I'm restarting this blog for the sole purpose of sharing these two lovely bits of email I got recently. Here's the first:

Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2006 21:28:17 -0500
From: "yaffa"
To: 
Subject: no verona, wi data

you have no data for verona, wi?

At first, I thought this particular query about geocoder.us was perhaps from an Eastern European or Central Asian correspondent.

They: You have no data for Verona, wi?

Me (logically): Wi, we have no data there!

Then it occurred to me that "wi" was intended not as some kind of interrogative particle from an Oriental language I don't speak, but rather as a postal abbreviation, namely that of the great state of Wisconsin, famed for its cheese and its mosquitos. Suddenly, the conversation took on a whole new tone.

They: You have no data for Verona, Wisconsin?

Me: Wi, we have no data there!

(Actually, geocoder.us does have data there.)

The other email was pure Zen, in the getting-hit-with-a-stick kind of way:

Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 07:40:54 -0600
From: "Billy"
To: schuyler@tridity.org
Subject: I ask myself the same questions every day.

be catawampous but marchesini see naskapi in jbinng some cpwscb

What a concidence -- I ask myself that same question every day, too!