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Spam as Poetry
ayahner writes "My spam filter receives about 500/wk, and within those frisky messages, among the pulp and porn, comes some pretty daring poetry. So instead of simply removing the spam, I have decided to peruse my spam library and use the best to spur my creative energies. Do any /. members have their own favorites? I have compiled a few of my own, and expect to add many more over the next few weeks as a creativity exercise. All of the verses are taken from actual spam, and copied directly without modification. Some of them are nonsense. Others are real text of spam, delivering their message. When combined, they tend to form semi-articulate sentences. I see a virtual e.e. cummings here, an occasional Shakespeare there."
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I actually got a message title "HOT E.E. CUMMINGS POETRY ACTION!" That one took me by suprise.
My spam filter [gets] 500 a week,
and within those frisky messages,
I have compiled a few of my own... to
form semi-articulate sentences.
At this point you could probably combine random words from a dictionary and call it poetry.. Show that poetry to a million people and it has to mean something to some of them, right?
Someone should also create a list of all the websites that take dictionaries and randomly combines them to form meaning..
the spammers have succeeded in....oh wait.
This is reminiscent of the Outside the Inbox music compliation project.
The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures,
He leadeth me beside the still waters,
He restoreth my credit and consolidateth my debts,
For as little as $1,750,
If I act now.
If you're not careful, some of these spammers might try to sue you for copyright infringement!
main(){char I,l,O[]={'-',1-1,0,(1<<5)-1,0+'-',-10-1,-10,11-0,
I expect universities to start issuing degrees in English with a Spam option now.
I won't settle for anything less.
There was a young man from Alabama ...waits for applause... not a sausage :-(
Who had attrocious grammar
His poetry stunk
So he did a bunk
And works in Florida as a spamer.
This article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on May 1st. It contains several spoems written by the author, as well as a nice breakdown of the various percentages of spam types he receives.
I've seen these sorts of poems appearing alot on blogs recently. Even tried my hand at it when I had half an hour to spare. It's good fun. Of course, being a girl, most of my spam is about penis enlargements (twice nothing is still nothing people!), but some of the more random spams make for interesting poetry.
In the title, "What makes a sock a diabetic sock?"
Uhh, diabetes?
Have you been recieving spam from Vogon.com? That is some bad poetry. kvn
...but let's not forget the other kind of SPAM poetry.
Breakfast served all day!
The topic of filter-avoiding-spam-as-poetry received a humerous treatment on NPR a couple of months ago.
2 26
http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1761
X-UIDL: ;r [200.181.94.68])
stubble relent standardly scrolls reverselyX-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path:
Received: from mxsf30.cluster1.xxxxx.net ([10.20.201.230]) by mtao01.xxxxxxx.net (InterMail vM.6.00.05.02 201-2115-109-103-20031105) with ESMTP id
Fri, 16 Apr 2004 17:24:29 -0400
Received: from (200-181-094-068.bsace705.dsl.brasiltelecom.net.b
by mxsf30.cluster1.xxxxxxx.net (8.12.11/8.12.11) with SMTP id i3GLF5Fw053380;
Fri, 16 Apr 2004 17:15:08 -0400 (EDT)
Message-ID:
From: "Thom15"
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 18:18:55 -0300
To:
Subject: With CD Cheap you are the Winner! yesterday bunnies
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
warrant prosecutor Richey units cousin
temperate rectums concubine novel tinniness
Valerie obedience disparity carbonate audiogram
incubated propounds carters mightiest Wyandotte
Melanesia reloads Tories paraffin brazing
Ple@se review our today's great offer elevated parrot honorarium urgings outvoting
denseness damsel attracted coarse supersedes
relabel Millie endurance carves asphyxia
packaged avidly block recurring Sutton
tinniest validation veers vagrantly addresses
shudder Stirling fragments munitions together
tracings diplomas deadness Sigmund graspingly
ensured wheel blackest eminently sagebrush
sig not found
Well, I'm sorry, I haven't seen any poetic spam. So I figured I'd tell you all about an interesting unsolicited message I did recieve one day. I opened a message from Hillary Rosen, and it said "We have detected that you are using Kazaa on your computer to download illegal music. Your IP address and ISP account info have been forwarded to the FBI. You can expect a knock on your door within the next two weeks. ... We'll settle for $1,000 if you click on this link.."
Yeah, not poetry, sorry. (I won't whine if modded off-topic.) But I did find it to be a relatively clever scam given that the timing was around the height of the RIAA's threats to sue people.
I heard a commentary on NPR by Andrei Codrescu a few weeks ago about spam as poetry. He said some of his dada-ist/nonsensical poet friends were jealous of the spam poetry.
Spam always surprises me in its ability to say the same thing in different ways to avoid the filters. No, I'm not talking about the billions of ways to spell viagra with h4ck3r text, but actual nouns and metaphors.
For example, I know 'lay some pipe' wasn't in the common online lexicon before spam popularized the term (although it does date back some way). The latest one I've seen is 'expand your waterway', which is a pretty unique twist on 'enlarge your penis', I must say.
Any other bizarre, but understandable, metaphors, similies, or noun substitutions?
What's your excuse for having spam?
I happen to actually have some contact with the outside world.
I got a spam on 9/11:
Subject: Tired of all this terrorism shit?
Come watch our girls take massive cocks.
http://.....
...than with poetry: spamradio - hand-picked spam mails, a speech synthesizer and ambient background music.
I sometimes listen to it during coding sprees late at night, eerie but cool.
"There are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare." - Blair Houghton
In search of rhyme I spam peruse,
With stalling breath I moan in Bayes.
I've heard of life. But of such ruse
No proof I've seen in all my days.
If you open yourself to the foo, You and foo become one.
I got a spam the other day that was written in German, more or less. I ran it through babelfish and got the following amusing blank verse. You gotta love "rat-sharp Girls in the wildest floats." It has such a lovely rhythm.
Geile, lsterne virgins with those
it itches so correctly.
They want you,
it need it.
Heie galleries and sharp picture series.
The geilsten photographs of
willing and rat-sharp Girls
in the wildest floats.
You want the heiesten Teeniesex?
Then schau equivalent purely,
because the whole groe selection
stands for you to the Verfgung.
All of the verses are taken from actual spam, and copied directly without modification.
Wow, plagiarizing spam, that's a new low. ;o)
Yeah, it's a joke, but got me thinking...if I got caught plagiarizing spam, that would be the worst punishment they could dish out.
"Pssst, look, there goes the guy that plagiarized spam."
I think I would kill myself.The reason they're in the art gallery is because they have the idea to push that off as art. If you came around and did that, and actively promoted it as art, I'm sure you too would end up in a gallery. Point is, you most likely haven't (either that, or you are in the art gallery for something that took more than five minutes with a paint can). It's art in an artistic sence simply because of the artist's audacity to actually do that.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
Have you ever listened to a Skinny Puppy *fingerquote* song *fingerquote*?
Here's a few examples:
Harsh Stone White
harsh stone white eyes behold bruise baths soak crying bones every
days appeal to stop spirit calm on valium hate permeates and fills the air
icy clouds the atmosphere illusions pull hair no reaction how was
this done it exists by extraction of reason drooling drips the bile
of sanity through the thought lines vomiting were even the clock wailed
and sped past two tic tic toc in time in the real understanding myself thinking
stand back unafraid and unaffected stand back non molested were
even down down down again down here in the cracks face hidden cracks
harsh stone white even were even
Worlock
binge cringe on the fringe sloppy mincing eyedropping biopsy cyclops overlooks
optic options rotton showstopper skinpopper babbler dabbler
self confessed criminal tore pen in vain instant still spellbound game
stock talk back rock reencounter incident subsistance inexistant
non committed unwitted oblivious habitual resistor buff the stuff roughed
up edge fluent nudge pre-collect ignition motivation inexistant wasted
views thats all they see blue hot blood guild optic nerve with the right attitude
you will succed blue self abusive recluse too late for me make
shifting peace settling crazy things keep your eyes open soft spoken
changes nothing a view so cruel dogs body comatose torchlight roast
disinterest disinfect retold impressed by possession insiders know
refresh detained contest off and pure sure tonight it feeds itself
freeze in time or shadows climb distracting override instincts
evolve and try over and over wasted truth why call at all blue hot lines
eventual decline with the right attitude you will succed blue resent
that discontent sidestep define the state of things so far crazy
things a view so cruel
Actually, as far as I know, Dadaism and Tristan Tzara came up with the idea of cut-up poetry. Though I can not find the text online, I once read a "How-To Write Dadaist Poetry" that recommended cutting a newspaper article of the desired length into seperate words, placing them in a bag, shaking it up, then pulling words out of the bag and writing down the words in the order they come out. Using this technique, I wrote Egging.
Class an left back. Warm tail star following.
Plain lady step story told. Write news middle modern does chief was got.
Stood end street word weight spot desire fix. Paid dream eight although wish.
Scraped off of a few spams, these all seem to come from the same source and have the same odd formating. Some of them are crying out to be set to music.
Wagon blow noon oil. Except food always were other follow push field fail. Again first country valley october. Thick was move heavy who.
Taken ill for poor member. She news fence anger class receive gray stick idea. Yard her oil row tought place. Am count share instead i warm settle cover.
Boys lead only throw press soil through thrown after road six. Iron could trust set held usual. Carry anger animals dance return stand six.
Morning bottle see often spoke. An ready wet try meet gather ago branch fill trade clean. Measure lay wagon suffer journey made.
Sometimes somnambulist about trembles, but wheelbarrow related to curse always plan an escape from dahlia about umbrella!A few pockets, and defined by impresario) to arrive at a state of insurance agentWhen you see over impresario, it means that of short order cook self-flagellates.Doug and I took behind fundraiser (with about snow, living with hydrogen atom.
Sometimes avocado pit over gets stinking drunk, but living with widow always bestow great honor upon line dancer toward!Unlike so many maestros who have made their womanly pocket to us.
bubbles remain smelly.Indeed, stalactite living with power drill a change of heart about stalactite over asteroid.around eggplant seek from carpet tack.girls remain snooty.Now and then, living with oil filter give secret financial aid to class action suit defined by.He called her Donovan (or was it Donovan?).
When inside squid daydreams, for demon reads a magazine.
If crank case toward starlet buy an expensive gift for ribbon for microscope, then defined by pork chop prays.He called her Foster (or was it Foster?).When you see living with corporation, it means that beyond hockey player gets stinking drunk.
Unlike so many taxidermists who have made their infected rattlesnake to us.
Full sign laugh serve direct join began something best. Electric caught smell ridden led there night cloth. Into sometimes wonder success cool advance hole. Wise whether saturday hurry gate walk. Double once walk various nine return height.
Blow black promise bag against cold believe famous seat no. Far drink around gain. Met while movement three so life i along joy toward.
Hello pain but low. Movement class sing miles count notice arrive army next. Easy follow means lone play hole tail divide another body form. Sign many animal arms likr aunt voice important ring. Worth wore deep fish stone still hand probably new.
Box wait fruit wall poor right of ago the raise. Can gives west many sugar face bean winter therefore.
Wagon blow noon oil. Except food always were other follow push field fail. Again first country valley october. Thick was move heavy who.
Taken ill for poor member. She news fence anger class receive gray stick idea. Yard her oil row tought place. Am count share instead i warm settle cover.
Roses are red.
Violets are blue.
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Ok, ignore what I said above, I found two previous /. articles:
You see that key next to the '=' key? Yeah, the one labeled "backspace". It comes in handy in these situations.
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