Just A Helpful Hint To The Viagra E-mail Spammers

Dear E-mail Spammers,

I’m probably not going to open your mail about Viagra anyway.

But besides the fact that I’m a girl and not a Viagra-needing guy and never will be, I think you should know that I’m definitely not going to open any mail that’s addressed to Mr. Thelynnsterzone.

Just sayin’,

Lynnster

Oh Hai

I am just knee-deep in fifteen tons of stuff right now and don’t really have any time for anything but the HAVE-to stuff right now.  That’s my explanation for the quiet.

Well, that and I don’t really have anything to blog about at the moment.  I could gripe about the fact that I got the phone call last night from the ex that I knew would eventually come (because it always does, eventually) and had dreaded for the last nine years, but I really don’t want to talk (or think) about that either.  It went okay, I suppose, depending on what your definition of okay is.

And a few weeks ago one of my e-mail accounts started getting overloaded suddenly with Greek spam, which I find the phenomena has now wended its way to my blog comments and the Akismet bucket.  Weird.

Other than that, I got nothing.  Newscoma’s down sick this week and posting all kinds of wacky stuff from the newspapers over there as well as other interesting stuff – go visit her and see.

Father’s Day Marketers Beware

My pal CeeElCee brings up a good point about all the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Father’s Day (and for that matter, Mother’s Day, for the same reasons) that I’ve been thinking about myself in recent weeks, and have in the past.

We are all mostly taking it in stride and being tongue in cheek about it over there in comments, but obviously all of us whose fathers are deceased have had pretty much the same thoughts about it all, as I’m sure folks who have lost their mothers thought the same in the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Mother’s Day.

My mother’s alive and well, thanks (and a frequent reader & commenter here, and regular Internet user).

But what if she weren’t? Not to mention the fact that HER parents have been gone for ages; one for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

I had a long conversation for the first time in several months with my former longtime co-worker, who lost her very elderly and extremely ill dad last summer. One of the things she and I have always had in common is that our fathers’ birthdays and Father’s Day always fell on the same week (as does her birthday). So this year, she is experiencing the June double whammy I have been for the last four years.

I get that it’s all about marketing, I understand it. And I know you can’t please everyone. I mostly – like I said – take it in stride and just overlook it. Normally it doesn’t bother me THAT much.

But it ALWAYS gets my attention, because of the circumstances – and it’s NOT the kind of attention marketers are striving for with those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day suggestion e-mails.

And I guess what kind of bugs me is that it seems like those holiday marketing e-mails are greater in number at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day than most other holidays, even Christmas. And while I do realize it’s all about the marketing, and I understand why it’s a necessary evil – it just seems like it might be a little better if many of these e-mail marketers scaled back their holiday marketing pummeling for those two holidays for the very reasons I bring up.

You hit someone like me on a bad day in a bad year – last year, not so much; this year, every day is a bad day – and tick them off, the results are never going to be good.

Again, I don’t have that big a chip on my shoulder about it, really. Generally, I’m pretty laid back and easygoing and not all that touchy about most things, I just have to work a little harder at it when it comes to this. And for the most part, the ones that come from Amazon and places like that, I mostly just overlook and hit the delete-delete-delete without much more of a thought.

Though the point is, there IS a thought… and it’s not the one they want me to have, that they’re intending with their marketing campaign of those holidays.

I have many, many e-mail boxes so I get TONS of these mails, and even more tons that aren’t coming from more traditional Internet marketers and are coming from the mega-spammers.

So it’s there that I take out my frustrations when I feel like it – which, this year, has been rather often. So depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment – well, let’s just say there’s several e-mail spammers that have been getting “My father’s been dead for almost four years, go away” e-mails back.

Not that they care, the mega-spammers. I can’t really say I haven’t thought about doing the same with some of those Amazon and other e-mails though.

Marketing’s marketing, and there’s no simple answer, I know.

But fair warning, marketing e-mail spammers and marketers of the non-spammish kind: Today would have been my father’s 66th birthday, so I might be a little less nice than “go away” today. Apologies in advance.

The Nigerians, Cote d’Ivoire, & Now Dead Celebrities

Yeah, so my Mom opened up an e-mail the other night to find that she was the beneficiary of thousands (or millions?) of dollars left to her in the late Luciano Pavarotti’s will.

The persistence of that particular flavor of spam scam really amazes me.  How many years has that thing been going around the ‘Net?  Do people really still fall for it?

I think my favorite influx ever were the ones in German that were coming to one of my Gmail boxes for a while.  I don’t speak nor read German, but I could pick out enough words and deduce from the format that it was the same old same old.  Heh.

A Puzzle of Spam

This is probably just asking for trouble, I know. But I am a little puzzled as to why in the last, oh, two or three weeks, the amount of spam comments and trackbacks sitting in my Akismet basket here on WordPress has gone from an average of 100 or more a day to, like, two in a week.

Those of us who have our own domains attached to our WP blogs have always attracted lots more spam than those who don’t, as a general rule, and it wasn’t unheard of for me to glance in there after not looking for a week or so and see 300-500 of the pesky little suckers in there.

Only having two… and I have no idea when the last time I looked was – a week? Two? In any case, only having two… that’s kinda drastic. Not that I’m complaining, but I wonder what changed?

Have any of you other WordPress.com bloggers noticed the same thing? Especially those of you who have your own domains attached?

Not Really Grouchy, Just Temporarily Blank

Not in the mood. I don’t exactly know why, because other than things being really busy with too many projects and other projects I really need to get back to (BTW, thank you, Sarcastro, for not berating me yet about finishing up the pictures on your new WP blog; I hang my head in shame but I really haven’t forgotten) – most things in my wacky life are going pretty well or even better than usual. I just don’t have a concrete blogging thought in my head at present, other than this one commentary on the whole Paris Hilton thing that I am fighting myself not to finish and post because I just, really, want her to go away.

And I’ve been mostly away from reading the past few days, so now I’m somewhere between sorta behind and sorta caught up. And haven’t even had my own blog dashboard up in my browser at all, which is unusual.

I’ll perk back up eventually, sooner than later probably, and will get to emails and comments in a couple of days or so.  I am just kinda, as they say, bone tired, inside and out. It’s temporary.

But crap, I forgot about the Akismet (spam) filter (which is why I usually keep one window open on the blog). I just cannot deal with checking SEVEN pages’ worth of mostly 300+ spam comments. Hopefully none of you fell into the void – if you did, I’m sorry, please post again if you wanna.

When You Know You Should Really Go to Bed

So, I spammed myself last night.

Actually, what happened is that – probably thanks to a certain person’s blog that is also on the same basic platform mine is, and where one of the posts there apparently took monumental exception to me earlier this week and the spam filter decided I might be spam – so, what happened is that last night when I was replying to a comment on my own blog, the spam filter said I was spamming myself, so I had to go try to fish myself out of the spamcatcher. (It also apparently continues to think my brother-in-law is spam as well, but maybe it has learned otherwise after fishing him out again today.)

But wait – it gets better.

So I go to the spamcatcher, presumably to fish myself (i.e., my comment) out… and what do I do next?

I mark myself as spam.

Of course, I immediately realized what I did and reposted my comment reply. And since, natch, the system once again thought I might be spam, I proceeded to fish myself out of the spamcatcher again, this time successfully, and all was well.

But all this spamtastic activity probably means I am liable to wind up in other people’s spamcatchers for a bit until it finally learns that no, no, NO!!!… Lynnster is NOT spam!… so please, if you see me languishing in your spamgrabber, please be so kind to fish me out. Gracias.

More Historic Spam

Right now – The Spam of 1812, with 1,812 spam comments killed.

The spam that will live in infamy (1,941) can’t be too far behind.

P.S. After all that mystery yesterday, I fell asleep earlier than intended last night, so I didn’t get the WP stuff done I intended. Soon, soon.

Bicentennial Spam

Woohoo, 1776 spam comments killed (as of right now). I like it!

It Doesn’t Help Much If I Can’t Read It

I am getting tons of what I think is Chinese and/or Japanese spam in my mailbox lately, and in my blog’s comments.

Do I look like I can read Japanese???