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.