Until this very week, I naively believed a computer "Spam folder" was required because of an abundance of discount email coupons from the company that makes the food Spam — which many of us love and affectionately refer to as the "particle board" of salty meat snacks.

One of my favorite scenes of creative violence in author James Lee Burke's immortal Dave Robicheaux series occurs when a villain — a voodoo adherent who sleeps one night a month in a grave — is sitting on a tree stump in a Louisiana swamp when our hero happens upon him. The bad guy is eating Spam and soda crackers and drinking from a bottle of apricot brandy — a menu I find oddly compelling — and gets irritated when his meal is interrupted because he has to hold a pearl-handled knife to Robicheaux's throat while a higher-up convict delivers a stern warning to the detective.

ANYWAY ... back to Spam and computers. I recently missed an important work-related email because it had gone to my Spam folder, and this was all revealed to me by one of our IT Wizards who gently showed me how to open the Spam folder and subsequently clean it out like one would a weed- and detritus-strewn patch of garden.

And what a wealth of wondrous theretofore "lost" emails I found! From today's Spam Folder, then, here are the five most intriguing "Subject lines" I will open at top speed!

1. "From: Your Father Mr. Richard Leo Koster" - This is great news because A) Dad is dead and B) he finally feels secure enough in the Great Beyond to use his middle name, which he loathed here on earth. Good for you, Pops!

2. "Why Wait? Meet Russian Women Today." - I've always wanted to know someone who could read "And Quiet Flows the Don" and "Dead Souls" to me in the original language, even though I wouldn't understand it. Hey, wait! Should this email be in Cyrillic? Not sure I trust this one.

3. "In Case You Missed It: Marshall Tucker Band Performance" - There's a reason I missed it.

4. "Get 16,000 blueberries from a single plant." - A sure-thing money-making email swindle based on ... blueberries?!

5. "Need Girth?" - I think that's a typo. Garth Brooks is touring again after several years.