There's a name given to junk email that is the same as a pork luncheon meat product produced by Hormel. I don't think the Hormel company is too pleased about their product associated with something negative and undesirable, but the usage has become widespread.
I was wondering if this word association has helped or hindered sales of the food product.
The meat product has been around for years. It was given to troops during WW II. Complaints then arose about it, but they were NOT about the quality or taste of the product, which was fine. The problem was that the troops in the field were given that as meal three times a day, seven days a week and they got sick of the monotony. The Quartermaster Corps attempted to provide a variety of tasty food for front line troops, but was constrained by (1) shipping and preserving food from the U.S. to Europe and the Pacific, 2) shipping food from foreign ports to the front line, 3) preparing food in combat conditions to serve mobile troops. The official history (the Army "green series" books) goes into interesting candid detail on their logistical challenges and their efforts to overcome them**. (They freely admitted that their "powdered lemon drink" proved more useful as a floor cleaner than tasty beverage.)
Getting back to words and communication, it is interesting how the word "pig" is so contradictory. As I understand it, the pig is actually a nice animal and some people have them as pets. But we have so many negative "pig" usages -- a nasty term for cops, sloppy eating, greediness, an overly aggressive man, rude behavior etc. Yet pig meats -- processed luncheon meats*, pork, ham, bacon, scrapple*, etc., are very popular foods.
(*balogna, salami, hot dogs, sausage, liverwurst, etc. Scrapple is a popular Philadelphia food made from scraps.)
(**The combat cooks used mobile gasoline stoves, but the stoves required unleaded gas otherwise the burners would clog up from the lead. The army stocked leaded gas for vehicles, carrying a separate fuel was another burden. As an aside, apparently gasoline fired stoves and heaters were popular at one time, but no longer. Anyone know why? Gasoline too flammable? Why didn't they use safer kerosene back then?)
Public replies, please.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I sometimes give scraps to my cats to eat, although I am sort of particular about which kind and how much. They are better off with genuine cat food rather than left-over human food.Regards the use of the term 'spam' for unwanted email, my impression has always been that Hormel treats it like a joke. Consider for example various television commercials for Spam (the meat product) in recent months: _they are quite funny_, IMO. In one, a family is sitting down to dinner and they have a guest. The guest comments on the delicious quality of the food she is being served, and asks the cook about the recipe. The cook enumerates the various ingredients, and then says "I put a lot of sliced up Spam in it also." As he says the word 'Spam' the camera closes in on his face and mouth as he deliberatly and willfully pronounces the word. The guest tell the cook it was really good, and looking at the serving dish she exclaims, "I wish there were more, I would have another serving, but it is all gone." Her face has a frown. "Oh, no," says the cook, "there is a lot more, we always have plenty of Spam." The cooks snaps his fingers and says, "More Spam, please", (again we see his mouth up close, deliberatly pronoucing the word) and a huge, semi-tailer truck full of little cans of Spam drives through, and dumps its huge load all over the family computer which is sitting nearby.
In the second Hormel advertisement, some guy is sitting at his computer doing some work. Something bad has happened because we see him turn around and face the camera with an angry look on his face; up close we see his contorted mouth as he yells, "more spam!" and angrily tries to erase it all. When he says 'more spam' the same semi-trailer truck backs up and dumps its load of Spam cans all over the computer, burying the machine totally under the cans. In both commercials, as the truck dumps its load, one of the little cans of Spam flips over upright so its label is upright, and the word 'Spam' fills the screen then another image saying 'a product of Hormel Meat Company; find it at your grocers.' PAT]