I Just Don't Understand Spam: A Rant

I hate spam, and I know I'm not the only one.

Wikipedia, my favorite semi-reliable source of knowledge, describes "spam" (as it applies to email) as "Unsolicited Bulk Email". Basically, a modernized version of junk mail, except that it mostly has to do with increasing the size of your penis and helping Nigerian bankers smuggle some dead guy's money.There has probably been some form of spam in existence since the beginning of human history.

Almost everyone has, at some point, found flyers or ads or bible verses stuck under their windshield wiper. Go to Las Vegas, and you'll see guys about every 8 feet all the way down the Strip, handing out little cards to everyone who passes by, regardless of age, sex, or demeanor. These cards typically feature photos of unclothed women, complete with phone numbers for escort services, stripping agencies, or phone sex lines. It makes me wonder-- did they do this kind of thing in Ancient Rome or other eras of civilization? I can understand how movable type and the Industrial Revolution made advertising in ALL forms a lot easier, and a lot more pervasive, but in the grand scope of history, those are pretty recent developments. I do theorize that there has always been pornography or some form of selling sex, and probably there have always been scams and salesmen. Do you think cavemen handed out stones with cave-paintings on them to advertise hot cavewomen that would come to your cave and dance and grunt for only 5 pig-skulls? I think it's not only possible, but fairly likely.

So, let's move forward a couple million years, to a time and place in which every morning I have between 200 and 600 emails in my inbox. On some days, 100% of these are spam. Other days, I get one or two real messages from friends or family or clients. The other 598 messages are the most obnoxious, idiotic, unsolicited hogwash I have ever seen.

Look, I understand the principle. I work in marketing, and much of my job consists of finding cost-effective ways to raise awareness and sales of my company's products. Advertising by email costs virtually nothing, and occasionally it may actually help promote a business or gain customers. But how are you going to promote a product with subject lines full of complete nonsense? Is this actually fooling anyone? I'm talking about the really spammy stuff, the messages that have subjects like some of the ones I received today:

• He my vendetta - (What does this even mean?)


• Everything for you penis at low prices - (My penis has everything it needs, thanks.)


• in aback as waggle - (Again, total nonsense. How is this supposed to entice me to buy things?)


• New Winter Poetry Contest - Enter Now! Win 10,000 Dollars - (I don't write poetry)

In fact, Mr. David Wong has compiled a hilarious Spam Subject Line Museum at his Pointless Waste Of Time website. My examples seem rather tame compared to some of his listings. Reinforcing my point; is anyone actually opening these emails? And if not, what's the point of sending trillions of them?

See, when you're in Las Vegas, and a guy is handing out sex-cards, you have the option of not taking one if you're not interested in paying for sex, or you could take one and throw it in the next available garbage can. If you actually wanted a midget sex message from Muswellbrook Netball Association Vice President Tracy Goldman, you would probably just call her up and ask if she would be willing to give you the scoop on midget sex (don't get your hopes up, I'm sure she's very busy). With spam, you are constantly getting dozens of repeated emails trying to sell you things that there is absolutely no chance you would ever want or need (like a midget sex message, because I'm actually not even sure what that entails. Is it a message you need to hear if you ARE a midget, or does the midget give you the message? Either way, I'm not interested).

The reason I even mention any of this is because spam is not only annoying, it is fast becoming dangerous. In recent years, spam and similar maladies like spyware, viruses, autodialers, etc. have shifted from being passive annoyances to very proactive and aggressive tools of destruction. With every safeguard we can install on our computer, some genius with way too much time on his hands finds a new loophole.

In a recent news story, a 40-year-old substitute teacher is in danger of being sentenced to 40 YEARS in prison for accidentally and unwittingly exposing a classroom full of 7th-graders to various pornographic pop-up advertisements that appeared out of nowhere while letting the kids surf the net on the class computer. As it turns out, in this case, the teacher had hired a lawyer who was woefully uninformed and unprepared to specifically place the blame on spammers and spybots. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for her appeal, as she has already been convicted of 4 felonies in this case.

A couple of years ago, some asshole company saw fit to install an ad on my computer without telling me. This ad was for something called The Amazing Diet Patch, a transdermal patch that pumped you full of some sort of diet drugs. This ad would pop up at random moments, complete with a very loud female announcer who would tell me all about the diet patch, and scare the bejesus out of my cat. When I wasn't hearing Diet Patch Lady's voice in my nightmares, I was hearing it in reality because it woke me up out of a sound sleep from the office next to my bedroom. I became so frustrated with the ad that I tracked down the phone number for the shady-sounding company that was behind the product, called them up, and demanded to be transferred to the tech department to explain how to get the thing off of my system. Since I was talking to some order-entry paean who probably had no idea what I was talking about, I got nowhere with this request.

My point is that there is no reason this ad should have been installed to begin with. If I want a diet patch, I'll go find one and buy it. If I want porn, or a midget sex message, or information on penny stocks, I'll seek it out on my own, thank you very much. I hate spam and spyware much as I would hate someone breaking the window of my apartment to sneak in while I was asleep and ask me if I wanted to buy something. Even if it was something really, REALLY good.

When spam and its ilk cross the line from annoyance to invasion, we all need to step back and realize that although there are some laws to govern this type of activity (like the CAN-SPAM act), there is no real way to enforce them until the damage has already been done, whether it's damage to your peace of mind or to your PC. So I will make a plea to all you spammers out there:

Please just stop doing what you're doing. Your way of doing business should be illegal, and at the very least it should give you trouble sleeping at night. If your products were any good in the first place, you would not need to resort to sneaky and cryptic marketing strategies. Nobody is shopping online for Diet Patches, searching for midget sex messages, or in need of any sort of herbal substitutes for marijuana unless they are really, really dumb or desperate. Your day will come!

Why I Gave Up On Comic Strips

When I was at SU, I had a comic strip in the Daily Orange that ran two days a week, called "Welcome To My World". It was poorly drawn, but I was more focused on the humor at the time. Probably my biggest inspiration at the time (1998-2000) was a little strip from Canada called Space Moose. If you've never seen it, there's really no way to do it justice with a simple explanation (warning - it's NOT for kids.)

In recent months, I've been considering starting up a new series of comic strips, because at least once a day I have an idea that I think would be pretty funny. The only problem is, there are already so many strips out there on the Web that are amazing and hilarious, that it's actually kind of discouraging. I'm fairly certain that nothing I can come up with will ever be as good as some of the genius I've seen out there. I'm sure you have felt the same way about something before, be it music, art, writing, or whatever.

Anyway, I still may end up doing a strip if I can force myself to work hard enough on it. But for now, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites with you. If you're planning to read any of these while you're at work, at church, or while someone is taking a nap in the other room, I strongly advise against it, because it's guaranteed that some of these will make you laugh WAY out loud. Check it:

• "Get Your War On" - A highly political strip that I assume evolved from the author's prior series, "My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable". Both are absolutely insane and fantastic commentaries on the state of business, world politics, and clip art.


• "The Perry Bible Fellowship" - Hilarious and disturbing at the same time. The author is an SU grad (just like me!) who used to have a strip in the Daily Orange (just like me!). One way in which he is not just like me is that his comics are an equal blend of witty dark humor and fantastic craftsmanship.


• "This Modern World" - You may recognize Tom Tomorrow's work from my links page. His comics are hosted on Salon.com and WorkingForChange.com, as well as in many newspapers across the nation.

Go check these comics out, but be sure to heed my warnings. Otherwise, you might get in trouble for uncontrollable laughter.

Quitting Smoking

So... for the second year in a row, I made a New Year's Resolution to quit smoking for real. So far, I have not succeeded, but I've made some serious progress. According to my calculations, my daily cigarette consumption is down by about 80%, and on top of that I've switched to Ultra Lights.

I've just learned a really unsettling fact, by the way. Light and Ultra Light cigarettes are meaningless. They're just regular filtered cigarettes with tiny holes poked in the filter, so when you take a drag you're getting a little extra air mixed into the smoke. They "test" the levels of tar and nicotine using a machine that "inhales" the smoke from the end of the filter. What they don't tell you is that most humans who smoke cigarettes typically hold them using their fingers, which effectively cover most of these tiny holes, rendering them pretty much useless.

Ultra Light cigarettes taste basically like just sitting in a really smoky room and breathing the smoke-filled air. Unsatisfying and gross, and it still makes you smell horrible.

Anyway, wish me luck everyone. I can't afford to smoke anymore since moving to Massachusetts, and once I sat down and realized that I've been a smoker for over 10 years, I decided that it's kind of important to not die. My parents are offering to split the cost of laser acupuncture treatment with me, but even divided in half, it's still too expensive for me to afford at the moment.

I also just read this article and got extremely pissed off. Not that the cigarette industry was really doing anything that great for me before I found out, but seeing the article just made them seem so much more evil. I guess even if they send me free flashlights and travel dominoes sets and mix CDs, in the end they're still basing their business on profiting from my self-destruction.

More on this as I progress (or don't)...

Illustratology Blog Announcement

Coming in February 2007 (or sooner)!

Yes, I am becoming one of those "blog people". If you'd like to know what the blog is going to be about (eww.. I hate the word "blog"... I wish it was called something else. It sounds like some kind of gross combination of "blood" and "egg") I really don't know quite yet.

This blog is mostly inspired by sheer laziness, please note the irony of that statement, since the actual mechanics of putting the blogging tags into my own web format were a living hell that drove me to the brink of insanity. I just decided months ago that I wanted an extremely simple and fast way to post any random thoughts, ideas, or news that I had onto my site without having to go through the whole hassle of republishing a page every time.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it when it actually begins to accumulate some substance.

-Rick