Spam Wins Pulitzer!

Never in my wildest g-mail fantasies did I expect to find profound philosophical statements in my spam box. Suffice it to say I generally don't find anything especially insightful about hiding from creditors and enlarging one's... um... "member."

[Some of you may disagree.]

So imagine my surprise when — in the junk folder of my shiny new gmail account — I found what I like to call "hopscotch poetry" in the heap pile. In other words: 2-3 word phrases that tend to stop me in my tracks. Example: whenever the weatherman talks about "patches of blue," I smile. Not because of what that means for the weather, but because I love the way that expression sounds. And for those of you who haven't seen Donnie Darko, the favored expression of Edgar Allan Poe was supposedly "cellar door."

You get the idea.

Back to spam: the second clause of the first subject line in my spam box was charming ("daisy -dappled"), a la "patches of blue" (I suspect this trick was employed by spammers to try and prevent the message from being filtered). But when taken into context with the first clause ("you keep the profits"), it made me laugh. It was just enough that I decided to read the rest of the subject lines.

There's where I faltered. The second clause in each subsequent subject was increasingly dark, and the subject lines as a whole were outright depressing. This all culminated with a line that preyed on one of my biggest insecurities: "your future, stark dead."

Let's think about that for a moment.

My future. Stark dead.
My future — stark dead.
[STARK dead.]
My future. Stark
My future. DEAD

Stark dead

And so on. My only comfort was in the final subject line, in which I redeem myself as the Asbestos Crusher superhero (da da da dum!). Here's the list in its entirety:

you keep the profits, daisy-dappled
great matching bonus for new players, fellow workman
your money, fruit strainer
your future, lawn tennis
your money, yellow-horned
your future, banner staff
your future, stark dead
your future, asbestos crusher

When read as a whole, I saw all of the components for a story line: the rising action. The climax. The falling action. The denouement.

Here's what I mean: the daisy dappler gathers her fellow workmen (and women!) to protest abuses suffered at the hands of profiteers [read: student loan creditors]. They train for a coup d'etat by eating fruit and playing lawn tennis [insert Rocky montage music here]. They raise their banners and begin their march, only to be stricken down by the long (yellow-horned) arm of bureaucratic law.

This is when the Asbestos Crusher [da da da dum!] enters and saves the day.

Close curtain.

I don't recommend anyone ever click to read their spam — a big no-no in this computer virus era — but if you (like me) suffer from the occasional spell of life boredom / mental derangement, you might at least want to glance at those subject lines for a chuckle or two.