Is A Part Of
aka Spam, the semi-edible kind. As for spam, the email kind, I did have that scourge of the internets under control for a while, through judicious use of multiple addresses at different domains, each disclosed to very specific audiences. Most of the spamisms I received were correctly filtered – except for those with “penny stock tips”… I’d get two or three of the same message with different “sent bys” showing up in each of my inboxes a couple times a day, nothing too annoying, and I had to laugh at the total futility of them for the spammers: I don’t have enough saving to buy a single share (and yes, I’m talking about PENNY stocks). But in the last month or so, things started changing. First, some spams promoting diet drugs started getting through the filters. It bothered me only because I have been trying unsuccessfully to lose weight (just not enough activity to burn the few calories I’m consuming) and I couldn’t help wondering if somebody at SpamMail Inc. actually had me on a fat-boy mailing list, and if so, how?
Another thing I had been lucky to avoid almost totally was p0rn spam. It rarely even showed up in my filters (when I’d open them up to hose them out) and I felt like I was living a good, clean life. But as of about two weeks ago, no longer. Now, with all the promises to provide crystal-clear pictures of almost endless variations of mostly disgusting practices (I’m no prude, but apparently there is no market for semi-normal sex… or it’s totally satisfied… yeah, sure), over 95% are successfully trapped in the filters, but enough still get through every day to outnumber my actual email messages from real people. And that’s a perspective I don’t want to see.
But the lowlight of my recent spam-covered experience occurred when one promoting an all-herbal-wonder-medication that I will never ever admit to needing (even if I ever do) had a randomly-generated name in its sender field that was not a Groucho-esque “Unselfishness V. Stonehenge” or something similar, but by sheer coincidece the real name of somebody I actually know – a female MetaFilter member who I’ve met personally and consider attractive. At least I HOPE it was a sheer coincidence.
Unfortunately, there is only one way to stop the scourge of email chopped-pork-shoulder… and that is to find that one-hundredth of one percent of the spam targets who actually respond to it and keep SpamMail Inc. and its ilk in business, and then to feed those idiots to live crocodiles. I have my suspicions where I might find some of these people (the audience at Larry the Cable Guy concerts, owners of Ann Coulter books and NOW CDs, viewers of Flavor Flav’s TV shows and users of HEAD ON, some of whom aren’t even smart enough to apply it directly to their foreheads). I will soon begin a charity fund-raising drive to acquire a sufficient number of crocodiles to do the job. When you receive my solicitation emails, you know what to do…
