2000:  Rocky 2
2001:  Love Letters
2002:  An Ethel Queen and a Judy Queen
2003:  Mind and Body
2004:  A Holly, Jolly Christmas
2005:  'Tis the Season Again

My 2006 Holiday Letter

IN MY OPINION
"A Christmas Carol"

Books Read in 2006
(Updated 12/8
"Tender at the Bone")

Currently Reading: 
"The Cat Who Could Read Backwards"
"Dog is My Co-Pilot"

ARE YOU THERE, GRUNYA?

14 December 2006

This managed to slip through my e-mail spam filter the other day:

'Hello, there! ' shouted  Nikanor Ivanovich in the dim hallway.  ' Are you there, Grunya? '
     No reply.
     Nikanor Ivanovich then took  a folding ruler out of his pocket, used it to prise the seal from the study door and  strode in. At least he began by striding in, but stopped in the doorway with a start of amazement.
     Behind Berlioz's  desk sat  a tall,  thin stranger  in a  check jacket, jockey cap and pince-nez. . . .
     'And who might you be, citizen? ' asked Nikanor Ivanovich.
     'Nikanor Ivanovich!  ' cried  the mysterious  stranger in a  quavering

I get stuff like this all the time in e-mail.  I suppose it's supposed to defeat spam catchers, but it's damned annoying! Do you suppose there are people sitting around writing stuff like this just for the purpose of annoying you and me?

One of the best things to come along in recent years is the list you can get on so that companies will stop sending you catalogs through the mail.  But it seems that this restriction doesn't hold — or perhaps expires — at Christmas time.

I am inundated with catalogs.  I'll bet you are too.  I could build a house with L.L. Bean and Signals catalogs alone.  I realized this morning that not only am I getting catalogs addressed to me, but also to a friend whose mail I collected for two years while she and her husband were living in Switzerland.  They have been back for years, but we are still getting their junk mail.

I decided to try to stay ahead of the situation this year by sitting down immediately when the mail comes, going through the day's stack of catalogs, seeing if there was anything I couldn't live without, ordering it immediately and then immediately tossing the catalog.

But it quickly got out of hand.  I have incoming catalogs, catalogs to be thrown out, catalogs that I haven't made up my mind about yet, and catalogs with folded pages for orders that I'm going to place as soon as I get back at my computer.  When Lizzie jumps on a table and sends them all scattering around the floor, I have to start all over again. 

I do have a bag sitting  by the mail-sorting chair and try to religiously throw out a catalog once I've determined that there is nothing in there that I can't live without, it goes into the bag.  That plan works pretty well.

Occasionally a catalog sneaks in the "to be checked" stack that I've actually looked through before and I find something that I overlooked.  I thought my Christmas shopping was pretty much finished, when my eyes lit on a page in a catalog that was sent to our friend from Switzerland.  Oooo...now there was something I'd seen on TV that I thought was clever and that I had intended to buy for someone.  How did I miss that?  And it was on sale, too! Another $40 order sent off to L.L. Bean.

While the avalanche of Christmas catalogs is by now a familiar one, this year I have seen an incredible increase in holiday spam.  'Tis the season to flood your e-mailbox with unwanted offers.

Thanks to MailWasher, most of them never make it to my actual emailbox, but because I have to screen all incoming email, whether I actually read it or not, I am spending an amazing amount of time deleting unwanted spam.  Much moreso than ever before.

The latest flood has come not into my personal email account, but into the mailbox that comes when you join YouTube.  Anybody who wants hot sex films or "Amateur Brazilian girls," let me know.  I'll bet in the last two days I have easily deleted 100 offers from folks who want to hook me up with Brazilians and hot sex films.  (There is also a new group emerging which wants to tell me which "supplements" I should use.)

(I'm wondering what an "amateur Brazilian girl" is — a female non-Brazilian who is studying how to be a real Brazilian? Taking thong-wearing lessons?  Learning how to toss back caipirinha and pop a couple of pao de queijos?  Lessons in feijoada making?)

The problem is that you can't turn off the flood on YouTube.  You can block a user's name but they just pop up under another name.  In no time your mail box is full of junk.  YouTube actually sent out an apology to people who are getting notices that they have over 4 billion new messages.  At least it hasn't reached THAT point for me yet!

Over on Steve's discussion board there has been an assault on the discussion section about HIV/AIDS.  I am one of the administrators of the board and at least once a day I have to delete a bunch of messages that make no sense.  Steve has been doing the same and I am assuming that his brother, the other administrator, is doing the same.

We are all at the mercy of these idiots.  Even G-mail, which is supposedly a bastion of spam-free e-mail seems to be missing more than it used to.  Just as soon as someone figures out one way of blocking spam, the spammers figure out how to get around it and sneak in anyway.

Well, it's nice that it keeps them off the streets.  And, if they are writing things about my friend Grunya, maybe they'll actually learn some creative writing as well.

(Though I suspect it's been lifted from books rather than originally written.)

Featured Holidailies Entry:  Nipples, Nipples, Nipples by subsequent events.  Very funny entry.

I'm borrowing Jim's idea and putting in here an brief intro for folks who might wander in from Holidailies. I'm a 63 year old woman in California who works as a faux theatre critic for the local paper and do transcription for a psychiatrist at home.  I bottlefeed orphan puppies for the SPCA and post a lot of video of them on line.  Walt and I have been married for 41+ years.  We have 2 unruly dogs of our own, Sheila and Lizzie, and three living adult children, Jeri, Ned and Tom, each of whom has a partner/spouse (Phil, Marta and Laurel, respectively).  I've been writing this journal daily since March of 2000 and have posted nearly 2,500 entries.  Anything else you want to know can be found in "100 Things About Me."

IN THE SPIRIT OF GIVING:  Anybody who might have been tempted to check out the Big Voice, here is Playbill's offer:

1. ONLINE: Click Here or visit BroadwayOffers.com and use code: BVPBE73

2. BY PHONE: Call 212-947-8844 and mention code BVPBE73

3. IN PERSON: Print out this page and bring it to the Actors' Temple Theatre Box Office, 339 W. 47th Street (Between 8th and 9th Avenues) You can purchase tickets during the day at the St. Luke's Box Office, 308 W. 46th Street (Between 8th and 9th Avenues). Open daily noon to curtain, except Mondays.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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