (with lime.) I ran into a woman who was in a wedding with me about 10 years ago. She's a widow, and she's tried a whole bunch of dating options -- eHarmony, this one we were at last night...she has three children and she wants to have some sort of a social life outside of soccer games. But seriously, if this is what it takes to meet "that special someone," I'll sit at home with a book, thank you very much. So I left when I knew my times was running out on the parking meter, and went to Giant Eagle, where I picked up some milk and two magazines. I sat on the sofa, reading about Jen and Vince, Britney and Kevin, Lindsay Lohan's 20th birthday party (she is so young!).

*****

I finished a great book last night: Leaving Church. It's about an Episcopal priest who finds that her vocation is suffocating her and out of the blue she get an offer to teach at a local university, so she leaves her church. It is a very honest memoir and I think everyone should read it.

I had a conversation with a friend at Tazza on Monday. We were discussing the OD and how maybe there doesn't need to be a sermon every week. (Revolutionaries, we are...) Are we just filling in the "slots" of what a "church service" should look like? This passage speaks to that:

"What if people were invited to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe? What if they were blessed for what they are doing in the world instead of chastened for not doing more at church? What if church felt more like a station than a destination? What if the church's job were to move people out of the door instead of trying to keep them in, by convincing them that God needed them more in the world than in the church?" (p. 222, Leaving Church, Barbara Brown Taylor.)

I know I need to sing songs every Sunday night. If I don't have that, my life crumbles a little bit. There is something about singing loud, worshipping God with others that know Him. I know I need to say "hey" to people I may not see any other time but on Sunday evenings. I need that fellowship. I need to pray with others--I live a solitary life at home and I crave being with other believers at the beginning of a new week. But do I need to hear a sermon? Could a poem suffice? Or a conversation about a passage?

I don't have any answers, just more questions. But I am ever grateful to know that I'm not the only one asking questions.