What's the lamest spam mail you've ever received? Was it a joke that wasn't funny? An urban legend? A ridiculous quiz? A chain letter? The "I Love You" virus?

-- Anonymous, September 30, 2000

Answers

I get every kind of spam in the world. Porn, viagra, make $100K in a month, you name it, I've received it. I am constantly getting one that says, "Look. We don't to waste your time or ours."

I'm always tempeted to email them and say, "Then don't!"

-- Anonymous, October 01, 2000

I get the funniest, lamest spam ever from some porn site. They always send it in HTML, with a hot pink background and lots of misspelled words. "This nasty Site will unleash all the secrets you have ever asked yourself about these horny Ghiesha Girls," par example. They're also quite keen on capitalising random words (which I can't repeat on a family site like this). It's truly hilarious, but I still report them to Spamcop.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

My Dumb Dad every so often sends me the ultra-schlocky "The Little Girl Who Taught the Old Man the Meaning of Life Before She Died of Leukemia" type of stuff. I have a cousin who always sends me the most horrific, sexist and stupid jokes, too. An old h.s. classmate looked me up last year and started sending me Urban Legend-related stuff like "Walt Disney Jr. wants to give you free admission to Disneyland!" and the Mrs. Field's Cookie recipe and "Welcome to the World of AIDS".... I'd respond with links to www.snopes.com. She finally stopped sending stuff, thank God....

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I get spam all the time. My favorite spam is the hot college girls who just learned the neatest stuff in an HTML class, and have personally invited *me* to watch.

I guess HTML just naturally makes you horny.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

An annoying SPAM chain letter I got was about Kentucky Fried Chicken not really being 'chicken' at all - some weird, hybrid, freak meat... I also hate those cheesy "Touched By an Angel" ones that make me feel like I need some insulin... Anything that plays on people's fear of AIDS, flesh eating bacteria, computer viruses, etc.

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

I don't remember most spam I've seen, and I try to filter it all out if I can. I've seen it all, and what bugs me the most is when my own family sends me the hoaxes, although their intentions are good. :-P

-- Anonymous, October 02, 2000

My wife has a sister who belongs to some evangelical church that meets in the minister's basement or garage or something. You know the type: "Everyone who's not here with us is going to HELL." She used to send these semi-hysterical, urgent, beseeching e-mails for us to join the group or at least give them money, because she wanted her whole family to be with her in eternity forever. Which, by the way, is my perfect description of Hell. I got tired of politely fending her off and to match her sappy jpegs of her minister performing miracles (REALLY!! HE REALLY DID IT!!)I started sending her photos of the country rock group "Nashville Pussy" and started suggesting that she'd feel better if she spent more time between the sheets getting boinked instead of wearing one. She told me I was a plaything of the Evil One. (Does that mean Mrs Bubba is the evil one?) God spare me from fruitcake relatives.

-- Anonymous, October 05, 2000

I got one today that will guarantee to jump start my sex life. It promises technocolor orgasms for women and a rock hard pump for men. And it's just a special little herbial treatment. Woohoo! Sign me up!

-- Anonymous, October 06, 2000

I think my favorite for this month is the one going around asking people not to heat their beverage in the microwave. A woman "reaches out" to us with her sad tale about her son Danny who got his face burned off when the liquid leapt out onto his face, "horribly, irrevocably disfiguring" the apple of her eye... Hmm. I personally have never had a beverage lie in wait for me so maliciously. Biding its time until I open the microwave door, lift it out, hold it up to my face... only to be horribly and IRREVOCABLY disfigured by my morning coffee. I'm sure there's some chemistry anomaly that covers this, but I'm pretty sure the boiling point is always the boiling point.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000

I haven't gotten one in a while, but I used to hate the ones that had Tweety Birds or other "art" made of slashes and brackets and stuff. You know, you'd scroll down and see the picture? I'd always get it after it's been forwarded to shit, and the Tweety Bird would be all misaligned, and I'd just scroll down and stare and wonder why I didn't have anything better to do with my life.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000

I've had some beverages get so old in the fridge, that they could "lie in wait" if their multi-celled brain thought it was a smart thing to do. That is why I buy milk in the half gallon size. If it mutates, I can still wrastle it to the trash.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000

Hee, Bubba! Plaything of the Evil One. That sounds like a great name for a band, or maybe for an online journal...

Anyhow, I get most of my lame spam from a well-meaning friend who is new to the wonders of the internet and passes along sappy chain letter poems (A Good Friend is a Treasured Gift!) with a note saying to forward them on to five Good Friends and you will receive smiles all day long! Ech.

-- Anonymous, October 09, 2000

All of the above. 400+ times each, 15-25 times a week, since 1991. (Well, except the ILOVEYOU virus. That's pretty new.)

Spam is Bad. Down with Spam.

SPAM: "Hi! Anyone want a recipe for Neiman Marcus brand chocolate chip cookies? They sell the recipe for TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY DOLLARS. Let's sock it to those greedy department store bastards. I've gotten fifty copies, I'm sure I can spare one. You have to promise to send it to ALL your online friends, though, especially those HOT SEXY NAKED INTERNET CAM GIRLS XXXX or you won't get your wish and something horrible will happen to you if you break the chain and screw up the ASCII picture of Tweety...and you'll win a FREE trip to Dinneylan' free from Micro$murf if you forward this plus a gabillion dollars from Canter and Siegel--the Green Card Lawyers, and there's a kid named Craig Shergold who needs greeting cards and bottle caps and pull tabs and business cards to cure him of his cancer and KFC doesn't really have REAL chicken in it and signing Internet petitions to combat human rights violations is effective and ...*gasp, pant*...I just wrote to say ILOVEYOU! I just wrote to say I care! I just wrote to say I sent this forum to everyone in your address book! Mua ha ha...I am evil. Fear me. I am SPAM! MUA ha ha...!"

STOMP STOMP STOMP.

-- Anonymous, October 10, 2000