Today's Guest Spammer: James Joyce

Funny that just yesterday I mentioned writing a post in the style of James Joyce, because today in my spam folder there appeared a refreshing piece of spam that neither asked me to accept large sums of money from a dying foreigner nor go to a questionable website to receive a kiss from a stranger. Instead, it could easily have been written by Joyce, because it is total stream-of-conscience with a hint of a story emerging:

Or challenging or inviting one another to go in swimming. The boys in the Boy's Town used to make the motion of swimming with both arms; or they held up the forefinger and middle-finger in the form of a swallow-tail; they did this when it was necessary to be secret about it, as in school, and when they did not want the whole crowd of boys to come along; and often when they just pretended they did not want some one to know. They really had to be secret at times, for some of the boys were not allowed to go in at all; others were forbidden to go in more than once or twice a day; and as they all _had_ to go in at least three or four times a day, some sort of sign had to be used that was understood among themselves alone. Since this is a true history, I had better own that they nearly all, at one time or other, must have told lies about it, either before or after the fact, some habitually, some only in great extremity. Here and there a boy, like my boy's elder brother, would not tell lies at all, even about going in swimming; but by far the greater number bowed to their hard fate, and told them. They promised that they would not go in, and then they said that they had not been in; but Sin, for which they had made this sacrifice, was apt to betray them. Either they got their shirts on wrong side out in dressing, or else, while they were in, some enemy came upon them and tied their shirts. There are few cruelties which public opinion in the boys' world condemns, but I am glad to remember, to their honor, that there were not many in that Boy's Town who would tie shirts; and I fervently hope that there is no boy now living who would do it. As the crime is probably extinct, I will say that in those wicked days, if you

And that's where it ends. Tantalizing, isn't it? What happens next? And what is the purpose of this bit of literary refuse? The only other thing in the email was a jpeg labeled "seamstress," which I was not crazy enough to open. It seems to be a story about a bunch of jeuvenile delinquents swimming without permission, although the line about "my boy's older brother" did puzzle me, since wouldn't the older brother of your son also be your son? Unless they are half-brothers. Luckily nobody ties shirts these days. How did they ever survive those terrible shirt-tying times? Count your blessings that you didn't have to live through that!

Famous Hat