I do get what I regard as more than my fair share of junk email. I have great spam filters on one of my email suppliers so pretty much all that comes through their servers is stopped before it gets to me – all I have to do is to remember to have a poke about in their files from time to time to make sure nothing I need has been trapped there. For some reason emails off a couple of my friends regularly get caught up in them.

The other account, that I’ve had for yonks has no such feature for those like me who don’t buy my service through them any more but still use one of their email addresses – I reckon it’s a way of forcing people to shut down email accounts if they’re no longer full-on customers. I suppose that’s fair enough really but I keep the account because many of my old pals have that address and I can’t work out who uses it to effect a change of email address.

So, every time I log on, I am faced with yards and yards of junk. Much of it is the sort of ‘buy your viagra/cialis/levitra here’ type of stuff and there’s also a fair few ‘penis enlargements’ and ‘stocks and shares hot tips’.

Weirdly though, I seem to have found my way onto a Christian mafia list – I know, I know, the two things are supposed to be mutually exclusive but as far as I can see there’s quite a bit of it about. It started in quite a sweet way – ‘meet your Christian soulmate here’ type of thing. Much as the last thing I want/need is a new soulmate, especially not a Christian one, I thought that at least these were reasonably innocuous.

Who knows, perhaps because I didn’t ‘bite’ at that, I started to get ‘meet your black Christian soulmate’ emails, then ‘gay Christians’ and a plethora of other groups, none of whom I have any reason to find any more worrying than the original 'Christian soulmate, it's just that they didn't start coming until I'd been receiving the general ones for ages so I believe they were monitoring subscriptions. I am starting to get an identity crisis from spam – what’s all that about?

Even more recently, I’ve been getting ‘Christians – clear your debts here, move all of your debts to one easy monthly payment, CCJs and mortgage arrears no problem’ (Dunno if I’ve used the right ‘American speak for CCJs – they are County Court Judgements – in other words if you’ve been taken to court for not paying a HP agreement.)

I must be honest, of all of them, I do find these ones the most disturbing. What happens with a Christian debt rescheduling company? Do they pay off your loans, charge you an exorbitant interest rate because you’re desperate, then ask you to say a few Hail Mary’s and How’s your Father’s? (Before moving on to breaking your kneecaps if you default?) Maybe I’m just cynical but I don’t see much Christian about this sort of stuff – it strikes me that it’s all preying on poor folks who are in desperate situations with little hope.

The latest one to arrive (this morning), I scrolled down it to see if they had proper contact details etc and noticed that they certainly do. In fact, they also have a ‘click here if you want to be removed from this list’ button and a legalese statement about how I’d found my way onto their mailing list through being a customer of a company I have never heard of or one of their marketing partners. Given that the company is in the Mid-West of America, I find that extremely unlikely, not to say impossible.

Somehow, this is all the more bothersome than getting emails asking me if I’d like a penis extension, to which I take great exception, given that last time I looked, I didn’t have one, whether in need of enlargement or not. Indeed, I’d almost rather (I did say ‘almost’) get the seemingly endless list of viagra/cialis/levitra ones than this. You see, this company, who, according to their blurb, I have dealt with is a Christian company. Now why would I, a card-carrying, tub-thumping atheist, deal with such a company? Don’t you think it’s creepy?

Now, I’m not sure whether to ‘click here’ to try to relieve myself of receipt of this old shit from a bunch of decidedly un-Christian looking Christians or if that will just put me in purgatory of more and more stuff from them because I will have confessed to having an active email address. It strikes me that the choices are both fraught with danger. So, while I ponder this, I send them this little message out into the ether……. ‘up yours – go away and bother someone else’.

By the way - this is the second shot I've done recently that was actually taken inside my fridge - there is really nice light in there!

Keeping things measured up was my theme last year.