The Twelve Days of Spam
Since my email address used to be all over Buttafly without any sort of spam protection I have the privilege of getting about 200 spam emails per day. Qurb, my spam filtering program, says it has snagged 72,857 emails since this time last year. Fantastic.
I've been trying to come up with some sort of purpose for all this crap. Sign up people I don't like to their distribution lists? Forward the particularly lurid ones to all my friends who send me chain letters with the subject "PLS forward - VERY IMPORTANT"?
As I was going through this thought process the Twelve Days of Christmas was playing in the background, inspiring me to wonder: What if this "true love" person mentioned in the song did all his shopping through spam emails alone?
And thus was born the Twelve Days of Spam, a beautiful song for the holidays as well as a wistful retrospective of the past year as seen through my Qurb folder. All of the lyrics are derived from actual spams I have received.
The Twelve Days of Spam
On the twelfth day of Christmas my spammer gave to me...
Twelve slutty Asians,
Eleven SoBig.F worms,
Ten Rolex watches,
Nine free drugs online,
Eight hot teen webcams,
Seven low mortgage rates,
Six tranny chatrooms,
Fiiiiiiiive Viagra,
Four Vicodin,
Three Xanax,
Two Valium,
And a virus that crashed my C: drive
I fully expect to see this on the Osmonds' next Christmas album.
My husband and I debate hunting
And I even let him get the last word.
As always, read from the bottom up.
-----Original Message-----
From: J.
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 6:10 PM
To: 'Jennifer'
Subject: RE: King Ranch Buck
I would agree that no one should ever kill an animal and not eat it. Rare is the hunter these days that does that. It is highly frowned upon. So let's agree that killing and dumping it is bad.So now we are only talking about people who hunt and eat what they kill. If I eat a deer, that's one less cow that I am eating. It's a pure substitution. They aren't going to kill that cow that I would have eaten and just dump it out on the ground for me since I didn't eat it. My not eating meat for a week is a small effect, but it does have an effect. If everyone ate deer for a month this year, fewer cows would be killed because there just wouldn't be as much demand for meat.
Finally, I think hunting is a fine and noble endeavor. It's a basic human skill that is enjoyable and useful, and I see absolutely nothing wrong with it. In fact, I think it's preferable to raising animals for slaughter. To say otherwise while wearing the leather and eating the meat of animals you paid someone else to kill for you strikes me as hypocritical. To me it smacks of the kind of moroseness that only the idle rich can achieve because they have time to obsess over such things.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 5:37 PM
To: J.
Subject: RE: King Ranch BuckDon't confuse rich yuppies hunting in 2004 with being opposed to the death of animals in general. Obviously I can understand the concept of hunting animals for food. I am comfortable with the food chain. The difference is that it is completely unnecessary in this day and age.
You make it sound as if you shoot an animal in the wild that it saves an animal from the slaughterhouse, but it's not a binary choice -- the animal in the slaughterhouse is going to die anyway. Of course I think it's a better life for an animal to live freely and be shot than to live cooped up and then die in a slaughterhouse, but since the animals in slaughterhouses are going to be killed anyway, regardless of whether you go hunting, why not just eat them? Given that more than enough animals are already being killed for food and tons of meat is wasted every day, why destroy one more living being just for amusement? To me it seems wasteful and disrespectful of life.
People in the modern era are incredibly greedy and gluttonous, and I feel like hunting is a prime example of that. Yet in this case it's wasting life rather than just material goods, which seems especially disrespectful.
-----Original Message-----
From: J.
Sent: Saturday, November 20, 2004 5:33 PM
To: 'Jennifer'
Subject: RE: King Ranch Buck
Jen-I can't believe you are down on hunting. How did our ancestors survive all this time? Were they all just bad people? Is a slaughterhouse better than a gun? Personally, I would rather live freely as a deer and take my chances against a hunter than be a penned up cow slaughtered in a slaughterhouse. Every creature gets hunted by the creatures higher up in the food chain. There are even a few enterprising lions and sea crocodiles that hunt us. Because we live in a society where meat comes in little plastic bags, you have the luxury of being overly sensitive about killing animals to eat their meat.
-----Original Message-----
From: Jennifer
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 6:43 PM
To: Dad
Cc: J.
Subject: RE: King Ranch Buck
I am so opposed to that.
People suck.
-----Original Message-----
From: Dad
Sent: Friday, November 19, 2004 6:19 AM
To: Jennifer (E-mail)
Cc: J.
Subject: FW: King Ranch Buck
Importance: High
Jen,Heres my point about trophy hunting. I could not bring myself to kill something like this just to show off the rack. The meat on a buck like that would be tough as a boot.
D
-----Original Message-----
From: Alex T.
Sent: Thursday, November 18, 2004 6:45 PM
To: XXXX
Subject: King Ranch Buck
Importance: High
[Picture of large dead buck attached]I WANT ONE!!
Best of the Inbox: Dukes of Hazzard
[Note: this is the beginning of a new category, Best of the Inbox, where I'm just going to copy amusing email exchanges. Perfect for a lazy blogger like myself. As always, read from the bottom up.]
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris B.
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 10:00 AM
To: J.
Subject: Re: awesome
Nor has Father Malboro or Father Jim Beam.
-----Original Message-----
From: J.
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 9:58 AM
To: Chris B.
Cc: xxxx
Subject: awesome
That's funny. Jen's response was, "Father Time has not been kind to Daisy."
-----Original Message-----
From: Chris B.
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 9:50 AM
To: J.
Subject: Re: awesome
Yikes. Daisy is looking a little worse for wear.
-----Original Message-----
From: J.
Sent: Monday, August 02, 2004 9:49 AM
To: Jennifer, Chris B.
Cc: xxxx
Subject: awesome
The Dukes of Hazzard are back!
http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/