Tech & Humor Special From: The Media Desk

©01 The Media Desk

An overview of some of the things that can go wrong with email.

1. Instead of typing the address of a romantic interest, business partner, co-conspirator, marital aid supplier, or other entity which is supposed to receive rather private information, you type the address of a mass email list robot which then broadcasts your note to half the known working email boxes in North America.

2. While listening to talk radio, you mistakenly address the letter with your deepest feelings for your dearly beloved to G Gordon Liddy who then sees fit to read it on the air while correcting your usage and grammar.

3. You carefully type the address to the Chicago Tribune, then cut and paste what you thought was a sure fire award winning recipe for Italian Beef. Only to notice two seconds before the cheerful message 'Email Sent' that what you pasted was your musings into your diary about how you wish you could overcome bed-wetting.

4. You click on 'reply' to a poem a friend sent you and type in how great it was and how you'd love them to come over for dinner next Friday. Instead, you clicked on 'Reply All' and the note was a mass mailing to everybody in your friend's address book. On Friday, her and eighteen of her closest friends stop by for dinner.

5. "The video store ripped me off. I fired off hate mail to them. I didn't pay real close attention to what I was typing and the address I used since that bloody so and so high school kid at the store had a smart mouth. And I was real upset and didn't actually mean it." You smile sheepishly, the Secret Service Agents seem to buy it, but the FBI man doesn't. He still thinks you threatened the Speaker of the House, who just so happens to have the same last name as the video store manager.

6. WELCOME TO THE PSYCHIC EMAIL FRIENDS NETWORK. For the next several days you will be receiving emails from our network of real live psychics. To receive this message you sent an email response to one of our subscribing services. If you received this in error, please reply to the address below. However, you may still receive mail from our psychics, as they really want to get in touch with you.

7. This is a return receipt from your ISP mail server, the address you typed, dogmeat@IRS.gov does not exist. Please check the address and try again.

8. From: Automated Responder, Customer Service, InLineSkatesOnLine. We were unable you fill your order. The Clearance Sale you responded to is over. We do not carry size 12 skates. We did not have two pair of the model you requested. To fill your order we substituted: FOUR pair Model 1191 size SIX. These were sent priority airborne mail. Your credit card was billed $219. Clearance items cannot be returned for refund or credit. Thank you for your order.

9. Your carefully worded treatise, with illustrations and supplemental material comes out of the professor's email box looking like a test pattern for a video game. All too late you find out his twenty year old Apple machine's antique email program is incapable of seeing your state of the art Super Pentium machine's Windows 2005 (Beta version) output in any way shape or form.

10. Your boss wants to know why your work mailbox is full of stuff from Psychic Friends, a dozen people claiming you poisoned them last week with your duck and pasta, the FBI, a bunch of strangers consoling your relationship and your bed wetting, G Gordon Liddy, and a catalog wanting payment for twenty-four pairs of size six inline skates.