I just received an e-mail ad telling me that there will be a great Super Bowl party this Sunday at the Bar Celona in Chicago. I entered its address in Mapquest and found out it's 2,034.25 miles from my house, or 31 hours and 16 minutes if I drive straight through without stopping.
I doubt I'll be making the trip. If I am suddenly seized by the urge to watch my first football game ever, I figure there have to be a few closer places…maybe in Denver or even southwestern Illinois.
For some reason, this kind of Spam annoys me more than the ones for penis enlargement and giving my bank account details to strangers in Nigeria. And I'm wondering if someone just bought a list of e-mail addresses scattered all over the world and didn't care that 99% of the ads were going to people far from Chicago. The only thing I can recall signing up for that was based in Chicago was many years ago when as a treat for a friend, I ordered some hot dogs from Fluky's, a famous Chicago frankfurter emporium. But I gave them my delivery address so you'd think that if they'd sold their mailing list, someone would have taken the 40 seconds to filter out non-Illinois zip codes. (I also signed up for access to the Chicago Tribune site but with a different e-mail address.)
Oh, well. If anyone's going to spend Super Bowl Sunday at the Bar Celona, tell 'em not to hold a stool for me.