Lake Neuron

The episode of “Doctor Who” airing tonight here in the U.S. involves a product called Atmos, a sort of combination of OnStar with a miracle pollution-blocker. Unfortunately, it turns out to be part of a sinister plot. It’s sort of funny, because here in Shelbyville the primary source of natural gas is Dallas-based Atmos Energy. I’m guessing the British creators of “Doctor Who” just picked the name because it sounded good; here’s hoping the natural gas people have a sense of humor.

Hormel didn’t have a sense of humor a few years back, when “Muppet Treasure Island” had an ugly villain named Spa’am. They sued for trademark infringement, and lost the suit.

Most of you reading this know that I hate, hate, hate, hate pass-along e-mails. And I must have at least a dozen people who send them to me. I’m not talking about one person passing something along to one other person; I’m talking about the kind of thing you send to everyone in your address book — a joke, a sappy inspirational story, a dire warning of impending doom, a petition.

What I really, really hate are self-righteous pass-along e-mails — you know the type: “If you love God (or your country, or the children), you will pass this along to everyone in your address book,” the inference being that if you don’t pass it along you must be a heathen, or a traitor, or a child-hater or what have you.

Well, the e-mail I got tonight takes the cake. Here is the first paragraph:

This is not sent for discussion, if you agree forward it, if you don’t fine delete it. I don’t want to know one way or the other. By me forwarding it, you know how I feel.

In other words, the sender has the right to clog up my e-mail with their opinions, but is not interested in hearing my opinion. Of all the nerve!

As Art just pointed out to me, Akismet — the comment spam fighter for all WordPress.com hosted blogs and for many people who have WordPress in self-hosted installations — seems to have spammed some legitimate commments over the weekend. I just got through sifting through 270 or so spam comments; I found and recovered one legitimate comment from Art and another one from my sister, but it’s possible I might have missed some. If you left a comment over the weekend and it never showed up, please accept my apologies and know that it wasn’t anything I did.