http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~watrous/account-closing.html
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 2000 02:03:14 -0500 (EST)
From: Charles McGrew
To: USERNAME@remus.rutgers.edu (Removed for some reason or other)
cc: mcgrew@klinzhai.rutgers.edu
Subject: Re: fall 1999 accounts closing
JEsus christ! I'm taking 300 level CS classes EVERY
SEMESTER. I'm a declared CS major. look me up. I shouldn't
have to go through the trouble of dealing with this kind of
message at all. put me on the list for perpetual remus account
renewal. having my account threatened to be closed every
couple of weeks at a university where I'm paying so much in
tuition is nothing but pure unadulterated harassment.
... darn it, you've found me out! OK, I can come clean now -- I was
hired with the express purpose of sending your this kind of mail every
couple of weeks. It's in my job description. During my interview,
the only question I was asked was, "Can you perpetually send mail to
anyone named USER NAME?" "Yes, I said. Oh, YES!" "Good," they
said, "you're hired."
And I was pleased. Greatly pleased. For you see, I was raised to
send you such mail. My daddy would sit me on his knee. "Son," he
would say, "remember, where you get old enough to type, there will be
a fellow named USER NAME. He isn't born yet, but he will be.
And you must send him email. Perpetually." I nodded my head, and
wrote the name "USER NAME" on my little hand in felt-tipped
marker. It washed off, of course, but that was all right.
And my Daddy was pleased. Greatly pleased. For you see, his
father had told him too: "Son, one day you will have a son, and you
must make sure he sends mail to USER NAME." My Daddy nodded,
because he was big on non-verbal communication. And My Granddaddy was
pleased as well. For his father had passes this on to him, and now he
was now off the hook, having fulfilled his obligation for his
existance. Family legend has it he moved to Ohio and founded Goodyear
Tire and Rubber, but nobody knows for sure.
And you know, I got to wondering - why? Why this obsession in my
family with USER NAME? I asked my relatives all over this land.
They didn't know, but they reminded me that I had a responsibility,
indeed THE responsibility, yea the family legacy, to send USER
NAME email. It was the albatross around the family's neck, the
thing we always told ourselves caused our spines to be curved and our
acne to be so vivid. And I, I was the chosen one -- the one to send
the mail. But that was not the why. I still had to find the why.
So I went -- to Scotland, to the land of my forefathers and three
mothers; to search the family crypt back in Aberdeen; the place where
legend had it that the first McGrew had changed his name to avoid
prosecution and founded the line that had led to me and a host of
superfluous other McGrews. There I found a parchment written in 1523
by Angus "Nobby" McGrew that read, "Herein is put down the reason for
sending email - whatever that may be - to USER NAME. It is...
It is... arrrrgh." I took it to the Glasgow archeology and
fishmongering department at the University of the Corner Pub, and
their best guess is that he died while writing it. So we'll never
know. But I still have the family legacy to... to.... arrrrgh.
:-)
... anyway, I've added you to the csmajor account; you shouldn't
have to worry about it until your graduate.
Charles
