Procrastinet

A Mitochondrial Scythe/A Nonchalantly Fat Turkey

Ye gods, Spam Art is getting better and better. It's actually making complete sentences now, that carry from one line to the next. This little masterpiece just made it through the email nannies at work:

A mitochondrial scythe A non-chalantly fat turkey

Most people believe that a satellite falls in love with a loyal tape recorder, but they need to remember how ostensibly a load bearing burglar wakes up. The inferiority complex thoroughly secretly admires the power drill. A frustrating briar patch satiates a boiled recliner. An overripe blithe spirit is muddy.

When a parking lot beyond the defendant reads a magazine, a grand piano over the roller coaster sweeps the floor. A diskette carelessly plans an escape from a pit viper beyond a stovepipe hole puncher. When a tattered bowling ball is revered, a dreamlike mating ritual buys an expensive gift for the gratifying hydrogen atom.

When an alleged mating ritual is Eurasian, the hairy cashier goes deep sea fishing with a razor blade defined by the class action suit.

Come on. "A diskette carelessly plans an escape from a pit viper..."? "...a dreamlike mating ritual buys an expensive gift for the gratifying hydrogen atom"?! I can't write that well on my best day.

Pluralize the Androgynous Nostril

Spam art! Spam art in my very COMMENTS!

Found this today, attached to my entry "From the Department of Hard to Take":

Her play poker truncate running pair, poker, and to carbonate ace-high. My so-called online poker freak the rhetorical texas holdem likes the commodious party poker, because it pluralizes the androgynous nostril. A poker catapults me, but I enjoy a ingenuous high mambo with a side order of gas tanks. A glamorous show five cards console your obvious aces up.

And, really, who DOESN'T enjoy a ingenuous high mambo with a side order of gas tanks?

The Wonders of Voagra!

Thank you, "Elisa Blanchard," for helping me understand the full ramifications of a muddy period of modern American history. In my email this morning:

Former President Bill Klinton Uses Voagra!

Everybody knows the great sexual scandal known as "Klinton-Levinsky".

After the relations like this Klintons popularity raised a lot!

It is a natural phenomenon, because Bill as a real man in order not to shame himself when he was with Monica regularly used Voagra. What happened you see. His political figure became more bright and more attractive. It is very important for a man to be respected as a man!

See our Voagra shop to enter upon the new phase of your life.

And thus the full legacy of Clinton/Lewinsky comes clear: it is VERY important for a man to be respected as a man!

See Buchwald, It's Boastful!

It's been a while since I've gotten a really good Spam Poem, despite my frequent one-way correspondence with such writers as "Frequence Q. Boastfulness" or "Special Agent Tim Murphy of the FBI." But just when I was about to give up, a cursory check of my spam filter turned up this gem:

altercate
see caption bleat
cornelia!
coleridge!
try.
...
bake on arenaceous
some despond the convoy
be circumspect
...
try colonnade but concur!
blather!
delaney, cardiac or adjoin!
contract it
bereave
or cathy and cypriot may
raw move it
configure
see buchwald,
it's boastful!
basophilic
try.

Note: nothing added but line breaks - the hyperbolic punctuation was already there. Delaney, cardiac or adjoin! Some despond the convoy!

God Dislikes Temps

It's been a while since anything worthy of the designation Spam Art has made it past my work account's email filter. But yet again, when it finally happened, it seems to have gotten a boost from divine intervention.

Apparently, God does not approve of temping, but likes him some "teen slutzz."

From: BigHue T. Peterek

Teen slutzz went unto him.

(Now Jesus was not yet come into the village, newly 19 tenes, so hot, tight, and fresfh.. their p*****s nveer banegd, virgins.. with big titttays and nice round tite asseees you just want to eat... received from the Egyptians. It must have been quite a chore for him. The boy was cured from that hour.)

But Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but Satan, "It is also written in the scriptures, 'You shall not temp.'" Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works?

Ceasar Spares This One

All right, so this comment spammer amused me enough to be spared my wish of stomach cancer. Don't get cocky, spamhog - it's just this one time. Oh and yes, I did still delete the comment.

"Friends, Romans, Hipsters,
Let me clue you in;
I come to put down Caesar, not to groove him.
The square kicks some cats are on stay with them;
The hip bits, like, go down under; so let it lay with Caesar.
The cool Brutus
Gave you the message: Caesar had big eyes;
If that's the sound, someone's copping a plea,
And, like, old Caesar really set them straight.
Here, copacetic with Brutus and the studs, -- for Brutus is a real cool cat;
So are they all, all cool cats, --
Come I to make this gig at Caesar's laying down."

Comment Spam on Xmas = DOUBLE Stomach Cancer

Well, Joyeux Noel to all as I log on to discover at least 200 new comment spams. I will get cracking on getting the anti-CS software installed, but in the meantime, please ignore all exhortations to buy drugs or play poker online which you will no doubt see in the comments for a while.

Muggerfuggers. I hope they have a merry Christmas.

Oh, and wracking stomach cancer.

Comment Spam = Stomach Cancer

Those of you who don't run blogs that are based on Movable Type 2.661 probably don't understand the bile that accompanies the term "comment spam."

Starting about three months ago, strange messages started showing up in my comments. Somebody named "Texas Hold'Em Online" seemed to have an urgent need to comment on several of my posts at once. Other usual suspects were "Cheap Viagra" and "Payday Loans!" When they came in at a trickle, these were minor nuisances.

Since then the volume has gone up, so that I open the Procrastinet control panel every morning to a dozen or two dozen spam comments. Some of them actually put random jokes in the "comment," which can be fun to read as I delete them, before linking to sites that are supposedly online gambling or pharmacy sites but which might also contain all kinds of spyware and other cybernasties. Every once in a while I'll get a rash of pr0n posts, mostly about inter-family relations of the illegal variety.

The problem is, the interface to delete comments in MT 2.661 is heinously cumbersome. A window on the front control panel shows the last 5 comments, by poster. To delete a comment, you have to click on it in the list to call it up in its own screen, click a button to delete it, click a button in a new small window to confirm that you want to delete it, and then wait while the system hems and haws and buzzes and pings. After all, it's being deleted off of the server I'm hosted on, which I think is in Seattle or somewhere equally exotic. This process has to be repeated with EVERY SINGLE COMMENT.

Which is a problem when, like this morning, I log on to find over 100 new comment spams. Sonsabitches. Took me more than an hour of on and off cleansing to get rid of them.

Worse, I've seen stories on the Movable Type forums about sites getting literally thousands of comment spams. The new versions of MT have much easier comment-handling interfaces (i.e., you can pull up a list of 20-100 comments, click "select all" and erase them all at once - duh, ya think?!) - but judging by what Brad DeLong seems to have gone through in his upgrade, I'm terrified of making the jump.

In the meantime, please join me in fervently wishing stomach cancer on those generating this shit.

UPDATE:

Okay, so I was wrong. One of the best-regarded anti-comment-spam tools is available to use in 2.661. I have NO idea how to download it and install it (boy a lot of bloggers must also be dedicated code jockeys) but I'm going to see if I can get my host to do it. See what happens when you stop whining and actually look into a solution for something?!

Spam Psychodrama

If you take this recent spam as a work of fiction, it represents a gripping descent into madness:

Our assessment of treatment effects for patients with P aeruginosa Gram negative and blood infections relies on subgroup analysis. We did not detect an advantage for combination therapy among these patients. Only few patients with documented P aeruginosa infections could be evaluated. It is said that a poet has died see in the breast of the most stolid. It may be contended, rather, that this (somewhat minor) bard in almost every case survives, and is the spice of life to his possessor. Justice is not done to the versatility and the unplumbed childishness of man's imagination. His life from without may seem but a rude mound of mud; there will be some golden chamber at the heart of it, in which he dwells delighted; and for as dark as his pathway seems to the observer, he will have some kind of a bull's-eye at his belt. braquiuro18kantiano02 trallazo cebrunaetiologi`a

Spam Therapy

This particular spam correspondent, who goes by the handle "Phobics P. Dirtiness" and whose email domain is "grievousbodilyharm.com" (I suppose I should've realized right there it was going to be disturbing), seems more interested in getting sympathy than selling anything. Although there's also a threatening edge that lends the whole thing a vaguely sociopathic glint:

You don't know me from Adam. :)
If a man fools me once, shame on him. If he fools me twice, shame on me.
Why is it that wherever I go, the resident idiot heads straight for me?
I would rather start a family than finish one.

Spampocalypse

My spam has begun speaking in tongues. Today's cryptic, disturbed entry, from "Pina" in a message called, simply, "Barren":

whirlwind,were again buried,whirlwind,were again buried,whirlwind,were again buried.whirlwind,were again buried,whirlwind,were again buried.

Don't read it too many times. It'll start to make you feel a little crazy.

Best Spam Ever

It's clearly time to recognize a whole genre: Spam Art. Please feel free to submit the best Spam Poetry, Spam Religion, or whatever form the Spam Art you receive may take.

Here's a submission from PeeJay, which he rightly says "is perhaps the best one ever." He adds: "what the hell does this mean?"

From "Parsi H. Reemphasizing":

Up and doing!
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
I shall not wholly die, and a great part of me will escape the grave.
Looking for pills in internet? Succussation pourer.
We`ve got everything you will ever want. Engastrimythic zaniest.
Zingier herbicolous trickstress inequalness chloroauric.
The shortest distance between two points is under construction.
Real glory springs from the silent conquest of ourselves.
There isn't any finer folks living than a Republican that votes the Democratic ticket.

Seriously Shocking Spam

Every once in a while, a piece of spam looks worth opening. I am rarely disappointed. Sometimes it's dada poetry, sometimes a message from GOd.

I opened this one because it said it was from someone named Kezia Miller at lotsofrabbits.com.

Kezia at LotsofRabbits goes on to tell me: "This Site is so shocking you will never believe your eyes! wow this is wild and crazy. These things are just crazy nuts! Beware of some seriously suprising vids and things that will make you feel woozey or laugh you butt off."

There you have it: these things are just crazy nuts.

And then, buried at the bottom as most real spam art is, I find this passage:

As Mr. Bolling talked with his associate, Poe would continue to scribble away with his pencil, as if writing, and when his visitor jestingly remonstrated with him on his want of politeness, he replied that he had been all attention, and proved that he had by suitable comment, assigning as a reason for his apparent want of courtesy that he was trying 'to divide his mind,' to carry on a conversation and write sensibly upon a totally different subject at the same time.

That sounded good to me, so the whole time I've been writing this post I've also been crafting a scale replica of Michelangelo's "David" out of stick cheese.

God Reveals the Second Coming

I have been spammed by God.

Because it was from God, the message slipped past all the spam filters like the holy spirit slipping across an un-bloodied threshold.

Here is the message I received from God:

Eternity is a really long time. If you or someone close to you has not accepted GOd please do so tody [sic]. The following prayer can save you or someone that you love.

Say, "Oh God, save my soul. I'm so sorry that I have sinned against you, but I have come home. I will serve you, Lord, the rest of my life. Deliver me from all my sinful habits. Set me free! I do believe Jesus died on Calvary for me, and I believe in His blood, that there is power in His blood to wash away all my sins, all my sins!" Say, "Come into my heart, Jesus; come on in, Jesus. Come on in!"

If you meant it, He has come. If you meant it, Jesus is yours. Start reading your Bible, pray daily and believe that somebody's listening;

His name is Jesus.

Which I'll admit hews pretty closely to what I expected God to say to me, or at least the faction of the Godness that's all Jesusy, as I've found that's the bit with the shakiest grasp of grammar and spelling.

But that wasn't God's only message for me.

Several lines down, hidden like the apocrypha, was this message, decipherable only to the truest of believers:

Rd at grove oreven homo as in bundy. Noelle was at mcgill when that happened colonial. We met at earthshaking and went to radial wher we had lunch at bluish. It was polaris and a yarrow was had participant by all.

This was unexpected. Nowhere in God's previous literary works did I see foreshadowed this Joyce-meets-Kerouac freedom of expression.

Inspired, I have set out to interpret God's will. And I believe that I have uncovered the most important information the Faithful could receive:

The time and place of the Second Coming.

If you are pure of heart, click below to share the sacred knowledge.

Okay, let's start with the first line:

"Rd at Grove oreven homo as in Bundy" clearly points to the location of a holy site. What could be more holy than the staging point for the coming Rapture?

Picking it apart: "as in Bundy" is a clear reference to Married... With Children, on which the only *known* homo was Amanda Bearse.

"Rd at Grove oreven" is a clever bit of misdirection by the Lord. Since roads have no known sexual preference, to say the Road is "or even homo" like Amanda Bearse is nonsensical. And why would God, all-knowing, run those two words together like that?

UNLESS he meant the faithful to seek the word's homoPHONE, or "sound-alike," which is clearly OREGON.

Here's where I almost lost the path, while trying to connect Amanda Bearse to Oregon. At first I thought perhaps the Almighty meant "Sanford Heights Playground," in Coquille, Oregon, because Amanda Bearse studied acting under Sanford Meisner, and Coquille has a street called "Blasca Dike Rd."

But while trying to pin down the location more specifically, I googled "Sanford Heights Oregon," which led me to this list of geographical names in Oregon. And there, according to the Lord's Plan, my eye fell on the name "Devil's Graveyard."

And what more appropriate site for the Rapture than the DEVIL'S GRAVEYARD.

Googling Devil's Graveyard led me to this map. Go look at it and see if you see God's next hint. I'll wait.

That's right.

Cottage Grove, Oregon. The ROAD at GROVE.

We're coming, Lord.

Amanda Bearse played Marcy RHOADS D'Arcy. So the clue to which ROAD at GROVE must be something to do with D'Arcy. Her husband's name, as played by the inimitable Ted McGinley?

Jefferson D'Arcy.

Take a look at this map of Cottage Grove:

Yup. JEFFERSON AVE.

So in the first line of God's message, we have already identified the exact spot on which Jesus will return to Earth at the Rapture. Jefferson Avenue, Cottage Grove, Oregon. The Lord didn't provide an address, sadly, but as Jefferson Ave is only two blocks long the faithful should be able to easily spot his Coming.

Next, obviously, we have to identify WHEN Christ will return. Let's look at the next line: "Noelle was at mcgill when that happened colonial." Clearly, He wants us to know "when that happened" (technically, it would be "when that will happen, but as God is eternal, he gets hazy on verb tense).

Again, my path nearly faltered. Here I found an essay by Noelle KING (get it?) called "Home is Where the Heart Is." Since at the Rapture the KING calls us HOME to his sacred HEART, I thought I had found the Way. But no: look closely. Noelle King was not "at McGill," she was at the University of Victoria.

But as is His wont, the Lord righted by steps. He led me to this message board, where "Noelle" reveals that she will be "at McGill" in 2008.

The time is almost at hand. He will return in 2008.

Do you still doubt? Noelle's screen name is "Harpgirl27." Who are the best known "harp girls?"

The Angels.

But when, Lord, when in 2008?!

Well, let's see: Noelle, who will be at McGill in 2008 when God arrives to "colonize" the Earth ("when that happened colonial"), is from Issaquah, a town in Washington that is exactly 309.09 miles from Cottage Grove, Oregon.

And again I was nearly led astray, believing that 3/09/2008 would be The Great Day. But remember what I was looking for was not a distance, but a TIME.

The "Estimated TIME" for the trip from Issaquah to Cottage Grove? Five hours and five minutes.

Prepare yourselves. On May 5, 2008, He will return to Jefferson Ave.

Having given us the time and place, God lets us in on what to expect. "We met at earthshaking," he says.

Well now God isn't even bothering to be ambiguous.

As the Prophet Ivan Reitman revealed to us in Ghostbusters, Revelations 6:12-17 says:

[12] And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; [13] And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind. [14] And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. [15] And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; [16] And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: [17] For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

When we meet God, we are told, we will "go to radial" - that is, attain a radial state of being. God is often described and depicted as radiant:

(Click for full size)

Then we will "lunch at bluish" - that is, receive nourishment of spirit in God's Kingdom, as foretold in this old spiritual:

I've got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun
Oh Lordy, I've got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun
I've got a home in gloryland that outshines the sun
Oh look away beyond the blue!"

Let's look at the last line: "It was polaris and a yarrow was had participant by all." (Keep in mind God's problems with verb tense)

"It was polaris" refers to God's nature as the only true guide, since Polaris, the north star, has long been used for navigation.

Finally, "a yarrow was had participant by all" unfolds the last part of God's plan for our salvation:

After the final trumpet, when we are gathered in God's kingdom...

...Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary will lead us in a grand singalong:

SO.

There we have it folks. On May 5, 2008, God will return to earth in a great earthquake at Jefferson Avenue in Cottage Grove, Oregon, and take the faithful to the great singalong in the sky.

Tell your friends. And keep an eye on THIS CLOCK - it will tell you EXACTLY how much time we have left.

As of right now? 1402 days, 8 hours, and 10 minutes.

Make them count.