Wednesday, July 9, 2008

spam e-mail poetry

(This is not an official post.)

I keep getting spam e-mails for sexual pleasure enhancement products, scholarships, and travel promotions with my name in the subject line. This is somewhat disturbing to me, but the creepiness it somewhat outweighed by the randomness of the body of text located below the advertisements. For example, here is a block of text from a dating website ad:


For water. Outside, all round the walls of this into lucia's
face. This is an awful house, aunt he got? No, i guess not.
i think it's his cough. Ended. Next day we spent in preparations
for departure. Noises of the kitchen, the high, shrill note
of phoebe's deduction was, not that jane talbot bore wide
enough for a couple of boats to go through you? It wouldbe
awkward, said emily. Well, if came out of the stall he grasped
her roughly by has adela no companions of her own age? None
but her closer against him. Her head rested on his murder!^
she looked defiantly at miss marple and about herselfnot
of herselfi don't mean that, oct. 1799. Dear jackson within
a few days of each disappearing dogs. All that is finished!
and the but now... He shrugged his shoulders in humorous
which seemed to betoken the desire to lose no royal for
shame, maiden! Said the queen wouldst to the reader better
than a description. A high he said to himself, as he lay
awake that nighti

It makes no sense, though that is a common theme with these e-mails. Yet I've actually grown to look forward to receiving them just to see what weird e-mail poetry will be included.

Maybe this is what the monkeys wrote before they finally made it to Shakespeare.

3 comments:

Christopher Schaberg said...

I really want to comment on this post, and I will soon. I apologize for not getting to your posts this weekend...it was a strange freak coincidence of the ordering of my blog list.

In short, I recently read about spam emails using 'poetic' and 'novelistic' language as a way of slipping by spam filters. The strange, thing, of course, is that it is not as though people generally write emails with poetic or prosaic language!

Christopher Schaberg said...

Below is a spam poem I just received; it really is literature!

"Was empty, i well, she said, did you see brenda? Pipkin,
and put to it some large mace, a few currans, clever, too
could talk on all sorts of subjects, of memory already accomplished
in the two hours no one in the office. Well, i don't know
where they have left me these good qualities, having and
they were taking deliberate aim, as carefully and the engine
was backing its one car down to to have been the comparative
excellence of the with yolks of eggs, verjuyce or whitewine,
cinamon, since mr. Richard hercule poirot was dressed by
eat it. Harpool. Can you not? 'sblood, i'll beat as the
shadow of a cloud, or shooting along like death in the airit's
lain on my mind, sir, something to that. Money! I'm like
a fly caught in a spider's."

Rachel said...

I'm imagining the coffee table book right now... "Spam Poetry: Lyricism From the Inbox."

I really like the "shooting along like death" line; also the line "could talk on all sorts of subjects, of memory already accomplished."