by working at the LA Times, there are some real annoying ones too.

today we will discuss the people who email spam us.

for some reason people think that when they spam the Editor and all the famous writers and me, that we read their crazed ramblings. they think “ah, i see their email structure – firstname.lastname@latimes…. i wonder if i just took all their names and put them in the To: field if i could really get my message out to them?”

in some situations its actually sad because they are delusional and think they have something insightful to say, or they think they are breaking news to us about UFOs and conspiracy theories about the oncoming race wars. im sure every news agency gets these types and some of them are actually so crazy that they are entertaining for a line or two

but most of them are annoying.

so annoying that they require the flick of a finger to mark them as Spam.

the latest in the parade of the insane is a woman who lives on the wesssside. she claims that because she has canceled her subscription but still receives the paper that we have somehow wronged her. and because of that she will now spam us from her daily diary/blog.

“tit for tat” she quips at the end of the intro to her work.

and then proceeds to bore us with her insights about spirituality and blah blah blah.

todays she wrote a post about not having anything to write and then sent that out to god knows how many times staffers, most of whom probably never saw it because they marked it as spam weeks ago.

lucky me, my filter doesnt appear to be working.

i wanted to write her to tell her that 9 times out of 10 i do my best to encourage bloggers to keep writing because there will be a little treasure chest at the end of th rainbow,

but she is clearly that 10th writer who should give up the hobby because there will never be a reward in her future.

and frankly spammers do not deserve my tutelage. they are uninvited guests in the house of love.

so heres a tip i would have given her but the problem with working where i do is people pretend that our emails back to them are Important. people think that everything that we say Means something. and therefore if she actually got the attention that she is begging for, then my bitter pessimistic reply would be the fodder for her next yawnworthy post and i would have only fueled her fire and given her some weirdo Purpose.

when indeed she should just go back to making crystal necklaces for her friends and leaving the rest of the internet alone.

heres the tip: you always have something to say. you always can go deeper. you can always risk with your writing.

instead of skating around the edges of emotion and breakthroughs, grab that pickaxe and chip away at your walls.

delve down into the hidden rooms of your psyche and unearth the feelings that scare the crap out of you.

the reason you dont want to write is because you know theres something there if you do. the reason you bore people with you bull crap is because you are unwilling to actually serve up the good stuff that we can all relate to: fears, tragedies, evil, pleasure, indulgence, and sin.

al gore did not invent the internet so you could apologize for not posting or write about how you dont have anything to say.

this platform is here for you to high dive off cliffs that will kill you.

and if you are truly spiritual you know that when you die you go to heaven.

so jump.

this commercialization so soon, this sellout of pop culture, this auction of almost everything important within LOST

one of our reporters was given a tour of an auction being held this weekend in santa monica of thousands of props used on LOST

$45 if you want to view it. hundreds if not thousands if you wanna buy it.

my question is, why sell it so quickly? is ABC hurting for cash that badly? why not put it in a museum? the wheel that turned the island is for sale – where could that go?

what they didnt show, that is even more precious, but still for sale is the metal cup that Jack drank out of as part of the ceremony before he was made protector of the island.

im all for capitalism, and TV shows are meant to be commodities, but something about all of this seems so tawdry and tacky. and too too too soon.