Saturday, August 06, 2005

Two Odd Emails Received

I've gotten two especially odd emails lately. One is this:

Glad I red up 2 wea u say ur Saidian respons is stil instinctiv or I'd have left so shockd @ how intelectual modesty can b used 2 let academic imperialism off ze hook. Ze Saidian instinct can hardly stand orientalism masquerading as neutral scholarship in pursuit of knowledge 4 tze sake of knowledge

That's it, exactly as it was sent. At first I thought I was actually getting hate-mail via SMS! Otherwise, how to account for the weirdly compressed writing style? And the conversion of "th" into "z"? But in fact, it's over 138 characters, so it isn't SMS.

Also, the name of the person checked out with Google. He appears to be a young African man in the UK, who was pretty active in the recent G-8/Live-8 media whirlwind. I still don't know what the heck he's saying in this email, though. I think it has something to do with my 'postcolonial theory' essay from a few weeks ago.

The second is a little bit sad:

Sir
I want to learn Hindi.My mother tongue is Urdu.Please
help me.

Sorry my friend, I don't think I can help you. Still, all the best to you in learning a language you basically already know.

1 Comments:

sepoy said...

maybe the second one is talking about the script and as for the first one 1 H4v3 n0 1|}34 wH47 H3 15 74LK1n6 480U7. I think i got that wrong.

Anyways, I got a comment recently from some kid who was denied an exam in Punjab and he wanted me to help him. Another email wanted help with an asylum application. love the internets.

12:37 PM  

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