Must be the Internet holiday season!
I can't believe HOW MUCH JUNK MAIL I'm gettin' these days...

Every day, it's the same old thing. Check and answer e-mails, then, I'll either look thru the list of junk e-mails I receive, or if I don't feel like doing that, I'll just delete everything from my in-box page. The reason I look thru the junk e-mail list, is because sometimes, SOMETIMES, but not often, "real" mail ends up getting dumped into the Junk Mail Folder. Most days, I've been averaging about 75-100 junk mails, and that number jumps slightly on the weekends. But COME ON, guys, EASE UP! I tell ya, the ol' junk-mailers have really been pouring it on since "The Holidays" arrived this year.

Christmas is only one day behind us now, but, WHAM, BANG, just LOOK at my junk mail folder! In ONE DAY'S TIME, I got 320 of the damn things! 320! Gosh, I know people have to make a living doing something, but how am I supposed to respond to all of those? And, why would I want to respond to ONE of those? I think anyone who sends junk mail for a living should really begin to realize that the more junk mails I get, the more I'm prone to delete them all without even bothering to LOOK at the junk mail page. Do people get paid for sending these things out? Do they get sent out on a computer-generated schedule, giving the false impression an ACTUAL PERSON sent them? That's even WORSE. Crazy, man, crazy...

320 junk mails in one day. Of course, I'm not going to look at them all. I've looked at the first page of them, though, in my frantic search for something to blog about. Nope, ain't gonna open any of 'em, but here's a sampling of what I got on just the first page of my multitudinous in-box:

From: LOCAL SINGLES. Message: "NAUGHTY OR NICE? BROWSE SINGLES IN YOUR AREA!" My feedback: ominous holiday overtones here. I thot only Santa only found out who's naughty or nice." Not exactly "visions of sugarplums" here, eh?

From: VISTA SPRINT SPECIAL OFFER. Message: "VISTA PRINT FREE BUSINESS CARDS!" My feedback: I've got enough crap to clean up around here without having to put up with More Business Cards Than I'd Ever Use In Several Lifetimes.

From: NEW CRUSH MAIL. Message: "YOU HAVE ONE UNREAD CRUSH WAITING." If it sounds Too Good To Be True, It Probably Is. The only crush I've ever had is when I swam near a diving board once, and a guy sprung off the board and landed ON me. I was probably 8 or 9 then.

From: RING TONES. Message: "GET 10 FREE RINGTONES INSTANTLY!" I don't understand the fascination with ring tones. Why is it so cool to have just the right ring-tone? WHO CARES? Just answer the damn phone! But I don't even have a cell-phone. Although if I did, I'd probably install a "Black Sabbath 'Iron Man' ringtone". YEAHHHHH!

From CONGRATULATIONS! Message: "CONGRATULATIONS: DETAILS INSIDE!" Just for your information, Mr. Junk-mailer or Junk-mailer-bot, I have NEVER opened one of these. How can you congratulate me? You don't even know me! Bah humbug.

From FUEL PROMO. Message: "RUNNING LOW? FILL UP FOR FREE!" This one actually caught my eye. I could actually get a $1,000-dollar gas card. Here's the catch: The phrase, "Participation Required". I once clicked one such "Participate" thing, and spent the next 3 hours turning down offers, by-passing subscriptions, rejecting merchandise and putting the kibosh on coupons...I never did get to the page which actually Offered Me The Item For Real. No more!

From CELEBRITY CHEF. Message: "YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED TO RECEIVE THE RACHEL RAY CELEBRITY CHEF PACKAGE!" She's the skinny woman with the big mouth on TV. The closest I ever get to "chef-dom" is making toast or putting Dinty Moore Roast Beef Royal soup-glop mix into the microwave.

From HEY!!!! Message: "WANNA SEE MY PICS?" Probably some beauty-queen wannabee who's had plenty of hard-knocks, advertising her nudity on "sleazebutproudofit.com"...I could visit a junkyard and find less wear and tear...no, thanks, honey, don't need no floozies today.

Okay, you get the idea...the 9 messages above comprise roughly a third of a page of junk-mail listings, and, there's still 312 of these lugubriously STUPID things wanting me to respond to them. In order to do all of the stuff I need to do online, and still have time to respond to TEN junk mails, let alone 320 of them, I'd need feeding tubes, since I'd never be able to actually Get Away From The Computer For Any Duration Of Time. Of course I could probably set my junk mail "filter" on "high"...but who knows? I just might be missing something GOOD! Ya never know...

But lately, just lately, these unsolicited e-mails are beginning to creep into my e-mail INBOX with alarming regularity. I figure, "okay, this is where I use the spam button", and ZAP!, there go the wrongly-placed junk e-mails, off into some boiling cauldron of cyberspace purgatory. The only advantage to junk e-mails, far as I can see, is that it's a lot easier to toss THEM out than it is REAL garbage. So I'll end this post now, and then I'll go ZAP! all of my junk e-mails. I'm still thinkin' about that "Iron Man" ringtone, however...
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The main difference between this blog-post and a junk e-mail is, that I haven't sent the following notice to hundreds of millions of computer users everywhere:

From: COOL BLOG! Message: "TOTALLY OUTRAGEOUS AND SUBVERSIVE!"