ANDROMEDA PUMPHREY SAYS: VIAGRA AS LOW AS $3.00

I learned a long time ago not to give out my good e-mail addresses to any commercial establishments, whether good, evil, or ambivalent. The quickest way to get spamified and suffocate an otherwise viable e-mail account is to hand out a good e-mail address to some random, seemingly innocuous online company or local business from which you're buying, say, a replacement computer part, or maybe even a few lovely salmon (see previous post).

I can handle 200 shit e-mails a day on the account I use to purchase books from B & N, primarily because it has a pretty good spam filter on it, and secondarily because no one I care about uses that e-mail address, so I know I'm not going to miss the local prayer-chain e-mail (something I take very seriously) or an electronic missive from my mom telling me that she still can't get her AOL instant-messenger program to work.

But what I can't handle is when one of my good e-mail addresses somehow makes its way into general circulation and becomes a repeated target for a barely literate, balding 19-year-old Armenian geek running a spam service with the capability of sending out 2,000,000 e-mails a day advertising some shitty porn site that exploits every type of carbon-based lifeform capable of being exploited for such an undertaking (men, women, children, midgets, cats, ring-tailed lemurs, Carolina wrens, real-estate agents, and pedicurists), and which, much worse, probably doesn't even comply with 18 U.S.C. 2257.

Sadly, this tragic circumstance is all too familiar to me, and I regret to announce that the afflicted e-mail account is my e.k.hornbeck account. When it occurred to me what had happened, at first I wept openly, just like I did when ol' "open-mic" Bush won the last election.

Only much later did I discover some solace in the fact that much of the spamification, if one only takes the time to view the advertised Web sites, is really pretty interesting, as are the spam e-mails themselves. The danger, of course, is that viewing the content of some of the advertised Web sites could get you 120 to 240 months of unconsensual prison sex in Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, and parts of Oklahoma. On the flip side ...

Here is a brief sample of e-mails received just today (some of my comments in blue italics):

* From "Verna Oliver": an advertisement for "quality replica timepieces." I do have a watch fetish, but who else would know that?!

* From "Gail Velazquez": it says: "Hi, Dear e.k.hornbeck! Get laid tonight! Meet women in your area!"

* From "Will": "Beauties can't get enough sausages," it says. So I've long suspected.

* From "WhereChristiansMeet": it reads, "The Lord has bigger plans for you than just sitting here reading this email [sic]. Click to find your heavenly match. Let Where Christians Meet take care of that. Just sign up and we will hook you up with hundreds of worthy Christians singles!" The Lord should know by now that "e-mail" is spelled with a hyphen.

* From "Adamdawson@hairdresser.net": the subject reads, "Susan felt her passage polished harsh." Who in the hell writes this shit? She felt her passage polished harsh? That sounds like a bad translation to me, like the type that used to show up in Korean instruction manuals for putting together Wal-mart furniture ("rotate the screw around the clock backwards . . . ").

* From "Alexander Gusinsky," who purports to be the "Franchise Owner of Yukos Engineering." Yukos Engineering, according to the e-mail, is "an international affiliate of Yukos Oil and Gas Company based in Russia." The purported author of this e-mail professes to have esophageal cancer that has "defiled [sic] all forms of medical treatment." Ha. He wants me to help him secure $25,500,000 of his money that has been paid into a secret account with a "Security Company" in France. For my efforts, he is going to pay me 30% of the $25,500,000. Zoinks! I'd be crazy not to do it!

* From "Athelstan Crosbie": this e-mail tells me that I can get Viagra, Valium, and Ambien for low, low prices. Then, even more troubling, it says, "design, prisoners and slaves that have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious." What the bloody fuck is that about?

(As it turns out, this little partial quote comes from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit (or, if you prefer the Spanish version, El Hobbit, or perhaps even the Arabic version, al-Hobbit). Someone please explain to me how a partial quote from this Tolkien classic wound up in an e-mail soliciting black-market erection drugs?)