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I read a couple of writing magazines every month. To be more precise, I devour them and digest anything that will help me be a better writer.

Sometimes ads catch my interest. The November issue of Writer's Digest magazine had one that caught both my attention and my imagination. Was it for a writing workshop or a book? No. Was it for software or a website? No. Did it have anything to do with writing?

Well . . . yes, but not exactly. The ad was not promoting a skill or technique. It was about junk email. It seems that the folks at Hormel® are unhappy that unsolicited email is called by the name of their unique line of meat products.

They purchased advertising space in a national writing magazine to plead with us not to call junk email s p a m. They do not want people to confuse junk email with their unique food products. When we refer to s p a m, we should be referring to the food.

When we are talking about the canned meat, the parent company would like us to write it as follows: The SPAM® Family of Products.

Wow -- when did that canned meat food have kids? I never knew. I went to the website to see pictures of the family.

The original product is called "Classic." There are five other varieties. I know Halloween is over, but I thought it was spooky to find out that there is a fan club for the substance in question.

I personally haven't eaten it since grade school, but I never thought a food would have a fan club. There are fan clubs for movie stars, singers, television shows, athletes, and even writers -- but for the SPAM® Family of Products? How interesting.

Being curious by nature, I decided to play on the web a little. When I typed "food fan clubs" into Google.com's search box, SPAM.COM was the first listing. The fan club may, in fact, be as unique as the product. The next food related fan club came two pages later. It is the Food And Nutrition (FAN) club out of the University of Maryland for its students. Having a life, I stopped after looking through about five pages of the "hits" for that search.

But then I realized my research wasn't anywhere near complete. Since I like beef, I'd see if beef had a fan club listed online.

Chicken is also tasty (don't tell the flock I raise for eggs), so that was my next web quest. There is a website called eatchicken.com, but it doesn't have a fan club. There is a headless chicken with an official website several pages long. The immortalized rooster in question has a fan club. Chicken, as a food, does not appear to have a fan club listed on the worldwide web.

But back to the SPAM® Family of Products. I never imagined that so many writers included junk email in their work that the folks at Hormel® felt they needed to purchase advertising space to admonish us not to call unwanted electronic communications sp-m.

I wonder if they have contacted all the internet service providers and other companies that make sp-m filters to urge them to be clear.

One of my other articles is about deleting junk email as a way to relieve stress. Had I inadvertently offended Hormel® and the SPAM® Family of Products by incorrectly using the name of their meat food? No. I never linked their food product with junk. Just for fun, I wrote the company to tell them so. The "thank you for writing" email informed me that I will receive a personal response from one of their representatives. Months later, I have heard nothing.

There is a lesson to be learned in all of this. It is a good practice to call something what it is. When a thing is useless junk, we should call it useless junk, not a canned meat food.