My mind on Ki-moon and Ki-moon on my mind

The best things in life are free / But you can give them to the birds and the bees / I want Ban Ki-money.

A few weeks ago the United Nations held a special meeting to award me $950,000. I know it may seem random and all too much to take in. Why would they do such a thing? Believe me, I felt the same way, but the email was sent straight from UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon’s personal Yahoo account so it must be legit. The UN has decided to “introduced this programmed” so as to abolish my poverty, and all I need to do is correspond with an African gentleman via his Japanese Yahoo account. Mr Emefiele uses a Japanese one because Ban Ki-moon is Korean, same difference… right? Also, boo to scammers. Mr Ban and his friend Mr Emefiele hate those guys.

Ki-moon really is making the world a better place, like he says. I can’t wait for my $950,000 ATM CARD.

More beautiful spam. You’ll see that I previously received a $10.5 million inheritance from the UN.

Shut up, you don’t know what real poverty is. I need that $950,000 on top of the $10.5 million I already had.

Attention: Beneficiary.

In regards to the recent meeting between the United Nations and the present USA government to restore the dignity and economy of the nations. Base on the agreement with the World Bank assistance to help in making the world a better place for all with by abolishing poverty.

We have been having meetings since early this year as to find possible means of eradicating poverty with the then secretary to the UNITED NATIONS. this email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world, the UNITED NATION in conjunction with the present US government and world bank have agreed to compensate Scam victims with the sum of USD950,000.00 This includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to Government problems etc. Our investigation shows that a lot of people are going through stress and poverty as a result of scam, this why we introduced this programmed in conjunction with the World Bank as a means of eradicating poverty.

Your name is among those in our list and that is why we are contacting you, this has been agreed upon and has been signed. You are advised to contact Mr. Godwin Emefiele he is our foreign representative in Africa being responsible for immediate dispatch of your ATM CARD credited with the total sum of USD950,000, contact him immediately for your ATM CARD.

The ATM CARD have being credited and can be used in any ATM machine over there. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number/your correct mailing address where you want him to send your card.

Contact Mr. Godwin Emefiele for your Card:
Person to Contact
Name Mr. Godwin Emefiele
Email; [REDACTED]@yahoo.co.jp
Telephone [REDACTED]

Hoping to hear from you as soon possible.

Making the world a better place
Regards,
Ban ki moon
On behalf of the United Nations.

The worst of Adoxoblog

HALLO, THERE! This is the 200th post on Adoxoblog. Choosing to celebrate that milestone with call backs to the ten least read articles on the site is not as perverse as it might seem. Many posts have tens of thousands of views– which I think is pretty good for a blog that isn’t really about anything in particular, never has cat GIFs on it and almost never mentions tits– but some pages have almost no views, and there are hundreds of other things to read here as well besides the greatest hits. So may I present to you the top ten least wanted on this blog in the hope that you’ll be encouraged to seek out some of Adoxoblog’s less frequented areas.

Mushuda I and Mushuda II. Almost no text here, which is probably why hardly anybody ever finds these pages. However, if you read this blog regularly then you are probably the sort of person who would enjoy seeing a bunch of Japanese furries laying seige to somebody’s house with insecticide packages and a turquoise bear marrying a doll who is also obsessed with insecticide. MUSHADA MUSHADA MUSHUDA.

Signals for passing pilots. Just in case you ever need to say NO to an aircraft.

Smells Like Papal Spirits. Pope Leo XIII was crunk.

Beautiful Spam III: “This is the carrot on a stick”. Buy stem cells off the internet! What could possibly go wrong?

Cook me Amadeus. Boys: identify nine ovens and win yourself a record player. I know, it’s almost too exciting to contemplate.

Visit Edinburgh: “A downright necrological purgatory.” I used to live there. In Edinburgh, not Purgatory. If you’ve ever been to Waverley Station you’ll know exactly what Robert Louis Stevenson was talking about.

The Devilphone. Actual villagers with real pitchforks.

HALLO, THERE! the robot, answering your vital questions about Walschaerts’ valve gears.

Yeah that’s the perfect roll roll roll perfect roll Product horror. “These poor models are clearly at the very nadir of their careers and we should pity them for having to feign ecstatic delirium at the prospect of their mouths (and at about 00:50… eyes) being stuffed with gelatinous tubes of randomness.”

Beautiful Spam VII: Humanitarian Affairs

O Nigeria, land of bounteous unpaid inheritances and altruistic functionaries, you have made me a millionaire so many times over. An email I received recently:

Subject: Immediate Release of Your Unpaid Inheritance Fund.

United Nations

Coordinator Under-Secretary-General

for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief

1 United Nations Plaza New York, NY 10017 USA.

Dear Beneficiary,

I am humbly using this medium to notify you that your unpaid Inheritance, Lotto Winning OR Compensation payment of US$10.5 Million Dollars in Nigeria has been irrevocably approved to be release to you. We have assigned Keystone Bank Nigeria Limited to pay this US$10.5 Million to you as soon as possible. Your Payment Approval Number is UN1829738. Your US$10.5 Million will be released to you on a special method of payment called “ATM SWIFT MASTERCARD Payment”. This method of payment is designed by United Nations and Keystone Bank to make sure you receive the fund without disclosing your bank details to anyone over the internet.

The Keystone Bank will issue you an ATM MasterCard which you will use to withdraw this US$10.5 Million from any ATM Machine in your country. You are hereby advised to contact the ATM Manager of Keystone Bank Nigeria Limited, Mr. Osas Eke on his open access email: [REDACTED] @Gmail.com and send him your Payment Approval Number WB82973 enable him issue you the ATM MasterCard without any delays.

Thanks for adhering to this instructions.

Yours faithfully,

Valerie Amos

Coordinator Under-Secretary-General

for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief.

Thanks for taking the trouble to write, Valerie! I have a few questions, though.

1. You seem a bit unsure if the payment of US$10.5 Million Dollars in Nigeria is for an inheritance, for winning the lottery or for compensation. A relative died recently, he had a lottery ticket in his pocket and I sued the shopkeeper for allowing an anvil to fall on my relative’s head while he was buying a lottery ticket, so the payment of US$10.5 Million Dollars in Nigeria could be for any or all of these things. Please clarify.

Beautiful Spam VI: Jesus’ lovely name

Dear friends in Christ, greetings in Jesus’ lovely name. I recently received a revelatory message from Nigeria, directly to my inbox, unfiltered and unhampered by the array of anti-spam measures that usually insulate me from friends in Crap like “Pastor” John Izejoko of Benin. He does not want money, oh no; he wants Bibles.

“Dear friend in Christ,
Greetings in Jesus lovely name. I read about you online in your web and thank God for meeting you and knowing about you. I pray my message finds you doing well in Christ. I also want you to note that all I’m asking for from you is neither silver nor gold but God’s holy book. Meeting one through the internet especially now that all evil abounds in it can be very distrusting but mine is all about God and outside of it nothing.”

Jesus’ name is lovely, isn’t it? I think the loveliness of his name is probably the main reason that people who like Jesus like Jesus as much as they do. If John really read about me “in my web”, I don’t think he’d be talking about Bibles to me. Hello, John, I’m an atheist and I recently did a video for a black metal band. So I’m not really doing well in Christ, whatever that means. Sounds a bit unpleasant, to be honest. He’s right, though, that all evil abounds in the internet. Facebook, Pinterest, etc. Those are proper evil, aren’t they?

Beautiful Spam V: Fifty Shades of Spam (in Abergavenny)

… and before long she was moaning “Invest into the elderly lady’s residence…”

The post Has your mouth ever been inseminated by a squid? for some reason provoked one spambot to new heights of literary creativity, not to mention repeated– almost violent– attempts to spam the comments. I’ve taken the liberty of omitting spammy links, fixing punctuation, and compiling the remainder into what is surely a solid basis for the next supposedly erotic novel written by, for and about imbeciles.

The program opened, I was as aroused as a female in an educational institution. I looked because of the opening and was surprised to perceive fair Jasmin, your daughter. She told me all round you and Spot, and the others, examining food so rigid her knuckles were snow-white from the exertion. Bart looked on in startle as his infant sister sucked the SPAM.

“Data sortie curve above,” I whispered softly in her attention, “Interior you.”

“You are a truthfully sugary gentleman,” said Jasmin.

I sat in my sward seat at the back part. Nearly to herself she said, “Oh… deficient gender”.

Beautiful Spam IV: “Your hideous wrinkles”

 

The Rhizome mailing list’s utter failure to filter spam is the gift that keeps on giving. There’s so much to love, so many accidentally inspiring turns of phrase, in this latest unsolicited missive to nobody in particular. The subject line was exactly as above: “Your hideous wrinkles”. For a moment I’d like you to try imagining exactly how facially ravaged a person would have to be (or how pathologically in hate with their own body’s natural processes and projecting those issues onto somebody else an observer would have to be) in order for “wrinkles and fine lines” to enter the realm of “hideous”.

As usual, I have thwarted the sender-bot’s masters by replacing every instance of the original product name with the word SPAM. Errors and typos have not been corrected.

“If your target is to attain sensuous glowing and supple skin then use only SPAM. This solution is an ultimate method to reduce your hideous wrinkles and fine lines. You can say it is a revolutionary product in the cosmetic industries.

 ‘Aging’, something that won’t spare you even if you are ready to do so. Why feel like, there is no way out with this problem? SPAM that would act as your personal guard to fight out your aging problem. Don’t worry this time aging has to spare you.

When you have age spots and wrinkles triggering you all day long, facial care from SPAM is the lone answer. This new age defying supplement will reduce all the aging signs with enhanced flow of skin protein aiding you with a young and radiant skin.

Bygone are the wrinkled days, courtesy SPAM, a canned precooked meat product that can always make you celebrate your eighteenth birthday even in your aging phase is now at your doorstep and you just need to befriend this product early as possible.”

The notion of being “ready” to stop ageing- of deciding that there is a way out of ageing- is dystopian and weird. So is “celebrate your eighteenth birthday even in your aging phase.” Logan’s Run. The part about “age spots and wrinkles triggering you all day long” evokes the image of some crazed, raddled, geriatric Narcissus constantly scrutinising themselves in ever-proliferating shards of broken mirror that they rage against and smash anew every time they catch sight of their own face.

The whole thing reminds me of Ayesha in H. Rider Haggard’s She, burning away her two thousand years in the magic fire of Life, melodramatically announcing “Bygone are the wrinkled days! Ageing has to spare me!”

 

Flattery will get you nowhere

I know it’s perverse, but occasionally I enjoy perusing all the spam comments that get caught in the filter. I also like the fact that the previous sentence sounds quite repulsive, akin to a sentence such as: “occasionally I like to eat all the dead insects stuck in the radiator of my car.”

Nowadays, many of these spam comments seem to be playing upon the inherent vanity and egotism of bloggers by sending generically positive words of encouragement that just happen to have spammy links attached to them. Here are some of my favourites.

Weird flattery

“Normally I do not read article on blogs, but I would like to say that this write-up very forced me to try and do so! Your writing style has been surprised me. Thanks, very nice article.”

“Hi, after reading this awesome paragraph i am as well happy to share my experience here with friends.”

“Hi there, just turned into alert.”

“It’s fantastic. grow lethargic this a bitter pill (for someone) to swallow Can better? ;)”

NOTES: I wish I could think of a scenario in which I could announce bombastically “you, sir/madam, have very forced me to try and do so!” although I fear this is dangerously close to one of Catherine Tate’s catchphrases. Since I wouldn’t be caught dead watching one of Tate’s TV shows- I mean, life’s too short, isn’t it?- perhaps somebody can tell me if I’m wrong.

Because of the random capitalisation I’m choosing to imagine that the fourth comment refers to swallowing the Krautrock band of the 1970s. At least our spammer got it’s (abbreviation of “it is”) versus its (possessive) correct, something that many legit bloggers and commenters aren’t capable of.

Beautiful Spam III: “This is the carrot on a stick.”

Nine months on from my previous forays into spam land, I’m still finding it far too hilarious that New York’s hub of aggressively New Yorkish, new media, too-cool-for-school digitalism Rhizome still has a feed that’s absolutely riddled with spam, like some sad old BBS from the Nineties. I hardly ever see spam anywhere else but on Rhizome, these days. Obviously they’re too busy commissioning baffling applets that break everyone’s browsers to bother with anything so mundane and uncool as preventing their RSS feed being used as a spam hose.

I’ve removed the actual product names to avoid inadvertently encouraging or attracting spammers myself, but the recent crop of messages all contain references to blatantly bogus, vaguely science-fictional creams and tablets whose provenance and purpose is always conveniently vague.  One of them made frequent references to stem cells. If what they’re trying to sell genuinely has any stem cells in it, I don’t think I want to know where they came from. While I do personally know a considerable amount on the subject of stem cells because I used to work in a place that specialised in genomics and biotechnology, most sensible people will surely not need a background in Life Sciences to know that buying alleged “stem cells” off the internet and then rubbing them on your face and/or genitals is unlikely to have much effect.

There were several other dodgy products on offer, but I’ve replaced them all here with the phrase “Soylent Green” to convey the slightly tawdry and possibly immoral sci-fi sheen of these unsolicited CG word salads.

I always knew I could count on SOYLENT GREEN and, the other day, I was right. You should understand how SOYLENT GREEN will impact your life. This is the carrot on a stick.

Beautiful Spam II

"Obtain the eye." (Photograph ©Alistair Gentry)

[NOTE: The beautiful Sino-Japanese spambot narrative pasted below was received as a spam comment on my post about Philip K Dick and ‘The Man in the High Castle’, Wu Wei Wu. As with all great art, I think we can all relate in one way or another to this barely coherent story of a Kyoto ingénue who just wants to buy cheap silver jewellery from the internet, but gets caught up with the Yamaguchi-gumi yakuza (to whom she is evidently related), Russian mafiya, arranged marriages and some strange eugenic plot coming to fruition on an offshore gambling haven masquerading as a cruise ship: why is the maid described as “homozygous”? Why must Mieko determine who is a “decent jerk zygote”? It’s like an extract from the novel we might imagine William Gibson writing if he’d suffered some kind of massive brain injury and partially forgot how to speak English. Spelling corrected, spam links to buy crap from dodgy jewellery dealers redacted. Sorry.]

Beautiful Spam (Annotated)

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I received the following spam today. I enjoyed it so very much that I felt compelled to respond:

Dear Sharia¹,

[¹I’m not the Islamic canonical law based on the teachings of the Koran and the traditions of the Prophet (Hadith and Sunna), prescribing both religious and secular duties and sometimes retributive penalties for lawbreaking… but thanks for being so polite.]

I hope you remember Dante Lawrence from denver [sic] high school? Last month I had a big handicap. I was at home for three weeks, and I had time for my wife. Thats [sic] nothing special you will think, but for a hard working guy like me, it is a long time. After 2 days, she wanted me riding her. I’d try many times, but I could not get him hard!! I’d try another day, nothing.²

[²Sharity, may I just confirm that I understand you correctly? Your wife wants you to ride her- be careful! Back injuries can be very serious and excruciatingly painful- but your primary concern is getting Dante Lawrence “hard”. I presume you are referring to this gentleman’s penis, please correct me if I’m wrong. I’m afraid I don’t remember Dante at all, but that may just be because I’ve never been to Colorado.