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Dogbert Answers RTV Email Letter Number 4
Diehard fans of the Dilbert comic strip know that all inane letters to author Scott Adams are answered by his razor-witted creation, Dogbert. Rick, Brad, and Mark thought it would be really cool if they could solicit Dogbert to do the same for them - and then realized that Dogbert is only a cartoon character. But if Dogbert were available to answer RTV email, we believe it would look something like the responses shown below:
Solicitations and Felicitations
Mark here. This exchange began with an unsolicited commercial e-mail, otherwise known as spam.
Suffice it to say that I get a lot of spam. On an average day I get better than 30 spams ranging
from offers for products to increase the size of a particular perpendicular appendage, to unintelligle
spams written entirely in Russian. I'm not sure why people in Russia think I'll be able to read their
spam, but stupidity seems to be a common trait among spammers. I'm willing to bet that if I were to
have the Russian translated, it would include a testimonial from a former Soviet woman Olympic
athlete on the efficacy of the latest Chernobyl radioactive body hair removing gel, now with aloe.
While I pride myself on my ability to identify and delete spam with lightning speed, one recent spammer suckered me.
Here is the e-mail I received:
Now, I wasn't quite sure what it meant to register my rockets, but it sounded interesting and I followed the link.
Immediately, I could see that this didn't look like a rocketry web site. However, I spent another 5 minutes or so browsing around to make
sure I wasn't missing something. Sure enough, this was not a rocket web site, but simply a low class web services company. Kemper's innocuous looking
e-mail had fooled me.
Please understand, we at Rocket Team Vatsaas get many e-mails recommending various rocketry web sites.
Most of the time they are interesting and useful. More importantly, they usually have something to do with rocketry.
I was ticked at having wasted my time on this garbage, and I replied with a concise e-mail that conveyed my annoyance
without excessive rudeness:
Mark replies:
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To: Kemper Kefauver
Subject: Re: for your website
Please do not spam me again.
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I expected that would be the end of the matter, until I received this reply:
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From: Kemper Kefauver
To: Mark Vatsaas
Subject: RE: for your website
Hey, dips**t, I was responding to your link on your site about rockets
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I was shocked! I thought that I must have made a mistake. Perhaps Kemper was merely a visitor to Rocket Team Vatsaas
and thought he was doing us a favor. I looked more closely at his e-mail address and saw that it was not from Rocket Registration. This was getting worse!
Clearly, I had offended him. Perhaps he has no relation to Rocket Registration at all. If so, I would have to apologize.
I set about doing some research. First of all, I visited www.kemperkefauver.com The overarching theme of Kemper's site seems to be reliving
the glories of past drunken, asinine behavior. Visiting his site provided ample evidence that women should check to see if their blind dates have web sites
before going out with them. I don't recommend you visit it unless you like inane, sophomoric humor, and not very good inane, sophomoric humor at that.
A little additional reseach provided the important detail. www.kemperkefauver.com and www.rocketregistration.com
have something in common. They are both registered to, surprise:
kemperk@tampabay.rr.com
403 South Orion Ave
Clearwater, FL 33765 US
+1.7276429999
So, Kemper was not innocent after all. Now he had wronged me twice. Once by wasting my time with his annoying spam,
and a second time by insulting me with an obscenity and implying that I had asked for his spam.
Of course, at this point, a reply was a moral imperative. While this type of thing is normally delegated to Dogbert, I wanted to give this one my personal attention. My initial reaction of having made a mistake provided the inspiration for the following:
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To: Kemper Kefauver
Subject: Re: for your website
Kemper,
My apologies. This is obviously a foolish misunderstanding on my part and entirely my fault. After all, I received an e-mail from you containing nothing more than a link to your www.rocketregistration.com web site and that should have been more than sufficient for me to devine the intent of your correspondence.
Even though your web site:
A) sells domain registration, web hosting and web site design services,
B) references the word 'rocket' only in the name and an occasional promise to 'rocket above the competition,' and
C) has nothing at all to do with model rocktetry and has no links to anything rocketry related,
for to assume that this was a commercial solicitation was completely unjustified.
If I correctly understand your last reply, I have a link on my web site asking for businesses in which I have no interest to send me e-mail. That would explain all the unsolicited commercial e-mail (commonly known as 'spam') which I receive on a daily basis. Apparently, all this spam has been my fault all along. If you would be so kind as to point out to me the location of this link on my web site, I can remove the link and not waste the time of such well intentioned businessmen as yourself, who are merely trying to help me out by providing me with services I don't need.
Thank you, once again, for your helpfulness in this matter.
Sincerely,
Mark Vatsaas
P.S. Allow me to complement you on your fine use of profanity and insults to promote your business. Your concern for your professional image in the eyes of your customers is plain to see. However, I think I may be able to provide you some assistance. As an erudite person such as yourself would know, proper grammar is a must for inspiring confidence in your abilities. For this reason, I wish to point out to you that in the context in which you used it, 'Dips**t' is a proper name and should be capitalized. Had you said, "Hey, you dips**t..." then it would have been an adjective and the lowercase usage would have been correct. Also, you are missing a period at the end of your sentence.
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The appropriate response at this point would have been, of course, a quick apology followed by some heart-felt groveling, and concluding with an expansive compliment on the wittiness of my scribings.
What I received instead was ... ... nothing! How unsatisfying! I was looking forward to another round of taunting. Never being one who was willing to leave well enough alone, I sent another retort:
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To: Kemper Kefauver
Subject: Re: for your website
Kemper,
What? No response? I am disappointed. I had expected another round of your witty repartee - perhaps something along the lines of, "Shut up, you Poopy-head!"
Sincerely,
Mark Vatsaas
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I did get a response this time.
Apparently Kemper had some items drop off his calendar after about six months, because he suddenly found he had more time for our foolishness:
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From: Kemper Kefauver
To: Mark Vatsaas
Subject: STOP NOW
I really though (sic) this $h#t was over. I honestly believed, (by the verbage of your site) that you wanted links to ANYTHING relating to rockets. I NEVER SPAMMED YOU! I apologize for the mistake. And I am sick of your accusations. If the propaganda about me is not removed immediately from you (sic) site, I will file charges!
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And Mark's reply:
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To: Kemper Kefauver
Subject: Re: for your website
Kemper,
What a delight to hear from you again. I was beginning to think that you didn't care about me. I am pleased to see that your vocabulary has expanded to include words with more than three syllables. I am further gratified to know that you have not lost your gift for 'colorful' language.
I am, however, aggrieved to learn that you are still of the opinion that I have wronged you in some way. More specifically, in three ways:
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That my characterization of your e-mail as spam is false.
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That my web site did in fact invite you to send me a link to your web site when I have denied the existence of said invitation.
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That I have engaged in propaganda about you.
I respectfully invite you to consider the definition of spam, which is published at the following URL: http://mail-abuse.org/standard.html
I believe that your e-mail falls with precision into this definition. However, as in my previous correspondence, I invite you to tell me where on the Rocket Team Vatsaas web site I can find verbiage requesting that you send me links. I have performed a thorough search of our web site for the word 'link' and can find no such request. Because you have apologized for your mistake, I must conclude that you now agree with me that, in fact, no part of the Rocket Team Vatsaas web site ever solicited your e-mail with a link to your commercial venture.
Furthermore, despite having been accused of possessing an imagination that stretches well into the bizarre, I find myself confounded when I attempt to ascertain how your web site possesses, as you claim, anything "relating to rockets." I will concede that the word 'rocket' does appear in the name of your business, and you do make use of fatuous rocketry metaphors. But if that qualifies your site as "relating to rockets" then the Rocket Team Vatsaas web site is related to sausages with attention deficit disorder because it has 'hyper-links'. Perhaps you can enlighten me, and elaborate on the relevance of your web site to the hobby of model rocketry.
Finally I will address your assertion that I have engaged in propoganda about you. Miriam-Webster online defines the word 'propaganda' as follows:
Main Entry: pro·pa·gan·da
Pronunciation: "prä - pə - 'gan - də"
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin, from Congregatio de propaganda fide Congregation for propagating the faith, organization established by Pope Gregory XV died 1623
Date: 1718
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capitalized : a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions
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the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person
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ideas, facts, or allegations spread deliberately to further one's cause or to damage an opposing cause; also : a public action having such an effect
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Normally in correspondence such as this, I would assume that you do not believe that I am comparing you to "a congregation of the Roman curia having jurisdiction over missionary territories and related institutions." However, because you have repeatedly implied that your web site is somehow "relating to rocketry" I suspect that such an assumption may be premature. If it is not too much trouble, please confirm for me that you do not perceive me as having likened you to a body of cardinals and officials forming an administrative division of the papal curia. For the moment, I will continue under the presumption that definition number 2 was what you intended to convey. Please correct me if this presumption is in error.
Though you were not specific about what you believed to be propaganda, I'll take a further risk and assume that you are referring to the page http://vatsaas.org/rtv/misc/mail4.aspx which documents the e-mail exchange you initiated back in January of 2003. Certainly the first clause of the definition applies to this page, because it does "spread information." However, the second clause does not, as the page was not created "for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person." The page was created because I found the entire situation exceedingly funny. So, I must contest your assertion that I have engaged in propaganda. As I cannot remove something that does not exist, I am afraid I will be unable to comply with your demand.
However, I am interested in knowing what kind of charges you are threatening to file. I will hazard a guess that one charge might be libel. I would caution you against this path, however, as you would be certain to fail to prove libel on my part. To qualify as libel, you must show that I have made defamatory statements, and the statement(s) alleged to be defamatory must also be a false statement of fact. Since name-calling, hyperbole, or exaggerated and heated words cannot be proven true or false, they cannot be the subject of a libel claim. As the plaintiff, you would have the burden of proving that my factual statements are false. Since my statements simply document the e-mail we exchanged, quoting you word-for-word, they are factually solid. Your e-mail used the plural word 'charges' and I cannot think of what other charge you might have in mind. Please do elaborate for me. In the meantime, please do not be offended if I take your threat of "filing charges" and place it in my "circular file."
I would like to conclude by saying thank-you for your apology. It pleases me to hear you acknowledge that you were in the wrong to send me your unsolicited e-mail regarding your commercial venture. I must confess that I find your explanation for sending this e-mail incredible, but even so I gladly accept your apology. I will update my web site with this information at my earliest opportunity. I further invite you to apologize for insulting me and wasting my time with your unsolicited commercial e-mail. Should you provide such an apology, I will happily replace the existing account on my web site with your apology to show that you have repented of your offense. I will even state that you are a swell guy, without referring to your ego.
Sincerely,
Mark Vatsaas
P.S. May I commend to you the use of a grammar checker? It would, no doubt, enhance the quality of your correspondence and mitigate the risk of miscommunication. Also, you might find a thesaurus helpful in replacing certain four letter words with less offensive synonyms.
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Lessons learned:
- Don't expect an imbecile to admit his mistakes. It is not in his nature to recognize that he is an imbecile.
- When looking to do business on the web, do a Google search on the owner. If you find a story like this that demonstrates that the owner is foul-mouthed, foul-tempered and
and fowl-brained, you will be glad you found out before you gave him your money.
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