7,

-Purse shopper quote: "This is, like, eating my armpit."-

And I had two dreams last night, of which I remember a minimum. One was attending an orientation at a college (I think) and in the other I think I was a character in a book. Still doing two glasses of water at lunch, three at dinner, and a travel mug of water just before bed. I think the problem is that I'm going to bed too late and thus don't become alert early enough to catch the dreams.

A young man I know is in his junior year of high school, which means only one thing: endless reams of college mail, both to his poor overloaded inbox and his actual snail-mail box. Well, let me just tell you, he is the sort of guy that kind of sits in the background, quiet, observing, until...

In this case, the idea dawned on him when he realized that virtually every email directs him to a form that requests, along with his name, address, and other sundries (so they can innundate him with paper spam), his "preferred first name". Now, at first this puzzled him, since to his knowledge very few people have a preferred first name besides their REAL first name (at least not that they'd want colleges using), but then he saw an opportunity. The next time he got an email asking him to consider a college he wasn't remotely interested in, he filled out the form... and inserted a preferred first name:

Rensalmon.

He continued with the next piece of spam, and the next.

Ahasapeshtim.

O fount of all knowledge.

Deagol. (ring a bell? Smeagol's perhaps the more famous of the two)

Handsome.

And so forth. Now he's looking forward to college spam, because of the awesome rush that comes with an actual paper copy of "Dear Ahasapeshtim, here is the 'Guide to Picking a College (hint, hint: pick ours)' you requested..." And I'm trying to convince him to frame the letters.

Reality check. Don't you just love automated systems?