Gramatically Challenged

Checking e-mail first thing in the morning is a wonderful thing. Among other things, it allows me to not have to dedicate my morning commute to brainstorming today's blog topic.

Good Morning Chris~
Would you be able to help me with the request I sent Lucas below?
Please advise eat your convenience.
Thanks!
Tanya Hanobi

You are thinking two things right now. First, why didn't Lucas get around to Tanya's request? (Reason - I made Lucas up. Names have been changed to protect the irrelevant.) Second, why does this e-mail, shown sans attachments or context, have any promise of bringing the funny enough to be deemed blogworthy by the editors-that-be? Easy, re-read it. It's time for another edition of "Making Fun of Other People's Correspondence Oversights and Mistakes" (MFOPCOM.) Actually, this could be a light-hearted roasting, but in all actuality, this one's got me just a tad bit apprehensive.

Please advise eat your convenience.

Maybe we're lucky and Tanya just got a little trigger happy with the send button before shooting this request of into cyberland. But maybe, just maybe, she knows something that I don't, and without careful analysis and theorizing on the blog, I'll never know what she really meant. The world is dependent on...wait, no...the universe is dependent...ok, nope, the Condon is dependent on decoding this encryption to reveal the instructions that I must follow.

Eat my convenience? What could she possibly mean? After much contemplation (read: very little), I've come up with the following three hypotheses.

1. Let them eat Tastykake. Despite Tanya's corporate e-mail address, this may be subliminal advertising at its finest. While she may be an unassuming, docile Human Resource administrator by day, she may be the Gordon Gekko of the minimart world by night. As Americans across the nation (where else would they be?) give up snack food impulses for cookies and candy bars in the name of Lent, stores that pride themselves on convenience, such as 7-11, may experience a first quarter dip in revenues. Other methods of cheap advertising must be instituted. Tanya is trying to plant the seed of an impulse buy in the minds and inboxes of the world.

2. Start being a simpleton. Could there be a political plea underneath it all? Maybe Tanya is telling me to relinquish the conveniences of the world. There are developing countries around the world in need of such basics as running water and a roof over their head, yet I can be brazen enough to demand that all the keys on my keyboard work (Curses, Num Lock, curses!) Is this a plea to the greater good? For YAB to adopt a charity, or become a philanthropic organizaiton altogether? Not just eat my convenience, but completely swallow it? Great, now I'm depressed. Drat. And Num Lock is still broken.

3. Grammatically Challenged. I'm the first to admit that fat fingers can lead to some annoying permutations of words. The only place harder to accomodate my hands than on my guitar is on the keyboard. I can't tell you how many times I have signed official-sounding e-mail with my Roman alterego, Chrius. Of course, if I were Roman, my occupation wouldn't be blogger or financial analyst or grad student. If I recall from high school Latin, all Romans were either farmers or poets. Or maybe the farmers were the poets. I can't remember. Oh, but I do know that Gallia est provincia. I'm a classical genius.

I'll let you all vote as to what Tanya meant.

Dear Tonya,
I will look into this matter at once.
Ate my convenience,
Chrius