Category: default || By jt3y

Some how, I've been put on a whole bunch of mailing lists. People seem to think that this daily page of foo has some influence, and every public-relations bumpkin (and as one myself these days, I know of what I speak) from Birch Bay, Wash., to North Lubec, Maine, now sends me press releases.

I'm not sure who decided that a freelance writer in McKeesport (Our Fair City), Pa., would be interested in news from the Canadian National Railways, but I get it religiously. If you want to know when the assistant regional district road superintendent for Sherbrooke, Quebec, is going to get promoted to senior assistant regional district road superintendent, just let me know. (Note to the professionals at CCNMatthews: Knock it off!)

For a long time I was on the mailing list of the Ayn Rand Institute. You would have a hard time finding someone less in agreement with Ayn Rand, one of the truly overrated writers of our time (others include the execrable John Grisham, but at least he hasn't spawned a political philosophy), than I am. Nevertheless, someone at the Ayn Rand Institute decided to send me nonsense several times a month. (Sample of a recent press release from ARI: "Social Security in any form is morally irredeemable." Sorry, granny, get off the dole! Ayn Rand says you should be eating cat food.)

Those have tapered off a bit since I complained to them, but occasionally, one slips through. Apparently, the Ayn Rand Institute needs no warrant or sanction to spam away, and it's perfectly logical to irritate other people with your junk mail. But I digress. Objectively, of course.

And then there's the Democratic National Committee. The sweet, misguided Democratic National Committee. Aren't they cute? More than two months after the election, they continue to email me missives full of invective about President Bush and his policies.

If your party had lost the White House, both houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court, I suppose you could focus on building a grass-roots effort in the South and West that could get some congressional candidates elected in 2006, and possibly turn some of the so-called red states into blue ones.

Or, you could continue to spend your time and money having staffers clog up my email box with useless "ACTION ALERTS!" How's that working out for you guys so far?

This week, there was a new email pest. Something called "Conservation Wire" wrote to inform me about an effort to list the "Northern Snakehead" fish as an endangered species.

I couldn't quite tell if they was fer it or agin it, but I couldn't give a tinker's dam for the Northern Snakehead fish, unless it tastes good dipped in batter and covered with hot sauce, in which case, I'll have three, and a cold Stoney's, please.

But since they didn't offer any recipes, Conservation Wire was no use to me, and after receiving several emails from them, I wrote back, saying "Remove me from your mailing list."

Then I went to get a cup of coffee.

I returned to find 250 emails in my inbox, and more arriving in batches every few seconds. It turns out that these nitwits at "Conservation Wire" were bouncing all of the "remove" requests to all of the other people on their mailing list. Not only did I get a copy of everyone else's removal requests, but everyone got a copy of mine.

I also all got copies of any messages that were bounced from any email addresses that weren't valid any more. So, presumably, did anyone else who was on the mailing list. And then they started to send emails to Conservation Wire. Which were resent to everyone else on the mailing list. Including the invalid email addresses. Which generated new bounced emails. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This thrilled me to no end. Or at least to the end of about another 250 emails.

Then I started to get emails from idiots who received my request to be removed from the Conservation Wire email list, complaining about how stupid I was for sending email to them.

I was nice to the first dozen or so, and then I started to tell them off: "Please look at the headers of the email. I didn't send this to you. I sent it to Conservation Wire, and they sent it to you. Complain to them."

Those have started to slack off, finally, but I just got another one, from the Webmaster of a radio station in Connecticut, who wrote to inform me that his station "does not have a mailing list and did not send out this email," and that he is "looking into the problem."

Go ahead and look into it, but I weep for your radio station, Charlie, if you're the Webmaster. Obviously, your reading comprehension skills leave something to be desired.

As for the people at Conservation Wire, who don't have any contact information anywhere on their Web site, I want to thank you for clogging my email box with several hundred pieces of useless crapola. I now know more about the endangered Northern Snakehead fish than I ever wanted to know. I still don't care, however.

I do know one thing --- I hope that if you go swimming this summer, you see a Northern Snakehead fish, swimming right toward you.

And I hope it crawls up somewhere that email won't reach, and bites you, hard.

...

Following up on yesterday's ecclesiastical Steelers Almanac, Alert Reader Officer Jim sends along the following fable to, as he says, "ease the pain a bit." It may not be original, but it is funny:

A Steelers fan amused himself by scaring every Patriots fan he saw strutting down the street in the obnoxious red, white and blue colors. He would swerve his van as if to hit them, and swerve back just missing them.

One day, while driving along, he saw a priest. He thought he would do a good deed and he pulled over and asked the priest, "Where are you going Father?" "I'm going to give mass at St. Joseph's church, about two miles down the road," replied the priest. "Climb in, Father! I'll give you a lift!"

The priest climbed into the passenger seat, and they continued down the road. Suddenly, the driver saw a Patriots fan walking down the road, and he instinctively swerved as if to hit him. But, as usual, he swerved back onto the road just in time. Even though he was certain that he had missed the guy, he still heard a "THUD." Not understanding where the noise came from, he glanced in his mirrors but still didn't see anything.

He then remembered the priest, and he turned to the priest and said, "I'm sorry Father, I almost hit that Patriots fan." "That's OK," replied the priest, "I got him with the door."