When I log into my e-mail account at work, I know exactly what I will find there. I work as an alumnae records assistant, not exactly the top rung of the academic ladder by any means, and besides, our entire department resides in a twelve-foot-square room divided into a crowded warren of cubicles, so not only do I not receive very much important or sensitive information, but if I did, the person communicating it could either walk over to my desk in about five seconds or stand up, poke his or her head over the partition, and yell it over to me. In other words, I get the kind of junk e-mail that the broomheads at the US Department of Defense most definitely did NOT have in mind when they first hooked all of their computers up to a network and started sending each other data. (Then again, I don’t think the bomb wonks really envisioned Pampers using the World Wide Web as a marketing tool, either – and what purpose does that page serve, anyway? Does it allow busy and cost-conscious parents to purchase disposable diapers online, in bulk? Does it give valuable instructions on how to put on and take off diapers? And if the site does offer either of these services, what kind of imbecile actually takes advantage of them? But I digress.) Once in a while, a co-worker will send me something relevant, but ninety percent of the time, I find myself hitting the “delete” key on baby shower announcements and union bulletins (which our shop steward always signs, “In solidarity!”) and bad jokes about Monica Lewinsky that I’ve already seen several times.

Obviously, I would rather read the electronic junk mail than attend to the alphabetization of the source file. But certain e-mails – and genres of e-mail – have really begun to fray my nerves. Below, a list of the worst offenders…

1. “WARNING PLEASE READ – Good Times Virus Alert!!!!” This one has died down as of late, but I used to find a warning about Good Times in my mailbox at least once a week, forwarded from a well-meaning but gullible friend or colleague. I think that everyone has figured it out by now, but just in case you still believe that an e-mail message can somehow worm its way into your hard drive and destroy all of your system files, you heard it here first – the Good Times virus does not exist (except as an annoyingly persistent Internet urban legend). If, however, you forward a Good Times warning to me, I will come over to your house and destroy all of your system files myself.

2. ASCII art. These e-mails ask you to scroll down quickly to the bottom of the message; you plant your finger on the down arrow, and the exclamation points and asterisks and ampersands and number signs weave and wiggle across your screen in a cool pattern until you reach the bottom. In other versions, the “programmer” has used words – usually something like “ain’t this cool” or “check this out” – to make the patterns. Pretty neat once, but after the twentieth time, I found myself wondering where the magic had gone. Plus, I can never identify one of these stupid things by the subject header; if people must send these to me, they could at least do me the favor of warning me so that I have the option to delete them before my snail-esque server takes the time to upload them.

3. Fly-by-night Web marketing spam. Yeah, okay – my site doesn’t offer any commercial products; it doesn’t earn any advertising revenue; it has exactly one graphic and very little in the way of original design; I have to bribe a friend of mine with free Starbucks to get my goofy little pictures scanned, and the site features myriad curse words. This site wouldn’t make money if they bundled it with Windows 95, and yet Internet marketing firms think that I would, or could, pay them to “increase my visibility.” Of course I want to increase the readership, but I can spam people myself for free.

4. Chain letters. If you have to rely on an electronic chain letter to get your wishes fulfilled, you don’t need luck. You need a lobotomy.

5. “Fwd – hilarious!!!!!” This subject header usually indicates that I don’t have much hilarity to look forward to when I open the message, which nine times out of ten will contain one of the following: computer humor; the Steven Wright jokes that I have already gotten twelve times; the “error message haiku” list; the “how come we drive on the parkway and park in the driveway” Steven Wright rip-off list; or some variation on Tim Allen’s brand of comedy which makes light of the vast differences between men and women. Women love shopping; men love sports. Women want romance; men want sex. Men think with their penises; women hate it when their husbands leave them at home and go play golf. Oh, please – I can’t tell you how boring this “humor” has gotten. The world does not need any more jokes about the toilet seat, for god’s sake – men leave it up, and women leave it down. Happily, it comes with a hinge, so get over it, and don’t send me any more vapidly dated Mars-Venus so-called witticisms.

6. Blind Timmy with bone cancer in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. I don’t know if this type of chain letter began as a prank, or if some misguided Christian soldier really thought that an electronic Hands Across America would brighten the last days of a dying child. Either way, the e-mail gravely explains the plight of a kid, usually from the Midwest and suffering from either a physical handicap or a terminal illness, who wants nothing more than for his humble message to reach ten thousand people. Manipulative in a blandly Hallmark sort of way, it goes on to say that if little Timmy can just collect enough e-mail “signatures,” he can get funding for his eye operation, or die happy, or laugh his head off when he sees how many people actually forwarded the damn thing to each other, or something, and then it signs off with “please help little Timmy realize his dream by forwarding this to all of your friends.” Well, I suspect that little Timmy does not exist. If he does, he can bite me.

7. “Hi.” I dread the “hi” subject header, particularly when I don’t know the sender. Much like the mysterious Neon commercials of several years ago, before the product actually revealed itself to us, these seemingly innocuous e-mails often end up containing some sort of graphic sexual proposition. Frequently, the correspondents don’t have the firmest grasp of the English language, leaving out crucial verbs and misspelling relevant body parts. They will frequently suggest a rendezvous. Examples include “I like your wrighting – lets party, you big breasted mama” and “you like sex, I think, and so, you should get to, know me.” I think I know plenty already, thanks anyway. Let’s get something straight. I enjoy hearing from my readers, with praise or criticism, and while I write frankly about sex and my body, this forthrightness does not imply an open admissions policy, nor does my foot in your ass constitute a sexual position. If you want to boast about the size of your penis, go to a chat room.

I like the chaos of the Internet, the fact that I can find random people and sites there, the fact that I can send a letter instantaneously. Alas, the flotsam of the ënet tends to find its way into my mailbox all too often, and while I can delete it easily enough, I really don’t need to download the “Whack Bill Gates” game one more time.

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