Legitimate marketing emails are close to dead and buried under a tidal wave of greed, cluelessness, negligence and borderline contempt.

Four old men are sitting over a chess board in Bryant Park lamenting about the economy. The first one says to his lifelong friends, boys…times are tough in the jewelry business. We have to take 25 percent off every item we sell just to get the conversation started.

The second one turns around and says, you think that’s tough? Let me tell you about the garment business these days. We’re discounting 50 percent or more -- buy one get one free!

The third looks up and says, shmucks, stop complaining and spare a thought for the furniture trade. I basically only move product when I sell at cost.

Finally, the fourth chimes in and boasts to his brotherhood, I gotta tell you, things are so tough I have to pay in $100 for every watch I sell.

At that moment, all three pause and simultaneously exclaim, but that’s crazy -- with a business model like that, how can you possibly make money?!

Don’t worry, he reassures, I make it up on volume.

Natural segue to spam. How is it possible that these SOBs make money? How is it conceivable that these bulk marauders “make it up on volume”? Quite frankly, I’m not sure, but I am sure that somewhere out there, there are enough men who are anatomically challenged and to them, the 20 messages a day perking them up with words of encouragement are just the ticket. Not that this is any different to those damn Enzyte commercials on ESPN News on Cable, but that’s another story (yes, I remembered the name and no, I have no need whatsoever for the product and the missus at home is very satisfied, thank you very much!)

But it doesn’t stop there. For some reason, I have been terrorized by what I can only believe is spam and not a plethora of lucrative speaking engagement requests from abroad -- specifically Russia and China (I think). Every day, my poor overloaded computer has to search in vain for a character set which corresponds to Mandarin Wingding or Ukranian Sans Sarif in order to decipher some meaningless message. While my computer hangs (itself), I fight to resist the urge to reply (against my better judgment) and say, YOU STUPID &^%$#@ IDIOTS. I DON’T READ, WRITE OR UNDERSTAND THE LANGUAGE YOU ARE SPEAKING! Of course, there’s nothing rational about the sender or receiver and any ping on the did-they-read-it-or-am-I-hot-or-not registry would only spur ensuing garbage into my obese in-box.

My spam filter, Cloudmark, does its best to contend with the barrage of mosquito-mails, but it is no match at the end of the day, even though it reminds me that it has caught 12,074 mails, saved me 34 hours and $670.33 so far.

I’ve disabled anyone@getthejuice.com which essentially directs all misdirected mails to my jaffe@getthejuice.com box due to the smart alec who began to send me an arithmetic progression of crap using the sequence, aaaa@getthejuice.com, aaab@getthejuice.com, aaac, aaad, aaae and so on -- which basically means that potential leads or correspondence are now rendered null and void. Too bad for me.

As I sit in my hotel room at the Hyatt in Cambridge, Md., (Chesapeake Bay) at the iMedia Summit, I am barely even able to dial up (no, they don’t have broadband access in the hotel rooms and yes, I am telling everyone this) due the length of time it would take to download all my wasted mail.

Then there’s the endless supply of viruses that somehow continue to worm and weasel themselves around the Net much to the delight of some pimple-faced geek in Germany (I wonder if his name is Norton?).

My blood boils when my 3-year-old daughter is playing on noggin.com and gets a pop-up box of offensive drivel through one of our IM clients -- the rise of so-called spim is equally troubling and does not bode well for a communications future on or through the Web.

All in all, it’s a woeful depiction of a sad state of affairs. In this scenario, legitimate marketing emails are pretty close to dead and buried under a tidal wave of greed, cluelessness, negligence and borderline contempt.

CAN-SPAM (the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003) can regulate and legitimize to its heart’s content, but I fear the damage has been done and right now, the least of my worries are that I might get an email from some merchant I previously chose to do business with, with an offer that very well might be interesting and relevant to me, even though I didn’t opt-in to receive their communications.

All in all, I can only wish that the minority purveyors of insulting and incessant attention-pollution go the same way as the old man who attempted to sell watches at a 110 percent discount.

Unfortunately for all of us, I don’t think that will be the case. And that is disastrous. For all of us. Even ultimately, the spammers themselves.