Spam and beans

     One of the most famous of all the "Monty Python" sketches was the "Spam" one. So famous, in fact, that it has now spawned the hit musical "Spamalot". The original skit involved a couple trying to order a meal in a restaurant and being told that the only thing on the menu was spam: "spam, spam, spam, spam and eggs, spam and beans..." Well, it's not often Cornflower gets on her soapbox but she's doing so today to protest about the proliferation of something which is a whole lot nastier than luncheon meat.

     Only a few short weeks ago, someone asked me if I got spam in my email inbox. "No," I said, "none at all." Then I "updated" my mail program at the behest of BTYAHOO [yes, chaps, you get capital letters for this one], and now I am inundated with mail of the most unsavoury kind.

 

     I am not qualified to speak on the technical aspects of this, but by what means has my virtual letterbox gone from being the ingress of the purely pleasant - in correspondence terms - to a cess-pit for purveyors of bad taste?

     I would have these spammy people know that I am not in need of surgical enhancement of any kind, and neither I nor anyone close to me requires dubious medicaments. As to some of the other services they offer whose content is not for a wholesome site such as this, they can take their sordid little selves elsewhere, and they can buck up their ideas on grammar and spelling while they're about it.        

      So before I reach boiling point, I would challenge these unpleasant people to go away (not that they will be reading this, of course) and urge BTYahoo to get their corporate act together and find a way of delivering to me only mail which has been specifically addressed to me or solicited by me. Or are they too busy counting beans?

Now that I've got that off my naturally ample chest, normal service will be resumed.

Comments

[Peter the flautist]

Very sorry to hear this (and amazed it hasn't hit you before). Do indeed try to persuade your ISP to use proper blocking fliters. My email provider has finally done this and the volume of junk mail forwarded to me has gone down dramatically (not to zero however). The ISP traps for me the dominant part of the spam which is around 50 messages per day. You should also be able to set up you mail client to autofilter the junk straight into a spam folder which you can then delete without further ado.

P

[rosie]

How exasperating! But I love your use of the beans to illustrate the mounting ire. As for Spam, I was most taken aback to find that my favourite cafe (Michaelhouse, Cambridge)had spam on the menu a couple of weeks ago.
I know there's a vogue for all things retro now, but Spam?!

[Peg]

I do not like Spam - either the food type or the nasty, annoying, pull-out-your-hair type! I do love beans, however!

[tara]

I feel compelled to tell you that Spam, the 'meat' is processed around 2 hours away from me. One of my coworkers and his wife hail from Austin, MN (home of the Spam museum) and eat it regularly. I have seen the leftovers. I am sure they are about as bad as these emails you are receiving.

[Lesley]

Ugh! Poor you. The OH's e-mail always has tons of the revolting stuff in it. No matter how hard we try, *they* always seem to find a way through. I have to say, though, that my hotmail account is spam free. So Yay for hotmail! (Well, until *they* find a way through anyway ;-)

[Alison Morris]

Another sufferer! I use a forwarding address for my home email (courtesy of the Durham Unversity Alumni Society) so never have any trouble at home but am fighting a battle at work to get the IT section to take it seriously. We have a filter which prevents me looking up Wikipedia and has blocked mail from Government Computing magazine which is a legitimate work-related list but which apparently is incapable of preventing countless phishing scams, offers of enlargement "to make me the most confident man in town" (!) illegal drugs, russian brides an far, far worse. My boss sympathises and even arranged for the organisation to trial the software used in Whitehall to count and block this sort of thing, and it was turned down on the grounds that "hardly anyone gets it so its not a problem" - as he said the trial would soon clarify exactly how big the problem was. So I sympathise! (Climbing down off my soapbox now....)

[Fiberjoy]

Ah a personal bowl of contention. Our business email addy has been used, by unknown sources, to send spam. When I complain to our webhost server they wring their hands and say they can do nothing. hurmph. It's maddening since we are so careful not be spammers and hate the stuff.

As for the "food". I recently read of a friend's son who is attending one of the well known (spendy) music camps in the eastern part of the US. Spam one of the choices for breakfast every morning!