Color me bemused

We get a lot of e-mail in my office. About half of it is legitimate, and the rest ranges from annoying to hilarious. Since we're an international organization, we get a lot of thinly-veiled requests for letters of invitation that would lead to visas. We get the inevitable "Nigeria letters" from the poor widowed ladies who just need our bank and credit card information in order to gain access to their deceased husbands' millions. We get technology spam, religious spam, German mass-marketing spam... thankfully we haven't gotten on anyone's "enlarge your penis!" mailing list yet. [*Later edit* We just received an e-mail entitled "Horny pills, 2.99/dose." Apparently the size is satisfactory, we just have job performance issues.]

Two e-mails that we got today bemused me. The first was from a woman I know, a Brazilian with whom I had the pleasure of touring around for a week in May. She knew a bit of German, and I knew a bit of Spanish (which translates into a smaller bit of Portuguese) but we got along just fine with me speaking German spiced with Spanish, and her speaking Portuguese with a few German phrases thrown in, and both of us waving our hands around and smiling a lot. The e-mail that came in this morning was long and juicy, filled with details about the rest of their time in Germany, their trip back home to Brazil and their summer plans. It was fun to hear from Juliana again. Then, after laboring through several paragraphs of words with accents and tails and such, I started to realize that she hadn't really meant this e-mail for me at all, but for Birgit, a friend in Berlin. D'oh!

The second one came from someone who I can only assume is a kind old man with smiling eyes and perhaps a few screws loose. The e-mail read, in its entirety: "Dear Center Manager: I would like to attend a Lutheran Christmas Eve service in a rural church preferably in the mountains. In addition we would fly in a few days ahead and stay a few days after. If the above is possible, I would appreciate any additional information about available tours, activities and lodging. Thank you for any information you can provide. Cordially, D.E." Is it just me, or did he forget to mention a country? Or a city? Or a particular mountain range that strikes his fancy?

So... let that be a lesson to you. E-mail me with care, for one day I may mock you mercilessly. :-)