# Surreal e-mail morning.... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [June 14, 2001, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799 "2001-06-14T14:02:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Deacons\_Trucked](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d78d45/32.png) [@Deacons\_Trucked](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deacons_Trucked)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 2:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/1 "2001-06-14T14:02:55Z")
Checked my inbox this morning, and thought I was still asleep and dreaming some weird surrealistic crap… First thing in my box was an “undeliverable mail” message with the subject: **Returned mail: Too many hops 13 (7 max): from (my email) via mail1.gcn.net.tw to (unknown address)** I think it was something related to a note I had recently sent to another message board…but what does “too many hops” mean?? The next inbox message was related to the same note I sent, but totally incomprehensible: \*\*From: Àüº´»ó Re: ÀÚµ¿´äÀå ¸ÞÀÏ º¸³» Áּż­ °¨»çÇÕ´Ï´Ù. Ç×»ç »ý°¢ÇØ Áּż­ °¨»çÇÏ°í¿ä ´ã¹ø¿¡ ¶Ç ¸ÞÀÏ º¸³»µå¸±°Ô¿ä °¨»çÇÕ´Ï´Ù. \*\* Am I still asleep?? ---
**Author:** ![rocking\_chair](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rocking_chair/32/2918_2.png) [@rocking\_chair](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rocking_chair)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/2 "2001-06-14T14:13:44Z")
yes. there is no spoon. ---
**Author:** ![Tars\_Tarkas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Tars\_Tarkas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tars_Tarkas)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/3 "2001-06-14T14:21:46Z")
> [@](#): > > but what does “too many hops” mean?? it means don’t hop on pop! Sheesh… ---
**Author:** ![Erika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/47e85d/32.png) [@Erika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Erika)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/4 "2001-06-14T14:32:28Z")
Hmm…I’d vote for still asleep. There was a period when I started getting the standard automated “your inbox is too full” emails from my sysadmin…in random foreign languages. That was sort of surreal. ---
**Author:** ![jmonster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/dbc845/32.png) [@jmonster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmonster)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/5 "2001-06-14T16:04:26Z")
It means your message being sent from server to server looking for one that actually knows how to deliver it to the destination. If it hops too many times, it’s either caught in a loop or the destination server is (currently) non-existent, so there’s no sense in keeping on trying. ---
**Author:** ![Anal\_Scurvy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c57346/32.png) [@Anal\_Scurvy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anal_Scurvy)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 4:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/6 "2001-06-14T16:17:07Z")
I keep getting weekly offers to make my penis larger. For awhile I was getting personalized penile effrontery, but that gave way to messages with the title, “YOUR DICK SO BIG YOU TRIP OVER IT” AND, “YOUR DICK SO BIG USE IT AS A WEAPON”. My friends were all wondering why I kept forwarding illicit viagra spam to them, they never saw the humour. ---
**Author:** ![rackensack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e5b9ba/32.png) [@rackensack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rackensack)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/7 "2001-06-14T16:21:26Z")
FWIW, the mail server that bounced your message is in Taiwan (the .tw top-level domain), and I suspect the second message was composed using an Asian language encoding (probably Chinese). Your e-mail client is set up for that encoding, so it’s displaying as gibberish. ---
**Author:** ![Pyrrho12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/b2d939/32.png) [@Pyrrho12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pyrrho12)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2001, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/surreal-e-mail-morning/68799/8 "2001-06-14T16:37:26Z")
The message is in Korean. From Jung Byung-san, to (if I’m reading this right) “automatic reply system”. It says thank you a few times, something about being written in red ink (probably an idiom that I don’t know), and I think it says something along the lines of “please try again”. My Korean isn’t too good. But boy, can I order pizzas…