If you’re of my generation or older you may associate the word Spam with the canned meat product you find on grocery store and gas station shelves alike. Maybe you’ve even eaten a piece of fried spam on white bread slathered with mayonnaise like I have.
In today’s world spam = any unsolicited contact you receive via the world wide web. The most common form of spam arrives almost daily in your email account. You know like when you receive notification that you’ve been awarded a vast inheritance from a long lost relative-if only you’ll pay some money up front they’ll send the rest of the funds right over. Spam can also show up on your facebook page, your twitter feed, or even on your blog if you have one.
In one of my college classes I learned using the word spam in connection with junk email or unwanted online drivel actually came from a Monty Python skit. In 1970 Python had a skit where cans of spam kept interrupting the singing performance and kept popping up all over the place. In other words spam was showing up were it wasn’t wanted exactly like the spam we are often plagued with on the web. In the early 90s when folks first started getting bombarded by unwanted emails someone gave the junk email the moniker of spam and it stuck.
Spam is the main reason I have comments here on the Blind Pig set to publish only upon approval. My blogging platform has a spam filter, but it doesn’t catch everything. Most of the spam I get here on the Blind Pig is of the advertisement sort: coach bags, woolrich, ugg boots, louis vitton, michael kors, etc. I also get a ton of pharmacy related spam. Both the pharmacy related and the advertisement type are easy to spot. In most instances, spammers who leave blog comments are simply trying to gain links to a specific website or product.
Spammers try to out smart filters by making their content appear normal, those are the ones that sneak through the filters. Most of the time I don’t do much more than glance at them, but every once in a while one catches my eye that makes me laugh.
I recently got these 2 funny spam comments:
On the post Away In A Manger-Clash of the Clans Hack left this:
Yesterday, while I was at work, my cousin stole my iPad and tested it to see if it can survive a twenty five foot drop, just so she can be a youtube sensation. My apple ipad is now broken and she has 83 views. I know this is entirely off topic but I had to share it with someone!
And on the post A Pocket Knife Giveaway & A Pocket Knife Christmas Story-Valentine left this:
I was getting tired of the usual Chinese take-out so I decided to cook for them using my family’s easy pork marinade recipe for some Asian-inspired pork chops. Any Irishman worth his brogue will tell you that Killard is probably the most beautiful spot in heaven. Children too will love the food and you for providing them with their favourite Pie Crust.
Crazy uh? And then there are the spammers who try to tell you what you’re doing wrong:
On a Planting by the Signs post Borsa Speedy said this:
Hi, I just wanted to tell you, you’re wrong. Your post doesn’t make any sense.
And on the 4th Annual Planting by the Signs Test-A Buon said:
Hello, you used to write great, but the last few posts have been kinda boring. I miss your super writings. Past few posts are just a little bit out of track! Come on and get back on track before I quit reading!
Tipper
I love it! Like ice cream. I bought a case recently to hand out to homeless people in Santa Monica (there are many.) Somehow 20 cans became 19-16-10. I finally left one can on my church steps along with four pillows, each having a one dollar bill attached with a paper clip. A Japanese-American market near my house had a recent display of at least one hundred cans of Spam, all stacked like a child’s building blocks, very impressive. Try it “Sushi” style on a block of rice with a seaweed wrap. I don’t have it around and buy one can at a time for obvious reasons. To be truthful, I am FAT! More Veggies. No comment on the other kind of Spam.
Tipper, My kids hated spam. I would slice it lengthwise grill it add cheese and put it on a hamburger bun.. They called it Dads Specially Prepared Alien Meat burger..
To those who do not revere Spam in a can with the little key that opened it, I say, life has been too good to you. When spam on my computer gets too much for me to abid, I can just turn it off. When my body has been starved too long of the nourishment it needs to survive, it will turn to whatever it can find.
Spam and Treet and Potted Meat where infrequent feasts to six hungry children from Wiggins Creek. I love cornbread and buttermilk and cabbage and beans and onions and beans and cabbage and buttermilk and cornbread, but sometimes a body needs a little something different. That’s when Spam or Treet or Armour Potted Meat are better that Christmas.
It just dawned on me that most of the people you really need to reach don’t even have a computer and don’t even realize how desperately they need one. Or do they? Do they really want to be like us more than we want to be like them?
Oh my gosh, I forgot the most basic ingredient of human life, taters! Please insert some form of taters in between every food group I mentioned above!
Well Tipper: I dun got here late to enjoy all the talk about eating the canned SPAM. But that SPAM business in our computer world and in our mailbox is aggravaten! But I just tell YOU KNOW WHO and he gets rid of it. I am looking forward to April and my READING AT THE FOLK SCHOOL! You be sure to mark the date 04-17-14! Tell the girls to come by also!
Best:
Eva Nell
PS…
Don’t boil your treat! LOL…boil your eggs, grind your treat into small pieces and add all the ingredients you love in the mix!
Thanks
Tipper,
and Ken….Please try Spam, it’s much bettern Treat…My mother-in-law used Treat to make ham salad.
Boiled, eggs one or two, onion, pickles or relish, mayo…she could make it good. I suppose she had a knack on all those sandwich fixin’s. Starting on Sunday evening, she made up her sandwich jars…Egg salad, Pimento cheese, chicken salad (usually left over chicken from Sunday dinner), Treat ham salad and Tuna salad. The back up was peanut butter and blackberry jelly! Those lasted pretty much all week, with 5 boys carrying sandwichs to school each day! I wish I had got her recipe for her Pimento salad, it was the best!
I forgot to add to the list Vienna sausage as one of my “SOS” emergency rations! Of course we do keep them on hand also, but we take them fishing and for snacks on little short trips, too with a sleve of crackers!…Let me ask this, do you think that pork n beans taste better cold or warmed? When fishing or at home with a sandwich? These two questions have been a ponder for us and we can’t decide for sure!
I know my favorite!
Wish you could remember the name of that canned Roast Beef?
Thanks Tipper,
I remember eating spam as a kid. If I remember correctly, we all liked it! Spam and mayo sandwich? That I never had. Still love a few slices of bologna now and then, but what I really love is Italian bologna – mortadella. Oh yum!
As for your writing – for what it’s worth, I think it’s just fine, not boring at all. Everyone’s a critic these days. Fun post.
We sued to eat spam and vienna sausages regularly…I liked them both but hate the blog spam!
And now we have Spam Lite, too…
Tipper,
I don’t ever remember eating Spam. I’ve
seen it in the Grocery Stores but I
usually get Treet and fry it with
sprinkled Brown Sugar. It’s pretty Good. Don’t care much for Potted Meat, but a lot of times get those original Vienna Sausages. I still like them with soda crackers. When I worked in Atanta, I took Roast Beef in a sandwich. Back then
it came in a can just like Spam.
As for the Spam on the computer, I’m
forever getting messages to connect
with Linkedin. When you’ve got the
Blind Pig, why do you need anything
else?…Ken
Ive had spam all my life and never grow tired of it. My wife won’t touch it. One thing to remember, if you get more than 2 sandwiches from a can , then you are cutting it to thin. Good stuff. MMM
Tipper,
My, my we have another “cowinkidinky” or as some say coincidence!
It was so nasty yesterday, with tiny icicles hanging around on the bird feeders and tree limbs.
Snow spittin’ around and threatening havoc, warnings of “black ice” and weather people not really committing to a absolute “this will happen forcast”, set us in motion!
It was time, we decided, to bring out the “emergency rations” or “SOS” food!
We picked from “Sardines?”, he said. Nope, out of crackers, and that figured as well for “potted meat”! “Deviled Ham” was out as we had “aigs” for breakfast. “Corned Beef”? Nope, we’ll be eatin’ it in a couple of weeks with cabbage on St. Pattys Day! How about “Tuna”? Nope, that sounds just too healthy and I was out of “Lemon Pepper seasoning” and whole wheat bread!
We wanted comfort food! Ah,ha “SPAM”! We fried us up a few pieces, grabbed the leftover rye bread (don’t knock it until you;ve tried it), lettuce, tomato, sliced onion, mayo and mustard, salt and pepper! Yummo, what a great “samwich”! We downed a big glass of skim milk with it and was set for the afternoon freeze off and nap off! LOL
How can any “emergency ration” closet be without “SPAM”…We try to keep it, especially in the winter! On our hill we have been trapped here for a few days. Really! Now that we are old, feeble, etc..lol we just wait for a thaw!
Thanks Tipper,
PS…I rarely say, Spam on my computer, it just tastes too good!I say JUNK mail….
Spam, Spam, and more Spam…I liked it as a kid (sliced thin and fried). I don’t eat it now but every now and then my boss, who is a bachelor, will come in a tell me he had a delicious dinner of Spam!
At a church dinner a lady made canned peach halves with a ball of Spam in the center. She baked them in a pan until heated through and cartelized. It was so good.
I really like Spam, fried or straight from the can! Maybe it goes back to the days when we worked in the peach orchards and packing shed, and didn’t have any way of keeping a lunch cool until noon. I understand about the meaning of spam in today’s society; same way with the word “pot”; it used to only mean a cooking vessel or a chamber pot. Ahh-h, old age!
Speaking of Spam, I remember having that with eggs when I was a youngster. Sometimes we had it with beans. It was an inexpensive meal and sometimes money was tight. In our English language, it is interesting to note that so many of our words have multiple meanings, like the use of spam for probably unwanted mail. Those little pain spammer just bug me.
I accidentally clicked a link a couple of days ago. Don’t remember what but while it was open, it placed about six adware programs on my computer. Every time I clicked something I would get four or five pop ups advertising everything from auto insurance to testosterone replacement medications. It took me about six hours to clean all that crap off.
As far as the canned “Pink Meat”, loved it as a kid; wouldn’t feed it to a stray dog today.
Saw a recipe on FaceBook for making your own Spam. My question was “Why.”
I still love Spam, but slice it paper thin because of the fat content. The best way for me to keep computer healthy is go in every few days and get rid of unfamiliar programs with recent dates. I sure declare war on hijackers Malware that hijack me away from The Blind Pig. Meanwhile, eagerly awaiting your posts on gardening.
Ah Spam, or as we call it in our family pretend food. Doubt if any of us would eat it if we knew the parts they made it with. I remember eating it as a child though and thought it good.
As to the spam in my emails my gmail filter is great, I may only get one a week that actually gets in my inbox
You know a lot people do much more harm to their computers while trying to get shut of spam and viruses and the like than the actual infestation causes. It is kinda like doing your own surgery.
My Dad, after serving through all of WW II in the US Navy, told my Mom when they got married that the only reason he would have to consider divorce would be if she brought a can of SPAM into the house (that was almost the only source of meat he got from 1941 until 1946). She honored that request. Consequently, I never tasted it until I got to college. I used to like making a fried SPAM and mayo sandwich. That was over 40 years ago, and I recently tried it again. It lost its luster in the ensuing 40 years.
I love spam. Love bologna too. And always, I love your posts !
ReneaW
I much prefer spam in a can. At least I used to. I don’t eat it now, for health reasons but I remember when it made a fine sandwich on white bread with mayo, just like you described.
As for those bogus comments, shame on them! I guess there always have been and always will be people trying to take advantage of honest folks.
I recently advertised a first edition book for sale. I had an offer to buy it from a guy that wanted me to cash a check he mailed me and wire the excess money to a man in Florida. When I wouldn’t go for his scam I am now receiving two to three phone calls a day from different people wanting that book.
I repeat, there always seems to be people wanting to take advantage!
last week I got a really nasty sex comment… spam is ruining my email to even with spam blocker..
I like a fried spam & mayo sandwich but I hate spam on the computer. I just delete it and go on.
Funny you decided to put this in your blog this morning. Before I opened the pig I went into my control panel deleted all programs I thought was responsible for some of the spam I have been receiving took me at least 20min, very annoying..