Let’s throw ’em
in the spammer

---

For every legitimate e-mail that arrives at the Star-Bulletin's city desk, we get two product ads, one plea for help, and one porn site.

This barrage of bulk mail is a huge drain on both upstanding businesses and my patience. Forget filters! My vision is this: the United Nations creates a special S.P.A.M. (Stop Proliferation of Annoying (e)Mails) commando division.

SPAM's job would be to trace the offenders and a) assassinate them with a well-thrown rice cooker or b) collect a fine of 5 cents per bulk e-mail.

Unfortunately, rice cookers are not an especially effective weapon of death. Sending thousands of e-mails is cheap for the sender, and the minimal cost is shoved off to the recipients and computers that reroute and copy the e-mails.

So, a more Dantean punishment is the fine. Minimum penalty: $1,000,000. Those who can't pay are thrown into a cell and given a rusty 486 PC. They are forced to press "delete" a minimum of once per second for four hours straight in order to obtain meals.

The only thing the prison cafeteria will have, of course, is spam.

Christina Chun
cchun@starbulletin.com