I get a lot of spam. Happily, most of it goes to the junk folder of the junk Hotmail account I maintain, but every once in a while I peek into that folder and have a look at what’s inside. It’s a good thing that I don’t do it very often, because sometimes that stuff just ticks me off. I don’t mind the “h0rny.m0mZ”, the “V_I_A_G_R_A”, the “ezmortgage-quote jk543ljjkl3jklj4k”, or even the “Re: found your pancreas” stuff. They’re all pretty laughable. Pathetic, really. I mean, what moron is actually going to think a legitimate business offer will be preceded by the subject line “u can refi ur home”?

What I really need is an Explicit Teen Viagra Mortgage, guaranteed to increase the size of my apparently minuscule organ. Either that, or something from our friends in Nigeria. Sadly, I have not yet been blessed with the opportunity to assist in the financial looting of African nations, which happens to have been a particular dream of mine since childhood. But I digress.

No, what really gets my virtual goat is the way some spammers try to drown you in bullshit about how their unsolicited message was requested by you, because you probably once walked down a street that someone’s cousin’s cousin once drove down, and he knows this guy who used to play Quake with that dude down the street who heard about a domain name that started with the same letter that what’s-his-face used to scrawl on antiseptic urinal cakes, and, hell, that’s tantamount to beating on the spammer’s door late at night, begging to perform acts of oral copulation on the spammer for the privilege of getting on the waiting list to receive said messages. There’s something obviously suspicious when the sender spends three-quarters of the message telling you how legitimate it is.

Every once in a while I succumb to the maddening urge to write one of these fools back. Like now. From another, even less-used address. I do this partially to avoid even more spam, and also because I am a craven coward. Well, that, and I heard that the CIA and NSA have commandeered the “e-mail tracker” once rented by Applebee’s, and nobody wants a piece of that action, at least, not until they figure out a way to get Scotch tape to reliably secure the psychically protective aluminum foil helmet and scrotum shields to my body. No, sir.

Anyway, I found a few administrative addresses searching whois databases, and sent the following message to the vile spammers at:

iblins@aol.com, info@mediasoftstudio.com, and mediasoft@onebox.com.

Hi,

You have been sent this message because you sent me spam at another address, one of my affiliates, citing a nonexistent contact with some domain I have never heard of, much less visited, and have therefore given consent to receive this message in return.

Thanks for the worthless fly-by-night offer to receive even more spam about online gambling, but I would prefer to pass, opting instead to seize this opportunity to suggest that you:

• Piss off.
• Die.
• Leave your bloated, rotting corpse to be repeatedly violated by chainsaws.

Note: This is not an unsolicited e-mail, as you have opted in to my shit-list by sending me your stupid waste of time and bandwidth. This, though, is a one-time mailing; if you do not respond to this message with more of your blather, you will never, ever, be subjected to one of these flames again.