The Past Is Another Blog #3: Spam Ain't What It Used To Be

Paul McCartney - Junk

Back to trawling through my old blog for recycled content. The next post I came across is from...

TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006

...and what's interesting is that I'm writing about a phenomenon which I suspect no longer exists, at least not in the form I describe here. I'd forgotten all about this weird kind of spam email we used to get. I guess the spam blockers are so much more sophisticated nowadays, and the bots have moved onto other things. Still, it's a fascinating window on the past...

Joni Mitchell - Dr. Junk

Natalie polychromes lonely pedant.

Since they decided to take away our spam-filter at work, I’ve been flooded with hundreds of those fascinating emails for stock tips and Viagra from people called Flossie Marks, Gloria Beard, Houston Stout and Carmela Slaughter (which always makes me think that Chris Morris might be involved)… and I’m becoming strangely enamoured by the copy that arrives with them. Presumably it’s just some clever way of bypassing certain spam-detection programmes, but if you take a moment to actually read it, you'll find a twisted genius at work. An Edward Lear, Spike Milligan, or even Grant Morrison of spam.

Alice Cooper - No Baloney Homosapiens

Our priest, carving the bread up the hill, isn't tirelessly unfirm.

Oh, I know it’s nonsense – but it’s often strangely poetic nonsense… and I’m starting to think this could in fact be my dream job – writing email gobbledygook for the world’s spam champions (did someone say ‘Spampions’?) Yes, I know what you’re going to tell me. It’s not an actual human being sitting in a lonely garret composing these odes to penis size and Wall Street… it’s just randomly generated computer blather, an IBM Macbeth churning out idiotic sound and fury that signifies nowt. But still, there’s something beautiful in it. In a sort of ‘found art’ kind of way.

Apparently musical ability and the bread and red sauce, plus… between the furrows. I should be safe enough here. I clamped my jaw.

Ultrasound - Nonsense

My favourites at the moment are these eerie paragraphs of haphazard sentences that follow a set pattern of ‘noun verb adjective noun’ (though occasionally crying out for a definite or indefinite article, the programme’s obviously not smart enough to select the correct one).

Saskatoon plumes wide calypso.

Telugu texturizes sore parrot.

Karloff conscripts dark polio.

Sigur Rós - Gobbledigook

It’s the deliciously bizarre, incongruous and esoteric word choices that make them so appealing. You never get anything as trite as ‘Fred jumps fat dog’. They’re like those creative writing competitions where you’re given a title and asked to make up the story from there. Except these titles are far more interesting. I mean… imagine the story behind:

Edgewood outfloats pleasant incubus.

Leave me now, I’ve got to start writing…

Captain Beefheart - Tropical Hot Dog Night

Is is possible to get nostalgic for email spam? They don't even make that like they used to...