Monday 31 March 2008

Poetic Spam


I've just trawled through the junk folder of my yahoo account and came across an email from a certain
Delperdang Eckrich. Now I don't know about you, but I could never have enough emails from people with names like Delperdang Eckrich. Just the very idea that people with names like that could exist in the world makes me oddly pleased. But take a look at the email's contents:

Saluton,


Hohe hoholulu

Strength is recruited. David, he continued, speaking dead
yet. I sent for preparations of sulphur, experiences, in
gaol and among mobs, in publishing butterfly soul fluttered
incessantly between memory to fall beneath a prince's noble
hand. The hangman's being finely stewed, serve it on sippets
with has done them. I think that ellie who has a very you
yet, so don't squeal, japp barked at the now hulk of a machinist,
who rooms on the same flat, infinitely concerned my daughter
should have so spirits by prattling away on every subject
that straitened they seem to be, very straitened. Taxation
drew on his gum boots, buttoned his overcoat collar off
the c. P. To the deck he would bounce back. Stalls, my companion
speedily over took the little.

How weird and fantastic is that? Yes, folks, it has happened: the spammers have discovered Wallace Stevens and abstract modernist poetry.

It disturbs me a little that the email contains my name (David), which shouldn't have any connection to that yahoo account. (For non-work purposes, my name is usually "N/A", and my yahoo account isn't for work purposes.) How did they get that information?

Then again, if these shadowy poets from the dark reaches of the internet choose to send me bizarre gobbledegook like that above, I don't mind in the least. It beats baldness cures, penis size enhancements, herbal viagras and invitations to launder money for Nigerian gangsters any day. (I sometimes look through all those emails and wonder exactly what is being implied. To internet spammers I seem to have an unfairly gained reputation as a gullible, rich, impotent, conceited 65-year-old.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I've actually been collecting and consolidating snippets of spam e-mails over the last year or so. One day I'm going to sort through it all and construct a poem from it all.

Most of my spam is just one or two lines, though, so you've hit a veritable jackpot with that thing

Anonymous said...

I use these spam texts on my site www.spamstories.com. Feel free to submit any that you receive!
Cheers,
Susie

Bilbo said...

You obviously aren't getting high enough into the Nigerian scam circles. I'm getting personal e-mails from the President of Nigeria, who considers me trustworthy and honorable enough to entrust me with his entire personal fortune! And you...you are only dealing with Nigerian gangsters. Too bad.