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Current Rants Past Rants Associated Tomfoolery The Suspects Worship Goes Here About the Ranter 576 |
Date:
October 25, 2002
Currently Thinking If he is good and they are bad then I must be ugly. Philosophy of the Day He who lives by the sword has really high health insurance. It's much better to live by the remote control. Current Celebrity Infatuation Jennifer Love Hewitt: For somehow inspiring every female on the planet to hate her more than, say, war or herpes. That's talent. |
Screams into
the Void
WARNING! Sexual content ahead! Any heavily religious types should avoid reading this material at all costs. For the rest of you who, like me, know you’re already screwed, read on as: PORKCHOP CRITIQUES AND GRADES HIS JUNK MAIL I highly doubt that there is a single one of you reading this (out of a probable two people who read this at all) who are not stricken with a plague that has been released on the internet-using society. Yes, this is junk mail. It is always there, advertising ‘miracle cures’, ‘debt consolidation’ and various sexual improprieties that, more often than not, scare the living hell out of me. Most of us choose to ignore these messages, and with good cause. They’re mostly crap, at the worst cause for severe disturbance. But they are not going away through pure ignorance. Every now one will seep through our junk mail filters on our Hotmail and Yahoo accounts. So are any of these junk mails worth saving? An interesting question and a difficult experiment at that since it would actually involve reading some of them. I have therefore, in my infinite wisdom (read: boredom), have decided that these mailings must be classified and judged so that we can evaluate their real worth and I can get an easy article out and return to drinking cheap domestic beer. Probability of hilarity: 73.4%! (after tax) I will, however, refrain from critiquing the most disturbing of the emails as there is a fine line between humour and just plain grossness. Although I pretty much tend to ignore that line unless formally requested by the judicial system, today just for the sake of propriety, I’ll stick to it. There will be no mention of the more disturbing emails that show up in my junk mail box such as anyone doing anything with horse hoo-hoos or other barnyard animal highjinks. One man’s poultry is another man’s fetish I suppose, but it’s just wrong, wrong I say. Get Debt Free Now! A noble cause, on its exterior, but I fail to see how I’m supposed to get further away from debt by giving away more money. It seems that you’d end up paying for a service that would in essence tell you: stop spending money! Or make more money! Either is really good! Now give me some of your money! On further inspection, these emails are pretty low, preying on people who are already in severe financial trouble by getting them to spend even more. Even if it were an advertisement from a legitimate business (and you’d think that a legitimate business would be able to afford better advertising than spam mailing), it would be hidden by all the probable scams out there. Assumption of Stupidity: 7 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 5 Overall Irritation Factor: 7 Cheap Viagra! My God people… have we really sunk so low that we have to peddle cheap erectile dysfunction remedies over the INTERNET? Lord knows most of them are probably resealed aspirin, but the fact that you’re buying a prescription drug over the internet says that you probably shouldn’t be buying it at all. I mean, as far as I can tell, the only requirement for you to get a doctor’s prescription for it is to tell your doc that you can’t get it up. What’s so hard (har!) about that? Even better, the email I got says that their brand is “generic” so it’s cheaper. Being as how this is Canada and we have free health insurance and all that, cheapness is not really a problem, but it’s the ‘generic’ that bothers me. I wasn’t aware that there were name brands for something like Viagra. I thought Viagra was a name brand, that’s why you spell it with a capital letter. Is this a trend that’s catching on? Is Tommy Hillfiger or Guess going to come out with their own ‘hip’ releases for Viagra? With catchy television ads and pouty, inhumanly attractive models sporting pup tents in their knickers? Will it come with a free sample of whatever bottled smelly chemicals they’re pitching these days? I don’t know, but “Eau de Redwood” would seem an appropriate title. There is a very good reason this stuff is sold over the counter or through prescriptions: college students might get a hold it. As if we could make the problem any worse. I read a news article a while ago about a university student who took Viagra while also taking steroids and he got an erection for five days. He had to go to the hospital for it. Could you imagine that? That would hurt like hell. After the third day you might as well tie a tire onto it for the neighbourhood kids to swing off of and head down to the ol’ swimmin’ hole. If he had a girlfriend, I’m sure she would be happy since she could get some at her convenience, but she would probably have a headache. That would be so like her. In summary, getting drugs over the internet is like buying crack on the street: you have no idea what’s in them. It’s twice as stupid when it’s for something as easily obtainable as Viagra for which, if there really is a reason that you need it, should be a snap to get even cost aside. After all, money is no object when it comes to guys getting laid, right? Assumption of Stupidity: 6 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 9 Overall Irritation Factor: 8 Earn $xxxx(xx) Per Day By Being a Carbon-Based Lifeform! These have to be some of the most absurd advertisements ever. Do people actually fall for these?? If so, keep them away from anything dangerous, such as table utensils. They are obviously unfit to retain money and thus deserve to have it taken away from them. For the rest of us, these emails were borderline amusing at first and now just incredibly irritating. I don’t know who is dumber, the people who fall for it or the people who spend their time composing and sending it out thinking that anyone who has money will seriously go for this. Of course, it must work somehow otherwise the senders would stop bothering with it right? But that would violate the simple rules of spam-mail: 1) You are an idiot. 2) If I send this email out to enough people, I will eventually hit my target audience, which is you (the idiots). The very idea that someone would pay you for being a fat assed slob or to look at ridiculous websites, which you were going to do anyway, is pure fantasy. I suppose that’s why people do go for this: living the dream of getting paid for nothing. Of course this dream lasts only for as long as you can lift your glazed-donut-filled bottom off the chair and keep the Repo men at bay, which isn’t very long. And they all have very convincing (har!) testaments by fantasy people like “Hi! My name is Strom Wickawapalis and I signed up for the MegaUberSavingsGizmo Club and am now making $6000 per day! Yesterday I picked my nose for 3 hours and made an extra $4000! It’s that easy! All you have to do is give us your credit card information and get ready to make money! But don’t take my word for it! Take the word of this other completely fictional character who, even if he was real, would still be a complete stranger asking for your money!” God, and I worry about the lack of gullibility in this world. There oughta be a law. Assumption of Stupidity: 10 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 8 Overall Irritation Factor: 9.5 Get a University Diploma without Books or Classrooms! Speaking as a university student who has been driven to borderline psychosis for the past 3 years in an attempt to get a worthwhile post-secondary education, this would almost be offensive if it wasn’t so fucking funny. Of course! Why didn’t I know about this after highschool?? All I ever had to do was send $29.95 to some guy in Louisiana and he would send me a diploma! No books! No classrooms! No actual knowledge necessary! It’s PERFECT! It might even be laminated! And have my name on it! The key phrase you see in every one of these emails is that the ‘diploma’ is “given by a non-accredited university/college” which is basically the same as saying “given by a fat guy with a photocopy machine and a thesaurus”. Again, do people actually fall for these? Do they not know that non-accredited in this situation means NOT VALID? I’d love to be a fly on the wall at the job interview for someone who used one of these things just so I could see his facial expression when he finds out that it’s useless. And then I’d lay maggots in his hair. Assumption of Stupidity: 9.9 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 10 Overall Irritation Factor: 6.5 Enhance Your Penis Size! Along the same level as the Viagra email, this one comes in two forms: pills and surgery. The pills I suspect are once again chewable aspirin. But my question is, how would the pill specifically target that aspect of the body? What if it had different effects for different people? What if it made, say, your little toe or a finger grow several inches longer? If it happened to be your middle finger, I can see why this would be desirable. You could flip someone off visibly from a block away and still have time to run like a girl before they caught you. Still, it seems doubtful at best. As for the surgery… well, I think every guy will agree with me that if you let complete strangers who advertise via spam mail come anywhere near your trouser trout, you have forfeited your right to own one. Assumption of Stupidity: 8 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 8 Overall Irritation Factor: 7 (plus 5 inches) Cartoon Babe Porn What the HELL? Since when were real people not good enough? Japanamators have too much freaking time on their hands. Assumption of Stupidity: 10 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 10 Overall Irritation Factor: 5 New Scent Attracts Men or Women! This, which I’m assuming is some sort of bottled odor and not in roadkill-form (which is what I think of when I hear the word ‘scent’), is probably the most arbitrarily wide-ranging junk mail I’ve read so far. I like to hope that the emphasis on the word ‘or’ is an attempt to open the product’s customer diversity to both genders, but I can’t help but worry that it really WILL attract men or women regardless of what gender the person wearing it is. I don’t have anything against varying sexual orientations, but judging from the raving testimonies of how powerful this particular ‘scent’ is, I envision formerly heterosexual construction workers, men who shave with a circular saw every morning, sidling up to me at the bar. I just don’t need that kind of stress in my life. Assumption of Stupidity: 6 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: 6 Overall Irritation Factor: 5 Junkmail That Pretends to Have ‘Accidentally’ Been Sent to You “Frank, check out this site!”, “Chester, Look At This Great Deal I Found!”, “Ezekiel, Take a gander at these petticoat-less sinners!”, etc. Every email that tries to convince you that it was unintentionally sent to you on its way to another friend of the sender as a natural mistake ignores several damning pieces of evidence including: a) the 20,000 other email addresses in the “To:” box, b) that you’d think the sender would know his friend’s email address at least roughly, and c) the fact that the email is in all graphical form and never contains just text like every bloody email ever written. Of course, this is still in line with Junk Mail Rule #1, so it’s all right. Still, Frank and Chester are perverts. I’m sure God will forgive Ezekiel as long as he doesn’t look directly at the ankle. Assumption of Stupidity: 9.5 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: N/A Overall Irritation Factor: 9 Every Unsolicited Email That Says At The Bottom
“This is not unsolicited email.”
Gee… whiz… I guess I just FORGOT that I subscribed to Sex Fetishes Weekly
and Telepathic Stock Quotes Forum. How forgetful of me! I must have
done it while I was high on Viagra and distracted by my own powerful ‘scent’.
This appears to be a relatively new phenomenon since I don’t recall this happening all that much before. Now it appears that every piece of junk that I get tries to convince me that I asked for their putrid pile of cow poo of an email. Either that or someone is running around with my address and subscribing me to every idiotic site on the internet. I don’t even know where it’s even possible to sign up for most of these things. I did not ask for any of it and no, I don’t want to know what your housewife can do with the turkey baster… that is between her and her dinner guests. Thankyou, delete. Assumption of Stupidity: 10 (out of 10) Useless Product Level: N/A Overall Irritation Factor: 10 -Porkchop |