My spam e-mail situation has gotten considerably worse this past few weeks. Where I used to be merely inundated, I am now completely flooded.

One of the more interesting things I've observed is that a great deal of this spam is being sent to old, old e-mail addresses of mine or is being sent with old, old information.

Many years ago, I reserved a couple of domains and put down as my mailing address a PO Box in Bedford, Massachusetts where I used to receive mail for, oh, about a year while I was constantly moving from place to place in Boston. Once I'd found a more permanent domicile, I switched the address to reflect my new living situation . . . and then I moved across the country and had to switch addresses again. Then again. And again. You get the idea.

So for some period of time under a year, the Internic (the "universal" registry for domain names at the time for .com addresses) had my mailing address as a PO Box in Bedford. I believe this was sometime around 1996, give or take a year.

The recent rage in e-mail spam has been alerts to REFINANCE NOW!!!! RATES ARE GOING BACK UP SOON!!! Yeah, yeah, like I'm going to refinance my mortgage with an e-mail spammer. Great idea.

But the funniest thing lately has been receiving a bunch of spam e-mail informing me that my residence "at PO Box XXX in Bedford, MA has been approved for 5% refinancing!"

It has? Woo-hoo! Show me the money, baby!

I wonder if I'd have to get the PO Box appraised before I could refi. Hmmm.