Slogging through
email hell
I don't understand this rush to manufacture smaller and smaller computers, particularly the wireless devices devoted mainly to receiving email. It's annoying enough to deal with email at home. The thought of lugging it around with you all day is insane.
America Online, the biggest Internet server on the planet, giddily unveiled its latest entry in the Annoying Product Line. It's a tiny pager-sized gadget whose main job is to send and receive email. Who needs it?
I dread going through my email, especially if I haven't checked it for a couple of days. Last week I had 60 or 70 emails waiting for me. They broke down into the following categories:
MAKE MONEY FAST! Catch the technology wave and begin immediately making money with a method that we can't tell you about unless you pay us a lot of money! (The method, I suspect, is to send millions of MAKE MONEY FAST! emails to people, hoping that a couple of them are dumb enough to send you money.)
GET OUT OF DEBT! We'll give you an instant loan TODAY! You don't have to have any collateral! We don't care how you have managed to bury yourself up to your eyeballs in red ink! We're just nice guys who like to loan people money! (Everyone is very excited on the Internet! The gross national production of exclamation points increased 3,000 percent in just the last year! Exclamation point abuse is rampant in email! Sentences are over-salted with many, many exclamation points!!!!!!!)
LOWEST INSURANCE RATES! Have you run over two or three people? We don't care! We'll still give you insurance. In fact, for only $1 per year, you'll get a $300,000 term life insurance policy, $250,000 in whole life and $1.5 million auto collision coverage, which will come in real handy if you happen to crash into Air Force One! Catch? There's no catch! All you have to do is send in your $1 and agree to a $5 million deductible clause and you're covered!
SEXIEST BABES ON THE NET! We got 'em all at desperatelosers.com! We've got amateurs, pros, next door neighbors, grannies, prison matrons, redheads, blondes, baldies, washerwomen, snotty waitresses, cops, docs, nurses, morticians and a Britney Spears-look-alike if Britney Spears looked like Ernest Borgnine.
BEST ODDS IN THE CYBER-GAMBLING UNIVERSE! Are you a criminal? You could be. Right now. Just send us your credit card number and we'll keep it snuggly safe in our off-shore, completely unregulated casino. We promise, cross our hearts and hope not to be indicted, if we allow anyone to steal your credit card number and buy the Queen Mary. You'll be able to gamble up a storm even though it is a federal violation punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine!
Ninety percent of the email I get fall into those categories. Another 9 percent are spam come-ons from other idiots. I also have lately been receiving a lot of rave reviews from readers in India who have somehow confused my email address with that of some huge celebrity in New Delhi. ("Mr. Deepak, I am loving your recent excellence. My Krishna but you are being right on, sir.")
I used to try to straighten these guys out, explain they they've got the wrong address. It was hopeless. Now I just go ahead and send off replies on behalf of his excellence.
So, I need a $329 pager-sized gizmo to allow me to access this garbage 24 hours a day? I am not thinking so!!!!!!!!
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
https://archives.starbulletin.com/lite
