spam

Spam, I hate it. I always have. I don't like the canned version nor do I appreciate the version that slimes my email account every single day. It's ridiculous. In my profession I hear more often than I care to about how peoples lives are a product of their family environment and disfunction in childhood. Save it! You want disfunction? Every month of my growing up years we had a "spam night" in our family. My father loves the stuff and therefore we got to experiment with it at least 12 times a year. I can't even look at the can. To this day I have a serious aversion to any combination of blue and yellow paint schemes. So I guess that naming the disgusting, annoying, crap that clogs my computer everyday spam is a stroke of genius. I wished that I had coined the phrase. I opened my mail today and had 234 unwanted messages from unknown, unseen, cowardly, high tech telemarketers. That was in one day! Imagine what happens if I don't check my mail each and everyday. I'd hate to go on vacation. I'll have to open a new account. It would be easier than cleaning the old one. Sure, it's easy to delete the stuff. I could merely hit "empty" in my bulk mail bin and they'd be sent back to cyberspace. However, I've learned that every once in awhile an important message is contained in those 234 messages. You almost can't see them for the slime surrounding them. Kind of like when you open the actual can. You almost can't see that thing that passes for meat among all the slime in the can. So everyday I'm going through page by page making sure that I don't miss something.
As I do, I inevitably find myself every once in awhile being lured to open the one that looks too good to be true. They always are. Like the games at the fair that you try every year convinced that someone with some shred of honesty has taken over the game and made it possible to win.
Never are they ultimately worth anything. And again I find myself looking in the mirror at my life. How many times do I chase down the ultimate prize, the easy solution, or the sure fix? How many times do I resist the delete button on something I think might be "the one", only to find another wasted moment. I'm convinced that there is something hidden among all the slime. It might just take one more time. Not anymore, today I hit the delete button. Trust me, when you finally get there, it's only another hunk of spam.