Kathleen McCall:
Occasional�� Muse�

2001-05-23 - 11:29 a.m.

Made You Look

My Hotmail account is getting worse by the day, I think.

I love the way they do these things, these days. So sneaky. They're always from some ordinary name, like Mary Palmer - someone you MIGHT know, probably DO know if you were good at remembering names, didn't I go to school with a Mary Palmer, she went with that boy from Drama, what was his name? - and now the subject lines all start with "Re". Have you noticed? "Re: Hello". Show me someone who hasn't ever sent an e-mail titled "Hello".

Okay, I know I didn't write to any Mary Palmer to say hello. I don't think I did. Did I? Oh, hell. So I open it, and of course it's "WANT TO SEE ME CUM?" Mary, Mary, you should have stayed with Drama Boy.

But she made me look.

What, exactly, is the point of this? Do they catch many people this way? Oh wow - I was going to catch up on the laundry today, maybe call my mother, but now, I have the chance to See Mary Cum. I'll just do that instead. I mean, tricked into watching porn? How could this happen? You either want to, or you don't, right? If you want to, you'll open it if it's in the subject line. In fact, if you're looking for porn, you probably WON'T open an e-mail from a possible old school chum. "Sorry, Mary, I'm only looking for the hot CUM stuff, goodbye, delete."

I don't get only porn advertisements, though. I get some good stuff, too. Career aids - I get a lot of career aids. In fact, if I read all my Hotmail, I'd be making $10,000 a month by surfing the internet. In my sleep. With all my debts consolidated. "Do You Own a Computer?" No, cretin, I'm pulling this in using the fillings in my teeth and a broken microwave oven.

I know a Hotmail address is not on the right side of the tracks. A Hotmail address supposedly says, "I'm a cautious person and I don't wish to list my home address on the Internet" but really says, "I use the bench seat from a '64 Ford as a porch seat. Siddown, there's a couple Colt 45's in the cooler there."

So I suppose I just have to wade through it. It's the price I pay for getting my mail in the Projects.

The banner ads are sneakier now, too. One almost got me this morning - it was a joke, something about Eskimos, only it looked like you had to scroll to get the punch line. I am such a sucker for Eskimos. My little arrow was on its way there when I woke up. That's not a scroll bar, idiot. Click it, you're gonna be more intimate with Mary than you ever wanted to be. Or how about "File Downloading NOW - Click to Stop." Woh, I didn't want to download anything, I better - no, wait. Ha! I see you, Mary Palmer, you and your Eskimo porn. You didn't get me this time.

We're not far from things like "Click HERE if you ever want to see your children again". No, wait, I might not click that one. How about "from [email protected], subject: Delinquent Fines"? Or "from [email protected], subject: First Warning"? They can get us, you know, those porn Eskimos. They're clever, and they're moving around all the time.

I think e-mail is a wonderful thing. I don't know how I ever lived without it. Pornography, on the other hand, does very little for me. Maybe I just haven't checked out the Internet type. Or maybe I should re-tune my fillings.

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