Patriotic Spam

A few of you may have noticed the following tweet on Friday:

Person I don't know sent me spam about the military with a poem. Asked them not to, they got nasty, called me unpatriotic. I hate idiots.

That one tweet devolved my Friday into a series of e-mails, phone calls, investigation into HOA financials, and general fussing and faffing about.

This all started when I received the usual image-heavy/God-Bless-Our-Country/pass-this-along-to-9,000-of-your-closest-friends spam mail. I hate spam. And I especially hate spam that has been forwarded to 19 other people before getting to me, so that before I can even see the tear-jerker images and read the cheesy poem, I have to view the To:, From:, and Subject: lines of everyone else. And I really hate spam sent to me by total strangers who just assume everyone in their contact list loves spam of all shapes and sizes and just forwards this crap along willy-nilly.

So I did what any self-respecting hater-of-spam would do in this situation. I replied to the sender, informing them that I didn't know them and would prefer not to receive future spam chain letters.

And this? Is what I received in return:

I don't know how you got into my address book but I thought those therein (my friends) would be interested in patriotic information regarding the state of our wonderful country. Evidently you are not. Rest assured, I shall remove you from my address book immediately. Enjoy your life.

What? The frak. Like I snuck into his address book and tried to pass myself off as a friend. And then accused me of a lack of patriotism because I don't like forwarded spam e-mails that clog up my Inbox.

I? Lost it. And out of my keyboard came the following:

You know what? I don’t need your nastiness about my supposed lack of patriotism just because I don’t care for unsolicited spam in my Inbox, spam that contains large image files and clogs up my Internet connection. Spam that I didn't sign up for. I attended a military college. As did my husband. Several of our good friends serve in the military. We vote in every election and fly the American flag on the front of our home. We are about as patriotic as you can get. That is the last I have to say to you. Please, buggar off and don’t make assumptions about people simply because they request “No spam.” You, as well, enjoy your life.

Yeah. I was pissed. And then I racked my brain, trying to figure out who the heck this idiot was and how he got my address. I called my mom and let her know I'd ticked off a Red Hat friend. Nope. Wrong. And at that moment I paused and thought What if it's one of my neighbors? And sure enough, when I checked our HOA financial statement for May, there was the name of my culprit.

Yet another reason for me to want to run screaming from my neighborhood.