SPAM in Reverse

Did you think your email was private before you hit "send"? WRONG!!! You don't even have to hit the send button and your words are in the public domain.

Something I noticed recently is in my Google mail account. When a draft is saved in my Gmail, ads appear on the right margin, disturbingly topical to whatever the subject or subjects about which I'm currently writing. For instance, when I hit "save" right now, leaving the compose screen momentarily to access my drafts, upon my return, five advertisements appear under the heading "Sponsored Links" with titles such as "Writing Pad Tablet PC", "Write Articles Instantly", "Myself, Unfettered", "Press Release Writing", "Win $10K Writing Contest". Another article I was writing earlier regarding the congressional practice of writing their political constituents invited links like this: "Labels-for USPS Shipping", "Jay Footlik for Congress", "Hillary Clinton in 2008?", "Mark Warner Lied to Us". I guess I have to give whoever came up with this invasion of my privacy credit for having the get-up-and-go to sell their wares, their ideas, themselves with such conveniently accessible marketing savvy, despite their incredible audacity to do so. It is SPAM in reverse. How sneaky. I'm outraged and impressed at the same time, wondering who I have to contact to advertise my blog this way.

Let's Write to Them to Tell Them to Stop Writing to Us

Franking is a term I use when my spouse, whose father's name was Frank, behaves too much like my father-in-law. I now see that Congress has another use for the term...a much more expensive use that wastes our tax dollars for this unnecessary process.
We've all gotten junk mail from our government, usually right before an election, but generally all year long, just to remind us that Congress does still exist and often busies itself with things about which we care very little or nothing at all. This, however is something that should have our complete attention. U.S. House members spent $20.3 million of our taxes last year just to send us mail. Do you remember each and every piece of mail you received from Congress last year? Okay, well that is asking a lot. Do you remember several pieces of mail? A few pieces? One? All our representatives go through to remind us they are still alive and you couldn't be bothered to remember one lousy, stinkin' postcard? How inconsiderate of you. These men and women go out of their way to spend our taxes on thinking up new ways to spend our taxes and you just don't care. It would not surprise me one bit if they stopped writing to you. Well, okay, it would surprise me if they stopped this expensive, albeit useless, inane practice that would save us millions annually. Just because we didn't know about the cost and even now that we do, we probably aren't going to do a damned thing about it, they will keep sending us mail about which we don't care, hardly ever even read, wastes our money and resources, kills our trees, pollutes our air, and in general, now pisses us off. What are you going to do about it? We could write to them to tell them to stop writing to us. Write to Congress