I know who you are (a message to spammers)

I know who you are.

You come to me with many names, but I know who you are.

You are a disgruntled telemarketer. You are still bitter that I signed up with the “Do not call” government website, and you found a new way to enter my home uninvited. You hired some people with semi-fluent English in some country where the labor is cheap and stuck them in a basement at computers and told them to send me messages that I “must to read.”

The e-mails above are the ones that managed to get past spamcop. The emails below weren’t so lucky:

I have a message for you. I don’t need Viagra. I’m not interested in stocks. I’m not looking for cheap medications. I am not in the market for sexy single ladies who want to meet me. I may need to lose weight, but I’ll figure that one out without your help, thank you. I just want you to leave me alone.

But before you go, I have another message for you. I’m praying for you.

I’m praying that the good Lord grabs hold of you and drives you to repent of this great evil you have foisted on us all. I’m praying that he will turn your heart around so that you go in and dismantle your handiwork and put your computers and your cheap foreign labor to work on something that will actually benefit humankind and make the world a better place. If that’s not possible, I pray that he will send a meteorite or an angry mob or whatever it takes to completely obliterate your computer facilities.

I don’t wish harm to come to you or your cohorts. I hope that you find whatever it is that you are lacking in your life that drives you to such malicious behavior. I just pray that all your twisted activities will be brought to a crashing halt so that I can open my e-mail program with joy and expectation, the way I used to.

This is my prayer every time I open Outlook and have to go through the process, one by one, of “Message, Block Sender, Enter, Enter.” And I hope that every praying person who reads this webpage will adopt this as their own practice.

I know who you are. And more importantly, God knows who you are. He has a message for you, too. It is one that “You must to read” before you find yourself with bigger problems than impotence and extra pounds. May he judge between you and me.