Walrus Spam

Have you ever done something out of a personal sense of enlightenment, only to have it backfire and make you wish you'd never ever ever seen the light?

It's called "No good deed goes unpunished" in some circles, and in My own personal Circle of Hell it's called the Sierra Club.

Local chapter. Number 666, I believe.

Several months ago, I decided that My consciousness could use a lift and filled out a form to receive e-mail on environmental issues from the Sierra Club.

Some of you are smirking already. Shut up.

Though the environment is not in My Top 10 Life Concerns, I was aware of some of the Sierra Club's activities around Our Island and thought that learning something new would ultimately benefit Me. (Because it's all about Me, really.)

The first message came in and I...deleted it. The Subject line was about a meeting in Fajardo and I live in Cabo Rojo, about a 3-4 hour drive away. Little did I know that the simple push of the Delete key would become a carpal tunnel workout of (Mr.) Olympia(n) proportions.

I'll cut to the chase: I am being electronically hammered by dozens of messages from the uninhibited zealots of the Sierra Club. Rain forest, mangroves, condominium construction impact, cats, dogs, monkeys, legislation (Notice the segue from simple primates to political processes...), roadways, power plants, windmills, biking, factories, zero emission vehicles, water quality... A veritable glossary of topics that in some way are related to the environment and are mass-mailed in ways that attract the mindless interest of anybody's spam churner.

For you see, the dozens of Sierra Club interruptions are now the beachheads for hundreds of spam messages. My Trash file went from 10-15 spams a day to 100-125 a day, and lest you say it's because I live on the damn Web (Not true, but close enough...now shut up) allow Me to point out that (A) I've been doing this for 14 years, (B) I've never been spammed to this degree EVER and (C) This account I've used since 2004 has only had one new e-mailer added to it in the past year: the Sierra Club.

Now maybe it's not entirely the Sierra Club's fault, but in many ways, it is. Their primary means  of "getting the word out" is e-mail, therefore it behooves them to learn to use it well. I get Sierra Club-endorsed e-mails from a local walrus of a weather-woman with an alcoholic past. Does she have a license to drive My Inbox batty, a license ostensibly granted by the Sierra Club? If she (very debatably) does, then it's up to the Sierra Club to deal with My current disdain for their effort and learn to manage their messaging properly.

Maybe if I convince them that the Internet is an environment and that they are...polluting...it, maybe they'll get the message. And maybe they'll get that walrus off My (electronic) desk.


The Jenius Has Spoken.