Domain Maims

Blocking individual email addresses is pointless, when it comes to coping with spam, so I've taken to blocking whole domains. Anything Hotmail, Yahoo, or MSN, anything ending in .net; any domain used more than once by spam relays. In the end, nobody at all will be able to email me; there are already some family members who can't.

I'd block certain words, too, if the crappy AOL software would let me (don't ask, it's not even worth asking). I'd block "prescription" and "degree" as well as the more obvious words like "bigger" and "relaxant." Something strange will happen to language in the next few years. I already delete anything that says "business opportunity" without reading it. And anything that sounds friendly and conversational, which is already making me more suspicious and paranoid than I really want to be on a daily basis. Emails with friendly and conversational subject lines are equivalent to those begging letters you get from charities which look (at first glance) to be handwritten and personally addressed.

Email: a noble experiment that failed. I delete more emails than I duck phonecalls, and that's saying a great deal. What with pretending I'm not in when someone knocks at the door, slamming the phone down on cold callers and deleting 95% of my email, pretty soon I'll be uncontactable; reclusive, like Howard Hughes.

Next step will be to stop shaving and put napkins over all my food. When the day comes that they start beaming adverts at you as you walk round the shops, I'll take to wearing an aluminium foil hat.