The Boston Diaries

The ongoing saga of a programmer who doesn't live in Boston, nor does he even like Boston, but yet named his weblog/journal “The Boston Diaries.”

Go figure.

Sunday, November 22, 2020

All I wanted was a surreal email conversation with a confused recipient

I've had a Google email account now for sixteen years. I don't use it for anything, preferring to run my own email server, thank you very much. And even after all this time, I still get email for other Sean Conners (that is, a number of other people called “Sean Conner,” not one person called “Sean Conners”).

I recently received an email for Sean Conner that consisted of nothing but pictures of a pickup truck. And another one trying to remind me that my mom is turning 90 this year. Or my Aunt Marge. It was kind of hard to make out how I was supposed to be related to Marge, despite the fact that I have no Aunt Marge, nor was my mom called Marge.

Most of these I reply back in a straightforward manner informing the sender that they have mistaken my email address for that of their Sean Conner. But one message I got though …

From
Jen <XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXX@gmail.com>
To
<seanconner@gmail.com>
Subject
RE: Sean
Date
Sat, 31 Oct 2020 23:56:00 -0500

Sean, are you near Tuxedopark?

It had been three weeks since that came in. And the word “Tuxedopark” just screamed a custume shop, or maybe formal wear. The fact that it was sent on All Hallow's Eve just cemented the connection in my head. Anyway, for this one, I just didn't feel like a straight forward reply was enough, and I decided that a surrealistic reply was called for.

From
Sean Conner <sean.conner@gmail.com>
To
Jen <XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXX@gmail.com>
Subject
RE: Sean
Date
Fri, 20 Nov 2020 04:53:00 -0500

Wow! That was weird! I was near Tuxedopark to rent my costume when this portal just popped into existence and swallowed me up. I can't go into details about what happened because I would be here all night, but I finally got out. Who won the election? Who's the President? Do you know?

I was expecting one of two things here—one, that I would start engaging in a very surreal conversation about my adventures across the 8TH dimention to a very confused Jen, or I would hear nothing back. Instead I got:

From
Jen <XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXX@gmail.com>
To
<seanconner@gmail.com>
Subject
RE: Sean
Date
Fri, 20 Nov 2020 06:39:00 -0500

Sean, I live near you!
My name is Jen, I am 31, and still very pretty
My pics are in my profile on this site: http:XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­XXXXX­X

Sign up there, it is free!
and find me, my nickname is Jenn_C!

A crummy commercial? Son of a XXXXX! Come on Google! I thought you were supposed to be good at catching spam!

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