Spam saves badgers from starvation

Whilst many of us regard "spam" as the biggest curse of the modern era, at least since the advent of the Partly Political Broadcast, we at The Rockall Timescan now reveal that spam has been instrumental in saving at least one sett of meles meles from starvation.

Thought by many to be dull creatures with no saving graces other than a remarkable ability to irritate fat cat dairy farmers, it now seems that badgers are in fact a highly-complex and technologically-advanced species. This came to light following a recent exchange of email between the mighty electronics giant, Hewlett Packard Inc, and the previously little known Badger Corporation.

A spokesbadger takes up the story: "Things began in late January of 2004. It had been a hard winter and, with the ground frozen solid, we were finding it difficult to scrape together enough worms to keep the family fed. Things looked bleak, especially for some of the younger cubs who hadn't been able to put on much fat late last autumn to tide them over. They were just wasting away before our eyes. Fortunately for us, our computer settwork proved to be a real saviour! Within hours of installing Microsoft Hotmail and going online, we began to receive spam. The first day it was just a pawful, but after we responded to the first offering from Hewlett Packard we began to receive more and more. By the end of the week we had enough to feed the whole sett and even a little left over to put by for the squirrels."

Speaking on behalf of Hewlett Packard, Hiram J Chickensh*t Jr, Assistant Vice President for E-Commerce and Chrome Desk Ornaments, proudly explained the company's role in saving a half dozen cute young furry things from certain death. "It seems the badgers, whose brains aren't perhaps as small as you might think, had decided they needed to be part of the e-commerce revolution, and had installed a computer network in their sett to enable them to shop online."

Cuddling a now very portly badger cub, Hiram continued, "Whilst Googling for canned worms, which they had heard about on numerous occasions from television and radio broadcasts, the badgers inadvertently responded to one of our emails and somehow became registered with our marketing database. After that, it was only a matter of minutes before we started sending spam. They replied right away and so began an ongoing and very profitable business partnership. The badgers were so impressed by the efficiency of our spam delivery service that we have been asked to tender for a complete upgrade of their Settwork. Gigabit Ethernet, fibre optics, the whole lot."

Badger Corporation, whose stock has risen significantly in recent weeks, are bullish about developments and were keen to express their backing for proposed joint ventures with several major companies. CEO Darth Badger's preface to the Corporation's first Annual Report adds: "The recently upgraded Intersett with it's broadband spam capability opens up a whole new range of possibilities for us. Freed from the nightly grind of hunting for bugs and grubs, we can concentrate on core business. For example, we're contemplating introducing a market in spam futures, a sort of electronic 'jam tomorrow' that will see Third World poverty wholly alleviated at the click of a mouse just for registering a few personal details with our sponsors. In just a few short months we should see Badger Corporation emerging from its humble underground beginnings to become a leading player in the world's financial centres."