Spam and Other Products

Hello everyone!

Well, it's officially over.

After over a year and a half of mostly undisturbed email enjoyment on my Yahoo email account, the spam has finally caught up to me.

I was careful. When I first signed up for my new account (after the Yahoo bastards dumped my first account for reasons never explained to me), I made sure I didn't give out my new address to anyone who wasn't an actual person that I knew. If I had to provide an email address for something, I made sure to use my crappy Hotmail address that I check once a week or so to dump all the spam. This system worked great for over a year or so.

But somehow my Yahoo address finally made its way out into the spamosphere. Once that Pandora's Box was opened, there was no turning back. Now I find myself up to my cyberneck in advertisements for debt consolidation, Viagra, mortgage refinancing, free Playstations and Xboxes, and of course, penis enlargement. I expect to be informed any day now about my long-lost distant relative who died and left me millions of dollars in a Nigerian bank account.

(It's worth pointing out that my spell check highlighted "viagra" in the preceding paragraph. I checked the spelling suggestions for the hell of it expecting to see "Niagara" or "viable" or something similar, but instead the only suggestion was "Viagra" with a capital "V" and not the lower-case "v" that I had originally used. This means that "Viagra" is in the Google spell check dictionary, even though brand names such as "Hotmail" aren't. I guess even spell checks aren't immune to the influence of the pharmaceutical-industrial complex.)

My Yahoo account gets as much spam as my Hotmail account, except now there are also emails I want and need to read mixed in with the spam. The only reason I haven't switched to Gmail yet is: a) I don't want to go through the trouble of changing my address, b) my spam filter seems to be working pretty well, knock on wood, although a couple weeks ago I sent an email to myself, from my same Yahoo address and it was even sent straight to the spam folder, and c) I already have three email addresses (four if you count my MySpace space).

I thought all these modern "conveniences" were supposed to make our lives better. How does more complicated equal better?

Here's another question: Am I the only one who thinks the word "product" has suddenly become alarmingly way overused throughout our society? It's now the latest fad to use the word "product" in addition to or place of anything that already has a name. This way, the focus isn't on what the "product" really is called because the name might clue someone in to what exactly is being pimped to them. For example, toilets are no longer toilets, they're "toilet products". Financial advice is no longer financial advice, it's an "advice product". Drops that look and smell like diarrhea are no longer drops that look and smell like diarrhea--they're "products" that are "now available for non-governmental sale." Even meat in a can is a "potted meat food product".

This really bugs the "Doo Drops" out of me. Maybe I'm the only one who feels this way, but people should just call whatever they're calling whatever it's called! You know the saying: "A rose by any other name..." Either that or: "You can't polish a turd."

Regardless, I hope you've enjoyed reading this blog product.

Rob