During my last semester of undergraduate work, I recall complaining to a friend about all of the huge (and I really do mean huge) flies that would come into my room, settle into my light fixture, and die. "It's like frickin' fly Shangri-La," I told her. "All of the flies seem to instinctively know that it is the place to settle down and die." She laughed and told me I was projecting.
Well, recently, I've been thinking that at least one of my e-mail addresses must be spam Shangri-La, because I get an awful lot of it. Thankfully, that e-mail address is forwarded to my g-mail account . . . which is then smart enough to promptly file it in the spam folder. Astonishingly--and depressingly--I get about five times as much spam in any given day as I do e-mail from regular human beings who actually want to communicate with me.
(And if you want to send me an e-mail, I welcome it. Especially if it's an e-mail that isn't asking me for something. I tend to get a fair few of those . . . usually from siblings and friends who perform the equivalent of e-mail small-talk and then get to the real question: "Could you help me with a resume/cover letter/paper/musical number?" Not that I mind helping. It's just that sometimes I get terribly excited when I see e-mail and then terribly disappointed when I realize they don't really want to know about me . . .)
Anyway, I thought that surely I must have been projecting again. Surely, surely I wasn't getting such inordinate amounts of spam I could call my spam folder Spam Shangri-La. (Even though it has a certain ring to it.)
But today, friends, I have arrived. Because now, I'm not only getting spam in English. No, indeed. (I know this, because periodically I scan through the spam folder to make sure that non-spam messages don't end up in there)
As of today, I've also received spam in French, Spanish, and--get this--Russian.
I obviously have no idea what the subject line for the Russian spam says, and I probably don't want to know. I've got a pretty good idea of what the subject lines for the French and Spanish spam said, though.
And I'm rather saddened that the French and Spanish spam isn't much different than the English spam. I was hoping they somehow got more inventive with theirs . . .
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3 comments:
Huh. The only reason I ever look at my spam file is to smile at the spam recipes Gmail offers up top.
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What a great post! Gee, I sure enjoyed your funny story about the dead flies! And the spam too!
Hey, could you come proofread my last post? Thanks. You're a dear.
Well done! Too bad they don't have anything like bug zappers for spam. It'd be great if people who send spam got a shock everytime they got to close to those kind of emails. . .
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