To my catalog of spam damages ("spammages"?), let me add another. Early this morning I was combing through my spam filter in Eudora. Even though I've managed to choke the flow of spam into my inbox to a mere trickle, I still have an immense backlog of spam in the junk folder I've been checking through for false positives. The last time I was all caught up on the junk folder was mid-August; by the time shut down all but a handful of my email addresses eleven days ago, 30,000 messages had accumulated in the junk folder. I've been scanning through the subject lines a couple thousand at a time since then, just in case I had missed any genuine and important emails.

This morning I found a genuine and important message in the junk folder, incorrectly classified as spam. It was dated August 22, and it was from Storyteller magazine. This, in part, is what it said:

We're very interested in publishing "The Ice Queen" in our fall 2004 issue. I see from your cover letter you sent it to us quite a while ago. I hope it's still available.

Please let me know if it is and, if so, I'll send instructions on how to get it to us.

I, of course, wrote back immediately and apologized for the extreme tardiness of my response. The story is indeed still available, though I'm sure it's far too late for it to make the Fall 2004 issue. I haven't heard back yet, and I'm waiting on tenterhooks to see if they're still interested in publishing it at all.

One more reason to string all spammers up by their own viscera.

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UPDATE: I heard back from Storyteller about two hours after posting this, and they're still taking the story. Whew.