“If variety is the spice of life, marriage is the big can of leftover Spam.” Johnny Carson.
During my younger years, I certainly ate a whole lot of America’s wonder food, Spam. I consumed most of it while I was in school, especially junior high school. Sometimes the sandwiches contained other ingredients such as lettuce, cheese and even mayonnaise or more than likely, the fake mayo called Miracle Whip. I definitely ate more than what is nowadays considered healthy but that’s what my parents could afford, and I was a hungry teenager in need of that desperate food fix for lunch. So what if it was extremely hot outside, our school lockers had no air conditioning and none of us kids had any idea that mayo became poisonous when it spoiled. Today’s electronic equivalent of Spam is really revolting to me and the way it makes my blood pressure rise more than likely makes it just an unhealthy as the Spam of yesteryear.
It’s amazing how our new electronic age is having influences on everything, including our language. When we ate cookies we left crumbs on the table and today cookies, unless one blocks them, are crumbs in our computers until we figure out how to get rid of them. Then there are those unwanted emails called spam that contain advertisements on products that I would never purchase in the first place and out of spite would never ever buy because they fouled up my computer. I even contacted the Federal Communications Commission hoping for some type of solution to the same spam emails that I seem to receive daily. If you’re a good guesser, you know what kind of worthless government runaround that I received back. That agency ranks pretty well even with the Maine Public Utilities Commission as far as I am concerned.
The amazing thing I find fascinating with spam emails is that the senders are always trying to out-think our methods of preventing them from ending up on our computers. For many years the vast majority of spam that I received contained a sender’s email address which included Yahoo. I don’t know why, nor do I care why, but I kind of find that really odd that an internet company would allow itself to be used to abuse others and that’s just my opinion, period. Lately, some of the email addresses in my spam are getting really weird and what I am going to do here use some parts of several addresses to make my point without revealing the real address. They seem to make no sense at all so here is one I combined: “idaapppubllyfczoberitycycxcobobo.” I left out a couple of symbols so it wouldn’t turn blue on my computer.
What’s interesting with the spam containing these weird email addresses is that I attempted to contact the companies the spam pertained to and when I found a contact email address they all turned out to be invalid so I have to presume that the emails are not only spam but possibly scams as well. That might very well be the reason I keep receiving some of them although I block them after receiving them. Of course, all they have to do is make a slight change to their email address and the next one ends up my computer as well. At least with the old Spam, I could throw it in a trash can if I couldn’t stomach it that day. I can’t understand why some people always say our lives are getting better than the good old days.
The day I was finishing this column I received another spam email that I had previously blocked and yet it came through. It stated this company requires marketers to include a working unsubscribe mechanism in all messages. It also states that it does not control in any way the email messages sent either directly by the marketers or affiliated organizations that send emails. It sounds to me that the spam will continue without Congress being involved. That surely won’t happen soon.
Lane Hiltunen of Windham wonders if wonders if Spam infused with marijuana would sell.
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