People hate terrorists, sure, and terrorists hate people, but not like either one hates spam. If you're a unrepentant global warmer, you are held in fond regard compared to a guy who wants you to know your credit rating for free.
Look at this inbox! Some girl wants to chat with me! I can win a trip to Miami, just by filling out a survey! 500 business cards free! Now I have to hit the DELETE key three times! Don't these damn spammers think I've got anything else to do? Why doesn't the government do something about this?
We the people once wrested this continent from the natives and the powers of Europe. Pioneers crossed the West in stagecoaches, were marauded by Apaches and Sioux and died building railroads and bridges to knit this great land together. Americans fought wars against anyone who picked a fight with them, or deserved it, or merely got in their way. We produced the Greatest Generation and defeated Fascism and Communism. The arc of American history soars with stories of men and women who breathed their last so this nation could be free.
Now that we get unwanted emails in our inboxes, we're starting to wonder if any of that was worth it.
Our hatred of spam is as deep as the shining sea, as purple as the mountains' majesty and as morbid and bloated as Rush Limbaugh and Oprah Winfrey's top-secret love child.
That is why I type these words with trembling fingers.
I am coming out of the closet.
The love that dare not speak its name is no longer gay love, or big love, or trailer park love.
I speak of it now. It is spam love. I love my spam.
Put down your weapons, you haters, and your scorn. Avert that frozen stare, and hear me out.
I tried to hate spam like everybody else, even though hitting the delete key a couple times an hour didn't seem as difficult as war or cancer or other things that Americans complain about less than spam. But soon I began to notice that while the rest of the world is coldly indifferent to my needs, my spam is fine-tuned to my every desire. It wants to raise my credit score. It wants to lower my interest rates. It wants to send me a free video on ten ways to improve my golf swing, even though I only recently became aware of which end of a golf club to hold because my cable company switched the Golf Channel with the Sponge Bob Channel.
Why do they do that anyway? Isn't that enough to piss you right off? Frickin' media bigwigs don't care that you've finally got the channels memorized. I'm voting for anybody who's willing to make switching around cable channels against the law.
My spam has stopped trying to sell me Viagra, or Viiagra, or vi a gra, or however it chooses to spell the world's favorite below the belt pick-me-up to escape the Internet spam filterers. That's how sensitive it is. It knows I have enough Viagra.
But my spam cares about my penis (or peenus, or peenis). It cares about my penis more than most women do, unfortunately. It wants to improve it. It wants to ADD INCHES. It wants me to have INCREASED GIRTH! It wants to make the foremost citizen of my trousers longer, thicker and firmer than a Supreme Court decision. Don't expect me to hate that.
My spam isn't all about sex, either. It cares about my work, too. It wants me to be an ULTRASOUND TECHNICIAN. That little picture of whorls and blobs that all pregnant women and fathers-to-be show you of their unborn kid, and you have to think of something nice to say about…I'll be responsible for that. You're welcome.
Or I could be a MEDICAL BILLING SPECIALIST. I'll send you those bills you thought your insurance would pay. My spam will teach me how. Don't hate me for having a career.
Rob Gleason, the Chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania, sent me spam. I'm not a Republican, and I live in California, but it shows that he cares.
My spam says I can buy a timeshare. It says I can sell a timeshare. I can forward these spams to each other and feel like a real-estate mogul without ever setting foot in a time share.
Some of my spam is CONFIDENTIAL. It is for MY EYES ONLY. Nobody else tells me secrets, possibly because I can't keep them any better than I can levitate and I mean levitate with a fifty-pound bag of cement under each arm, but my spam respects me. I download this little file and find all I have to do for a one-thousand percent return on my investment is to call 1-800-NIGERIA. I'm rich.
I dial the number and nothing happens, because I have NO SIGNAL. Doesn't that infuriate me! They ought to pass a law that anytime you can't get a signal, you shouldn't have to pay your next month's cell phone bill! I can't send a text, either, dammit…what's Congress DOING about this?
More stuff by me under Books and Stories, upper right.