I don't get many e-mails, at least "real" e-mails from people I know or do business with. I am on some mailing lists, but those are not aimed directly at me. I rejoice when I receive nice comments from readers of this Electron Weblog. Positive messages just make my whole day. But the vast majority of the e-mails I receive, as with most people who use Internet, are SPAM: unsolicited trash advertising, mailed in bulk of billions.

Earthlink's excellent filter removes all of the incoming spam from my main e-mail receiver, and sequesters it in holding files where I can go over it to make sure that no "legitimate" e-mail has been mistakenly filtered. I wrote about this whole process in an entry from November 2004. The situation is the same this year, but instead of an annoyance, I now regard these millions of falling leaves of spam as a kind of surrealistic entertainment. Perhaps it is even a kind of literature, a stream of cyber-consciousness, as the messages from all those made-up but virtually real names reach the filter's inbox.

Having used up the ordinary names, they've opened up their Kleimo Random Name Generator to more ethnic and less common names. But the Random Name Generator doesn't match the ethnicity of first and last names, so I get a wildly globalized mix of spam-names such as "Otthild McCarty" or "Gyuri Goggins" or "Bienvenida Tarlton" or "Concepcion Rutherford." Even more surrealistic is my phantom correspondent "Apolline Blum," who sounds like a character from some risque' novelette from the 1920s. The strings of absurd names and spam texts remind me of the literary experiments of the twentieth century, whether it is Joycean punfests or Gertrude Stein stammers or William Burroughs' weird cut-up verbal collages.

When even those names fail to reach the intended targets, the spammers move on to bizarre names concocted of one actual human name and another random word. I have thus received messages from "Pigeonhole Strickland," "Salvage Kaiser," "Stateroom Warren," "Housewares Lowry," and that charming guy "Jeffrey Xylophone." Sorry, Mr. Xylophone, I don't have a house to re-finance my mortgage with.

The funniest and most entertaining spam-names remain the ones which are composed from two not-quite-random dictionary words with a single middle initial. I don't know what the generator program for this one is, but I say that they are not quite random because almost all the words are multi-syllable words that are more than ordinary vocabulary. They are nouns, noun plurals, verbs, verbal forms from past tense to participles; adverbs, adjectives, and even proper nouns such as names of places and people. The name word salad generated by this program, within those parameters, appears to be random, but often results in either hilarious or intriguing combinations. Many of them can be discarded as just combinatoric duds, such as "Ore H. Bruins" or "Extincted B. Reform." But there are so many good ones that it's hard to stop quoting them, the ones which elicit humor and hilarity in my quarantined inbox.

My better correspondents include the canine philosopher "Doggier U. Kierkegaard," the fretting engineer "Distressingly J. Compactest," and the romance novelist "Ravished D. Confrontational." I have received urgent messages from "Grimacing P. Chastised," "Startlingly A. Carouses," "Angrier M. Effervesce," and "Strenuous O. Incremental." Meanwhile, helpful solicitations arrive from "Bahama G. Launderer," "Hairsplitting F. Bingo," and "Lithography E. Bookings."

If I need help with my spiritual life, I could always answer the mails I received from "Cements L. Transubstantiation," "Reorganizing U. Chant," "Syriac U. Conks," or my favorite, "Flapped V. Vatican." But I would much rather seek out the company of computer expert "Cecilia R. Mainframe," feminist "Suffragist F. Separatists," herb-puffing lawyer "Inhalation S. Jurisprudence," or Near Eastern short-order cook "Turk K. Cheeseburgers." Honestly, I am not making any of these "names" up. They all came from real spam mailings.

What are they all trying to sell me? Drugs, drugs, and more drugs. At least recently, all these marvelous monikers come with the same come-ons for online prescription drugs. This virtual crowd with its colorful array of comedic names is a plethora of phantom pharmacists, dealing out endless numbers of pills (many, if not most of them counterfeit) for the ills that we computer-addicted moderns live with. But the drug that they deliver to me is laughter. Here are the winners, the funniest ones I've received so far. Thank you for those lovely drug-logo-embellished napkins, "Unused H. Toiletries." And I share your pain, "Remorse F. Misunderstanding." You are the eight-hundred-pound canary, Mr. "Tweeting Q. Omnivorous." I will not corrupt you, "Precious S. Essence." I love your noble Roman mathematics, "Quirinal H. Exponentiation." And they are all marshaled by their boss, the chief executive of Cloud-Cuckoo Pharmaceutical Marketing, the most apt name of them all: "Quirkiest O. Ironic."

Posted at 4:33 am | link