mostly david ephgrave

Over the last few days, I’ve been very organised (for me) and tidied up my computer desktop and email inbox. The latter was the most in need of attention and that’s an understatement; for a number of years now, I’ve had literally thousands of unread emails (just a little under four thousand, to be a little more detailed) and while they were all of no importance - and most could be deleted - I’m sure it will make a real difference, psychologically speaking, to not be confronted by such a big number when I log in. That’s not to say that I didn’t have a system for spotting if I had something to attend to; as ridiculous as this may sound, I always knew at which point my unread stack tended to total at - normally around the 3,420 mark - so anything above that would have just come in. This is similar to the bit in Spinal Tap when the documentary host asks Nigel Tufnell why he doesn’t just make ten louder instead of going up to eleven; there was logic to ...

It's disconcerting to receive emails like this in your inbox.   Is it a death threat? Have I only got 2.29 days left? If someone’s taken out a contract on me, they shouldn’t be leaving a paper trail, even if it’s only in an internet sense. Or are they okay as long as no-one prints it out? This campaign only works assu ming you’ve committed to memory what Thebestof a re counting down in the first place. Clearly I haven’t, or I wouldn’t be writing this. Or maybe I have and I’m being obtuse (or trying to find something to flesh out a blog post.) This isn’t the only confusing subject-line to appear in my inbox this week. On Thursday, I received this: The question is, where’s Duncan?

Nothing starts the day better than receiving a cheery email. Stumbling across this as I scrolled through my mobile inbox yesterday with a bowl of Sainsbury's Wholewheat Biscuits in one hand and a cat on my lap (God knows how it got there, as don't own any pets) put a spring in my step that lasted until bedtime. "Oh yes, of course ," I said to myself, "I'm going to die , and something will have to be done with my remains. But would I prefer to decompose over an extended period, or be burnt to a crisp?"  I’m glad I wasn’t eating toast. I'd like to think that I'm a realist. I'm also not particularly squeamish. Perhaps society would be better prepared to face mortality - and the inevitable admin that comes with shuffling off of it - if we didn't sweep these thoughts under the carpet. How will my family know I'd like my corpse to be fired from a cannon into the barrel of a second bigger cann...

Should I click on the link? I’m not asking because I'm concerned about my intimate statistics. I just want to know for certain if the email is spam. A number of things suggest it is: the eccentric spacing of the subject text; the sender’s name (who’s called Eudora, for Chrissakes?); the unusual accents in the content (no-one puts a breve over the I in ‘penis’). The fact it’s about engorgement of the male member suggests it’s unsolicited, but that’s not my main concern. The reason I’m dubious is I received another email recently about cheap watches, and the formatting was too similar to be a coincidence.    It’s got to be shifty. They’ve got to come from the same source. There’s nothing wrong with running a business with more than one specialty (like cobbler / locksmiths), but incorporating time-keeping with genitalia is a step too far. There’s no such thing as a cock-clock. It must be hard making a living in penis enhancement w...