Dave Does Impressions

I suppose it’s laudable that a church would have a “director of first impressions”; it suggests that the church recognizes and bravely undertakes the uphill climb it faces as it pursues a redemptive relationship with an increasingly dubious culture. It strikes me as unusual, however, that this same director of first impressions would wait to respond to an e-mail until two weeks after it was sent.

In defense of the director, I will aver that that a church big enough to have a director of first impressions probably has to categorize a lot of e-mails week in and week out, and in one sense my e-mail was likely difficult to categorize. Not impossible to categorize, however, in that two weeks after the fact the director of first impressions rightly concluded that my e-mail should be forwarded to the office of the person I was requesting a meeting with in the first place. Something tells me not to hold my breath waiting for that meeting; I suspect this new office has more than one layer of bureaucracy for my e-mail to penetrate.

I can’t wait to hear from the director of second impressions.

Pseudo-Spam of the Day

A 4 year old girl and a 1.5 year old boy.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

You might think it's spam, but it's really an old friend from college, filling me in on his family life. I'm sure they're adorable kids, and more virtuous than virtual.

There's probably a market for BlackBerry Kids out there, however. I thought the Cabbage Patch Kids were ugly and pointless back in the day, but plenty of people disagreed with me. My sister had one, complete with adoption papers and a detachable pacifier. My brother and I would play War with it/her serving as a grenade; we'd "pull the pin" (AKA pacifier), count to three and throw the Cabbage Patch Kid from one end of the room to the other. That wouldn't fly with BlackBerry Kids; Mommy and Daddy paid six hundred bucks for that little bundle of joy.

Spam I Am

Today, due to circumstances beyond my control, my outbound e-mail has been tagged as "spam" by one or more major e-mail providers. Consequently, until I can prove that I'm not a spam generator, many of my e-mails are being blocked.

I can't tell who thinks I'm spam and who doesn't until I get a bounceback e-mail, but it is a rather humbling experience--an indictment on my communication habits. My approach to e-mail historically has been to (a) have a thought, (b) commit that thought to digital data and (c) click on "send." My thought then becomes someone else's problem--until, of course, someone somewhere says "Enough!" and cuts me off. On days like these I realize that one person's epiphanies are very often another person's irritants.

Beyond the obvious benefits to necessary communication, e-mail as I've approached it--along with blogging, I think--is often equal parts an attempt to be known and a desire to be admired. As such, it can be pretty addictive. You want to be known by more and more people, and so you monitor the profile views on your profile, despairing when the count stays static and congratulating yourself when it reaches some new round number. You compare the comment count from one post to another and from your blog to another's, and thusly you measure your relative worth. Meanwhile, people with their own problems are surfing the Internet, minding their own business and either allow themselves to get drawn into your search for significance or throw their guard up and say, "Please don't bother me!"

Anyway, my experience as spam has left me plenty circumspect, so I will simply say: thanks for coming by my blog. I hope you have fun here more often than you get annoyed. And if my presumed profundities ever bug you, please don't flag me as inappropriate. Instead, please post a comment to let me know; you get the annoyance off your chest, and my fragile sense of self-worth gets bolstered by another comment. Everybody wins.

Who Needs Books When You Have Spam of the Day?

Subject: 12 new messages from ladies for you (dating)

The ladies, based on the e-mail address, are apparently a part of the MEC Sundries of St. Paul. Perhaps, I naively imagine, they'd like me to come speak to their group on the subject of dating. So I open the e-mail:

I am looking for man for long-term relations.
I am from Russia, my name is Vika,
please let me know if you have interest.

I can tell it's authentic because Vika, like all the English-speaking Russians I've ever seen in movies, doesn't use articles: "I am looking for man," not "I am looking for a man"; "if you have interest," not "if you have any interest."

I hate to publicly humiliate Vika, but I'd rather break the hearts of countless Russian single ladies all at once rather than one at a time, so please take note and alert any e-mail-order brides in your address books:

Back off, ladies! I'm taken!