...No, it's not another installment of my strangest feature "Dear Mr. Spammer". This is more special than that.

This is about non-email spam. And non-snail mail spam. And no, it's not about that special stuff that comes in cans in the grocery store.

This is about Instant Messaging Spam. What? You've never heard of instant messaging spam? Oh, well let me educate you!

I can't escape from it. If I use Trillian and connect into my ICQ account I get random IM's from people in other countries who want to chat with me about special things like what positions I like to be intimate in, or to practice their English by talking dirty. If it isn't that, then they're sending me porn links via IM without so much as a "Hi, how you doin'?" first.

I thought I was free from them for a short while since I'm trapped using Yahoo Messenger at work until I finally get my new laptop and can install Trillian. That and I've not had someone try and proposition me on Yahoo in a long time. Suz and I used to enjoy making fun of these guys and figuring out outrageous things to say to them when they'd show up and start off nicely by saying "hi" and pretending that they wanted to talk about databases or programming languages since my profile used to state that I like mucking about with such things.

So I sign onto Yahoo Messenger and within two hours what do I have? My first Yahoo spam in a long long time. I have some freaky username that shows up with a message of "Hey Sexy" and the image of a little blowfish. And as a special bonus I receive it as a voice message so the rest of the office can hear it. Thankfully no one noticed, and I ignored the user. The guys are a little surprised that I'm getting these messages - they swear they're not behind it, and they've never been spammed via IM.

The best part about it is that I can report it as spam to Yahoo. I can't do that in Trillian but I'm going to suggest it to them as something to be able to do. I get a bit of sick satisfaction at being able to report some idiot as a spammer even if nothing ever happens to them.

But still... what did I do besides sign onto the service to deserve this spamming? It was really nice having a method of communicating with people that wasn't infected with porn links or scamming. And yet, finally, it's caught up with us. Or at least with me, finally, since I don't know how long this has really been going on. I just wish it would stop...

...or at least get a little more original.