"RE:PillsOnlineD122174" reads the subject line in my inbox. That's right beneath a friendly e-mail from my good friends "Male'sEnlarger" and "WEIGHTLOSS". Wait ... I didn't remember having friends with names like that. Oh, I see now, it's the stuff that composes about three quarters of my incoming mail: spam.
I'm sure you're just as familiar with spam as I am. We all try to block it, filter it, bounce it, redirect it, report it and, perhaps most commonly, delete it as soon as we see it. Next time you check your e-mail, though, take a minute or two before you hit the trashcan button to actually read it -- you just might find the most entertaining piece of e-mail you'll get all day.
Take note of just what ridiculous lengths spammers take to bypass your junk mail filter. You certainly won't find any e-mails on your Webmail that are advertising Viagra, but you will almost certainly get ads for v1@gr@. The spelling and grammar is frequently downright awful as well. Is that raelly,, how to bypass UVAs male fitler?
Then there's the zany e-mail addresses from which spam is sent. E-mail addresses like pxkwjybq@otc1.com or just about anything from the newcastle.co.za domain name do not instill much faith in me towards the legitimacy of their product. And their attempts at pretending to make their junk e-mails seem personal are just downright pathetic. No, I don't know anybody named Napoleon Hathaway, and starting the subject line with "Re:" won't make me any less suspicious.
Perhaps best of all, however, is when spammers put in random nonsense totally unrelated to the product they're trying to push. And when I say random, I mean RANDOM. One series of e-mails I've been getting lately exemplifies this perfectly. The top of the e-mail is always the same: "IT gives you confidence in any chance, every time. IT offers you the freedom of choosing the right moment. Improve your intimate life!" Nothing unusual, right? At the bottom of the e-mail, however, there's a paragraph of gibberish. Sometimes the nonsense seems to tell a story, but recently it has been spitting out of proverbs and maxims that'd make Confucius roll over in his grave. Now, for your reading pleasure: the three funniest pieces of drivel found in junk mail that I've ever encountered.
3. mailA paranoiac, like a poet, is born, not made.checkThe losses as well as the prizes must be drawn from the cheating lottery of life.onlyIt is impossible to begin to learn that which one thinks one already knows.
2. When we lose the right to be different, we lose the privilege to be free.insideAnd all your future lies beneath your hat.ownMen are most apt to believe what they least understand.
3. selfWe must interpret a bad temper as a sign of inferiority.tryFolly is perennial, yet the human race has survived.welcomeThere are no small parts. Only small actors.
What? Only small actors? Where do they get this stuff?! I must admit that for weeks I looked forward to getting these e-mails, which were generally addressed from people with non-threatening names like Susan or Brenda and subject lines like "For dpm9h." Every e-mail had something different, and each one would leave me wondering why and how I was getting gibberish like this in my inbox.
This gave me incentive to start looking through almost every piece of junk mail I got, just to be amused by its contents. One e-mail stated "FACT: 76% of women aren't satisfied with their man's size." Well, that certainly makes me want to pay for their 100 percent guaranteed herbal supplement that is probably more likely to give me an upset stomach than two to four inches.
Another one tried to explain in broken English why I should invest in some unknown penny stock. Does anyone actually buy into this stuff? I don't know what's funnier: that somebody out there actually writes these things or that somebody out there actually believes it.
So, next time, take a second and read through some of the junk mail you get. Maybe you'll find something worth your time. If you do (or if you already have), drop me a line. Just make sure to add some mumbo jumbo at the bottom or it might not get past my spam filter.
Daniel's column runs bi-weekly on Wednesdays. He can be reached at mcnally@cavalierdaily.com.
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