Odyssey into the terrifying world of one Ms. Recipient's messy and overpopulated Inbox

This email began with the ambling keystrokes of one Mr. Sender, pressed through the telltale precision of a ten digit wielding writer with vacuous chasms for a brain. No thoughts could churn upstairs, so this email is poorly devoid of worthwhile content. All the same, it occupies space, and oh what space it occupies! Letters and words and sentences, all lined up in sequence in an overt attempt at being meaningful while still without meaning.

If this email could tell its story, it would tell of its communion with the digital gods as it hurdled past scrutinizing network devices, shedded off its outer TCP layers in a desperate attempt at passing on its seminal data to the next transport layer. It would, if it could, tell of its ordeal through Bayesian spam filters and the harsh interrogations thereafter of its header. Oh, if only it could tell these things and more!

This email, however, is quite silent, as all its strength to reveal its odyssey was drained by the very odyssey itself and the maddening hours it spent enveloped in solitude, awaiting deliverance. It clings, nonetheless, with the last ounce of its spirit before it decays into your post-read trashbin, to solemnly deliver, as any duty-bound email would, the laconic message of its author. Therefore, with this email's dying breath, it reveals unto you, oh most valued deity of the Inbox, these words:

Yo, it's me.

'sup? You weren’t online. Msg me when you’re back.

Ciao.

I Service the Machine that Services the Machine

Every morning before breakfast, a whistle shoots up high above the rooftops of the nearby service station and blows with all the fury it can muster a high-pitched "Wheeet." That’s the sign. That’s the sign that a baby lord machine has been hatched. We the servicemen rush from our homes, leaving our cereal bowls vacated. Forty leaps with all the might our legs can afford and the service station’s door is in sight. A swipe of the badge and a careful walk past the sterile threshold to the station reveals the little lord machine, shining wetly and acquainting itself with servicemachines fondly dabbing warm cloth on its chassis to prevent any buckles during the cooling process. This time of day is always a treat, since it is the only time we servicemen can gaze upon a lord machine. Our task is not to care for it directly, but to ensure all the servicemachines who do care for it are well cared for themselves. All one servicemachine need do is let us see its light lit orange and four of us will come walking hurriedly to it with clean oil, chilled water, and a sizable, freshly charged battery pack. Mere feet away from a lord machine, our pride swells; to attend to the machine directly attending a lord machine is a privilege bestowed upon the few, the lucky.

priestcraft, a pious ode

Adult children kneel before you in scores, awaiting you, a master raconteur who serves sweetened thousand year old stories. None resist these delicious tales, salted with reactionary principles, peppered with donation-box chicaneries.

O, your humility knows no bounds; first we are made a plaintive lot, then your philanthropy saves us from our dismay. Your predilection for our salvation keeps us in your edacious embrace, shielded from recreants and their infectiously latitudinarian ways.

You offer such elegant sophistry, simplifying the multifarious thinking one otherwise needs. One hardly could reproduce such a spectacularly specious feat.

O, how greatly you enamor your flock, professing the virtues of moderation on gilded podiums, abstinence under the sanguine light of stained-glass windows, and the teachings of an ascetic in such a meretriciously preternatural an abode.

You have no need for red piping, your white suffices; your machinations are the envy of cabals the world over.

ascent of a sycophant

Buggy-eyed with a grimace covering half his face, the unskilled sycophant is not beautiful. Contortions and contractions of those facial muscles of his manage ugly smiles in even the most trying of times. Near his master, the sycophant is bowing, radiating a glow of appreciation and humble affection. He is not respected; the intentions of the unskilled sycophant are too thinly veiled.

The skilled sycophant is just as uncouth, but cloaked especially well. He does not bow, he does not flinch, he does not strain his face into a smile. A master fraternizer, he keeps and grows his good graces with those he needs to. Ostentatious and reveling, he carefully accomplishes one or two things. This man is no fool; he sheaths his lies and deceit within genuineness. He will not yell at you, he will not fight you on any single day. Yet, cross him and beware: his unsheathed vitriol will seep like ink and stain black any reputable man within the year.

Brave men turn fools, honest men turn cowards; none challenges the skilled sycophant who now only grows in power. I remain waiting, to see whether it is the fool or the coward I have become. I so loathe the skilled sycophant; he soon may be my master.

the phoenix and chaos stalemate

Wonderful curtains flow down from mounts above the windows. Baby blue, I think the color is, with some embroidery I haven't looked closely enough in years to see. A nice ornate lamp in a corner lets off a comforting yellow glow. Fresh chequered sheets and a down comforter wrap around me on a large bed. All wonderful, all great, none my doing.

My contributions are seen on the other side of the room, the side with lamps unlit because brown paper bags I have to unpack guard them like Cerberus. Stacks of envelopes spread themselves haphazardly on a polished oak table like a recently felled house of cards. The letter-opener has been misplaced for some time; torn and disfigured envelopes tell their dying tale. Some checks need depositing, some bills need paying, all the letters have dates two weeks old. Soon, soon they will be taken care of.

Here I lie, my presence bringing about chaos to the erstwhile order -- not the chaos so foul that remedies are immediately taken. Here brews a more dangerous chaos, the cunning, sly, mischievous kind naively smiled at for its disorderly cuteness.

Unshaven since friday, disheveled and with only a faint recollection of sunlight, I am indeed the most unfitting object in this entire room. Tomorrow by daybreak my obsolescence ends and I vanish, replaced by a rejuvenated man I pray will right my wrongs. He never does, not thoroughly. Chaos fools him also.