Spam and life goes on

Recently a literary agent Nathan Bransford held a contest to be a blogger for a day while he was on vacation. I am big fan of his blog and entered the contest and sadly did not win (maybe I should have proof read it better and that's why I lost it wasn't perfect content that was for sure) but writing the piece was still fun and reminded me of the days when I used to write an opinion column for my local newspaper once a month. Here is what was written of course edited a little to fit my blog and not Nathan's.

Age is a funny thing. It creeps up on you until one day you go wow where did the last fifteen years go and when the hell did I become thirty two years of age. I got my first computer in 1994, I was eighteen years old and it was like I had discovered sliced bread or someone had invented the wheel. I paid for it myself and I got jacked by the salesman who must have been rubbing his hands saying well there is one born every minute after all. I knew nothing about computers at the time and my exposure had been mostly a DOS class I took in Junior High, wow thanks education board I use DOS everyday now yep I do. He sold me the previous years model at that years price of $2500 and it was a good little computer even if it was outdated the day I bought it, heck it was outdated even if I had bought it a year before. It had a 66mhz blazing processing power and 2 whole megabytes of ram and the darn thing even came with one of those fancy pants CD drives. Also it had a whopping 100 mb hard drive and if you believed Bill Gates you would never ever in your lifetime fill a 100 mb hard drive, wait doesn't Windoes Vista need 2 gigabytes just by itself who knew Bill Gates would lie to us.

Now the best part of this amazing computer is it came with a modem, a 2400 bps modem that was well faster than most DSL connections now days. It's kind of ironic but it truly was faster than a lot of DSL speeds today mostly because we didn't put it through the seven layers of hell like we do now days streaming video and using apps that would have made our modems weep blood. Back then most web pages in 1994 consisted of dancing little images thrown hodge podge on a website and their was oh so little content and more pages about someones dogs then you could shake a stick at. We could check emails, heck we could talk to people from Europe and some Prince from Nigeria who wanted us to help him remove his family wealth in his turmoil ridden country and best of all he would let us keep a cut. Heck if you forwarded an email from Bill Gates to enough of your friends Bill Gates would personally cut you a check and you could be megarich and remember Bill Gates would never lie to us.

Fast forward fifteen years and that poor prince of Nigeria is still having trouble getting his money out and Bill Gates still wouldn't lie to us, heck if your my friend I got some emails I'd like to send you and please forward them or a dancing rhinoceros will take your mother out a date and your dog will be hit by a tractor and your grandparents will disown you and a meteorite will hit your house and your car will explode and you will be forced to ride a bicycle to work in a speedo because that was the only thing not destroyed by the meteorite. I constantly wonder if anyone falls for this spam anymore, I mean fifteen years ago maybe just maybe that Prince of Nigeria was legit but you would think in fifteen years someone would have helped him. So if no one falls for it anymore why does my yahoo email account currently have 491 spam messages (I got tired of emptying it and yahoo does it for me every 30 days so why bother). Sure the spam isn't the same for some reason my yahoo account thinks I am addicted to porn, want to lose weight, slow the aging process, get a nursing degree, buy some life insurance, get dish network, check my credit score and make money on twitter. Wait what was that last one make money on twitter ah so the Nigerian prince has given up and now twitter needs my help poor little twitter.

The internet is great, we can learn so much and it still promises to make all our dream come true and we will be published my Christmas because the internet never lies and all that is important is believing in the internet. Fifteen years has taught us nothing, the Nigerian prince has only been replaced by belief in something else and it still floods are email addresses and poor little twitter needs our help now instead of some nameless prince. Great writing trumps all you can write a query letter on pink paper using smiley face stickers and gothic font with dripping blood and putting hearts on all your I's but if the writing is truly great there is a good chance you might get published. Now actually doing things as agents would suggest and stopping your hearts desire to use that gothic font will actually only help you because the writing was already great now you have just put a pretty bow on a pile of gold instead of covering it in trash and making the agent sift through it to find the gold. You can't believe everything the internet tells you but you sure can take good advice every now and then and you need to learn the difference before its too late. Fifteen years later I now have a degree in Computer Information Technology and that salesman would not be so lucky nowdays and I still don't believe everything the internet tells me or Bill Gates for that matter. My goal is to spend more time writing or perfecting my writing and stop worrying about the Nigerian prince and maybe just maybe I will be published by Christmas just not this Christmas and so could you.