Acid ate through my glove.

As I sit here waiting for my Reaction that Will Not Finish to come to an end, I get these incessant little popups on the lower right hand corner of my screen. I'm down with that, as they're mail alerts and let me know when to check this thing to see who we're holding a Meet the Speaker for (this week, it's K. Barry Sharpless, who won the Nobel Prize in 2001 and, incidentally, who I'm sitting down with tomorrow to chat about chemistry) or when I should respond to a comment that Rory's left on my blog. So that's all well and good. Except for the several emails a day that get through the gmail filters. Cutting the spam I actually see down to about ten a day is a pretty good feat, and it's mostly taking care of things that go on about the wonderful medicinal benefits of "V1@gr@" and "\/\/|-|@73\/3R D@mn Th!ng" they're trying to get me to buy, but I do have to register a complaint.

Dear Filthy Spammers,

Having a subject informing me that you've "acquired" my email does not make me want to open your email. It makes me want to break your things.

It's not so much the fact that the spam's getting in the way (as hitting the "Report Spam" button is easy enough), but that it's incredible the lack of creativity that's going into these things. Perhaps it's just that in order to get around the filter, it's better to have an email that actually seems like it could be related to some kind of business venture, or whatever the hell the good people at Google Labs think I do.

In other: My intramural Softball team "BSalsa" (playing in Northwestern's "White League", which is evidently a little more competitive than the Co-Rec league but less than the "Purple League") beat the No. 1 seed in the second round of the playoffs today. They were a team that was undefeated through the four game regular season and had not won a game by less than ten runs. So, though not expecting much, it was incredibly nice to be able to put them down, 14-8. Props to third baseman Jim on a spectacular unassisted double play in a bases loaded, no outs situation after two runs had scored in the inning. We'll be proceeding along to play in the third round, Sunday.