i kill me!

I think you're a fine council and I appreciate your services BUT FUCK YOU I AIN'T PAYIN'.

You should sign off with "I remain sir/madam, your most humble colonial subject"

xpost - i LOVE using "i remain."

I'm not keen on referring to organised bodies as 'you' myself, but I do love/hope that you did indeed pen the letter as Tracer Hand - you should've included a link to ILX though, with the strapline 'overpowering the miserable stench of life' or summat.

(Imagines us striding down Whitehall singing that to the tune of Vindaloo)

::shudders::

(Well, except for Damien Hirst at the cash machine.)

I am, Tracer, your humble servant,
Mark.

and the letter!

In regard to your channeling a "1930s posho", I would observe that the formalities of life do not change with the speed or readiness of popular fashions, so that in using a formal voice, you must shape yourself to the tradition rather than otherwise, and this tradition does indeed reach back through many decades to the 1930s and well beyond.

I congratulate you on your mastery of this necessary skill and convey my sincerest wish that it may continue at the pitch of perfection to which you have so obviously brought it.

Businessman: "And how's business round your way"
Ronan: "I guess we can't complain, at least not in this climate"
Businessman: "Well this is it, I imagine your industry doesn't take any prisoners"
Ronan: "You know yourself, what you lose on the swings you get back on the roundabouts"
Businessman: "Well I'll let you go now, but I'll get back to you on that? What's the name again?"
Ronan: "Ronan Fitzg*rald"
Businessman: "Well thank you Ronan, I'm John Average"
Ronan: "Don't hesitate to let me know if you've any further worries John, that is what we're here for, afterall"
etc etc etc

I would like to speak with you about the work you did for your book, "xx xxxx xxx." I'm currently completing the master's programme in international journalism at xxx xxxxx in London, and my dissertation is about what journalists ought to do when they realise that racism is part of the story they're covering, but their interview subjects stonewall them with "well of course I'm not racist," or variations thereof. I feel that you could shed some light on the psychological aspects of this behavior, which would be beneficial to journalists hoping to improve their stories and their interview techniques.

I would like to talk before January 10th, if possible, by telephone. I won't take up more than 15 or 20 minutes of your time. You can email me at this address.

Sincerely yours,
[Tracer Hand]

Dear Tracey Handywandy,

Had your email addressed me prorperly, not assuming that you, whom I do not know at all, could use my first name (spelled wrong), and had it shown some politeness, for example by beginning with: "Dear Dr. xxx-xxxxx, I hope I am not intruding upon you by asking you for the favor of a brief telephone interview. I am a journalism student in the master's programme..... etc.," then I might have agreed to your request. But, as it is, I don't want to.

I am bothering to tell you this, rather than ignoring your email, because you do not realize that you are not thinking about how to do the journalist's business of contacting potential interview subjects. You are not putting yourself in the place of a busy professional person and asking what is the right way to approach her. I figure if you have not given thought to this matter, then you are not ready to give thought to the very much more complicated matter of racism in interview situations. So I cannot help you with that. But I hope you will take it in the right spirit that I am trying to help you with the first step you need to take to in order to do a good journalistic interview: think about your interview subject, and about how you want to be viewed by her, even before you set up the interview.
Best wishes, xxx xxxxx-xxxxx

Dear Exalted Honoress,

Thank goodness my apparent impertinence, and your lengthy detailing of it, has vouchsafed me the blessed luxury of not having to suffer through whatever it was you had to say. I am bothering to tell you this because I am pathetic and have nothing better to do.

Best,
[Tracer Hand]

i feel that my response wasn't quite cruel enough.

I don't think so. It is to the point, but not in a rude way. A truly "busy professional person" usually has better things to do than read through a bunch of flowery bowing and scraping, in my experience.

"her help would be much appreciated and that you hoped she could fit in the interview within the constraints of your timetable"

haha as opposed to what?

If she considers herself a 'busy professional' she has just put way more time and thought into her response to you than probably would have been taken up by 15 minutes on the fucking telephone. What an unbelievable cunt!

next time put "this message sent using my Blackberry Wireless Motherfucker" at the end of your request, you will impress shallow insipid bitches more that way

Suppose you had written to an African-American scholar asking her for an interview about a book she had written on race relations, but using her first name (spelled wrong) and starting off with a statement about what you want rather than one somehow acknowledging that you were aware that she is a busy person, who would, to meet your request, have to make time, be at a phone on a specified date, etc. She would read your email with the same annoyance that I did but with the added thought that you were racist –why else would you ignore the social convention that says people (including professional people) do not use first names until they have been invited to or until they have come to know each other and the first name basis has evolved naturally? She would just hit “delete” unless she thought it worthwhile to instruct you. I am sorry that I did not manage to convey to you, or convince you, that attention to detail and attitude (involving psychological understanding of context, roles, etc .and tact) are crucial to the art of the interview, which begins with the art of setting up the interview. Instead, you got angry and assumed that I had disrespected you. And that kind of escalation –annoyance to anger—is what happens in all the instances where a detail bearing a race meaning trips a wire. Just the sort of thing you are trying to study. My reply may have been too didactic, and its annoyance too obvious, and I should rethink that; but you might rethink your reply as well.
Best, xxx xxx-xxxxx

Dear Dr. xxx-xxxxx,

You're right; my reply was unbelievably sophomoric. My annoyance and anger found a voice because I felt that you stepped outside our transaction to point out the fact that I had broken the rules. I suppose you felt justified in this because I had, in your mind, already stepped outside the bounds of the normal with my familiar address. In any case it's quite interesting to see how people behave once they feel that they are no longer governed by a particular formal transaction. And a bit depressing, too.

Reporting requires that one throw oneself into the affairs of others, and it can be difficult to know what will work. You may be surprised to learn that a formal and courteous introduction will bore many busy professionals to sleep before they've read the substance of the email. And email has a different mode of address than a written letter; first names are common, for instance, even between strangers. If you were aware of these things, you might not have scolded me so brazenly. Like you said, you don't even know me.

But all the same, I appreciate you taking the time from your life to have this discussion with me, and perhaps the profit lost concerning the substance of my hypothetical interview with you has been replaced with another kind of profit. Your point about an African-American, or a woman, who has a long memory of being treated too-familiarly by colleagues or students, is well-taken, and I must admit I hadn't thought of that in the context of my letter to you.

My best,
Tracer Hand

this person is full of crap! fite someone better

Here is more useful advice, about speeding up the performance of Firefox on your broadband connection.

1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return.

2. Alter these entries as follows:

Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.

3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New Integer. Name it
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is
the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it
recieves.

xpost