An open letter to spammers...

Yes, it's a FW.  Yes, I hate FW's too.

But this one just cracked my ass up.

bri

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Dear Internet,
(stolen from grumblemagazine.com)

Dear Internet:
Please stop sending me email. I am sure that all of the marvelous
opportunities you insist on telling me about are, indeed, marvelous. I
appreciate the fact that you ensure I never have to face the humiliation of
an empty e-mail box when I get home from work. But as much as I appreciate
your concern, I want you to stop talking to me. To wit, I am providing you
right now with the answers, once and for all, to the questions you keep on
asking me. Read this, and you'll never have to email me again.

My name is not John, nor is it Dave, Ralph, Harry, or Michelle. I'm not sure
why you're sending me these people's email, but I'm sure they miss it. I am
sure, however, that you didn't see me in a chat room the other night, as I
don't go into chat rooms. I don't know what you were doing in that chat
room, but if it's like the ones I used to frequent when I was a lonely grad
student, you ought to be ashamed of yourself.

My penis is just fine, thank you. There are only two people who see it on a
regular basis, and we are both quite happy with it. I have no lingering
issues from my bris, and as such have no desire to add 6 more inches to a
structure that's not built to be load-bearing in the first place. I'm not
quite sure how you propose to do this anyway, but have no interest in
finding out, as I have a nasty suspicion it involves duct tape and PVC.

By the same token, I have no interest in purchasing Viagra online. The
plumbing works. Honest. Furthermore, should erectile dysfunction ever strike
me down, I solemnly swear that I will have the balls to purchase it
face-to-face from a local pharmacist. I do, however, reserve the right to
spend the entire visit to the CVS talking about what a man's man Rafael
Palmiero is. He takes fielding practice. He takes batting practice. And if
you make fun of the fact that he can't get it up without the little blue
pill, he'll take your ass to the cleaners.

I do not wish to make scads of money working from home. As nice as my home
is, I want to get out of it once in a while. Furthermore, I like talking to
someone besides my girlfriend's cats. They're nice cats. They're intelligent
cats. They're charming cats. I don't think they'd make good coworkers.

I do not want to see pictures of the hottest naked teenagers on the net. My
chance to see naked teenagers came back when I was a teenager, and having
missed it, I feel no Woody Allen-like urge to revisit the lost opportunity.
North Carolina prisons are reputed to be unpleasant places, and I have no
desire to visit the inside of one for the crime of clicking a link to a
website featuring topless pictures of an overdeveloped 14-year-old who lives
in a town that votes 98% for Jesse Helms. For that matter, I do not want to
think about how the question of who the "hottest naked teenagers on the net"
are gets settled. One suspects that all of the judges for that particular
competition all accessorized with a police tracking ankle bracelet.

I do not wish to see pictures of attractive women getting it on with
barnyard animals. These emails are nothing more than reminders that
beautiful women have, for years, preferred to have sex with cows, horses,
and other trayf, rather than with me. This is the sort of tremendously
depressing thought that drives a man straight to the scotch, no questions
asked.

Please do not tell me about your stock IPOs. I am quite adequate at losing
my shirt in the stock market after months of careful research and analysis.
I feel no need to do so on the basis of a poorly written email inviting me
to invest my life's savings in the preferred stock of a Cajun Sushi chain
restaurant whose house specialty is the fugu po'boy.

I have a college degree, thank you. As a matter of fact, I have two. Neither
of them is doing me terribly much good at the moment, so I do not feel
compelled to add a third one, especially not online. Besides, the whole
point of college is getting drunk and chasing women, and I can do the online
equivalent of that without shelling out $5000 for an email purporting to
tell me all about the rise of flogging and its symbolism in the latter works
of Harold Pinter.

It is very nice of you to offer me a mortgage online, but I prefer dealing
with a banker whose email address indicates strongly that he's not operating
from the Cayman Islands.

I do not want to know that more of my old high school classmates have been
located. If I really wanted to talk to these people, don't you think I would
have looked them up on my own already? I will, however, give you ten dollars
to hide them back where you found them, so I don't have to answer
embarrassing questions about that Tears for Fears tape I borrowed from the
lovely Jill Muchnik in 1988 and never returned.

I do not care that there is a sale going on at amazon.com, towerrecords.com
barnesandnoble.com or sheckys-house-of-sea-turtles.com There is always a
sale going on at amazon.com. There always will be a sale going on at
amazon.com. I strongly suspect that long after the heat death of the
universe, there will be one last sale at amazon.com. No doubt there'll be a
run on books by Steven Hawking. And even free shipping won't make me buy a
sea turtle - or a book recommended by Oprah - online.

My penis is still fine. Honest.

I have no interest in buying any aphrodisiacs, natural or otherwise. Whether
or not I do all right on my own is irrelevant. The town I live in has zoning
regulations about hormone-driven mobs of sex-crazed women pursuing my
pheromone trail hither and yon. They fine people around here for that sort
of thing, you know. Even worse, the neighbors might talk.

I am well aware of the fact that Lord of the Rings is coming to DVD. I am
also aware of the fact that I'm not going to be buying it from you. You
should probably be aware of this, too.

I find the opportunity that you are offering me the chance to purchase a
stun gun online, no questions asked, to be terrifying. Presumably my refusal
to take advantage of this offer will lead to escalation on your part, and I
look forward to the chance to purchase submachine guns, anti-tank rockets
and suitcase nukes liberated from poorly guarded Russian weapons facilities.

I have no interest in taking any personality tests online. For one thing, I
really don't care which boy band member, famous stripper or large extinct
ungulate I resemble most. For another, I don't really have a personality, so
the whole exercise is wasted on me.

Your willingness to share your brilliant moneymaking ideas is touching, but
I can't help but think that setting up a lemonade stand on the sidewalk
shows a better chance of a profitable return on investment. Best wishes,
incidentally, to those poor Nigerian millionaires who need my help in
getting their money out of the country. Unfortunately, money laundering was
only my minor in college, and I'm not really up on the latest techniques any
more.

I'm sure it's a great time to refinance my mortgage. However, I would rather
take care of financing it for the first time instead.

It's great that you have customers looking for my products. I just wish I
had some to offer.

I don't really want any great cell phone accessories. My cell phone,
frankly, sucks - for one thing, it insists on telling me that my pants are a
"roaming area," which causes all sorts of trouble with the girlfriend - and
I feel strongly that it's simply not worthy of any of your remarkable
collection of accessories. Until it learns to behave better, I'm simply not
going to reward it. I'm sure you'll understand.

All the Best,
Elfpants

PS-My penis? Still great. Thanks for asking!