Just for grins, I decided to collect the spam that shows up in my e-mail inbox instead of deleting it instantly as I normally do.
I understand there is a certain irony in writing about spam in a column which is circulated to about 70,000 people a week via e-mail. But Mullings is what is known as an "opt-in" list. People on the Mullings list want to be on the Mullings list.
Spam, for the purposes of this test, was limited to unsolicited, commercial, bulk e-mail which I never requested, for items and services I have no intention of every buying - or, if I were going to buy them would not do so on the basis of a spam e-mail.
I started this project at midnight on December 1, thinking I would collect them for the month and see what I got.
I decided to quit at noon yesterday because I believe I have a handle on the pattern.
In the 60 hours of the test I received a minimum of 476 spam messages. Minimum, because I suspect I deleted a bunch by mistake, and I only counted the messages that came to the Mullings account, not my other double-secret e-mail accounts.
Even at that, I averaged about eight spam messages per hour, every hour, day and night.
If I had continued the test for the whole month, I could have counted on about 3,280 pitches from organizations I don't know, for items I don't want.
And none of this includes mail from readers (about 150 messages per day), from political organizations (about 70 messages per day), or from old girl friends (zero messages per life).
Here is a sampling of products and services:
I can INCREASE the size of a certain anatomical feature by taking an all-natural pill ("in just weeks!") even though I don't remember, from high school health class, the process working that way.
Conversely, I can DECREASE the size of my waist by taking an all-natural pill ("in just weeks!") One assumes they are not the same pill.
Having accomplished both, there were many opportunities for me to hook up with lonely women in MY TOWN who were just waiting for me. Long experience tells me that attractive women in my town are neither (a) lonely, nor (b) waiting for me.
There were a large number of offers for both a talking Three Stooges Clock AND Talking Toilet Paper which was billed as a "hilarious way to surprise" my friends, and which was like "having bathroom voicemail," a concept I had not previously considered an absolute necessity.
I can buy a pen which lights up when I write, on the off-chance I actually have a thought in the middle of the night, perhaps triggered by listening to a voicemail coming from my toilet paper.
DVDs and CDs are available at prices so low it is a wonder Napster ever got started and printer cartridges are so cheap they will almost pay me to take them off their hands.
There were dozens of offers to buy "the hottest toy on the market" which, as it turns out, is a mini-remote controlled car. This, in all seriousness, points up a problem of getting older: When you can finally afford to buy things like "the hottest toy on the market," you don't want them any more.
The most intriguing offer was for a thing called, "Window Magic." Window Magic is a
two-way mirror bird feeder. The tag line is: "You See The Birds - But The Birds Don't See You!" and there is an obviously doctored photo of a woman about one inch from the Window Magic, her eyes open so wide she looks like a poster from a 1950's horror movie, looking in the general direction of an equally obviously artificial bird feeding on the other side which is, unaccountably, looking at the camera.
If I could have come up with a reason - ANY reason - that I would want to watch a bird eat from two inches away, I would have sent away for the Window Magic.
And told my toilet paper all about it.
On the Secret Decoder Ring today: See the "Window Magic" photo, a remarkable Mullfoto of the Day, a Catchy Caption, the first spam ever sent and the audio of Monty Python's "Spam Song."
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