(pssst! wanna buy a watch?)

After years of email use I'm well used to receiving those very special emails called "spam" that are so thoughtfully sent to me by kind and well meaning people who just want to help me increase the size of my non-existent male genitalia, or who want to help me please my non-existent woman, or who will even sell me a Russian woman if I don't yet have one to please. I've come to smile whenever I see those emails inviting me to lower the mortgage on my non-existent house. I've shed a tear and then hardened my heart to the pleas of pretend Nigerian royalty who can spell neither "royalty" nor "Nigerian" correctly, and who just need the small favor of either a large sum of money, or my social security and bank account numbers to regain their throne.


But this is a new one: wanna buy a watch? All the sudden I've been inundated with offers for cheap (but real, we swear it!) Rolexes (or is that Rolexi?), Omegas, other brands I've never even heard of. These emails have filled my head with many many questions that I've narrowed down to two.

1) Isn't this the sort of business that is traditionally carried out in an alley-way somewhere in NYC or DC or similarly acronized* cities? I mean to say, traditionally speaking when you think of someone selling you a suspiciously cheap and greenish-"gold" watch, you tend to imagine them wearing a trench coat and speaking in whispers. It's hard to email in a whisper.

2) Since the sleazy shady watch-selling business does seem to have switched to an e-business, how did I get on the watch-sellers' lists? I don't need a watch, I don't wear a watch, and I don't remember giving my email address to any kind of watch-esque website. So how?


I suppose I'll never know the answers to these questions, so I'll just have to add watch-sellers to the list of kindly, good-hearted people who have purchased my email address for the entirely selfless purpose of improving my life with their totally reliable, totally affordable, and above all totally unnecessary items.



*Okay, so I think I made up the word "acronized" but I could *not* find the real word for something that has been turned into an acronym. Quick, someone else look it up!