SPAM

Coffee firmly griped in my hand, I opened my morning e-mail. Three swallows and a bite of bagel later I had downloaded all 187 vitally important communications. I suddenly had 186 new friends and a note from my cousin.

Sgt. Perry needed urgent help. He sent the same e-mail four times within four minutes. Sgt. Perry is in a military (he didn’t specify whose) protecting a deposed government official who has millions of dollars that he needs to get from Nigeria to the US. London Barrister Arthur sent the same request! So did Sister Mary Margarita. I specifically selected for this economic opportunity over all those other ‘undisclosed recipients’ made me proud.

I immediately opened the e-mails from Amex, UPS, CitiBank, and Western Union and sent the required information so they could access my bank accounts to make the necessary transfers. I can’t wait to get my check! This is better than playing the lottery.

And since I was feeling so good I also bought some mirikil pils for my peenis, a lifetime supply of Hoodia, and several herbal, organic life extenders. My new Russian wife will arrive next week. She’ll be happy to know I refinanced my home at 1% below the Dubai prime rate and will be able to retire now. Now, I need to respond to that website that will remove my tattoo- the one on my forehead that says PMUHC.

I love SPAM, thin sliced, covered with Velveeta and tomatoes on toasted rye bread. SPAM costs about $3.00 a can. SPAM also costs this country millions of dollars in lost productivity.

With the current economic challenges, mainstream business can’t afford this junk e-mail Tsunami. They pass the cost to you and me. It costs me to delete the SPAM I received today. I don’t want to also pay increased costs for every business that wastes time deleting the same crap from their systems.

SPAM is free to the spammers. Anybody can send thousands of emails a second to anyone they have in their address book or purchased from another spammer.

It is time to eradicate SPAM. I am advocating for a tax on e-mail. One that charges a penny for every e-mail a provider sends. I’ll gladly pay my tax burden for all the e-mails I send! I believe we need legislation requiring a delay between each e-mail sent by a provider. A few seconds or even a minute between my e-mails will never be noticed. But it will prevent spammers from posting thousands a day!

Legitimate businesses would still use e-mail marketing and be more successful. If I received two or three advertisements from a company willing to pay to solicit my business, I’d be more likely to open it. Today the one potential legitimate solicitation ended in the trash as the jelly covering the spam- unnoticed.

I will push Microsoft, AOL, Netscape and anyone else in the industry to give me a program that allows me to return this junk to spammers. Maybe I can clog their mailbox they way they clog mine.

So Spammers be on notice. I’m coming after you!

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/the-case-for-taxing-e-mail/

http://www.pcworld.com/article/110837/will_taxing_email_stop_spam.html