Best Emails Evs 2005

so remember that idea i had about a post consisting entirely of quotes from emails that friends have written me? well here it is. i have tried to abstain from excessively personal correspondence (although that is often the best reading), so i hope that those who find themselves below will feel honored, and that everyone else will try to get onto next years "best emails evs" post by regaling me with witty remarks.

Winner of the Warm and Fuzzy Award

“italy is going very well. i am in Bologna for the year studying scienze politiche, i've moved in with some people following an advert found on the street. they are one guy and three girls who are all 4 or 5 years older than me. we have a dog called bruno who has befriended me with open arms (his head i on my lap as i type) as have the others, though it is difficult to be funny and interesting when the extent of one's conversational vocab barely covers the weather. this i will have to do something about. my italian is improving at a rate though and i'm getting the feeling of being sucked into a new warm pool the further on i go, where the rest of the world seems strange and i look back on england with a slightly detatched perspective. i have never experienced this before. i think that for all the travelling ive done, this is the first time that i am playing the role of participant rather than observer.” –Paddy Wells 9/23/05

Winner of the Most Humorous Depression Award

“I've had to revert to smoking as a
means of self-expressive/destructive sublimation of my emotions.

Bah. It's cold outside and I feel like I've been licking ashtrays. I
don't want to travel over Thanksgiving weekend and I have no interest
in making deals with Jonathan so I can go dodge stray bullets in
Baltimore. I want to go to bed.” –Karin Isaacson 11/17/05

Winners of the Best Rant Award (Tied)

“I don't really care very much about chemistry or physics, and I'm not
really sure I know enough about the Peace Prize winner to have an
opinion (though when I got out of the shower, the BBC was all in a
lather about the IAEA or whatevs not actually deserving it and being
highly controversial, blah blah blah). But you should tell your dad
that the H. pylori guys were the first to prove the link between
bacteria and a chronic medical condition. It's much less about
finding the cause of ulcers than the fact that these two challenged
the sheer stubbornness of doctors--medicine was like no way, and they
were like, fuck you, we're right. And they were. And one of the guys
who had a completely healthy stomach DRANK A CULTURE to prove it.
That's pretty badass, and more than just a little crazy. And it's
figured that bacteria can actually be implicated in a number of other
chronic conditions (arthritis, etc.), including inherited conditions
(!) and even cancer. It's just because doctors and biomedical
researchers have their heads up their asses that they're not looking
in the right places yet for the causes.

So as you can probably tell, I support that. Not that it really
matters, but I always like to see people stick it to quote-unquote
medical “science.”

I feel you business (busy-ness, that is) at work . . . I'm pretty
busy too, and Jonathan just bitched (well, not really bitched--bitched
in that passive-agressive way that academics have--he came up to me
and was like, "I'm surprised that you didn't do more with these
yesterday"--how fucking unclear is that? Like, if I hadn't already
worked for professors, I would have NO IDEA that he was attempting to
express unhappiness) at me for not doing more with these experiments
that he wanted done, which is especially dumb for the following
reasons: a) I've been here late--like, more than a hour late--for the
last two days . . . not that he would know that, he goes home at five
or before and b) when you give somebody a long list of things to do
and are not totally clear about the order in which you want them done,
you should expect the individual you give the list to prioritize the
tasks as they see fit. Whatever, the bottom line is that academics
make super sucky managers.” –Karin Issacson 10/7/05

--AND--

The best thing about lubeck was its puppetry museum. Don't ask me why i'm so interesting, never get a thrill out of it as a kid. The museum had an
extensive collection of puppets and marionettes from all over the
world, very cool! (where did the v. as in v. cool come from?) In some
ways I understand why puppetry has lost its mass appeal but on the
other hand, I feel it's been partly made irrelevant by its own doing.
We saw some examples of recent/modern puppetry and they're all
ridiculous faceless blobs, weird shapes and the like. The actual
productions are done with electronic or otherwise modern music. No
wonder no one gets it! I mean, back in the day when you had puppets
that dressed in the style of dress of the day, made social commentary,
played out stories or what have you- the audience could relate! I
think things would be a lot different if you had puppets wearing baggy
pants, backward hats, lots of bling and playing to pop or rap. I don't
think I'm being very articulate here- but I don't understand why
today's audience doesn't get its due. Maybe music videos suffice and
people wouldn't be interested in puppetry anyway (big
possibility...)... Is part of the problem the attempt to elevate
everything to a higher "art"? Whereby puppets no longer function as
entertainment but are used as a vehicle for this very intellectualized
conveyance of "meaning"? I want to learn more about how previous
vehicles of mass entertainment and social commentary have been
modified for our "modern" age...” Haley Morrisson 11/7/05

and the Best Email Title Award goes to . . .

This day rated U for "UGH" --Karin Isaacson 12/1/05