Your Happy Pill

I was opening my email account this morning, just to check it out like I do every morning I get to the office early and realized that the majority of the email that I receive now is junk. Seriously. "Your Happy Pill" is one of the ones I got today, along with three for online dating, one for online sex, and several junky coupons from stores I don't go to. How do so many people get my email address? I would love to know how NCOHSEONNELK OI@ehaioeo.com receives my information and elects to send me time-sensitive information on a free penis enlargement, or how others send me things on shopping, food, and pills. Why do they think they know so much about me? Then I realized that they don't, but that they must have enough responses from other people to keep on filling inboxes with cheap Viagra and Prozac websites.

I would love to meet these other people, who not only open the emails (which I did in the case of a midget porn site) but also actually go to the site and register and pay to watch midgets have sex or get generic prescriptions from Canada. THere must be a whole population who wants a free penis enlargement and probably a whole other population who wouldn't mind having Happy Pills readily available to them through the wonder and beauty of the internet. While I'm not one of these people (I won't even buy herb remedies online) I would love to meet some of these people. I guess I've always viewed the internet more as functional than as a doctor, prostitute, teacher, and restauranteer. One time a college roommate, E, and I bought Kindersurprise from Canada. We spent like $25 on these toy chocolate eggs that we rationed out slowly and collected more and more toys, most of which I have saved. We won it on EBay. Seriously. But beyond that I still do most of my shopping in stores and enjoy the person to person contact of strip joints as opposed to web cameras.

The internet truly has changed how we look at the world. Whereas I used to be terrible at crosswords and always wonder about certain answers, now, when I've done all I can, I'll go online trying to find as many other answers as possible.I can know what certain clues mean (Except in the case of the Times, when you just have to be a Harvard doctorate in order to solve the Sunday crossword) There are just certain parts of my life that I enjoy spending in the outdoors, especially now that esseentially 40 hours a week is spent indoors in front of the bluish white screen of a Mac. Maybe that's why people need to have access to happy pills online. They want the security that even as they sit in front of their computers, hundreds of other less than happy people are doing the same thing.

I wonder how the numbers compare between now and ten years ago. How many people had blogs or IM or hotmail? I can still remember typing research papers on an electronic typewriter and turning in hand-written drafts. I remember my father having a carphone back in the eighties but it certainly wasn't regulation on top of being HUGE. It took up the center front seat. I remember my first cell-phone, a bulky black thing I kept carefully tucked in my car for EMERGENCIES only. Now I only have a cell phone (mostly because I can't afford a landline. I love landlines so much more than cell phones. I think there's nothing better than getting home to hear the familiar beep of an answering machine). Now that's general. Most of my friends up here only have cell phones without landlines. You certainly can't go the other way nowadays. It's too easy to meet people and double check movie times and restaurant reviews... all from the convience of Times Square.

So I guess I'll just continue cleaning out my junk mail folder every day. But I"ll still wonder about the other people out there with their junk mail folders, contentedly opening emails about animals and demerol and alien abductions.