E-Flail

Ever lose your mind and inappropriately assume familiarity with some person who you don't really know via email? I do it a lot, and I never learn my lesson. And so, I present :

E-mail, the dong resin way!

1. First, over-assume familiarity to the point where you call your mail victim "Cunt Cheese" second mail in, and expect to inspire no offense whatsoever with such obvious-to-you jocularity.
When they never mail you again, wonder briefly if you got it wrong.

2. Drink a lot of coffee. Don't skip this step, you'll need a lot of paranoia to get through the rest of this self-created hell. You're going for the level of coffee that creates the same sound when you crap as the sort of polite applause that Fiona Apple generates with one of her very stoned pseudo-political podium speeches... just enough coffee so that anything besides an instant reply from your new friend goes through the following cycle :

• kind of a bummer
• personal slight
• total rejection of you, your race, and all that you stand for
• rape

3. Wallow in sudden deep, deep hatred for this person who has rejected you so violently and so completely out of turn. Wonder what you could have done to deserve such shitty treatment from Cunt Cheese. Further figure that it must not be Cunt Cheese, but that it's you. Work it over for a good 16 hours or so. Become certain that it's you. Wonder what you did. Figure out what you did. Re-read mails to confirm what you did and then find out that it was probably something worse than what you first thought. Clearly they took you as obsequious. No, maybe they took you as manipulative. Wonder how to craft an apology for what you did, one that addresses what you think is most likely the thing you did, but one that doesn't possibly re-enforce the other thing you may have done. For example, if you decide that you were too vulgar, but perhaps instead you were tight-assed, try to be lighthearted and playful without coming off like a pussy. Work it over for another 36 hours or so, just enough so that it looks natural. Scrap that and start over.

4. Finally get mail from the person. They don't seem pissed at all, but they kept it short. Are they hurt or just busy?
Wrestle with the tone of your reply. Should you apologize? Wonder if you'll look weird apologizing for what might only be an imagined offense. Try to work it out- if you do apologize, you put the person in a weird spot where they're suddenly way more deep in your psyche than they need to be, considering all they were trying to do is get a simple note across to you. If you don't apologize, you'll seem dense to your own offensiveness and you'll totally misrepresent yourself. Think it over for a good 48 hours. In your conflict, eschew any playfulness and instead come off terse and pissy.

5. Sign off email "Thanks, Asspaste!" and repeat from step 2.