Spamalot, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crap

Now this may be a sign of age, wisdom or the gradual numbing effects of a dirty martini too many, but spam--that of the e-mail variety--no longer bothers me. (The pinkish meat-ish product in a can, well that still disturbs me, at least on a scientific level.) But rather than getting upset or annoyed by the tons of unsolicited shit that winds up in my mailbox regardless of spam filters, anti-spammy government legislation and a concerted effort to give only fake e-mail addresses to companies seeking to put me on a mailing list, I still get it by the steaming shovel-ful, and I've decided I'm okay with it. Why? Read on...

For any of you who have visited the comments section on our blog here, you'll undoubtedly have noticed that our most faithful contributors are, for the most part, not admirers of the R&R brand, they're not thoughtful respondants to the deep questions we pose, rather they're agrammatical pre-programmed messages that generally start, "You have great blogcome See myne!!!" then they link to their "low interest" credit card site, their dating for lonely losers site, and their member-extender site(s). They generally have nothing to do with the subject of the posting that day, but occasionally, like just the other day when I wrote about Israel and the first comment to appear was a site promising to help you "MAKE MONEY NOW," or on the especially spirited discussion on 9/27/05 which started with a post about not getting a job, and the first comment directed me to a site on bipolar depression, which led to 5 more spammers chiming in about their sites on penis extensions. These are happy coincidences to be sure, even if they are tinged with crude assumptions and potential prejudice.

But since there's no real way to fight back (read: since i'm not technologically savvy enough to know how to delete these comments), I've decided if I can't beat them, I might as well join them. And if you check the comments section, you'll notice that I do tend to answer right back to the spammers and encourage you, you brilliant bastards, to do the same.

No doubt if I include a few key words in this post like, say, "throbbing," "date-less," "debt-ridden," and "donkey love," I'll wind up getting a number of good comments for spammers with finely-tuned search functions. I'll actually be away from my computer for most of the afternoon, so if anything pops up before I can respond, please have it. Not only will it give you an excellent sense of retribution, re-claiming your deep-seated feelings of victim-hood, it'll make this blog look incredibly popular.

I thank you for your support.