Breaking

In social psychology, 'breaking' is behaving without any reference to social norms.  Stanley Milgram was apparently happy to do it as a hobby - arriving for dinner he would skip greetings and proceed to counting the cutlery.

Bible study is a social gathering with a lot of norms.  Often there will be a short prayer time, where people share a personal concern, and someone else prays for them.  (There is a norm about not praying for your own stuff, so structures that ensure you know who you will be praying for are important - otherwise there's no guarantee everyone gets prayed for - also a terrible solecism.)

So I was sitting next to Chris, an IT guru - maybe a 'systems analyst' describes it.  He hacks Unix like other people hack cheese off a block the size of a car battery.  What was Chris's prayer point?  Was his boss on his case? Did he have a sick friend or relation? Was he feeling stressed and rundown?

Spam.  Chris wanted me to pray against spam emails. Why?  'They're very annoying.'

Although I joined a long period of hysterical laughter, I didn't think spam was absolutely outside God's concern - it's wasteful of time and intellect and processing power.  (Side note: If, as in Lawnmower Man, an AI decided to ring all the phones on the planet, or email all the email addresses on the planet, it would almost certainly be ignored.)

So I attempted to formulate a prayer beseeching the Lord to stifle spam.  I will leave this account there.  It's literally hysterical - I feel my (metaphorical) womb rise up and enter my brain.