Junked

I decided to click. You know those blue links on the side of semi-sketchy websites like http://www.starchamber.com/paracelsus/elvish/elvish-in-ten-minutes.html – where you just go because, I mean… who doesn’t want to learn how to spell their name in Elvish in just ten short minutes? Well, let’s not dwell on the fact that I am, indeed, one of those people who is totally into that. No. I’m talking about those blue hyperlinks on the side. They’re advertisements for even more sketch websites that  you don’t even notice because you are so accustomed to seeing them and subconsciously making the assumption that they are not the kind of rabbit that you want to follow. Maybe it’s sheer boredom, or maybe it’s Sagan standing up to those scary junk mailin, virus ridden, badly designed outcasts of the Internet and sayin “Hey-  what are you all about anyway?”

The link I clicked was one that would supposedly divulge “7 FACTS YOU DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOUR PERSONALITY AND FUTURE. BUT SHOULD!” Well, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I’m tempted. If a gypsy approached me on the street with the proposition of telling my future (instead of shoving dried sage  into the top buttonhole of my coat and then pleading I make a small donation for the needy children of England), I would probably be much obliged to be in the know. I mean if she knows, shouldn’t I know? I don’t want people selfishly parading around with knowledge about MY life. I should be in on that shit.

So I signed up.

It’s really not as bad as it seems. The worst thing about these garbage sites is that they send you TONS of pointless dribble about new programs and offers and donations and 35 fresh unopened messages in an inbox that you didn’t even know existed. I mean who wants to shift through all that just to get to your daily installment of Don Quixote? “Not I” said the Sagan. So, for this reason, I have created a decoy email address. That’s right, I caught on. Early last summer I decided that I wanted to sign up for Urbandictionary.com’s word of the day. But. I mean. That’s a lot of commitment. Because once those bad boys start rollin in, they’re gonna get all piled up and unread, and then eventually I’ll just start deleting them before I even read them and then it would just be a waste of time for one human and one Mail List Robot. So instead, I created a new email specifically to receive such frequently posted… well… junk. And it is in this inbox, that I will uncover 7 things I NEED to know about my future.

Here I will be posting the ‘correspondence’ between Sagan and the future according to Blair Gorman from Numerologist.com. It may very well end after this first message, being that it sounds like an absolute crock. But hopefully this can last at least a month.

MESSAGE ONE

So I got another one this morning. Really more prompt than I imagined. I can see why people get into these things and start paying some guy named Blair to tell them everything about themselves. We’re all a little curious. Luckily I’m also really frugal.

MESSAGE TWO

UPDATE:

OK. This started out as a total joke. As a “hey, let’s see what great hidden humor junk mail may still possess” kind of thing. I am not one to subscribe to any kind of nonsense. While I am not priggish by any means, I am quite the cynic. There have been few times in my life that I have taken the opinions (or as many subscribers to these opinions call them, “facts”) of others to heart. I have always been skeptical of the mystic, the unknown, the phantasmal. I will say that I am no advocate of the Christian religion, while I believe moral guidance is incredibly important, I cannot honestly give myself to something that involves faith. I will not leap until I have seen (or know someone who has seen) what is on the other side of the precipice. That being said, this is kind of freaking me out. Sometimes I get my Tarot cards read, because, well, I like to think of it as a really cheap psychologist. It is an excuse for me to be paid attention to, for my past, present, and future to be the concern of another person. Sometimes it is nice to be taken care of in that way, to be understood for what you are, or at least what the cards say you are (or what you choose to tell your psychologist). Sometimes the results of these readings hit a little too close to home, but I dismiss the ‘knowledge of the cards’ as the very good people-reading skills of the interpreter. I will say, though, as my mother has commented below, that the assumptions of this Blair Gorman, are eerily “right on.” I cannot say that Blair Gorman is a good people-reader, because I have never met him face-to-face and probably never will. He can make no sound conjectures from my email address or my name. I could be anyone, I could be a fake, I could me a robot. My cynicism is now being publicly put to the test. How should I react? Should I feign disbelief? Should I act as though I knew this would be the result, that somehow this person has taken the time to gain access to my private information? He does, indeed have my full name and birth date, most certainly he would be able to learn something of my past (and therefore make assumptions about my future) from the information available to him on the Internet (my scholastic achievements, my film awards, this blog). But I am hesitant to make this assumption because that kind of research involves time. Time in retrieving this information, and then creating some kind of ‘soul’ profile from the accumulated data. I cannot give Blair that kind of credit, there is no financial guarantee for him, no assurance that I will take the bait and spend my preciously saved dollars on a half price reading. So what is it? I will say that I do not know. And I can say that with complete confidence.

MESSAGE THREE

And then there was this. Which I didn’t even get through, so I don’t expect you to either. I see how it works, bait line and sinker to a tune of 67 bucks… mighty mighty might.
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