You don't believe THAT, do you?

Thanks to a tip from my friend Phil Smith, I've been Snoping people who Spam me.

What I mean is this: from well-meaning and good-hearted people I regularly receive mass emails that smell of urban legand. You know what I mean: the email that has attached a list of names to which I need to add my own and send to 10 more people, and if I do, something really cool will happen. Or the story about the bronze statue of an American soldier in Iraq which was made by an Iraqi who had previously made hundreds of busts of Saddam Hussein. Or these photos which came to me from three different sources, purporting to be of Hurricane Katrina.



Now, you look at the pictures and wonder: are there large corn fields in Louisiana? How can these pictures show the width of a storm that is supposed to be 85 miles wide?

Anyway, I used to just hit the 'delete' button when I got these emails. Now I'm doing something better: I run over to Snopes, the urban-legend debunking website, search for the appropriate page, and send that URL via 'reply all' to the spammer and my fellow spamees. It's great; without having to get all up in someone's grill, I can politely say "you really don't believe that, do you? Puh-lease!"

Since my snoping has begun, I receive less and less of the offending spam from my good-hearted and well-meaning sources.

Excellent. Everything is going according to plan. Bwaaaah-haaaaa haaaaa!