I just received yet another unasked for newsletter by e-mail. It was from a company that has a product I think is pretty good and the newsletter started with the following spiel from the vice president of marketing:

"Welcome to our fall issue of [newsletter name]. We hope you enjoyed every moment of summer as it swept by. On my morning run last week, I felt the crisp air and was reminded that fall is well on its way.

As always, with a change of seasons comes fresh beginnings. As the school year starts, some of the excitement of a new year still rubs off on us as adults. So when the leaves turn and the temperatures fall, we sometimes feel that we have a fresh start in our worlds e-amil

[Company name] is excited to present a fresh perspective on [product name]. In this issue of [newsletter name], we will talk about the new option for purchasing [product name] - as a hosted solution."

I quote all of this because it illustrates the kind of newsletter that companies like subscribing me to without asking. I am totally pissed off with these involuntary subscriptions! It's bad enough to get more gunge in my inbox, but when that gunge is irritating . . . well, it makes you want to hurt someone.

These newsletters almost never contain anything of value. They are almost always smug, chatty, self-congratulatory, irrelevant and boring, boring, boring.

Even more aggravating are the newsletters that include, as this one did, explanations such as, "When you subscribe to the [newsletter name], you can be assured that your e-mail address will not be sold to third parties by [company name]." Isn't that nice of them?

To add insult to their stupidity, the swines make me send a reply to them or follow some link to get off their lists.

I have had it. The following memo is to all the companies that decide to subscribe me to their newsletters:

Dear Whoever Subscribed Me,

You people must be daft. I just received your latest newsletter and the most obvious message in it is that you are idiots. You talk about my subscription, but the problem is I didn't subscribe - you did it to me. Without asking.

So, for the third or fourth time today I have to follow a link to some site to unsubscribe to yet another lame, useless newsletter I couldn't give a dang about.