Have you ever received an email in which all punctuation was replaced by someone taking a shit on the proper use of an ellipsis?

Hey…. So I was wondering if I could expect that quarterly report…….. it’s almost 6…… -Bob……

Bob, shut the fuck up, ok? Your smug aloofness has somehow perfectly translated itself across the sea of electrons that you’re speaking through. When did you start using email, 2006? You write like an 11 year old girl playing online checkers in 1997. And it’s no thanks to your god damn use of the ellipsis.

What exactly is this ellipsis meant to portray in these emails? Are they taking long thoughtful pauses, is an epic struggle of syntax and word-choice happening in their brain? Are they actors, measuring out the beats of their lines? Are we supposed to picture someone thoughtfully pacing around dictating to us, stopping in revelation before saying their next thought? Are they pausing and waiting for the applause to end before they continue?

No matter what the implication of a string of 15 periods is meant to be, when I see it, and you write it, there’s only one way I interpret it: you’re an asshole. The worst offenders are those who construct questions that end in an ellipsis instead of a question mark:

Is that expense report coming along ok….. will you be able to get it in by Friday…….. let me know… -Bob…

Bob, shut the fuck up. Here the writer implies that the question is so obvious from the context of the sentence and the situation that including it would be overly redundant. The other implication is that the person writing the email is leaving a space in which you would answer the question, but you’re not, so they’re smugly continuing anyways. They judgingly shake their head while writing, miming shrugs and cupping their hand around their ear to better hear the answers they’re not getting.

If you want to use an ellipsis, use three dots in the middle of a sentence, and four at the end of a sentence. I receive emails now from smart “educated” people where it seems like they immediately press the period key whenever they’re not typing a word, leaving a string of 27 dots on the line before the next word. I don’t need a visual cue to every single moment and pause you took while writing. Writing is separate from speaking, I don’t need to know when you inhaled, and you’re not portraying any additional information by typing three dozen periods rather than one, except that you’re an asshole.

Did you get my last email… -Bob……….

Bob, shut the fuck up. What the fuck is that long string of periods after your name supposed to be? Are you waiting for my email? By including those extra periods are you hinting to me that you’re sitting there at your computer furiously clicking the button that checks for new emails? It’s smug bullshit, smugly implying that they’re waiting for a response and getting none. Bob, I’m sorry to disappoint you, I can’t respond to your emails because I’m too busy counting all the fucking dots.

My parents always covered me under their work health insurance plans. It was great, they paid a little bit extra every month, and we all felt safer knowing that we were all covered under some group plan that offered awesome rates and low deductibles and co-pays. I heard of those words at the time, but I had no idea what they really were, and really, they didn’t affect me. My parents put up the money whenever I needed to see a doctor anyway.

Then I got to college and suddenly the college wanted to make sure I was covered with some sort of insurance. Simple enough, got some copies of proof of insurance that I guess my parents had somewhere, and voila, problem solved.

Then came graduation, and suddenly, I wasn’t eligible to be covered under my parents’ insurance plans. Well, that can’t be too hard, I thought, I was able to get a good paying job and find an apartment all on my own, insurance will be just like choosing which cell phone company I wanted to go with — research the prices, look at what they offer, and pick the best one.

Having been pretty masterful at my internet research for cell phones, cars, computers, etc., I went into researching health insurance with a lot of confidence. After an hour, that confidence was pretty much gone.

What happened? Huge teams of sneaky and malicious health insurance underwriters whittled down my mental reserves till my head was swimming in words that had confusing and differing meanings depending on which company I was looking at. Suddenly the words, “deductible,” “copay,” and “premium” were super important, and yet I had no clue what they meant. I tried to wrap my mind around all the possible scenarios. “So I pay a monthly premium which gives me a certain priced copay whenever I go to see the doctor, but when I met some deductible, I could stop paying the copay, but I’d still have to pay the premium, and my premium does or doesn’t count towards my deductible?”

The restrictions are difficult to understand, and they come without explanation. For example, I only qualify for copay at certain kinds of doctors, but when I go to them, the premium only sometimes counts towards the deductible. What happens when I have an emergency and I can’t choose a hospital or doctor on the preferred list, do I need to constantly tell people near me that if I suddenly go unconscious, they have to send me to a preferred hospital? What the hell is HMO and PPO? Why did these guys make so many words that I’ve never heard before?

From one service provider to the next, the plans were completely incomparable to each other. There wasn’t a standard PPO plan or deductible/copay plan that they all conformed to or attempted to compete on. Every company had their own system of packaging and terminology. Perhaps the health insurance companies were afraid people would wonder what the hell they were buying from them, so they invented dozens of words to throw around and confuse people.

Eventually I gave up. I just stuck with the company that my parents had me on all my life — Kaiser Permanente. Seemed simple enough, and since I’m young, it wasn’t too pricey per month. I paid their monthly premium of $134 for an HMO plan and with that I could go to any Kaiser hospital and see a doctor for a $50 copay. Sounded good enough for me. But for some reason, since I moved away from my parents in northern California to southern California, I had to go through some special process and get a new insurance number and fill out some lengthy paperwork. Fine, I did some paperwork, figuring anything was worth having the health insurance.

But then what happened? I didn’t fill it out early enough in the month so Kaiser couldn’t cover me until the month after the next, a full 50 days later. That means that even though I had the money in my hand, and had continuous Kaiser coverage my entire life, they refused to cover me, telling me to go elsewhere for a few weeks. Fine, I’ll go find some temporary insurance somewhere.

Luckily, my college alumni junk mail had some stuff about temporary insurance. So I filled out more paperwork and they approved me right away. Ahh, now I’m good and covered and I don’t have to worry about this shit anymore.

Then I realized I had no insurance covering my teeth! Kaiser doesn’t do that on their general health plan. Well, screw that, I don’t want to pay hundreds of dollars every time I want to see the dentist. I’m supposed to see him at least 2 times a year for cleaning. Oh, but if you pay Kaiser like $20 more a month, you get some dental coverage, though you’ll still have to pay some copay each time. What? Wait, so I have to pay at least $240 a year for my teeth? How is that a benefit when I already have to pay at least a hundred each time I go see the dentist? Why isn’t that covered in the $134 a month premium? That’s already $1608 a year, and that doesn’t include copays or my teeth? And on top of that, all the Kaiser hospitals aren’t even close to my apartment. This is when I started wondering why I decided to choose Kaiser in the first place. So I needed to go back to researching again.

Seems like laziness and health insurance don’t go together, so back to the confusing lingo and plans that don’t quite really tell me what’s going to be covered. I mustered all the brain power I could in reading the small prints on these health insurance websites. And I consider myself a pretty educated individual, I excelled in high school and college, graduating both with many top honors. But when I read this stuff, which I should hope everyone does sooner or later so that they know what’s up with their health plans, I felt like I was reading the US legal code, mumbo jumbo that only the most elite of lawyers could understand. It was like learning to read all over again, and having the vocabulary of a five year old.

Well, after hours of this, I decided to forget understanding exactly what I would get and just go with the lowest premium with what seemed like the most coverage that I could find. I’ll probably get screwed, but I’m in my early twenties, I’m healthy and the premiums seemed like the only loss I would have if I don’t see the doctors.

I eventually went with Blue Shield of California. It was the only plan I could find that actually covered both vision and dental for the low deductible of $1750 with only a premium of $125 a month. On top of that, it was a PPO, a plan that let me choose which doctors I wanted for only a $40 copay, and there were many doctors less than a mile away that I could see. Wow, why the hell did I choose Kaiser in the first place? This one sounds awesome, and I just saved myself at least $1,008 annually (this was based on premium alone).

Being pretty happy with myself, I switched over to Blue Shield and forgot about my health insurance.

But then a few months later I decided I wanted to see a doctor just to make sure I was healthy. My doctor recommended me some immunization shots, and I agreed. And no one asked me for any copay. That’s odd, at Kaiser, I always paid the copay before I could even see a doctor. Did they forget to charge me? I know I’m supposed to pay $40 each visit, that part I at least understood in the fancy underwriting. Oh well, if no one asks for money, I won’t go looking for trouble. And weeks go by. And then suddenly, I get a bill from my doctor and a claim from Blue Shield. Both demanding that I pay my doctor over $200. What the hell? I know I didn’t misread the underwriting that much! I spend an hour calling into Blue Shield and demanding they explain why the hell I owed $200. After going through what feels like secret code language, they say that their underwriters need to review the claim again. But I’ll have to wait a few weeks and see what they say. Great. Thanks for scaring the shit out of me with a $200 bill and now making me wait even longer to get a real answer.

So I wait another week and the claim is adjusted and the price they now say I owe is $40. Ahh, I see. I’m starting to understand why this whole health insurance business is pretty sleazy. The way they work is to overcharge you when they can and then if you catch it, they will correct their “mistake” for you. Well, I thought, that’s not too bad, I am getting a lot of coverage (so I thought at the time) so having to make a few calls every time I notice the bill is wrong isn’t too bad. I did save myself over $1000, after all.

But then a few weeks later, I cut my hand pretty badly on a broken glass, and I realized I needed to go to the emergency room. I’ve been to the emergency room before at Kaiser when I was younger for a somewhat similar injury to my hand, and they made me pay $50 before seeing the ER doctor. With this Blue Shield plan, it was $100. Not too bad, seeing as I could actually get to the ER pretty quickly since there was a Cedars-Sinai Hospital only a few miles away, and this was a hospital that the stars go to, they can’t be too shabby. And I was right, it was the best ER visit I’ve ever had. I was in and out in less than 1.5 hours. And everyone was super nice and attentive to me. I can see why the stars go here. You get treated nice, like a king. And the best part, no one asked me for any health insurance info, or copay or any financial matter till after all the ER care was given to me. At Kaiser, I actually had to provide a credit card to pay them $50 with my injured bleeding hand and actually sign the receipt before I got any care! This new method was much less stressful during my time of emergency, and I approved whole-heartedly.

Until my bill came in. Apparently, there’s an ER doctors fee on top of the $100 copay for the ER hospital fees. What? Why is there two separate bills? Why didn’t I catch this on the underwriting? So I looked back at the small print in my plan to investigate what this is all about and if they actually charged me correctly. What does it say in the small print? It says I don’t have to pay the ER doctor’s fee after the deductible. Oh right, my deductible is $1750, but wait, my premium doesn’t count towards the deductible, and neither do copays. And since I haven’t paid anything that Blue Shield deemed to go towards my deductible, I have to pay the entire doctor’s bill? I call into Blue Shield to get more clarification (as the small print sucks at any clarification), and they say, well, you did save money, we’ve reduced the doctor’s bill so you only have to pay $180 of it. Perhaps their small print should have said that when I go to the ER, I pay $100 plus doctor’s fee till I meet my deductible. It might also help to know that there’s absolutely no hope of meeting your deductible limit unless you have a major accident, and even then, you still might get stuck with big fees.

As I grimaced at the bill I was paying, I kept thinking about the Michael Moore film Sicko, which I’d seen earlier that year. Michael is right about the health industry, it’s pretty screwed up. Just to think, if the US had universal health coverage, all the health insurance lingo would be required to make sense, be uniform, and be clear about what you’re getting. In addition, with universal health coverage, I’d probably have to pay less than I already am, and they may completely do away with copays and deductibles, and hidden fees!

I’m not satisfied with my current plan, but I tolerate it because it’s generally not that much that I have to really pay. But seriously, I’d be willing to pay a little more and not have to deal with the commercial aspect of the insurance. I really believe that in the corporate system that I’m stuck with, there’s almost nothing I can do, including more research, to find myself a more agreeable plan. And unless I get some job with an awesome group plan, or the government decides we can implement universal health insurance, I guess this will have to do.

Then I started thinking about what other people might be going through. Keep in mind, I’m a college graduate, I have the time to sit down and read the small print, I have the time to call up the insurance company and complain, I have the time to look around and research and use the internet, and write about the experience on my savvy chic blog. There are millions of people in the US that have none of those things, who aren’t as capable as I am to make sure they’re not getting screwed.

Even I was confused by the most basic explanation of the plans. There are people out there that are getting screwed on a daily basis, who have loved ones who require serious medical care, and they’re being stalked upon in the time that they need the most help, getting fucked because they and their loved ones want to live. They’re being asked to overpay hundreds or thousands of dollars a month, not because they owe it, but because the insurance company has profiled their less capable customers and realized they’ll pay whatever is asked of them, bleeding them into complete bankruptcy and ultimately condemning to death the people that need the help.

COMING SOON: Tips for getting health insurance.

At the time, I wasn’t very amused by the show. My film knowledge kept kicking in, and I kept thinking about how the execution looked poor, how simple tweaks here and there could have made it not only more professional but funnier, and how these guys were trying to use the poor quality to their benefit by poking fun at crappy movies in general. Sure, you can intentionally use poor cinematography, editing, and cheap tricks to get laughs, but something about “The ‘Bu” just didn’t sit right with me. After the third or fifth episode, I was annoyed by the fact that over an hour of my life was wasted to watching crappily executed, low-bandwidth low-brow low-quality no-laughs comedy shorts pretending to be hi-larious quality ha-ha’s. I figured, perhaps it just wasn’t my kind of humor. After I was allowed to free my eyes of the horrid shorts, I put Channel 101 on my “Never Visit These Sites Again” list and didn’t think much more about it or The Lonely Island guys and their so-called show.Until in late 2005, when I find out that those Lonely Island guys had been invited to write and act on “Saturday Night Live.” At this point, “Saturday Night Live” was on my “Not Worth Remembering When This Shit Is On TV” list, but since I had been a big fan of “SNL” when it used to be funny, I decided maybe I’ll give these Lonely Island guys another chance to show that they’re funny. I then went to their official website and watched a few more shorts, which turned out to be just as agonizing as the first time I saw their stuff. Well, this is before they have access to bigger budgets, I thought, maybe the fact that they’ll be on actual TV now may put them on another level of comedy and quality.

But something else happened instead, they got on “SNL” and their large crowd of internet groupies followed them to the “SNL” website, making the “SNL” website more popular than the actual show. This made it so that Lorne Michaels couldn’t help but bump them up from featured to full members of the “SNL” team. Hearing this news, I decided to see what the new “SNL” hype was all about. And yet again, I was disappointed. “SNL” hadn’t changed the Lonely Island guys’ comedy and quality, they made “SNL” change to their comedy and quality, to be shittier and more ill-conceived than it was even in the shitty quagmire of Jimmy Fallon as star, trying to be Adam Sandler and laughing at how funny things were in every sketch, all while being horribly embarrassingly not funny (Hint: Suggesting that you and the audience have a “special” relationship where you can laugh at your own jokes doesn’t make you America’s sweetheart, it makes you the only one laughing.)

How did we get to this? Now “SNL” has all these shitty-looking shorts littered with headache-inducing shaky hand-held camera, crappy costumes, and piss-poor visual effects that look bad even for “haha, this is so bad.” In the good old days, “SNL” didn’t have the greatest quality stuff around, but they did have something different and fresh and inventive, and often they even had a few things per show that got big gigantic laughs. It didn’t matter that their budgets weren’t high, because they were abundant with messages dressed up in elaborate comedy sketches. Comedy that didn’t just show you a funny character or concept, but that also poked fun at some issue or idea that wasn’t being mentioned anywhere else. It didn’t make you think that hard about the issue, but you remember those sketches clearly because it hit some chord and brought to light some truth that went beyond the initial laugh. But nowadays, when I recall a sketch from “SNL” that’s been done by the Lonely Island guys (which is all the “SNL” Digital Shorts, and even some of the regular sketches), all I remember is shitty execution and wondering why I have brain space devoted to remembering Laser Cats. Come on, this is funny for the first 10 seconds, then they need to cut back to Lorne Michaels’ face, which is actually the funniest part of the whole sketch. The fact is, the “OMFG this is so shitty” laugh that they’re apparently trying to get isn’t even in itself that well done, and it’s all basically a poor version of the awesome Official Ninja Movie, a much better attempt at that style.

But even then I decided not to blame the Lonely Island guys for the lack of quality in “SNL.” The show had been slipping for years. And it’s a bit much to think that three new kids on the block would be able to drastically alter “SNL” to suddenly become like it used to be a decade or more ago. They’d have to be comedic geniuses to do that, and it was fine with me that they weren’t, even though I secretly wished that someone would take “SNL” back into a better direction. Whatever, I thought, those guys will probably eventually mature their comedy and get a show of their own or get a movie deal in a few years, and hopefully it’ll be something I’ll want to watch.

And then it happened, they got a movie deal. You’ve probably heard of it, Hot Rod. Did I go watch it? No. I saw the trailer, looked at the movie poster and website, and I knew what to expect — the same old stuff I’ve already been disappointed/annoyed with. And plus, they made a movie called Hot Rod which didn’t feature a hot rod car. Apparently, reader, you didn’t watch it either, because it bombed. Perhaps if they didn’t insist on five year olds doing their production design all the time, it would be clearer that the movie name is about a guy named Rod that’s supposedly “hot,” and not about a cool car, which it isn’t about. Regardless of the apparent marketing brainfart, I knew this wasn’t one of those movies where perhaps the marketing was misleading. The marketing did its job, and I got a taste of exactly what I’ve been getting from these guys from the very beginning, complete mediocrity.

And now I’m fully qualified to say I’m disappointed with the Lonely Island guys. They’ve been given an opportunity that most people can only dream about, they were given carte blanche to make anything their large web/”SNL” audience might go see, and this is what they come up with? The same warmed over “OMFG this is so shitty/bad/misinformed” comedy that they’ve been stumbling through for years now. They probably got a few million dollars to make this movie, which meant their quality could sky-rocket compared to the stuff they did before. But, as I’m sure most of us are well aware of now, even if a bunch of money is thrown at a movie, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to suck balls. Sure, I thought to myself, the visual quality is much better than their Channel 101 days, but it still looks like an amateur is learning how to shoot a movie while shooting it, and on top of that the content still sucks. It has the exact same story as another shitty dead-on-arrival comedy called The Ringer that came out two years ago (the only difference is that in The Ringer, the main character is a normal guy pretending to be a retard, whereas in Hot Rod, the main characters are retards pretending to be normal people.)

And that’s when I realized what it was that bothered me that day 3 years ago when I first watched “The ‘Bu.” The problem with this stuff isn’t the execution quality, it’s the content. It’s not the shaky camera and shitty lighting, it’s the fact that it’s mildly funny at best, never hilarious, and usually has a feeling of very barely giving any effort. Never in all the stuff I’ve seen of these guys, have I found myself laughing out loud. I would smile at some stuff, a haha may come out of me every once in a while, but I was never fully laughing. And despite what resources these guys are given, they haven’t improved their stuff. They very well might be funny talented people, but the execution of their video/film content needs to come up dramatically. Case and point, their greatest achievement so far (their movie) isn’t funny and bombed at the box office despite getting a similar marketing treatment from the same people who pushed Transformers.

America seems to agree, as shown by their box office numbers. (BTW, in case you don’t know, a $5 million opening box office is considered a horrible opening for a comedy opening in 2,000+ theaters.) And if you look here, based on box office numbers, it seems that theater goers liked Dana Carvey’s The Master of Disguise better than Hot Rod. And if you don’t remember, Master of Disguise was a pretty horrible movie, and this coming from me, a diehard Dana Carvey fan. The difference is, with Dana Carvey, he’s earned the ability to fuck up, and after years of being absolutely hilarious on TV and cinema, we can forgive him. But the Lonely Island guys have yet to prove themselves, everyone looks at their stuff and goes “these guys have potential, they should do a feature or a tv show,” and when they get a chance, they suck.

Maybe they”ll get better with time, and simply because they were a bunch of no-name underdogs getting a chance to hit Hollywood by storm, I was rooting for them. But what they’ve done with their storm is nothing new to Hollywood, reheating old comedy standards with the misinformed hope that a string of gags can replace a well-written story. If you get a chance to hit Hollywood, why not make the most of your talent and skills and make a dent, freak out and do something new and fresh for people? Why waste it on continuing the same thing you were doing when you had no money and were making stuff out of your garage? The world’s had its fix of that shit.

The Lonely Island, I’m disappointed with you. If you’re reading this, Akiva, Andy, or Jorma, sorry guys. I was rooting for you, and maybe you can still do it, but the plan of attack needs to change. Maybe try something a little more efficient, and a little more awesome.

When the next 15,000 spam emails showed up, you began the now more than ten year tradition of “dealing with it.” You scan your inbox for the shit, delete or move it, and get on with your life. Once in a while, one will trick you with a well-picked name or subject line, you scan it for half a second before deleting it, muttering under your breath. Maybe you spent a little time being vigilant about reporting every single one to a vague authority on the issue. Maybe they’re just littering your inbox right now. Maybe you had to abandon an email address because the spam got too heavy, and you’re gonna do your new address the right way, letting nothing get through.

When it comes down to it, it affects us all. It’s a force of nature, we plan ahead to deal with it, or we trudge through quickly as you would any other obstacle. You might even once in a while remark to a friend, spouse, or co-worker, “Spam’s been heavy lately.” As if it were like a heatwave to be reported on the news. In the future, it might even get some time on the nightly news, I can see it now, “Spam’s always heavy this time of the month, here’s some keywords to filter and addresses to blacklist that should save you and your loved ones some time.” Smug co-anchors will make wry comments about a particularly outstanding piece of spam they got the other day. “What’ll they think of next?”

But there’s something about spam that for a long time I couldn’t quite place my finger on. I’ve never been the type to delete a large group of something without taking a look here and there. Every day, about 300 spam emails pour into my mailbox, the accumulation of a few email addresses that get auto-forwarded to my account. Every day, I check through and do a cleaning session, about 10 spam in a day make it to my inbox, the rest are automatically sent to a Spam folder. I pick out and report the bold few that got through. I’ve learned begrudgingly to check my spam folder for false positives after once finding a few month-old job offers in there after a vacation. About once a week, I’ll find one, making the task something I don’t expect to give up for a while. I’ve been doing this for about a year, a daily check-up on my spam folder, scanning the names and subject lines for anything familiar.

Then something interesting happened. It started when I began seeing the same spam over and over, I’d begin seeing patterns in some of the subject lines. “Here’s another ‘MyBFsPenisTooBig’ one.” or “CanadianPharmacy hit every single one of my emails three times today, must be a busy season for them.” I began to enjoy some of the patterns and variations in the names and subject lines. There was an evolution over a few months where “My penis makes the ladies happy!” turned into “My penis pops out during sex!” and eventually became “My guys penis pops out when he goes into my mouth! It’s too big,”

It’s funny to think about how the writer of the subject line kept trying and refining slight variations, got rid of ones that weren’t working, then did variations of the more successful ones. He went from first person male perspective with a positive declaration to second person female perspective with hyperbole, graphic visual that specified the type of sex, and negative declaration that it was “too big.” This is what got people clicking. Nobody gives a shit about some guy making people happy, people got interested when some poor girl who gives blow jobs had a major dilemma on her hands. The only way to get in a position to help that poor girl is to click on that damn email, and by God, a relevant amount of the world does just that every day.

Because, in reality, this is what people click on, this is what people are interested in. Do you want to find out what the hopes and dreams of the email-using world are? Look at successful spam. People want strong ejaculations, giant penises, cheap software, fair-priced pharmaceuticals, and to keep their financial accounts in good order. Once in a while, we dream a little and hope that all our hard work will pay off and some distant acquaintance will have recommended us to a Nigerian banker to be steward of a small fortune. We wonder about whether we can make a living working from home, or get affordable higher education. We hope to get emails from prominent-sounding people such as Maximillian Penn and Evan Longoria. We hope to get greeting cards and emails from friends and neighbors whose first names may be James, Betty, Scott, or Nebedikt.

Recently, every morning I open my spam folder, and it’s not with a “Harumph” but instead with a bit of glee. What new mass-demanded product will have turned to spam emailing today? How realistic can those fake Ebay emails actually look, and how do they do that? (They’ve become surprisingly sophisticated since I first started receiving them about 5 years ago.) Every morning, I get a large chunk of free genuine entertainment hoping to peak my interest with any manner of ridiculous wording and spelling. It’s a little mental game to try and figure out if some of them are fake or not. “Would the Christine I know ever send me an email with the subject line ‘Re: Take a look’, and if so, could it be important enough to risk opening what would otherwise be a clever ruse for attention?”

The mental gymnastics one goes through are a little brainteaser, warming you up for the day to come, hitting you with randomness that breaks you out of your mental routines and forces you to question your assumptions. In many ways, this is the closest most of us get on a daily basis to a sort of seedy underworld in which we must always be on guard, alert to dangers and possible tricks. If we bypass a rather tricky spam email, we think “Any lesser person would’ve fallen for that, I’ve accomplished a level of sophistication that can outsmart someone out there who openly wants to trick me.” In our own way, we’re the sentinels and warriors of our tiny email inboxes, especially when it comes to spam that hopes to trick you, ones that ask you to download viruses or “phish” for your personal information. Like James Bond, we’re always in control, but always in danger, some openly hostile nemesis out there hopes to foil our plans and gain access to our many secrets. Every time someone tries to trick us into betraying our secret usernames and passwords, it reminds us that we actually have secrets that are of value, and that we hopefully will be able to guard from whatever tricks they come up with next.