Oughta be a law that would fry spam for good

I'm not talking about all those emails promising enlarged body parts and reduced mortgage rates. Or was that enlarged mortgages and reduced body parts? Do I really want to increase the volume of my ejaculation? Or get a cheaper mortgage on gas? Or a lower interest rate on a Xanax? Or was that a Rolex? Does rolexanax increase the volume of your gas?

No matter. Those emails are from professional spammers. The poor slobs are just trying to make a living.

No. I'm talking about my friends here. Everyone I know is an amateur spammer. If our politicians had any guts, they'd make it illegal for anyone to send an email to more than one person at a time, period.

Technology makes it so easy. Point-click-fire lets these people satisfy a primal need to share their darkest personality defects with the known universe. This cyber-junk is propagated around the world in less than the nine seconds it took to bring down the entire eastern seaboard power grid.

Much of this digital flotsam is sappy smarm: "Remember the Good Old Days when we played hide and seek at dusk?" Designed to warm the cockles of the heart, it merely brings my five-year-old laptop to its knees. Duh. If everyone needs a hug, why are these people sitting alone in the dark in front of a glowing screen, drizzling this sentimental slop to everyone they know? Why aren't they out there hugging?

There are jokes. Lawyer jokes, blond jokes, golf jokes: "Gushy reporter to Jack Nicklaus: You are amazing. You are the best golfer in history. How do you find your way around the course so well? JN: It's easy, the holes are numbered." Groan.

Some were actually funny a few years ago, the first time they hit the Internet. Now they just revolve endlessly around the virtual cosmos, randomly hitting on my inbox.

Fans of chain letters must think they've died and gone to heaven. It used to actually cost real money, in paper and stamps, to mail out an urgent promise of lower prices, luck, prosperity, etc.

Now, it's free. All you have to do is follow the instructions to keep the thing rabbiting about in cyberspace and reap your reward: "Don't end the chain!" or something bad will happen. Spray the thing out to everyone in your address book.

Fortunately, my computer usually freezes, and I can Ctrl-Alt-Del to reboot.

I get household advice. Who knew there were 1,001 uses for Bounce? Or coffee filters? Hmmm, I wonder if coffee filters would work in the dryer?

And mountains of pithy statements: "One good thing about narcissists, they don't talk about other people." And deep questions: "If you ate both pasta and antipasta, would you still be hungry?" or "Whose idea was it for the word lisp to have an 'S' in it?"

I don't know. The only thing I know for sure is that I need more hardware and faster connections.

My definition of friendly spam also includes pictures of relatives. Especially when they're not downsized. The child is probably adorable, but when all you see on the screen is one giant, unblinking eye, it can be downright scary.

And I'm not alone. A poll showed that 73 per cent of respondents wanted fines, jail time or worse for spammers.

I fantasize over suitable penalties. First-time offenders could be let off with 100 hours of community service, say, giving lectures to high school students about how spam causes acne.

Repeat offenders -- those caught with nicknames in their address books -- should have to spend two years less a day sending mail the old-fashioned way, folding paper, stuffing envelopes, writing addresses and licking stamps.

But I'm not holding my breath. After they read this, my friends will just change my nickname to "Grumpy" and carry on.

Uh. There was this one joke that was really funny: Did you hear about the blond who called her boyfriend over to help her with a really hard jigsaw puzzle? With a picture of a tiger on the box?

When he gets there, she has Frosted Flakes spread all over the kitchen table.

Marilyn Baker is a "grumpy" freelance writer who lives in Richmond, B.C.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 31, 2009 A11