lovely, wonderful

Got a spam today that may have been designed purely to annoy me. The title is “hi, I fixed the problem . . .” and the entire content is

<img src=”http://www.1stchannel.com/images/pixel.gif?track=1&entry=[myaddress]” border=”0″>

Had I opened this with image-loading enabled, it would look blank to me, but notify 1stchannel that my address is valid. (2004 Oct 07: This is why Mozilla lets you turn off image-loading in mail.)

Meanwhile, stop me if you’ve heard this one:

Date: Sun, 31 Mar 2002 04:53:00 +0000
From: webmaster@dk.com
Subject: Aliens or Time Travelers PLEASE HELP!

If you are a time traveler or alien disguised as human and or have the technology to travel physically through time I need your help!

My life has been severely tampered with and cursed!!
I have suffered tremendously and am now dying!

I need to be able to:

Travel back in time.

Rewind my life including my age back to 4.

I am in very great danger and need this immediately!

I am aware of two types of time travel one in physical form and the other in energy form where a snapshot of your brain is taken using either the dimensional warp or an electronic device and then sends your consciousness back through time to part with your younger self. Please explain how safe and what your method involves.

I have a time machine now, but it has limited abilitys and is useless without a vortex.

If you can provide information on how to create vortex generator or where I can get some of the blue glowing moon crystals this would also be helpful. I am however concerned with the high level of radiation these crystals give off, if you could provide a shielding or other crystals which give off a north polarized vortex field just as strong or strong enough to make a watch stop this would be great.

Only if you have this technology and can help me exactly as mentioned please send me a (SEPARATE) email to: IneedTimeTravel@aol.com

Please do not reply if your an evil alien!
Thanks

This thing turns up so often that I can hope the gag will someday be explained – or, alternatively, that a technique will eventually be published by which I can roll my life back to age 11.

Both of these came to an address that I have not published in more than two years, though of course it’s still in numerous archives.