Waiting for his Lady

He's been waiting for his lady,
He's sitting nigh beside the sea
Her blue eyes, sweet perfume,
and the affection he wants to feel
With memories of their love affair,
the sweet nothings that they've shared
His mind is in a state of glee,
and the boy he's waiting by the sea
In that old place where they used to meet,
by the tall green palm tree discrete

He inscribes in sand his amour's name,
in a lettering that's not always same
Gently the sea washes it away, and he writes yet again
he knows the hours that've passed, aren't going in vain
She must be on her way to that place,
picking up flowers or tying them a lace

Her favorite sweets he has got today,
a romantic tune he's humming by the bay
His old six-stringer guitar lies by his side,
today he's learnt two riffs and a slide
He's brought it to sing her a blues song,
a song of his love for her golden hair so long
Of her blue eyes, and graceful moves,
her silken clothes and their lovely hues

Butterflies in his pockets, an old cap for the sunny day,
and that suit he'd inherited after grandpa went away
"Fame and fortune" she says, "are things sublime."
"What matters is I'm yours and you mine"

'She must be on her way' he thinks,
with a twinkle in his eyes each time he blinks
He thinks of what to her he'll say,
and how they'll spend that lovely day

He's waiting for his lady, singing songs beside the sea,
and he'll sit all day under that very palm tree
He is waiting for his lady, thinking about her is he,
for them love isn't easy, just like for you and me.
He's going to wait for his love the whole day by the sea,
and soon she'll come to him, and so believes he...

—Abd elAzeez

Kazaam! This one's about Spam!

Abd's Takes
on Spam Emails!

Word under perusal: spam
Pronunciation: 'spam
Function: noun and verb
Meaning: unsolicited usually commercial e-mail sent to a large number of addresses

Well well, that's the formal part of it, and so to speak, the only formal part of it. Yes ladies and gentlemen, there are neither boundaries of formalities, nor the shackles of communication etiquette when it comes to spam. Nothing beats the inventive minds behind each uniquely crafted and (personally?) sent out spam message.

Each day, we receive a large amount of spam in our inboxes; and at times one can almost guess if a message could be spam or not by just looking at the subject line, but then there are cleverly crafted ones as well that don't let us get away so easily.

Soliciting emails from companies selling 'medication', to delirious singles from the same city as you are in, coupled with far away 'relatives' from some unknown desert in southwest africa trying to give us half their wealth, added with some lonely and disparate (that's not a typo :-) housewives waiting for the perfect man who they co-incidentally? think is you, with help from a few exercise evangelists who somehow know you're worried about a weight problem, accompanied with banks and finance companies ready to give you that house loan you can't remember applying for ever, alongwith lottery promotions telling your email won a million dollars just because it had an extra 'edge' in it and stock-brokers who've got the best practical insight into your financial situation, and not to forget the love gurus who claim to know the answer to the eternal question of what women really want from a man (you mean there's more in that list?), clutter millions of inboxes like ours each day.

In all this mindless plethora of genuinely fake emails, one question that arises in my head is "do spammers ever get anything sold?" I mean, with kazillions of spam emails sent out every day, spam tactics should have 'evolved' much faster than uncle Darwin with his bunch of baboons [no offence intended to any monkeys (evolved or under-evolved) please].

Jokes (?) apart, one continues to be amazed at the fact that spammers think we will be able to sieve through all their un-decipherable gibberish and figure out the no-doubt sensible practical and financial advices contained therein.

Imagine, starting off an email with a line like "The window is useful, but accumulates scratches incredibly fast because of the extremely sensitive latex material it is made up of", and then describing stuff that's unmentionable for family blog viewing, and then finally onto the main part of all this painstaking write-up with "CHFR is climbing steady all week. Up over 23% since Monday, investors are enjoying the solid climb. Read CHFR's recent news, and get on it.
China Fruits Corporation
Symbol: CHFR
Price: $0.42".
Yes sir Mr Spammer sir, I definitely see where you are getting at with that.
And there was one email from Wynona Woodsworth (name sound familiar anyone?), with the subject 'RE: did we speak on orkut today?' and before I can get excited about the prospects, I find the email is actually for some William (hmm...), and it seems Wynona is penning down her thoughts on which 'medication' is selling cheapest and how it will help good ol' billy save his taxes. Nice stuff to discuss in Orkut scrapbooks, people.

Sometimes you can almost see a pattern in the methods which spammers have adopted in order to make up that one eye-catching subject line. Seems like there could be very well be a B-school out there churning out spammers in thousands in batches differentiated only on the basis of the methodologies taught in them. Like for example, some spammers these days seem to have adopted the approach of having (arguable) witty one-liners as their email subject, for instance 'best way to get a dog, donate a bone', [yikes!] 'Look no further, eat that toe-nail' [ouch!], 'From the desk of WagMy FatTail' [I swear I want to speak to his man, just so I can pronounce his name on his face once] 'Get your life back, fill that prescription' [whoa! which one?], 'Extra large round juicy sweatshirts' [or was it sweaty juice shirts? nevermind]...

Others still have taken to the business tactic of impress your target with profanity. They churn out email subjects like '@!#@$@ you in ^&$%@!' and 'With stuff like &$%%^&' and '$@#%% $^#% all the way upto the @*&&^' [Oh sorry spammers for umm.. whatever I've done to annoy you that much...] [And yes, I've got word-filters in place on this blog :D].

Recently there's been a spate of emails from people who's deceased relatives had somehow before passing away, told them about contacting me for taking care of their billion dollar fortune for them. [Oh how I wish that were true, I'd buy all those shares from CHFR that's climbing the stocks so well]...

And so spam continues to clutter our inboxes hour after hour, and day after day. And gathering from how the well their industry is doing, it seems that as long as there is email communication on the internet there will be spam.

Come to think of it, with the new era of voice email, and net to phone (and vice-versa) communications coming up in full swing, do we envision spam in visual form too? Could spam ever cross the boundaries of text and cross over to the realms of voice and video? Will spammers now begin recording personalized messages or will they use the silly sounding text-to-speech converters to do their job? And do we think I might ever get to 'hear' from Mr WagMy FatTail? [damn! I'd even considering buying what he has to sell with name sounding like that]

I for one, just cant wait for the next level of spam advertising. Seriously, there has to be intelligent life out there, [no offence O ye existing spammers,] just waiting for the opportune moment to start smart spamming, and when it does, I guess we're in for a hilarious riot! Until then, we'll have to live with those that have no name, but just the power to spam!... in text mode!

—Abd elAzeez
______________________________________________________________________

The copyrighted [mini?] series titled Abd's takes, is a collection of humorous blog posts comprising of completely original but wierd/ obnoxious/ unfathomable/ and seldom-light-hearted tid-bits of humor that are a product of my own twisted mind.

Feel free to use them where-ever you want to, just don't forget to 'quote the author' (in simpler terms, mention me!)
If you don't, then bad things might happen to you; things like forgetting the punch-line when in the middle of an elaborately told joke, or meeting an audience-member who knows the answers to all of your original 'amusing-riddles'.

:-]

A soldier of the coming years...

Do we know how it feels to lose a loved one?
Do we know how it feels when nothing can be done?
Except bury the pain inside, and let the tears subside?
How does it feel when one night's journey seems the longest ride?

They plunged into the war, to protect their village, their dignity
Rode away into the desert, to face their deadliest enemy
Had to save their women, the adversaries were taking away,
And the children who's fathers they'd executed the other day

They rode on horses as fast as they could,
Laying a trap for the foes who were taking the loot
Attacked them with their best, with everything they had
With their swords, their rifles, on horsebacks, and white robe clad

Not the perfect match, against the enemy's machine gun
Still they fought from all sides, attacking as one
The adversaries they too were very well-prepared
All arms and ammunition they promptly bared

Our heroes fought bravely, driven by just one goal
To save the captive prisoners from perishing into a dark hole
With their war cry out loud, they attacked
Like mad men, they tore upon the enemy's pack
A bloody battle between them ensued
In that desert part, the one seclude

By the Grace of the Lord, they then overcame
The foes, they were all now a campaign tame

Then they returned back to the village in victory
Everyone rejoiced as the horse-riders returned in glory
People of each household rushed to welcome their men,
while others thanked HIM for the safety of their women

There were drums beating a victory beat everywhere,
The heroes were returning, there was glory in the air
With bated breath the womenfolk awaited their men
And seeing them, they ran to welcome and to hug them then

The children too, their tiny lips and their tender hands,
Praying for their fathers' safe return from the desert sands
And when each came back, his children rejoiced
The wife was thankful, her eyes were moist

All prayers seemed answered that day, but not little Ali's
His mother, she then began dreading what it is
At last his father's white horse it returned
But atop it, was no white-clad figure to be discerned

Only one horse returned empty that hot afternoon
And the little boy just couldn't figure out why
Although two dry monsoons have passed without a boon
He stil can't understand what made mamma back then cry

His father he thinks, is still somewhere far away
Fighting with the enemy, or gathering lambs gone astray
His mother has now learnt to hide her tears
Since now he is to become the soldier of the coming years...

—Abd elAzeez