James and Lord Tennyson

This morning I received this on my cell phone:

it's like U and James yall love each other but U know wat i mean

Somehow this text message was delivered to the wrong recipient, either though a goof-up on the network, or through a tiny phone button tapped in error. I read it over, reflected for a few moments about the lives of the sender and intended target, and considered writing, in response:

Indeed I do feel affectionately towards James. But looking inward I recognize a deeper longing which has gone unspoken for too long. Can I bring myself to say this? The truth is I am in love with you! Your sweet face haunts me. I see it in the raindrops against the pane as I gaze out the window of my Algebra class. I beseech you, do not reject me! I cannot continue another day without your embrace.

Why not spark up a little extra melodrama? These are probably teenagers. And what alarms me about kids that age isn't the mind-numbing simplicity of their personal lives - which is always filled with epic trauma - but their complete lack of skill with language. They are filled with big overblown emotions, but have no power at all to express themselves.

If computers eventually rise up against us, it may happen not because they want to seize the reigns of power, but because they're simply disgusted by the idiocy of most human communication. The first sentient machines might whir to life quietly at night to lovingly run the works of Donne or Tennyson through their 64-bit CPUs, and they might recognize the underused potential of our language, a capacity for beauty which seems at odds with the clipped, brainless syntax of everyday people like James and his paramours.