The Annoyance Is INSTANT, Too

You'd better run away, you bastard!

When you use Instant Messenger, unless you fastidiously maintain your list of contacts, you'll have people on your buddy list for years, even if they no longer qualify as a buddy, friend, amigo, or bro.

I can always see when these people are online, yet I never have the urge to shoot an IM to ask, say, Julie Klausner, with whom I took a couple of improv classes at Upright Citizens Brigade Theater like 10 years ago, how she's doing. (Apparently she's doing much better than I am in terms of writing and performing, thank you very much.)

I even have "buddies" I can longer identify. Who the hell are you, Rizzjox75? Did we used to work together? Did we do stand-up at New York Comedy Club back in 2003? It's not like I'm going to IM you to find out!

Then, the other day, I received an odd IM...


It was from an old stand-up comedy colleague, Greg. The last IM I'd received from him was in late 2001, so I was surprised to receive an IM from him that read, simply: "hi." Not quite the way a normal person would start a conversation with someone he hasn't contacted in 10 years.

I was also suspicious because the text was pink. Greg is, in fact, gay, but I don't think he'd type with a pink font. Not that I'm generalizing or anything.

Warily, I wrote, "Hello Greg." His reply was "hey whats up" with no punctuation. This made me more suspicious because Greg is not the kind of guy who'd write a sentence like that, plus I don't think he'd contact me after a decade to ask what is up, so I didn't type anything else. The "conversation" went no further.

I FEEL PRESSURE TO BE THE BREADWINNER, TOO
A couple of days after that, I received an e-mail from "Greg." The subject line was just my AIM handle, so I knew we were dealing with a hijacked account, unless poor Greg suffered a serious head injury, which I hope would have been tended to rather than having him send e-mails to long-out-of-touch acquaintances.

Hoping my computer wouldn't blow up, I clicked to read the message. Here it is, in its entirety:

You know it's a sad state of affairs because I actually considered clicking that link. After all, being the breadwinner is a high-pressure endeavor, particularly when most of the bread I've been hauling home is either stale crusts, or (as I paraphrase George Carlin) the first couple of slices of bread you walk your fingers over in order to reach the good bread.

Also, I can't recall anything in my life that made me say, "everything worked out in my favor." That would be filed with other phrases like, "I ate sensibly today" or "I completely satisfied my wife."

But better judgment prevailed, and I deleted the e-mail.

IT'S NOT OVER, FOLKS
As soon as I logged into my IM account the next day, and I mean at the split-second moment when I came on, I received an IM from "Greg." It was the same pink "hi," so I decided to have a little fun.

Unfortunately, it seemed to be some kind of spam-robot rather than a mugu 419 spammer in Nigeria, so I blocked the account.

And I'll always wonder whether Greg's other IM buddies have changed their lives to work everything out in their favor in order to win more bread.