Well, my plan to learn Spanish instead of listening to those old sourpusses at NPR has hit a snag. The tapes I bought don’t stand all by themselves. They’re just pronunciation tapes — they don’t teach vocabulary or basic phrases. You’re supposed to read the book that comes with them. That’s all fine, but now I’m stuck listening to the news again.

Not that NPR news can’t be funny, in a subtle sort of way. For example, yesterday, one of the the correspondents was reporting on the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. If you’ve been following the case at all, you’ve probably heard about the strange outbursts and bizarre behavior of the man on trial. Recently, it’s been, “What’s he going to plea?” First it was innocent. Then it was guilty. Then it innocent on some charges, guilty on a few others. Now I think it’s back to innocent again. Anyway, where was I? So the main anchorperson asked the correspondent how Moussaoui was comporting himself on that particular day. The correspondent replied glibly, “Actually, today he’s been very calm and reasonable, by Zacarias Moussaoui standards.”

I think that would make a good general catchphrase. “How’d you like the movie?” “Well, the plot made a lot of sense, by Zacarias Moussaoui standards.” “How’s traffic going to be this weekend heading down to the Gilroy garlic festival?” “Oh, by Zacarias Moussaoui standards, it’ll be smooth sailing.”

From the That word… I do not think it means what you think it means department: I ran across an interesting UPI article on the economics of spam. Here’s a fun quote:

According to the Direct Marketing Association’s guidelines, quoted by PC World, not responding to an unsolicited e-mail amounts to “opting-in” – a marketing strategy known as “opting out.” Most experts, though, strongly urge spam victims not to respond to spammers, lest their e-mail address is confirmed.

Hmmm, someone seems to have reversed the definitions of “opt-in” and “opt-out”. Here’s another stunner:

Spammers, it emerges, have their own organizations. NOIC – the National Organization of Internet Commerce – threatened to post on its Web site the e-mail addresses of millions of AOL members. AOL has aggressive anti-spamming policies. “AOL is blocking bulk e-mail because it wants the advertising revenues for itself (by selling pop-up ads)” the president of NOIC, Damien Melle, complained to CNET.

Or possibly AOL is anti-bulk email because their paying customers are screaming for them to do something about it. (Not that the spammers should complain so much… I haven’t heard that AOL’s filters are all that effective anyway, but hey.) Fortunately, NOIC is almost certainly too chickenshit to try anything like that — AOL would immediately take them to the cleaners. (Yay for big corporate legal teams!)

Still, this is the caliber of people we’re dealing with. If you don’t reply to our emails, you’ve “opted in”. If you don’t let us spam you, we’ll post your personal info in public. Cripes, how do these people sleep at night? No, no, don’t tell me… no doubt it’s “on top of a big pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.” Bleah.