Spam, fresh as the morning dew

          Something I’ve learned this week: When you stay up very, very late (say, until 2 or 3 a.m.) working on your computer, you get to watch the Viagra and Cialis spam actually arrive in your email inbox, fresh as the morning dew. Usually it’s just there waiting for me when I wake up in the morning. Lots and lots and lots of it. Are the men of the world really that worried about impotence? Is the problem graver than I ever dreamed? Is the impotence industry really a huge one (no innuendo intended?)? I’m starting to wonder.

          But one spammer actually kind of fascinates me. The subject lines of the emails are these trippy non-sequiturs, and in the body of the spam, after the inevitable creatively misspelled sales pitch for Cialis, is always a paragraph or two of what appears to be a story excerpt. I have a friend who gets this exact same spam, and she’s become just as fascinated by them as I am. Anyone else get these? (You’re thinking: "Julie, if you’re reading spam, you really don’t have enough to do." And I can hardly fault you for thinking this, but you’d be oh so wrong, my friend. Reading spam is a splendid way to dodge a whole hailstorm of little deadlines and tasks.)

          Re the spam in question, though—some recent subject lines are, “Hi, orange-tailed,” “Better future, wood-sheathed,” and “Life, milk-curdling.” There’s a bizarre sort of poetry to them, and as peculiar as it seems, I have to admit, as a lover of words, that I’ve come to sort of look forward to seeing the latest subject lines. And as an example of the stories embedded in the spam (after the Cialis ads), here’s a paragraph that appeared at the bottom of a recent one:

"I looked up  and felt a catch in my throat. I couldn't utter a sound. I
translator of these short novels. Russian I do not know; fiction I do; and I
wasn't bad. It was a photographic  process--aerial and highly  enlarged. You"

          Just that little bit of a story. Weird, eh? Almost haunting. In every new bit of Cialis spam there’s a snippet of what appears to be a different story, and these particular emails arrive nearly every day. I’m sure the stories and subject lines are meant to disguise the spam and sneak it past our battery of spam filters, but it’s still oddly intriguing.

          And as I had a dozen little deadlines and things to finish, my flat has become very, very clean in very specific places. For instance, I don’t think it’s ever been so spotless under my microwave. Also—that narrow strip between the stove and refrigerator? Pristine. Obsessively micro-cleaning is another splendid way to avoid the things you need to be doing. Or maybe it’s just a way of burning off excess energy before I settle down to work. Or a sort of unconscious attempt to Feng Shui the place.

          Speaking of snippets of stories, look below—there’s a snippet of WAYS TO BE WICKED below if you haven’t seen it yet, and if you pipe up and say something (you don’t necessarily have to tell me I’m wonderful—LOL—“hello!” will do) in the comments area, you might win a signed copy of BEAUTY AND THE SPY or TO LOVE A THIEF. My sis is going to choose a winner at random from commenters by 9 p.m. EST Friday. J

          Off to bed now! Sweet dreams, all. My goal is to get into bed before midnight tomorrow. Everyone needs a goal, right?

Comments

[Haven Rich]

Ok first, you are wonderful so what's it hurt to tell ya??

Anyhow, I hate spam but they love me. The only email box I've managed to stop spam in is my yahoo. I get maybe one spam email in there about once a month. Not bad eh? The others, shesh, I've set my spam controls and still get about 40-50 emails a day.

The ones that really bug me are the ones your really not sure if they are actually for you. I belong to a few groups and some of them have some interesting pen names...so how am I suppose to keep up with them all. So sometimes I get sucked into a spam actually wondering if I know this person.

Anyhow I'm off to check my spam..err email.

[Zara]

Well Julie, you are wonderful and lovely. See, I said it completely of my own free will.

Hmm, it sounds as if your spam is much more interesting than mine.Oh I get the Viagra and Cialis spam, but unfortunately without the poetic nuances of your displaced bard. I also get the ads for penile implants. It would be nice if they would at least send spam regarding parts that I actually have lol.

[Julie Anne Long]

Oh, jeez, you guys, maybe I should fish for compliments every day. LOL. You are too sweet. And I know—the spam is all awfully male-oriented, isn't it? What's that about? Maybe spammers figure women are too smart to buy, um, figure enhancing products via spam. LOL.

[Ranurgis]

Julie, I guess you never really read spam before--or you didn't get much. LOL

This is the usual kind of thing I get on most of my spam: bits of chopped up stories that sound interesting. In fact, sometimes that's *all* I get and I really wonder what the point is. They're not selling anything, just writing some phrases or sentences which, yes, can be very tantalizing. I try to figure out who might be the original author.

Well, I really don't get this whole spam thing anyway. I get some that just have all XXXXs. I've put different languages on my MS and some of these letters are Russian, some look like Chinese or Japanese, Thai but not so I could really even read one whole word of Russian. All the characters are jumbled. A lot of spam has not subject line. I used to read a lot of them just to make sure I wasn't missing anything important. Now I just automatically put everything in spam even if it doesn't meet the legal definition. I didn't ask for it, I don't want it.

There is some spam geared to women: weight-loss and as someone said above other "figure-enhancing" procedures or products.

I think the whole sex-centred society that we are: think "sexy cars", "sexy shoes", "sexy houses"(?); every commercial shows a "sexy" man or woman--all these drive the need to be sexy and here I do include the romances and especially erotica.

Any guy whose penis is on the small side thinks he needs a bigger one to compete with the guys whose are "as big as the Eiffel Tower". Those would give any guy an inferiority complex. Everybody has to have great sex 5 or 6 times a day and if you don't or can't you're a failure. It seems that sex is the be-all and end-all of life. And yes, I've had spam on how to make a woman your sex-slave, rob her of her will.

I know I'm exaggerating but unfortunately not by much. And I truly wonder if it's worth it in young lives ruined or lost when what seem to be good upstanding (pun not intended) men need to go to Thailand "to check out the candy" as one friend recently told me. I don't think I'll ever think of candy in the same way again.

My friend heard this from a mutual friend, a former businessman who goes to third-world countries to help individuals or small groups build up a business in which they can become self-sufficient and earn enough to keep their families together instead of having to sell their children even as young as a year to people who will use them as sex-slaves. And the comment was made by our friend's seat-mate on a flight to Thailand while one man was going to help the people and the other was going to use their children. Our friend almost slugged the other man, but as a peaceful man he desisted.

[Ranurgis]

For fun with spam read Spamarama Fridays at this site http://longandwritingroad.blogspot.com/

Sorry I got to ranting about "sexy" but ever since my friend told me about this, it's really been bothering me. Maybe that is also why two Thai cities are among the top 10 favorites in the world to visit.

I know I wrote about the airplane encounter once before. I hope it wasn't here because I'd hate to rehash something. But it's become a real concern for me and I would love to help those homes who take in these young girls whose lives have become such a tragedy because men want to be the "first" so they won't catch AIDS or other STDs. How sickening our world is becoming.