Mind Streaming

Monday, September 15, 2003

A draft "tongue in cheek" article I've written out of frustration with being the target of various spammers lately . Tried to be funny but not quite sure I completly pulled it off.

INTERNET ALTRUIST : JEWEL IN THE CROWN

Even though I am an English Brit, sometimes I think I'd make a natural American. I just love the global warming and altruism of the Internet community, don't you ? I so genuinely enjoy the real and friendly dialogues that come my way through my on-line journal and my Fotolog and I am amazed everyday to find so much in common with people from all around the world, some with whom I have developed strong friendships. These contacts happen within a specific context and effectively that gives both them and myself that all-important choice of who we communicate with.

But, recently, I have been getting more and more random visits from seemingly really friendly and helpful people through my e mail INBOX. All these new, apparently kindly visitors seem to have the same things in common and curiously they all live in the United States. I thought I?d tell you about one of my latest lovely in-box guests because she is fairly typical of the kind of American strangers who drop by everyday to say Hi to me lately.

Jewel Romo is an American on line. She is one of that unsung army of seemingly wonderful altruists who spend all day writing emails to people like me , whom they have never met, but would so like to help anyway with their personal problems and inadequacies . Jewel, it appears, is blessed with telepathy and can run her sharp eyes over an e mail directory and automatically diagnose , for example, mental illnesses and physical inadequacies. Although Jewel clearly isn't a doctor and has had no medical training whatsoever, she feels able , not only to make a diagnosis by proxy , but is also able to prescribe remedies for me, and even direct me to a discrete place where I can purchase potent medicines without even the unnecessary formality of a consultation with a doctor or a valid prescription.

No matter that Jewel has no medical knowledge or training. I know she just really cares about people like me and knows all about the wonders of a whole range of medical products to can enhance my life. Jewel is such a great lady that she wants to save me the hassle of having to go to a doctor and paying those unwelcome medical expenses. She knows too, out of the kindness of her heart, that there are some problems that are, well, a tad embarrassing to discuss even with your own doctor and she can help there too. Gee ! The United States seems full of people like Jewel who want to stretch that supportive hand of theirs out over the great wide Ocean to reach out to people like me in the Old World whom they just know may need their help. Every day, in my e mail in box, one or more of these big hearted Americans writes to me wanting to be helpful.

Now , when someone tries to help me out like this, well I just melt and want to thank them personally. The problem is that Jewel, (as a teacher I instinctively know) , isn't capable of meaningful employment on account of her learning difficulties and so has to stay home. She must sit all day at her PC trying to write to all those people she seems to so want to help. Sadly, it seems , Jewel suffers from dyslexia. That causes all sorts of headaches for her. She has typically made a bit of a hash with her e mail address so I can't write back with an appreciative response. The subject line of her e mail was a little hard to read too with its random letters. She did manage aol.com though and that must have been a struggle for her. Jewel is also trying very hard to get to grips with web page design but her html coding is hopelessly illegible and a complete salad of misspellings and gobbledegook. What is worse is the web site link she is trying to help me get through to mysteriously doesn't work but I was able to decipher her hieroglyphics and find the web site myself.

Now , as I said, lovely Jewel doesn't know me from Adam . It is a good job I have been an educator working with young adults with complex learning difficulties for the past 25 years otherwise I'd mistake this genuine person for one of those awful Spammers we read about. If she did know anything about me she would be aware that I am probably one of the best adjusted , healthiest, anxiety free people she could ever wish to meet. I am completely at ease with the body I am blessed with and I have no complaints whatsoever about the functioning of its various parts ( and may I say , in all modesty, I have to date received no complaints about any inadequacies in any department of my anatomy and , especially the trouser department which Jewel seems so very concerned about on my behalf.)

It was with great sadness that I realised that life for Jewel has been cruel in comparison to the blessings it has showered upon me. Not only is she afflicted with learning difficulties, she is clearly sexually dysfunctional. By default, I deduce she must be inadequately equipped sexually like the guys that send me the same kind of helpful e mails and , with all that pent up anxiety and depression it can't be helping their sexual hang-ups. She also suffers from delusions of being the professional she can only dream of ever being.

Now altruism is one of my strongest traits and I would so dearly love to contact Jewel. I know , deep down Jewel really needs a friend like me to talk with and also needs career advice and help getting a real life. I think she may have allowed that unscrupulous Internet Pharmacy (she tried to point me at) to take advantage of her innate good nature and exploiting her lack of intelligence. To save her from herself, I have played Internet detective and tried to find her . I tried AOL whose account identity she'd tried to use and I even pasted her IP into Geektools but the domain people for that P.C. couldn't help. I wrote to the company that Jewel's kindly e mail was pointing me at, shadydrugpeddler.biz Well, alas, they had a 'contact us' dialogue box but it didn't seem to want to work for me. I'm off now to phone up freewebsell.com who gave shadydrugpeddler.biz their web design and host them. Spammers are sad but cynical; amoral companies like shaddydrugpeddler.biz need unplugging and maybe freewebsell.com will do that for us all. We shall see. Jewel, if you are out there, you are not alone and I'm working on your behalf to rescue you from slavery. I hope that you will find someone to read this article out to you.

Footnote : The name Jewel Romo( no doubt an alias) was taken from a genuine Spam I received today. The actual on line drug peddling company I have been plagued several times by from various of their spammers is called "theherbalstore.biz". They operate using software provided by freemerchant.com, a part of the Digital River Corporation. I have reported both " Jewel" and the drug company to freemerchant.com and they seem to have taken my complaint seriously. I await results. The spammers may get cut off; it remains to be seen if the website gets pulled. I won?t hold my breath.

Finally ,take a look at this. I have been playing:-




You have to laugh at these sinister on line drug sites and wonder at their effrontery, using spammers to illegally tout for them. Don't you just love their web site graphics which use models to create the illusion that they are staffed by genuine medical people. I guess there is a fakedoctor.com website and a fakemedicalpersonnel.com and a dysfunctionalmale.com and a virilehappyadults.com who supply fake graphics to help with the illusion that these are not really online criminals running the drug company websites but genuine caring professionals. Ho, Ho , Ho!



johncoxon 9:57 PM - [Link] - Comments ()
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