FROM: Kermit Couch
SUBJECT: Don’t be ashamed of your wrist anymore.

I totally want a Kermit couch.

Comments always welcome.

FROM: Daren Watts
SUBJECT: Welcome to the world of big monsters in pants and big possibilities.

The lateness of this column is due to my waiting to see if anything interesting actually showed up in spam this week. Apart from hearing cheap Viagra called “testromaniac pillules”, it’s the normal batch of meds, watches, Nigerian princes, and UK lotteries.

Except for one message inquiring whether I need any plastic molding or plastic parts from a factory in Dongguan, China. Which, considering the state of the economy, might actually be an authentic email; with all the businesses going out of business and scaling back production, I could see the Chinese manufacturers looking to pick up some extra bucks by randomly asking strangers if they need molds made of anything in particular.

To tell the truth, not much struck me as either funny or important in this week’s batch. So I post this purely to maintain the numbers at the top.

New episode underway. More posts in the following week.

I am often disturbed by my spam.

Oh sure, it’s occasionally unsettling to get email from yourself proclaiming great advances in member-hardening technology.

It’s even yet still more heebie-jeebie generating to get an email with nothing in the subject line OR THE ADDRESS LINE, saying merely, “Hi John!” That had never happened to me before, and I admit it gave me a bit of a shudder. But that’s not the kind of disturbance I really mean.

No, every week, I must admit, the numbers reported above are ever so slightly skewed. Because every week I have to make a choice as to how to classify the email forwarded to me by my elderly relative in South Carolina.

I have never really known my father’s side of the family. It was an intriguing prospect when I found one of them was online, despite his advanced and further-advancing years. We exchanged a few brief email pleasantries, and I fully intended to get a longer conversation started when I had a chance.

Within a week, I received my first “FWD: I CAN’T BELEIVE IT.” (That probably wasn’t the original subject line, but it conveys the general impression of similar, familiar subject headers.) It was, if I recall, a mildly conservative rant presented in a vaguely humorous style. I deleted it without too much thought, thinking the occasional email forward was a price I was willing to pay to have access to that branch of my family tree.

Soon, more FWDs arrived. Mildly off-color jokes. Aggressively Christian anecdotes. No personal messages attached; always forwarded three or four times before reaching me. All the messages were very right-wing Republican; for a time I would read them in order to get a better idea of how the other side thought and felt. I saw it as a way of learning more about this relative, too; it was clear we were of two different worlds, and his was a very conservative, old-school Southern viewpoint.

Unfortunately, it further became clear that it appears difficult to adhere to such a viewpoint without accompanying doses of jingoism and bigotry.

Messages began arriving around Christmas of 2006 calling for, of all things, a ban of the Christmas stamp offered by the Post Office because it had an image of a Christmas tree illustrated with Arabic letters. The message was filled with hateful misapprehensions about Islam and awful, awful things about those who practice said faith. It was then I first felt the disturbance I’m feeling today.

More hate-filled messages arrived, and I wasn’t sure how to respond. This is a relative I could barely remember, whom I have not talked to in 20 years. What would I be able to say that would be contextualized well enough to have any lasting effect? I doubted I would be able to influence this relative in any way without first making an effort to become a greater part of his life, and yet I found the idea of knowing him at all more and more distasteful.

Then the messages stopped. It was a curiosity, to be sure, but I was also relieved. Had he passed away, I would have heard, so I just assumed that the messages were tapering off naturally.

Some months later, clearing out my spam filter, I realized the truth: they were all being shuttled off into the spam corral instead of finding their way to my inbox. I discovered this last year. I still haven’t done anything to correct it.

All the messages from him are now labeled as “might be spam” and held in my special reserve box. It makes it incredibly easy to ignore, to delete without pause, to just shake my head at the fact that after all these years, I discovered a racist older relative I never knew I had. Welcome to the Generation, kid. We’ve all got one somewhere.

But this newfound project of actually paying attention to my spam has given me pause; what is the correct course of action, here? It’s clear that this relative is incredibly distrustful of any non-white, non-Christian folks. He’s rabidly pro-American (in that way that is actually fiercely un-American if you know anything about history). He’s ultra-conservative. I have yet to see a homophobic email forwarded, but I’d be incredibly surprised if he were tolerant at all of anything other than strict hetero-normative sexuality. In short, judging by the things he sees fit to forward my way, he doesn’t seem like someone I want in my life. And were he to know anything about me, I severely doubt he’d want me in his.

In my younger days, I likely would have written him a polite email asking him to stop forwarding me hate speech. Now, I’m not so sure. He’s old. He’s very old. So are many of the people like him. His particular brand of violent terror is dying out. I could just go on letting my spam filter keep his messages out of my day-to-day life until they come to a natural end.

Or I could say something. Recently I keep composing angry responses in my head, violently disputing each and every claim of each email. But I don’t write them down. I don’t see a violent response doing any good. But maybe it would. Maybe the shock of having the boychild reject every principle you hold dear might actually lead to… or cause bitterness and pain, or do nothing. Such an action on my part is purely selfish, no matter the reaction.

So to respond with love? To attempt to address the issues in a calm manner? What would that do? Would it do any good? Would it change his mind? SHOULD I attempt, at this point, to change the mind of a man I barely know, simply because we share some DNA somewhere? What’s more, how to generate the love necessary to pull it off? I don’t care how closely related you are to somebody; it’s actual closeness that matters. I can’t automatically love someone I wouldn’t recognize in a small, not terribly crowded room. And without a love to transcend my automatic dislike, I doubt anything gentle would be persuasive or sincere.

Should it be done? A response is a commitment on my part, a commitment to try and forge a relationship with this long-lost relation. To do so would allow me access to a deep history of my father’s family, something I’ve never had. On the other hand, if my father’s family is filled with hateful bigots, perhaps it’s history best left undiscovered.

I got that Christmas stamp forward again this week. The spam filter missed it. I kept it on my phone for a day before deleting it. I just don’t know how to react.

What say you? Opinions, anecdotes, similar dilemmas, all welcome in the comments.

From: Chiefjusticemohammed Uwais
Subject: GOOD DAY

You know what? You’re right. It IS a good day. It snowed today. That probably does deserve all caps.

From: Anita Mansah
Subject: PLEASE READ WELL

Oh, I intend to. Thanks for looking out for me.

From: aw-confirm@ebay.com
Subject: Phishing: eBay Unpaid Item Dispute for Item #29025…

My, it was nice of you to tell me you were Phishing. Saves me the trouble of ignoring you.

From: “Desmond Clayton”
Subject: Your new female guest will love that you are blessed.

I’m sure she will. Did you intend to write a rhyming couplet? Kudos.

From: danceaward2009@tiscali.it
Subject: DancEurope2009: The way to show your dance competition performances in the best theatres of Europe’s Capital Cities.

Um… what? I think maybe you’re looking for Bill T. Jones. Or, really, anybody who gives a crap about dancing.

From: AccesD
Subject: Participez au concours « AccesD au Cirque du Soleil »

Oui? Non.

From: BLOCKBUSTER
Subject: GET SMART and KUNG FU PANDA are at BLOCKBUSTER®

Well, there’s a mighty fine reason to avoid Blockbuster. Not that I needed another one.

From: Shell Oil Customer Service
Subject: YOU ARE NO(5)

I AM NOT A NUMBER, I AM A FREE MAN.

From: Mrs. Mimi Kirian
Subject: OK?

…yeah, I am. Though I could use some more tea.

On the subject of spam, comments are always appreciated.

• Number of messages sorted through: 465
• Number of spam messages missed by filters: 39
• Number of real messages marked as spam: 4

OH MY GORT.

The news that comes through the electronic circuits at my spam box is TERRIBLE this week. I mean, I thought we were in a land of beauty and light since last week proved that dreams could come true. But apparently, according to this email, the sitting President just killed the First Lady-Elect. Really! Says so right in the subject line: “Bush Killed Michelle Obama”. And the email says I got it because I’m subscribed to some MSN email list. MSN — that’s MicroSoft Network. That’s the first three letters of MSNBC, and Keith Olberman wouldn’t lie to me about something this grave! Sure, I haven’t heard any other mention of it, but that’s the beauty of email! You get news as it happens! Sometimes before! Hm, “If you do not wish to receive this MSN Featured Offers e-mail, please click the “Unsubscribe” link below.” Why on earth would I want to do that? How else am I going to find out who President Bush kills next?

“BAD economy? Low salary? Buy an University Dip1oma/Bacheelor from us, No Study/Exam needed peurpi 5o”
They’re RIGHT. It IS a bad economy. My salary IS low. But look at this — these poor Bacheelors must be selling off their Dip1omas to buy food! The world is an absolute mess! I’m not currently seeking a Bacheelor, but there’s a phone number I can call. Bless their poor hearts, I bet it’s their mom’s house. Or moms’. I hope it’s the latter; what a terrible time to be an American if a huge Catholic family of Bacheelors all had to sell their degrees and themselves just to keep their one mother happy.^*

Granted, I’m pretty low on work myself. I can’t even finish any of my freelance illustration work because my computer is still in the shop, and Apple can’t find the right part anywhere, and I almost started crying on the phone with AppleCare things are looking so bleak. I’m typing this on an ancient machine that can’t even run Firefox, and I’m wearing fingerless gloves because the heat is off, and I just don’t know how much longer — Wait, hang on, what’s this? “The Art Of Craft Ltd®”? Subject: “Part Time Job Offer”?! It’s got one of those circle-R things after the name, this must be BIG. Lessee, Henry Wilson blah blah blah growing art company in Spain — well, I mean obviously you’re from Spain, with a name like Henry Wilson — Ah, I see! They want to hire me to be their representative in the States, because they can’t be bothered to travel all the way here to pick up payments for their art products. All I’d have to do is accept the hundreds of thousands of dollars in cheques, money orders, &c and wire it to them in Madrid. And I get to keep ten percent off the top! Oh, so tempting, but unfortunately, as I mentioned before, my computer’s in the shop, so I’m afraid I’m not reliable enough to be able to wire all that money in a timely fashion. Poor Señor Wilson, you’ll have to find another representative.

Oh NOES! Now I’m getting an email from Citibank telling me they’re going to suspend my account! Oh, no, it’s okay, if I click the link going to tv5korat’com/web’da-us’citibank/longurl-I-wont-bother-typing, they’ll keep my account open. Hooray! But… but wait, no, I’m using an ancient machine with Internet Explorer, how am I supposed to read that file? And look! American Express is shutting me down, too! And Chase Bank! And Wells Fargo! And ANZ Internet Bank! I didn’t even have accounts with most of those people, and they’re preemptively shutting down my accounts! I’M DOOMED.

At least there are a lot of people offering me naked photos of Cindy McCain. Maybe I’ll get to see them before the President makes her his next victim.

Doom & gloom? Share your troubles in the comments.

^*Fun with apostrophe jokes! Grammar is your friend!

Funny. I don’t remember sending out a bunch of emails to people I’ve never heard of with subject lines reading “Message X” where X is a random integer from 1-99. And yet I seem to be getting a lot of replies that imply that I did. One Jeffrey Watson claims in RE: MESSAGE 33 that he is a hot blonde girl, searching for a man to chat with by email, Skype, “or even meet in reality!” Marva Valentin, in RE: MESSAGE 38 ups the ante, saying she is a pretty woman who is looking for a nice guy “to date in reality!” Sorry, Jeffrina, Marva is already saying she’ll date me in reality, so meeting isn’t that big a deal. I think I’ve found my — wait! Freida Alfaro, in RE: MESSAGE 24, is both pretty AND blonde, and is eager to meet an interesting man for “dates in reality!” Sorry, you two, with Freida I get plural dates! She’s eager! And I don’t even have to be nice! I think Freida wins. Unless Lane Leblanc (RE: MESSAGE 78) or one of the seven others has a better offer… Zap.

Hm, what’s this? One Susane Kamara must have gotten the wrong address. This message is completely in French. How exciting! International intrigue! I wonder what it says… Oh look! There’s an English version at the bottom. “HELLO DEAR FRIENDLY”? She must not speak English terribly well. Says here she’s a lawyer, and she used to represent a family who died in a plane crash seven years ago, and now she has nowhere to put their seven million American dollars. Understandable, as that’s worth about twelve Euro. Hmm. “It is thus after several days of research that I decide on me entrusts has you.” Has what now? This lady talks funny. Zap.

Alison Barnard? What a safe and familiar-sounding name. Subject line: mit blackjack team. Dude, I TOTALLY want to see video of MIT students playing blackjack. They probably have robots, and cards made out of lasers. Show me the link… oh, you want ME to play blackjack? Boring old non-robot non-laser blackjack? I don’t really feel like it. Though I do like your email name: MaryannWheelbaseAlbright. Zap.

Huh. “P&G Privacy”? I care very deeply about my privacy. I’d better take a look at this one. Oh, it’s from Proctor & Gamble. Because I requested a coupon at some point, I’m on their list. Funny, I don’t remember asking for a coupon, but hey, maybe I did. So… okay, so they’ve updated their Privacy Statement, and they’re providing a link to it. Well that’s above and beyond. Most big corporations change their Privacy Statements all the time, and nobody ever notifies me of it. I wonder why my mail program thought this was spam. Could it be because instead of the proctorandgamble dot com url the link is supposed to go to, the actual url is a 30 character alphanumeric string? Not that it matters. It’s a Privacy Statement. Nobody reads those things anyway. Zap.

What is this crazy jibba-jabba?

From: "imfibupc" pltzbq()segmkt,com
Subject: REMjztunZHLcFAnHX
L18JD7 a href="http://petdytetoglp,com/">petdytetoglp, [url=http://migpznghsaez,com/]migpznghsaez[/url], [link=http://oaisaqxkjudi,com/]oaisaqxkjudi[/link], http://hkhhexygfnkj,com/

HOLY CRAP I’M GETTING EMAIL FROM ALIENS. ZAP ZAP ZAP ZAP.

Man, I don’t know what to do now. This alien message is probably a warning of a future invasion by a hostile race. What am I supposed to do with that? I’m a pacifist. And by that I mean that I’m crap at fighting. Sure, I have friends who are good with guns, but a few slackers with Airsoft pistols aren’t going to take down an alien mothership. If only I’d gotten in touch with all those Army Sergeants who emailed me last week to ask me to help them smuggle cash out of Iraq. If I’d played nice, I’d be able to call in the favor with the 3rd Infantry. But no, I don’t have the email anymore… Oh hey! Sgt.J Cruz sent me a message! He… he has a new email address! And he still needs help moving that $48 million! The Earth is saved, and I’m a millionaire! Not bad for a Tuesday morning.

Feel free to leave a comment. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have very important things to be getting done “in reality“.

By FAR the best email address since this project began has to be drblessedifydickofficeatmpresid… (at) yahoo.co.jp. I find the particularly long username makes the brain marvel at the myriad possibilities of grammar and parsing. Also of note, an email from one Benjamin Franklin. Who was, according to the subject line, chilling out on his yacht. Which is, when you think about it, not entirely out of character for the bad boy of the founding fathers. It was certainly, for Franklin, all about the Benjamins.

As is always the way, the bulk of the spam this week (hovering around 60%) was prescription-related. Quite a few emails from one “Most Read Story”, which I have to say is one of the more optimistic fake names I’ve seen. Also a few usernames came into the spambox that were so close to people I actually know that it gave me pause. Of course, Adam and Doug don’t care that much about my rigidity, so I figure it probably wasn’t them.

Got a rather large handful of inquiries about ebay listings I’d never heard of. Amusing, partly because about the only time I didn’t get a bunch of these types of spam was when I actually had an item listed on ebay. A few days after shipping out the item, I started getting these messages again. Very weird.

Actually, I have to say, there is a part of me that always wants to check accounts referenced in spam. When I see that ebay, or Amazon, or someplace has a “problem with my account,” I find it very hard not to go check. I mean, I always use a new browser, and type the actual address in myself, I’m not a complete idiot. I see it sort of like looking under the bed for monsters. It’s a dumb thing to do… but wouldn’t you feel even more dumb if you didn’t look and there was a monster under there?

(Granted, it was only last Saturday that I, after a surprisingly spooky movie late at night, had to fight the urge to sleep with the light on, so maybe my paranoia is just particularly bad as of late.)

Anyway. The rest was mostly watches and Sergeants looking to unload war gold, sprinkled with a modicum of porn and fake watches. A few fake IRS refunds (one of which might have actually duped me into maybe thinking about looking into the possibility of its veracity had the URL not contained several lines of unnecessary hex code). A few fake lottery wins, offers of debt consolidation, and a couple fake job offers, which really burns my biscuits in these difficult times. Fake jobs, that’s just mean, and sadly will probably work better than most financial offers. I know my own defenses are down when it comes to possible employment. Anybody not used to being on their guard might just find themselves first-time victims.

As for me, Benny Franklin just emailed again. He’s gonna swing the yacht by on his way to Cabo. Dude just doesn’t know when to quit. Probably all the pharmaceuticals.

• Number of messages sorted through: 270
• Number of spam messages missed by filters: 12
• Number of real messages marked as spam: 2

Mostly prescription drug offers this week, with a marked return in focus to Viagra offers. Canadian pharmacies seem to dominate the market this week. It doesn’t seem so long ago that most of the drugs were coming from India. Then again, you can often get actual prescription drugs from India, so maybe that’s the confusion. Far fewer fake watch offers (less than 5% of total messages), but a slight up-tick in porn spam (including one offer for Britney Spears videos; does anyone even want to see her naked anymore? is there anyone left online who hasn’t?).

One thing I’m happy to see — a message from one absurdly named “Rene I. Youngblood” containing bizarre cut-and-paste wonderments (e.g. “Patriot Act, sometimes illegally.gas emission levels by the year 2020 by 20% compared toA secretive, mysterious figure for a long time. Soros, by the early 1990s, was pleased to”). I had complained last week at the absence of both phenomena, so it was a joy to get at least one message containing both.

Two messages might have been from actual businesses but didn’t get included in the “wrongfully labeled” stat, as there’s no way I signed up for either list. The ad for the Cuban restaurant in Atlanta was unwanted, to be sure, but was at least plausible in terms of why it was sent to me; I like food, so I can see how I’d get on some weird list about food, even though most of my Atlanta dining experience involves Waffle Houses years and years ago. At least “eating” is something that I do. The other ad? The other ad was for scuba diving with whale sharks off the coast of Burma. I don’t think I’ve even been swimming in the past eight years. Delete, delete.

Just under 10% of the messages this week were various non-medical scams, primarily foreign bank/Nigerian or UK lottery scams. A handful of fake IRS refunds. One lonely fake PayPal email (amusingly sent to an address that doesn’t have a PayPal account). Very little innovation or surprise here.

Probably the most amusing this week is the fake email from the FBI. In this lovely twist on the Nigerian scam, the bait is an email “from” the Federal Bureau saying, essentially, that because of the Patriot Act/nationalized wiretapping, they’ve been monitoring my communications. And they noticed an email from the Central Bank of Nigeria, so they decided to check out the validity of it. And they (the “FBI”) are happy to report that it’s totally legit.

It might interest you to know that we have taken our time in screening through this project as stipulated on our protocol of operation and have finally confirmed that your contract payment is 100% genuine and hitch free from all facets and of which you have the lawful right to claim your fund without any further delay.

The email then goes on to warn against sending money to any other address than the one provided because, you know, there’s a lot of fraud out there, and they haven’t verified any of those other people.

Then again, this might just be part of the economic bail-out plan. Maybe I should save that address, just in case. Thankfully, they sent two copies.

Jones thinks the increased number of Viagra offers has already boosted his sex drive. By the same logic, he also has millions of dollars in his bank account and the largest watch collection known to man.

• Number of messages sorted through: ~700
• Number of spam messages missed by filters: 7
• Number of real messages marked as spam: 6

This being the first week, and having not gone through the spam filters for a few weeks, there’s a bit too much data to add up easily, so I’ll go by trends.

It seems the fake pharmaceutical market is still very strong, though I was surprised to see a trend in the last couple days away from viagra offers and towards anti-depressants and vicodin.

What seems to be a growing trend is the sale of fake watches and designer shoes. An indicator of the financial crisis? Or have I just not been on that particular spam list before? It does give me a new visual metaphor for spammers as creepy guys with trenchcoats standing in alleyways. Which is utterly appropriate.

Not seeing as many fake messages from eBay, PayPal, or large corporate banking institutions. Also of note, the era of the fake RE: tag seems to be coming to an end. It was, for a moment, a great way of side-stepping most filters, but those days are long gone.

I think what’s most tragic is the apparent death of the Nonsense Spam. Out of 700 messages, not ONE of them was from “Felicitous T. Blendertrouser” or “Horatio M. Sanctimonious”. There was a Silver Age of Spam there for a while, where all the senders’ names sounded like Marx Brothers characters, and most of the body text consisted of weird mash-ups of other literary sources, DaDaist cut-up short stories I would almost always read when I had a spare moment. Now, it’s all essentially fake advertising as boring as real advertising. Nobody’s trying any more. Or maybe I just don’t get them any more.

Two spams stand out. One was missed by the filter, and was an endless tirade about the impending doom of my immortal soul. For a while I thought it might be actual hate mail from a non-adoring fan (and yes, I would consider anyone who sends hate mail a fan, as you have to be a fanatic about something in order to hate it enough to want to interact with it), until I realized there was a sketchy link at the bottom, essentially asking for money to ensure a place in heaven. Considering I got this mail right after being turned down for two separate jobs, it did not put me in the best of moods.

The other is only vaguely spam, in that it is unsolicited advertising, but it also well may be a legitimate business. It is a service that offers to photograph your business using an oblique camera hung from either a Cessna or a helicopter. The email was my “last call” to get on their aerial photography schedule for October, apparently a prime time for it, what with all the beautiful fall foliage and all. Most head-scratching (and spam-worthy) is the fact that they’re in the midwest, nowhere near where I used to own either of my businesses. I wish them safe flying.

Now the spam boxes are all empty, I need to get out and about, amongst other things dealing with one of the messages caught in the filter by mistake. Only missed it by 12 hours. Check back next Tuesday for more fun with spam. And feel free to leave your own spam stories in the comments.