It started everything.
No one knew the impact these
squares of processed, preservative-laden chunks of pig would have on society
today.
When SPAM, originally named
Spiced Pork and Ham, entered the cuisine realm in 1937, people could eat meat
again, or at least what they were told was meat. During the Great Depression,
families had no food and, worse, no refridgerators, so any carcasses they
managed to find quickly spoiled.
A miracle was born. Hormel’s
SPAM saved countless American peasants and many more soldiers during World War
II.
Thus, everything began.
SPAM was the king of all
delicacies, earning its just place in Webster’s Dictionary, receiving a
reputation as an excellent word in general, the perfect blend of consonants and
a vowel.
And so, in 1975, Monty
Python borrowed SPAM from Hormel, but removed the capitals and duplicated it.
“Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam.
Spam. Spam,” Monty Python vikings, attempting to drown out another.
Hormel's sales continue
rising.
And everything continues.
"Spam," until the
1990s had been a good thing, both as food and entertainment, however, after the
internet was born, its etymology completely turned around. Spam became
something to fear.
It started, as most things
do, as a joke; one man posting a repeating string of "spams" on
multiple posts. Then this grew to monstrous proportions, an evil, lurking in
the world of e-mail and message boards.
Spammers harvest email
addresses daily off of other websites, searching for anything with an
"@" symbol. Then send out millions of messages advertising weight
loss programs, dating services and the ever popular pornography sites, hoping
some stupid, gullible person will fall right into their scam.
To avoid losing 30 pounds in
under 34 hours, dating a random druggie or seeing someone no clothes, don't
click on the e-mails with funny subjects or the ones with a mix of capital and
lowercase letters.
To avoid getting these
letters, stop registering to be a member of every "webclub" or
messageboard.
Everything keeps going.
Spiced Pork and HAM will continue being eaten. Monty Python will always be
funny, at least for the select underground group. And scammers won't cease
trying to get money.