i guess they think everybody from texas is in the militia...

I, like most Americans, receive a lot of junk email and spam. Apparently my sex organ is too small and fails to reach satisfactory tumescence on demand. Also, apparently, I should be worried about increasing the size of my breasts as an Asian woman to please my male partner (disclosure: I am a white guy). Thankfully these things, as well as ads for a cocktail of painkillers without prescription, are intercepted by my provider's spam filters. But one piece of mail keeps getting through.

Back in the day, I think I registered to vote as Republican. However, I'm almost entirely sure I've never voted that way in an election. But I still get emails from Texas Republicans urging me to vote and participate in activities that I find, frankly, politically and morally repugnant. I don't know why I don't just unsubscribe. Perhaps like the folks of J.G. Ballard's _Crash_, I get off looking at human tragedy. Seriously, Rick Perry, secession?

But there's another email I receive regularly; it comes from the Ready Nation. I have no hypothesis how I ended up on their mailing list except for the aforementioned Texas Republican party link. This "business" markets your typical survivalist mentality gear to people (MREs and long term storage foodstuffs, emergency preparedness kits, etc.) This evening I received a disturbing email playing off the tragedy in Japan to sell me through their Ready Store a variety of Saratoga Farms canned foodstuffs by the case [10 cans per] (diced apples, green beans, macaroni, freeze-dried scrambled eggs, even buttermilk biscuits cuz they know how us southerners love a healthy dose of biscuits and gravy before we venture out of the Vault to battle giant radioactive scorpions in search of a replacement Water Chip).

Scared of the tsunami and earthquake (the newsletter still rated it 8.9 instead of the upgraded 9.0)? Nuclear crisis emptied shelves of food in Tokyo. Buy our cases so you don't get caught unprepared when God's divine wrath via natural disasters strikes in your area. Way to exploit a human tragedy to sell a few more cans of freeze-dried beans, Ready Nation. Wanna also sell me some fake potassium iodide pills to stave off radiation poisoning? Sheesh.