Enough is enough.(1)
Business cards... I don't need one (2)
Woody (3) in Calgary... what will I do?
Susan Plamondon... If I knew what a Plamondon was, this might excite me (4)
Missing scissors... let me check, I have the kitchen sink, surely I've got the scissors (5)
Wrong fax #... sorry, don't do faxes
Photo's returned... so what your saying is, they were missing from my life
Insert stamps (6) ... I could tell you where to insert them
Wierd calls from Grocery stores... I'll just die if I don't get to the bottom of this
And finally, what are we... (7)
It would seem the endless array of meaningless emails (8) may drop us collectively in the Time Wasters and Electronically Preoccupied Association for Employees Without Discretion and Nothing Better to do. (9)
Bottom line. E-mail was designed to speed the flow of relevent mail to people who might need it. (10) Contrary to popular belief, it was not designed specifically to allow you the opportunity to waste my time. (11) Just responding to the cascading email garbage in my mailbox has proven to be a waste of time. (12) Request...If you can't properly discriminate between those who need your e- mail and those who simply don't give a *#@!, stop using it. At the very least, stop sending it to me. (13)
It's bad enough dealing with a post office that sponsors the destruction of our forest (14) to fill our mailboxes with junk. I don't think the world needs this new breed of savages (15) who randomly execute bits and bytes for no productive reason. (16)
Chris (17)
Exegesis:
(1) This appears to be the title, or a sort of "J'Accuse!" proclamation. All spelling is as the original, as are the line breaks. The work may be broken into two distinct parts, a series of statements followed by a rant.
(2) This line and the following eight (for a total of nine, three squared and a perfect tic-tac-toe grid) are a list of email subjects that Chris singles out as examples of stupid use of the "everyone" button on the company email.
(3) Name of someone.
(4) We start to get a sense of the alienation that Chris must be feeling. He doesn't use business cards, he can't see the use of knowing that Woody will be in Calgary, and he doesn't know who Susan Plamondon is (and this isn't a very big office). These emails, which are addressed to "everyone" can't help but reinforce that he doesn't belong -- because they don't relate to him!
(5) This hyperbole occurs in statement four. There are five statements to come, and three that have passed. Subtract the two to reach the number two, the first even number! The only other example of this literary device in the statements comes in statement eight (two times four). Can this be a coincidence?
(6) Refers to a missing stamp that said "Insert to ..."
(7) Refers to one of those corporate statement-type things where employees were asked to come up with one adjective to describe the company's product.
(8) This starts the rant segment of the piece.
(9) TWEPAEWDNB for short, although it may be accidental that the "do" is not capitalized, in which case the association would be TWEPAEWDNBD, which could, with a little imagination, be pronounced "Tree Planting" with an drunken Elmer Fudd accent.
(10) Clearly, Chris does not see the email he receives as relevant to him. As the paragraph progresses his anger increases. The major question of this work is how this outburst is the result of the tension between his conception of the Sacredness of Mail as a form of personalized communication between sender and receiver, and his feeling of alienation on discovering that all these messages that are sent to him, that he has received, are not meant for him at all. They are meaningless.
(11) The messages are seen as a deliberate affront. These people are deliberately trying to waste his time. Is he really that busy?
(12) This is the second time "waste of time" is mentioned. Still operating under the paradigm of the Sacredness of Mail, Chris tries to respond to each "Everyone" email personally. Of course it is in vain.
(13) Chris closes the paragraph with a threat of suicidal isolation. With this sentence he takes his stand that messages are personal, and that he won't be a part of any community that won't address him personally.
(14) See note (9) above.
(15) An unusual description for office workers. Chris is undoubtably referencing the concept of the "noble savage" through an ironic conceit. The savage may also refer to the destruction of the Sacredness of Mail ethic. The savage is "The Other", someone who doesn't belong to the writer's civilization.
(16) Chris cleverly uses the phrase "productive reason" to provide the clue that he is acting on behalf of the company to curb time-wasting fraternizing. Note the use of the word "execute".
(17) The name chosen to sign this piece seems austere compared to the rest of the work. One almost expects a tag-line like "sick of reading stuff I don't need to know". A tag-line like that would immediately alert the reader that Chris is already labelled and not open to discussion or dialogue -- i.e. a conversation between two people. Instead, the simplicity of the signing suggests that Chris is offering himself to the reader. It's personalized and friendly. It invites or pleads for a response, a real, personal contact with another human.
For an analysis of this exegesis click here.
