Saturday, July 24, 2010

Bras, Babies, and Toys R’ Us…

Yesterday evening, those of us living at the Howe’s house had a conversation about the different generational meanings of derogatory words such as “jerk” and “tool.” It wasn’t difficult to arrive at an accepted definition of a jerk, but tool proved a little more difficult. We thought maybe it meant that someone was “purposely annoying” or simply rather “useless.” I would like to submit my actions in the following story as a possible definition…

Like many amusing actions, I don’t recall exactly why we chose to do this, but we did. After a group conversation about sending large amounts of spam to a certain teacher, Cody and I decided that “Spam 2.0” would be a good idea. After an initial failed attempt… we settled on signing Alban up for some mail. We started with some nice companies like Chadwick’s, Toys R’ Us, Baby Gap, but we quickly matured into the old high school standby, Victoria's Secret.

It was pretty amusing when magazines and emails began to arrive for “Mr. Alban Howe” that displayed everything from breakthroughs in “under wire technology” to the latest in middle-aged women’s fashion. However the real treat was listening to Alban try to explain why he had been singled out. “It’s probably because my name is on the bills…” Phil helpfully suggested that it might be because Alban had a Safeway card. Cody and I smiled and agreed… “yeah, that’s probably it.”

We had planned to tell him about our questionable actions but then we got greedy. We decided to just let it go. Then later in the school year, his spam problem was featured on the Backside of the Collegian.

The funny part wasn’t so much the actual spam as much as it was having a secret. They say that secrets don’t make friends, let’s just hope they don’t unmake them…

At this point “Spam 2.0” had become too big to end it by simply giving ourselves up. Cody and I tried to think of a way to end the experiment and never could quite think of a satisfactory course of action.

I suppose this is just about as good a way as any…

6 comments:

  1. hahah this is wayyy good. its a good trick. oh, hey, what is your new address for seattle David? in case i want to send you a post card or something...

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  2. My best memory from this is when Alban exclaimed in the Collegian office, "Oh no! Oh, this is not good. I'm getting spam to my SCHOOL email now..."

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  3. I'll let you know as soon as i know em... i should know soon... You're always welcome to come and sleep on the couch or something if you ever need a place to crash in Seattle.

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  4. I get at least 3 SPAM messages every single day. Actually, SPAM has a way of multiplying itself, and so besides the regulars that seep through (V. Secret, Toys R Us, Chadwicks, 1-800-FLOWERS, etc.), I get about 70 or 80 e-mails in a single SPAM filter e-mail. You guys are both tools. Both of you.

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  5. HAHAHA This was so funny. Still is funny!

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  6. Ha ha, I can't believe he never even figured out until now. I even knew. And really, how/why would i know?

    funny stuff

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