Leftover Spam

Last month, I wrote about the junk mail that piles up in my mailbox like leaves on an autumn lawn, though not nearly so picturesque or colorful.

And still the spam keeps coming in ever-increasing volume and even less entertaining forms:

Prescription Drugs. Now, I realize that Americans are thoroughly screwed when it comes to prescription drugs. The companies that manufacture said drugs charge premium prices for them, with their stated reasoning being that since they spent the cash to research and develope the drugs, they're entitled to charge whatever they want to in order to recoup their expenses. Okay. I get that. But when the choice for some Americans--especially seniors whose sole income is likely their Social Security check--is between paying for drugs they need to survive or, say, rent and food, something is way out of whack. The funny thing, though, is that these same drugs are available for a lot less in other countries. And when one of those countries is as tantilizingly close as right over our northern border--yeah, Canada, I'm talking about you--who can blame anyone for taking a little trip to save a good chunk of change? Even as expensive as gas is these days (and will increasingly become over the impending summer months), you'd still save money driving to Toronto or Montreal for your prescriptions than if you walked to your neighborhood Walgreens or CVS.

All that said, would I buy prescription drugs from a site that clogged up my mailbox with blind solicitations? Two words: Fuck. No.

Software/Hardware. I'm an old-fashioned sort in many ways, but one of the most prominent manifestations of this personality trait (flaw?) is that there are certain things I won't buy online. DVDs? Sure. Books? Why not? Porn? Not so much anymore--"When masturbation's lost its charm, you're fuckin' lazy," or so Green Day sang--but when I did buy, I did quite a bit of it via e-mail. But a printer for Polly Jean? Or software that I can't be certain would be compatible with her delicate innards? I'd be more likely to walk down my crumbling back porch, pile up what little paper money I have, douse it with lighter fluid (which I do have, despite the fact that I don't smoke much more than three cigarettes a year) and light the pile up.

Hi. Oh, but this fascinates--and infuriates--me to no end. My e-mailbox has been crammed to capacity lately with messages from addresses I've never heard from--all of them with attachments that they want me to pop open. Now, I may be an idiot in many ways--spending money recklessly, falling in love unwisely, working at a dead-end job eons longer than I ever should have--but even I am not addled enough to double-click a ZIP or EXE file from someone I don't know. Shit, I won't even do that from someone I do know unless I'm expecting an attachment from a friend. Once, Sailor J sent me a scan of Richard Roeper (said by far too many to be my celebrity twin) with his arm around a woman who was a dead ringer for a mutual friend and former co-worker. But she had titled her e-mail "Hi" and I had to to ask her, "What the bloody hell are you thinking? Don't you know that assholes are sending e-mails like that to spread viruses?" She confessed that she didn't know, and I felt bad for going off, especially since she's one of the few readers I have left.

But the sheer volume of these infected e-mails--sometimes as many as a dozen a day--surprised me. So I asked out tech at work what the blue fuck was going on. "The virus-writing community..." Wait...there's a virus-writing community? Do they get together for coffee or have conventions? "...is having a competition to see who can write the nastiest virus and cause the most damage on the Net." How absolutely darling. It's hard enough to maintain a site on the Web without these evil rat bastards trying to take me and Polly Jean down for the count. And to make things extra special, it appears that some of this dicksmacks have appropriated Adoresixtyfour.com's address to send some of these infected e-mails (or so I'm lead to believe, from the "mail delivery failure" notices I get from places like Canada, Great Britain and Hungary).

There's little more disheartening these days than seeing that my e-mailbox has a dozen messages in it, but not one of them is from a friend I haven't heard from in a bit, a close associate who's read the latest update and enjoyed, or some random stranger passing along a rare compliment. When only spammers are paying attention to you--and scant attention at that--it might just be time to pull the plug once and for all.

The spammers would have plenty of other, more tasty targets--they wouldn't miss me at all.