Brief note (and possible apology)...

It seems that earlier today one of my email accounts (Hotmail) was hacked and there was a spam email sent to everyone in my contact list. If you received one, please ignore it. It doesn't seem to be particularly dangerous, but it's a definite annoyance.
If you received one, sorry about that!
I've taken steps to prevent anything similar happening in the future.

Overreaching?

Prominent User of the Internet

So I get this spam that begins:

Prominent User of the Internet How are you today? Hope all is well with
you and your family?I hope this mail meets you in a perfect condition.

I think from now on I'd like to be referred to as "Prominent User of the Internet." Seriously. It's like "The Dude" in The Big Lebowski. He demanded that as a form of address without any irony.

I am Prominent User of the Internet. Do my bidding.

Good Times, Bad Times

The good news: you may have noticed a two-thirds drop in the amount of spam in your inbox.

The bad news: it will likely only last a few more days.

As far as I'm concerned there is no punishment too severe for these bastards who render email accounts useless. I would also include in this group the scum who work for allegedly legit companies who sell their mail lists to the spammers. Rot in hell.

Life Imitates Porn... or Something

Today I found the following message in my junk folder:

Hey whats up?..i found your profile on a dating site i was on. your hot! i tried to add you to msn but it didnt work! Can you try adding me to yours?

Now I'm sure that anyone reading this has received untold billions of messages just like this one in, oh, the past couple of weeks alone. And, like me, I'm sure you have more important things to do than to look at every piece of spam that you receive (don't you?). In fact, it was only by accident that I saw the above message. Seeing it got me to thinking, though...

No, I wasn't thinking about adding the sender to my MSN. I was thinking, who writes this stuff, and why does it seem vaguely familiar? Look at the "come on," of the message above, and then look at this scene from the script of a porn movie (never mind which porn movie... any porn movie, dammit!):

He: Here's the pizza you ordered ma'am.
She: Why, thank you!
He: Just doin' my job, ma'am.
She: What's your name, big boy?
He: Rocco, ma'am.
She: That's a really nice belt, Rocco...
He: Uhuhhhhh....

I think the parallels are obvious, and I leave it to you, gentle readers, to draw your own conclusions...

[UPDATE: Just a couple of hours after posting this, someone from Calgary, Canada was directed here by Google. Their search term?

hey whats up?..i found your profile on a dating site i was on. i tried to add you to msn but it didnt work!

I find this incredibly strange and funny...]