I'm not as nearly as patient with people as I'd like to be, I know that. I'm better than I used to be but I acknowledge that I often do not tolerate things and I wish that I were a better person.

I also know that I'm often an extraordinarily angry person. That one, I think, is a little understandable. I think most people would either express or suppress anger if they had to deal with a life like mine. Pain and frustration, limitations and exhaustion make all of us, even the healthiest, most saint-like, lose it at times. I try mostly to channel my anger into socially acceptable whatever. I'm a good audience at sporting events. I'm awfully good at swearing. And I'm happy to say that most of the time, the anger doesn't last very long and I'm very good at letting most of it drop quickly. But I admit to one really nasty way of dealing with my anger, and that's the continuing striving for perfection of the exact message I send back to spammers.

I know I know all the things they say. Don't reply, don't go to "take me off your mailing list" sites, just ignore it. But it's so stinking bloody rotten putrid awful. Remember when? When you'd turn on your computer and get your email in the morning? The little bluebirds would sing and there would be cute little puffy clouds in the sky. Now you open the mailbox in the morning and it reeks of rotten fish. And sewage. Yeah, yeah we have filters and yeah, yeah I delete most of the shit but we are talking about hundreds - hundreds - of stinking fish carcasses every day. At least, that's how I see the spam - as something unwanted, smelly and revolting.

So I spend hours cleaning up and sprinkling lavender around and scrubbing and tightening the lid and getting new locks and still it wastes my time. And one of the problems I have is that sitting hurts; hurting lowers my tolerance levels, and around we go. So while I get rid of 95 percent of the stinking fish spam daily once in a while a Nigerian spam slips through, or a "Christ be with you, I'm dying of a terrible disease" whatever gets through. And I block it and I send a notice to the ISP, which yeah, yeah, I know is usually forged - please don't tell me all this I know I know. But every so often I write back to a spammer, especially one of those "invest with me" shitheads who gives a legit email.

It's cathartic. It gets out some of the anger I deal with. It's like a voodoo doll. I rant, I get creative in my cursing, wishing them daily migraines, hoping that their enemies prosper, saying I hope that what they fear most happens to them. It's rather impressive; I wonder if I would have made a good witch once upon a time.

And then I get the STUNNING, STUNNING result. One writes back, telling me that I'm not very nice. You got that? This piece of dogshit who is trying to scam me, has wasted my time, insulted my intelligence, used my precious pixels, filled my nice clean well-scrubbed mailbox with stink, answers my "fuck you" email. Most recently I got one who used some sort of "christ" message - which I particularly find loathsome - to try to con me and I sent my usual reply. I believe she claimed she was dying of cancer. And the shithead (sorry but these people are just the scum of the earth), emails me to tell me that I was "a very big fool" and that I was irritating "her" (who knows, it was "Jane" so let's pretend). Now mind you, I had already dumped her email directly into the trash but since my filter isn't 100 percent effective, I sometimes check. (A while ago, I almost let a "lottery winning" email go through that really WAS a notice that I'd won an iPod in a second chance drawing for the Washington state lottery from my scratch card. So I check.)

So the lying thief tells me I'm a fool and that I'm IRRITATING because I wrote back to her spamscam that I wished her vicious, violent terrible things.

So I let loose. Again. Worse than before. With name-calling like no one hears from me (okay, except occasionally when I get stuck hearing politicians telling me that I'm a traitor because I don't support a war). I did four more paragraphs, never repeating anything but the wholehearted wish that they get migraines. I called this thing stupid, moronic, a liar, a shithead, you know. I got it all out of my system. Really and truly I did. Phew.

And she came back.

Okay, now we're of course guessing that English is not this thing's first language but if you know enough to send one of those "heartfelt pleas" you should know that "you shithead" is not an endearment, and that "fuck you" is not a happy greeting. Maybe "beneath contempt" is too hard but, but, but….And this thing writes back. And wants to know if I'm interesting in her proposal.