Hi it’s Jerry…

Or Malcolm, Jose, Peter, Mary, Tiny, Tricia… The list goes on and on.

Everyday, I get dozens of emails headed ‘Hi it’s…’ and each time, my brain jumps into rolodex mode. Do I know anybody called ‘Feliciano’? Have I a friend called ‘Carlos the Jackal’? It doesn’t matter than I don’t know that many people and that the few I do know are not international terrorists. My brain has some social networking function that I can’t disable under the options menu. I wouldn’t mind but the disappointment is tangible each and every time I realise that I am reading yet another email trying to sell me shares in a Mexican bean factory. You’d think that, by now, there would be enough investors in Mexican beans to leave me the hell alone…

A report yesterday suggested that something like nine in ever ten emails sent are supposedly spam. Nine in every ten sounds terribly low but if it’s right, then judging from the amount of junk mail I get, there must be some lucky soul in the world that lives a spam free life. Every piece of mail must be a real gem: the winning ticket to a competition, the letter from a publisher accepting their novel, the email from the long lost friend… I, on the other hand, must get 1000 spam emails for every one that’s real. Some of my email accounts have become unusable since they’ve become dark holes filled with prescription drugs, free TVs, stock market quotes, and more erectile products quotes than you could shake a… well, let’s just say that there are a lot of them.

There goes the ‘whoop-whoop’ of the email again. I should go and check it… You never know. There’s a one in a thousand chance that a real opportunity has come my way.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 29th, 2006 at 5:18 pm and is filed under A Penguin's Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.