Spam, or Farmer from Iowa buys a Computer

I sat on the porch of my house, stroke my charged gun lying on my knees, and sipped home-made whiskey from a bottle. Missy makes it clean as a tear, God bless such a wife and her father. If not for Old Jeff and his gun, I’d never have guts to marry her, and where could I find another like her? Missy is good – keepin’ the house in order, good mother, and when it comes to bed… True daughter of the South, the way I like it. Anyway, back to business.

So, I sit on the porch of my house, quietly, ain’t asking for no trouble. For now. Usually, I don’t keep a gun on my knees, no need, it hangs nearby anyway, but today I had a reason. Two days ago some city folks drove by my house in their fancy car, and yesterday they did it too, lookin’ around for somethin’. So, I decided that if they show up today, I’m fixin’ to teach them a lesson. After all, God gave man a gun to protect his property.

So, I sit, drink, and then Missy comes from the house and tells me that there’s a mail for me in the computer. Computer is a separate story. Last year the corn grew real well, we weren’t even able to save it all, some of it got wet and rot. Of course, that had a good side too – that’s why we have so much home made whiskey now, it would be a pity to waste that corn. But even what’s left made a pretty coin. Then the son of Pat from the farm down the road, behind the Snaik Crick, came from the city, where he lives, to visit his parents. I went to Pat the second day after he came to borrow a couple of cans of oil for the harvester and we talked. “You should buy a computer with Internet”, he said, “It will let you have weather forecasts for free. And it will be simpler to work with suppliers – to place an order or check if seeds or fertilizers are ready for pick up. It will also let you check with the bank, if they had the next payment for the harvester in place and what you have on the account. And it all instant and free.” So, we talked with Missy and decided that we should buy such a useful thing.

Pat’s son fixed it up for us, connected to the phone line, showed us everything, explained. “This is a monitor, which shows everything. This is keyboard and a rat to control the computer, and this is the system block with a hard drive…” Or something like that. I don’t know what does this “hard drive” drives, and why is it so hard, but who cares?

Anyway, a good buy, really useful thing. And when our son started to send photos from the Army, we even started to watch TV less. To tell the truth, it happened to be not all free as promised. That Internet, that Pat’s son spoke about, was almost twenty bucks monthly. A large bottle of real whiskey bought from a store, by the way. But it was worth it.

So, I get up and went to check what’s the mail came to me. Opening it, and what do I see? Somebody offers me Viagra, five bucks a pill! Whatcha those guys talkin’ about? Me and Missy don’t need no Viagra. What do these skunks presume?...

So, I call Pat’s son and ask, whatcha goin’ on? 

And he said, “Oh, that’s spam.”

“Huh?” I say. “What’s  pork got to do with it?”

“No, not pork,” he says. “That’s how people call any unasked advertising sent by email.”

Then I exploded. “What? What does this city folks permit themselves? It’s my computer, and my hard drive, I paid for them, and this Internet too, and they use it send me their junk ads? Who let them dump this junk on my property?!”

“C’mon,” Pat’s son says. “Just delete it, like I showed you, and forget about it. You don’t worry about postal junk mail in your mailbox, right?”

“Don’t worry?” I say. “Nope, no, sir! Postal mail is a different story. I don’t pay for the junk mail I get in the mail, and mailbox is the property of U.S. Postal Service. With email it’s different. I paid for the hard drive with my own money, and this Internet ain’t free either. I think these are the same skunks, who nosed around yesterday. Oughtta have figured out that I am waitin’ for them with a gun, so instead of comin’, tried to get me through the computer!”

“I don’t think so,” Pat’s son says. “They could be on another end of Earth. I’ve heard that most of the spam today comes from Russia now.”

“What?! Russians again?! What the …<skipped due to inappropriate vocabulary>… Congress is looking for?”

So, I said bye to Pat’s son and went to write letter to Congress. Here I am, sittin’ and writin’. Honorable Senator, I am a taxpayer and a registered voter, maybe you can tell me how an honest citizen can protect his property and what are you doin’ about it?
    

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