Poking through the (e-mail) Trash

 

So another "too crappy to go for a walk " day, and as an entertainment, I thought I'd go through my current trashed e-mails list.  The file is currently holding 77 e-mails, 57 of them never opened.  Before you think I'm just a callous bastard that cares for no one, let's just see how many were actually needed.

4 of them are "Personalized spotcrime reports", IOW the crime that hit the police blotters within 5 miles of my house.  Why I didn't open this morning's message I don't know, but I'll blame Misty and move on.

7 are for various things I agreed to get on the letter list of, and then decided I never felt like reading them.  I used to unsubscribe to such things, but now days, spammers send you phishing mails to get you to unsubscribe from things you never subscribe to (I'm sure dozens of these will be in among my other lists), so now I just quietly ignore them.

12 are various charities that I have given to anytime in my life, asking for some more. (see also: 95% of my discarded snail mail).  At least one of which from a charity I gave to once maybe 15 years ago opens by thanking me for being one of their most dedicated supporters, go figure.

The various political campaigns that I have NEVER given to thank me for my support as well.  I have 2 of them today.  Surprisingly today, I have no ads for "Let's Go Brandon" merchandise, which I got 3 per day leading up to Christmas.

PAUSE:  Time for some more of those pesky M10 top 40 tunes!  Today we'll be covering the teens, so you won't see any more till New Years Eve...

20- Geowulf, Open Me Up.  This one wouldn't be in the top 40 by points yet this week, but it will be a "split the difference" across this year and next, so it gets put in based on estimated finish.

19- Old 97's, Champaign Illinois.  One pulled from the recent past (2010) to be a #1 this year.  Because time is not a factor on a musical Tardis.

18- Lily Hiatt, Brightest Star.  An early-season #1.

17- Blackberry Smoke, Ain't The Same. Wartime PTSD rears its ugly head again.

16- Sass Jordan, The Key.  My yearly Debbie the DogLady contribution.

And now, back to our previous program, already in progress...

16 of our trashed missives belong to blogging:  Either my replies to comments, replies to my comments, or posts that get e-mailed to me because they aren't with Blogger and are therefore screwed out of sending blog posts by e-mail (like me).  Odds are these have been read, or accessed through another medium.  Another 7 belong to sites that send out daily or weekly things I look at, like "Best Classic Bands" or daily devotionals.

8 more belong to the "I want to sell you a gadget" category, including a special today on something I simply MUST have- a "better butter spreader".

Better than THIS?  G'wan...

I have three solicitations from dating apps, which reminds me:  It's been a couple of weeks since I got one from "your wife", offering her preferred male enhancement pill.  Speaking of other such services, I count 6 of those, including Liberty Mutual, a search-for-a-maid site, and the daily love letter from Empire flooring.  I haven't seen today's letters from Anderson windows, Gutter wizards, or all my other friends from businesses who don't know I live in an apartment yet.

Then we have our usual collection of "free gifts" (today from Comcast and Lowes); 4 more from services we're signed up for (one of which being the three-times-a-week notice from Disney + that the friend whose account Laurie "borrowed a couple of times" signed in); and one from a site I signed up for to do something on another site I actually give a crap about.  This other site, I got bored and tried to sign back in.  It rejected my auto load user name and password, apparently because on the sign in page, it says "using your e-mail is okay", but when you use it, it locks you out after a couple of tries and then informs you you can't use a @ in the user name (and thus, can't use your e-mail).  I wrote them to inform them their system was balmy, and today I got the third message back (first 2 ignored), telling me, "This is a just a super quick notice that we will be closing your open support ticket  and I will be eating it shortly."  Munch away, muchacho.

15- Weezer, Grapes Of Wrath.  If this was the Earworm list, it would be top 5.

14- Counting Crows, Bobby And The Rat Kings. Winner, song of Summer '21.

13- Driving To Texas, Tom Morello featuring Phantogram.  Actually, Phantogram with the former Rage Against The Machine leader doing the guitar solo.  But, it was his lp, so...

12- Molly Parden, Kitchen Table.  Another strong contender for Earworm of '21.

And, 11- Tom Jones, Till.  From 1971, and thank you!

Finally, we have the special "It's what I am, but I'm not" category- title lines claiming them to be one thing, when it's actually just an ad for something else.  I have four of them, including the every day one that starts with "Animal Encyclopedia" but goes on to tell me about "Quiet dog breeds that rarely bark".  This started up sometime after the every day ad for the "doggie bark collar that really works" stopped, so I bet if I ever opened one, that's what I would find.  But my favorite- in fact, my inspiration for today's post:

Title line: "Devastating disasters"

Description: "7 places to retire that won't break the bank"...

POSTSCRIPT:  In the time it took to type this up, we've added:

3 daily devotionals I will actually read

2 charity contribution requests

One infomercial from some conservative group

Unnecessary notifications from Spotify and Dlvr.it

An offer of a trip to Egypt

And an offer for a pet shop credit card.

Giving us a "looked at or actually read" percentage of 35.22%  I wonder if Xfinity would give me 2/3 off my email bill?

Xfinity:  "We offered you a free gift, and you trashed it!"