Spammers got hold of my undergrad school's alumni-email-forwarding-for-life list a few months back, and the ensuing crapfest continues. Most of the ads fall into three major categories: (a) porn, (b) Viagra, and (c) printer cartridges. What this combination says about the perceived lives of those in the targeted market is best left up to someone else's imagination.

My banner ad yesterday touted various bug killers, and I can't complain about this because I killed a few myself in the course of the day. Collected some ants to practice keying them out from the Holldobler and Wilson book; it was slow going at first, but I did okay (two subfamilies, four genera), and Nick, our local myrmecophile, pronounced my work acceptable. Not bad for someone whose microscope technique is rustier than her 1987 Colt. Also killed the tick that tried to take up residence on my head while I was out collecting; we cracked its exoskeleton in numerous places and fed the little bugger to Nick's colony of Tetramorium. No doubt about it, it's a bug-eat-bug world.