The disconnected
by Josh Staiger
So there's this engineer on a cruise ship in the Caribbean for the first time. It was wonderful - the time of his life.
A hurricane came up unexpectedly and the ship went down.
The man found himself swept up on the shore of an island. He looked around. Nothing but bananas and coconuts. He was forlorn, but decided to make the best of it. For the next four months he ate bananas, drank coconut juice, and looked to the sea for a ship to come to his rescue.
One day, while he was stroking his beard, staring off into the horizon, he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye. Could it be true, was it a ship? No... But from around the corner of the island came a rowboat. In it was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. She was tall, thin, tanned, and her blond hair flowed in the sea breeze, giving her an ethereal quality. She spotted him waving and screaming and rowed over.
"Where did you come from? How did you get here?", he asked.
"I rowed from the other side of the island. I landed on this island when my cruise ship sank."
"Amazing! I didn't know anyone else survived. How many of you are there? You must have been really lucky to have a rowboat wash up with you?"
"It's only me", she said, "and the rowboat didn't wash up - nothing did."
"Err, then how did you get the boat?"
"Oh, I made the rowboat out of raw material I found on the island", replied the woman. "I whittled the oars from branches, wove the bottom from palms, and molded the sides and stern from eucalyptus."
"But, what about tools and hardware? How did you do that?"
"No problem, on the south side of the island there's an unusual stratum of alluvial rock. If I fire it to a certain temperature it melts into forgeable ductile iron. I used that for tools, and used the tools to make the hardware. Where do you live?"
"Err... well... I've been sleeping on the beach...."
"Oh... well let's row over to my place", she said. So they got into the rowboat and left for her side of island.
She rowed around to a wharf, tied the rowboat with a beautifully woven hemp rope and they walked up a stone path where there stood an exquisite bungalow painted in blue and white.
"It's not much, but it's home. Sit down. Would you like a drink?"
"Ugh, sorry... one more coconut juice and I'll puke."
"Oh, not coconut juice. I have a still - how about a Pina Colada?"
"Well... errr... yeah... of course... that'd be wonderful", said the man, trying to hide his amazement.
They sat on her couch and talked. After a while they had exchanged stories, and the woman asked, "Have you always had a beard?"
"No, I was clean shaven all of my life, even on the cruise."
"Well if you'd like a shave, there's a razor upstairs in the bathroom." So the man, no longer questioning anything, went upstairs to the bathroom. There in the cabinet was a razor made from a bone handle and two shells honed to a hollow ground edge. He shaved, showered and went back downstairs.
"You look great", said the woman, "I think I'll go up and slip into something more comfortable." So she did.
After a time, the woman returned wearing nothing but strategically positioned fig leaves, and smelling faintly of gardenia.
"Tell me," she said, sexily, "we've both been out here a long time with no companionship. Have you been lonely? Is there anything you miss? Something all men and woman need? Something that would be really nice to have right now?"
"Oh, there certainly is...", the man replied.
He moved closer and fixed his gaze upon her.
"Tell me.... Can I check my email from here?"
~~~~
(Adapted from a random internet hero)
Last week while vacationing in Virginia Beach, I found myself in a similarly disconnected state and was reminded of this joke.
Although I have to admit, it's nice to get away from the instant messaging and angle brackets for a bit. But the email backlog is a pain in my ass.
Unfortunately in 2006, even if a nerd could check his email from the sexy fig lady's house, he'd find 90% of his inbox filled with chinese hello kitty sex toy spam.
It seems even the best minds in the industry are struggling with the spam problem nowadays.
Although, frankly, I'm not sure why Gmail has a hard time recognizing I have no interest in emails consisting only of chinese characters, nor announcements I've won 30 million euros, nor emails with only image attachments and no message body (from random people).
But apparently it's hard.