Stop Pleasing All Marathoners

Stop Pleasing All Marathoners (SPAM) — besides being good advice for greater happiness as an endurance runner or walker — is the new system that I had put in place to begin using today, April 1, 2014, to email everyone who visits this site.

Yes, that’s right.

Now that you are looking at this website, this new SPAM system should have connected to hundreds of back-end systems to look up your favorite email address and record it so that I can email you at any time about any topic.

There are many benefits.

Why I Am Using SPAM

• I want to email everyone who might be a marathoner, so emailing everyone who visits my site is a good step in that direction.
• With the advent of texting, instant messaging, and social media, studies show that email usage is down, and email hosting companies are cancelling marathoners’ email addresses for no or low usage. The SPAM system ensures that I can fill your inbox, so that you can keep your email address!
• I am all about helping you to be a happier marathoner, and I want to bring back the joy of plowing through tons of email messages that you were not expecting.

Confusion about the CAN-SPAM Act

In Internet circles, “SPAM” refers to unwanted email.

Quoting Wikipedia, “The CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, signed into law by President George W. Bush on December 16, 2003, establishes the United States’ first national standards for the sending of commercial e-mail and requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce its provisions.”

Unfortunately, most people misunderstood the intent of the word “CAN” in “CAN-SPAM Act”.

They thought that “CAN-SPAM” meant to put SPAM into a can — to sequester it from the email target — analogous to the sardine canning that occurred in now-defunct factories on Cannery Row in Monterey, California.

However, when I read all of the oral arguments in the U.S. Congress for the act, as well as all of the footnotes in the legislative document itself, I discovered that “CAN-SPAM” actually meant, “YES, you may SPAM!”

Congress had misused “CAN” where it meant “MAY” instead!

So, when I discovered this new SPAM system, I had to license it to serve you better!

You Need Do Nothing

To enjoy the great benefits of SPAM, you should not have to do anything.

Your favorite email address should be registered here, and you should get lots of email from me very soon and very often.

A Glitch and a Workaround

Unfortunately, there was breaking news earlier today about an April-1 glitch in the SPAM system.

This glitch is blocking me from getting your email address automatically.

So, I’ve had to abide by the OTHER meaning of “CAN” in the CAN-SPAM Act, and I’ve had to sign up with another email service provider (ESP).

This one requires that you give to me at least your email address so that I can enroll you in the SpryFeet.com Readers Club.

Also, this ESP won’t let me “SPAM” you, so you will have to “double opt-in” to confirm to the ESP that you want to get occasional email from me.

I’m sorry about that!

I had hoped that I could share the benefits of the new SPAM system with you, but technicians are unsure when they will be able to remove the glitch.

Here’s a link to a page that I have set up in the meantime, so that you can register in the tradtional way.