It happens to all of us: you unsubscribe from an unwanted marketing email, and a few days later another message from the same company pops up in your inbox. Comedian James Veitch turned this frustration into whimsy when a local supermarket refused to take no for an answer. Hijinks ensued.

Intro

What do you usually do with spam emails?

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Watch

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Glossary

• settle down – to become quiet, calm, or orderly
• overload – give excessive work, responsibility, or information to
• predominant – present as the strongest or main element
• lo and behold – a phrase used to present a new scene, situation, or turn of events, often with the suggestion that, though surprising, it could in fact have been predicted
• discriminate – recognize a distinction; differentiate
• mundane – lacking interest or excitement; dull

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Think about it

Answer the questions below. Pause at times indicated in brackets.

• What story from his childhood did James forget? (0:50)
• What problem with the Internet does James identify? (2:26)
• How did James react to the final message about the opening and what was the reaction? (4:19)
• How does the story from James’s childhood tie in with the conclusion of the email exchange?

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Practice makes perfect

Fill in the blank spaces with the words in brackets used in appropriate tenses/forms.

It’s funny the things you forget. I ________ (go)to see my mother the other day, and she ________ (tell) me this story that I ________ (completely forget) about how, when we were driving together, she would pull the car over, and by the time she ________ (get out) of the car, and ________ (go) around the car to let me out of the car, I ________ (would already get) of the car and pretended to ________ (die). And I remember, that ________ (be) a game I used to play with myself to entertain myself whenever I was bored or frustrated.

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Fill in the blank spaces with the missing words. Use ONE word per blank space.

And here’s the problem: ________  internet gave us access ________ everything; but it ________ gave everything access to us. It’s hard enough to discriminate ________ the things that genuinely matter in this world and the minutiae of life, without having emails ________ supermarket chains and Candy Crush Saga. And I was really annoyed ________ them, and I thought, OK, I was about to write a strongly worded email, ________ I can do quite well.

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Explore it more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqKafI7Amd8

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