I normally avoid writing about such trivial stuff, but in addition to garden variety exhaustion I'm now running a fever. So the little things are getting to me. Like spam whose intention I can't fathom. I understand penis-enlargement spam. Plays off insecurities. Contains links to penis-enlargement pills. Makes sense.
Weight-loss spam? Makes sense.
Car insurance spam? Makes sense.
"Beaver in disloyalty kisses the drizzle's price" spam?
"Beaver in disloyalty kisses the drizzle's
price" is all the email says. That's it. No link. Nothing. There's a point to the pointless of "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously." Why would someone named "point man" want me to know what happens to those who are "beaver" in their disloyalty? Why would somone who is want to kiss "the drizzle's price"? Who is The Drizzle? What is his price? Do I only have to pay to kiss it if I'm beaver in disloyalty? Or is "kissing the drizzle's price" a euphemism for the dire fate of those who are beaver in their disloyalty?
Maybe this is some sort of test.
Maybe "point man" wants to know whether I'm beaver in disloyalty.
Maybe this post proves that I am.
Maybe it proves that I'm not.
Hard to tell.
[UPDATE: Since posting this I have received another email--this one from "morgan bridges" who wants me to know more about "fanaticism dry cleaners." What more? "Bash and nobody glimmers in the bridle of the creator."]
[UPDATE II: Now "harriot trent" informs me of "my raise." In the interest of fun I will render it in free verse form:
shift.
flap unwanted
unmoved
in the animated disruption.
lip to!the quietness drifts heroic,
too residual to adjourn,
to subscribe
to a lantern of estimation.the merry-go-round
of influenza punctures
all odd-jobs.catnap contentment,
the soap opera errand.the sigh to commemorate
what was Catholic,
as the octopi gather verification
to vandalize the "v" with illumination.
I'm tempted to say that "harriot trent" is really Rich winding me up. Some of that's too evocative to be truly random.]
I think you're mistaken. It's not that someone is beaver in disloyalty as if "beaver in disloyalty" were somehow adverbial. No, rather, it is that a person or creature named Beaver does the kissing in a state of disloyalty. An adulterous Beaver, perhaps. Given that there's money involved, I'd even go so far as to suggest an adulterous Beaver/john.
Posted by: Kevin M. | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 01:47 PM
Ah yes, a chance to continue the folk-psychanalytic theme of finding hidden reasons for what people do.
1. Beaver (slang), disloyalty, kisses, drizzle -- perhaps it was originally porn spam that lost its URL? Spammers make errors, of course, and this one just hit the Spam button (like the Send button, or Post button) before attaching it. Maybe they'll send another one later.
2. Spam often has a line or two of grammatical nonsense text that is generated uniquely for each message in order to fool spamblockers. This looks like one. But why the generated message with no ad? Spammer error, again. Probably a new spammer who doesn't have his software figured out yet. This one is actually my best guess.
3. There is an invisible-to-you something or other (virus, 1x1 GIF that must be downloaded from a Web site, etc.) that would do something to your computer, or at least identify your IP, whenever you open the Email. The point is just to send nonsense text, as above, that will get an Email through to you. But, given your boasted technical abilities, I assume you'd probably detect this.
4. There are no errors. The spammer is deliberately sending inoperative spam with uniquely generated nonsense but nothing else because (your choice of):
a) They hate the world
b) They hate you, Scott Eric Kaufman. Someone is pretending to be a spammer so they can fill your mailbox with nonsense messages. Choose your paranoia below:
b) 1) You were chosen randomly.
b) 2) It's someone who knows you and knows you have a fever -- they know you well enough to know that you'll be puzzled and confused by it.
b) 3) You are really the only person in the world who gets this "spam". Everyone else just pretends to so you won't catch on.
c) They want to discredit Email in general because:
c) 1) They want to sell spamblocking software
c) 2) They want to help to set up control of the Internet by your choice of shadowy corporate / governmental force on the pretext of controlling spam.
d) It helps to maintain their spam setup to send messages even when no one is paying them to do so.
e) They're cheating their spam-sending customers by sending out metered numbers of Emails without ads.
I could go on, of course. But that's probably enough. For now.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 01:50 PM
I think you might have to pay to kiss the beaver in disloyalty. Let me know what the price is. And don't forget to visit the free clinic afterwards.
Posted by: Jason | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 01:57 PM
If you dont tag it as spam then your filter (if it is Bayesian) will make future emails from that address less likely to be tagged as spam. Thus it is a two-period strategy;
in period one you send sensless emails witht he hope that some of them wont be tagged as spam.
in period two you send your spam emails with the same sender and similar words included, given your period 1 action these are less likely to be tagged as spam by a bayesian filter.
How well this strategy would work is not evident, but it seems most likely to be whats happening.
Then again, I am an economist so I have a tendency to rationalize the most random of things.
Posted by: econgeek | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 03:14 PM
"The Drizzle" was the crime-fighting superhero that Shake attempted to create in an episode of "Aqua Teen HungerForce."
"Drizzle's price" is, obviously, what Shake owed the printer for his Drizzle merchandise.
What this has to do with beaver disloyalty, I don't know.
Posted by: Jon McGee | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 03:58 PM
No, it wasn't me winding you up -- I considered it, but you have a fever after all, and anyways I'd have to figure out how to actually anonymize the thing. Maybe someone else read b) 2) and thought that it was a good idea.
Assuming that it really is found poetry, usually interesting last two lines though.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 04:10 PM
Er, I meant *unusually* interesting last two lines. Though now I wonder whether found poetry really does have the last two lines usually more interesting than the rest, since that's why it was cut off at that point.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 04:45 PM
Kevin,
Funny, that is. A disloyal beaver . . . or Beaver. I don't know though, I think the loyalty rank of "beaver" absolutely priceless. (Or however much the drizzle's willing to charge.)
Rich,
"The Spam button"? I like it. They are proud of their chosen profession. As for the rest, well, it speaks for itself.
econgeek,
I find this information very disturbing, esp. since all this email's coming through my uci.edu account, not my Gmail; and it is coming through. Fortunately, I enjoy writing found poetry sometimes . . . seriously though, N. Pepperell posted a comment here about spam evolution a week or so ago, and I can't help but think she's correct: spam itself is evolving. We all think AI's going to be some advanced neural network we create, but no: it will be spam zombies linking to other spam bodies. The computers will then rise against our inboxes and belittle our small penises even more.
Jon,
I know who The Drizzle is. Master Shake can't fool me. I'm hip. I even own the Danger Doom
album. See! I'm not old yet. I'm not!
Finally, here's the entire text of that third email. There's still some evocative stuff left to mine, if anyone wants to have a go at it:
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 04:54 PM
And Rich is proven correct before he could consult with the octopi for verfication.
Posted by: Scott Eric Kaufman | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 04:55 PM
Some of this, these comments, remind me of "L A N G U A G E" poetry. I know there are some poets working on what they name google spam poetry. Strange word games. Sort of trying to make intelligence out ofthe commercial and random.
Posted by: clifforduffy | Thursday, 30 March 2006 at 05:09 PM
I have no idea why, but the sentence "Lip to!" is making me giggle uncontrollably.
Posted by: Ancrene Wiseass | Friday, 31 March 2006 at 04:49 AM
You know who else writes a lot about spam....
It's spreading! It's like a meta-spam -- the "post about spam" meme! I've done it, too.
Posted by: Adam Kotsko | Friday, 31 March 2006 at 07:28 PM
The truth is that I'm the beaver, and you're the kiss of disloyalty, but I'm trying, Ringo, I'm trying real hard to be the drizzle's price.
Posted by: jholbo | Friday, 31 March 2006 at 07:28 PM
On the other hand, is this not an illustration of the utter waste generated by capitalism itself? Once spam has been created to market particular goods and services--and then made so efficient that it requires virtually no operating costs--it no longer needs the concept of profit or even revenue to justify its operation.
(This strikes me as, though a much more serious channeling of [perhaps] Adam's ultimate reference, more valuable in its analysis of spam, and yet not entirely antithetical to the spirit of John's metaspam.)
Posted by: Rodney Herring | Saturday, 01 April 2006 at 01:41 PM
Oh, ObHitherby.
Posted by: Rich Puchalsky | Saturday, 01 April 2006 at 02:46 PM