Out Damn Spam!

I happen to like Spam. Alas, I have to qualify that statement. I like Spiced Ham. I hate e-mail spam. I loathe comment spam!

I'm just a blogger (Little Ol' Blogger Me) like so many others out there. Blogging relaxes me and gives me a chance to express in some measure, some the creative juices that have been sloshing around in my cranial cavity for decades. I resigned myself years ago to the fact that my poetry will never get me nominated for Poet Lauriet. I don't think I ever came close to convincing myself that I would someday write the "Great American Novel." To date neither have Spielberg nor Bogdonavich approached me for the movie rights to anything I have penned.

I ran a search (using Yahoo search) and on the first screen of the results out of ten, only one was in reference to the Hormel product. All nine of the rest were concerned with electronic spam. All of the Hormel Spam products pictures here came from the Official Spam site.

When the brand name of a product becomes more widely known as a coined phrase than for the product itself, I think it is safe to say that there is a problem. Did the pencil-necked geek who chose to give the name "spam" to electronic intrusion, ever eat the product? If so, he must have not liked it. He could have chosen "weed," but he didn't want to insult pot smokers? Was he afraid there might be a "Friends of Poison Ivy" association out there? Here's one he could haved picked: "Geek."

Suppose theater lovers stayed away in droves if they thought that "Monty Python's Spamalot" was about computer spam. When that geek coined spam as the moniker for this malady, was his little heart beating in triumph under his pocket protector?
...."Hey, Eugene. I've got it! We can call it spam!" He calls out to his acne faced friend with the coke-bottle-bottom glasses and polka-dot bow tie. Why I don't know, but the two of them confirm the discovery with a calculator and slide rule.
...."Boys, it's almost time for bed. Take out the trash, put out the cat and get ready for bed," yells Montague's mother from downstairs.
....Suppose they had chosen "weed" as the sobriquet instead. "Hey, Eugene. I've some weed." Mother, hearing the conversation thinks her son is getting garbage on his computer, goes about her housework and dismisses it. Meanwhile, Eugene and Monty are sharing tokes and getting stoned out of their skulls. Had they chose "weed," the sixties may have lasted longer. And the aroma? "Oh, the smell, Mom? That's my computer. It's been clocking a lot lately."

Now I ask you, does computer spam have a recipe book? I doubt it! Can you fry it? Bake it? Broil it? Can you grill it? And of course, can you eat it?

In any event, I have been forced to change my comments settings on my site as many of you have. I don't like it. I thought the idea was to encourage the readers to leave comments and not to do drive-by-readings.

Had they had computers back then Willie Shakes would have wrote it this way: "Out Damn Spam!" "Or Something is rotten in Spam-mark." "Spam, Spam. My Kingdom for Spam." "To Spam or not to Spam. That is the question."

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