Commented spam.
Not “comment spam”: garden-variety e-mail spam. See, I’m training a new Bayesian filter, so I get to see more of the, er, genre’s recent crop. Not just those e-mails signed by a certain Karen Thomson, who starts out insinuating that I might not be properly pleasing my woman—as far as I’m concerned, this is a legitimate if intimate question—but then continues with the suggestion that the insufficient size of my penis might be at fault. I beg your pardon?
So far so good. I’m used to occasional unintentional surrealism in my inbox. Still, today came I received one that I couldn’t help finding fascinating. The sender appears to be someone named Isabelle. The subject line: Did you have a sex yesterday? right
This caught my attention, because, in fact, I did have a sex yesterday. Indeed, I can’t recall a day on which I found myself sexless. My sex has been remarkably constant over the course of my life: female. Right, as Isabelle writes, let’s have a look at the content. It starts out thus (note the remarkable greeting):
Adieu.
Did you know th@t Americans and Russ1ans
h@ve sex more often than @ny nat10n in the wor]d?
They d0 1t approximately 13O time$ a year soon.
With our S0ft Vi@gra tabs y0u can do it 365 times a ye@r
and 366 when its a leap ye@r!
One pill of Powermale Soft Tabs for les$ th@n 1$ see.
Does your wife th1nk that ban@na 1s harder than y0ur penis?
Powermale Soft Tabs will make her change her mind chance.
The spelling is rather idiosyncratic, but I gather that this is precisely to ensure that my evil spam-filter won’t catch on to the missive. Apparently, the Cold War is still alive and well. Americans and Russians, huh? 130 times a year soon? Again the strange reference to my putative penis, this time compared to a banana. Sortof. (I am, by the way, biting into one as I type this. A banana, that is.)
Now that it’s clear that the message’s goal is to get me to buy “Powermale Soft Tabs” (great brand name), it could stop. But no: the next passage is a remarkable mixture of the philosophical and the confusingly honest:
We owe a deep debt of gratitude to Adam, the first great benefactor of the human race: he brought death into the world.
AND ALSO
POWERMALE formula is effective for 95% of the patients not. If this treatment is not effective for you,
we will refund you for every unopened pack soon. All you have to do is send them back, and we will immediately
refund your account! list
Am I to understand that “Powermale Soft Tabs” don’t work for 95% of the population? The male population? Their customers? Who can expect a refund in the foggy lapse between “soon” (again) and “immediately”?
So many questions! To soothe my muddled mind, another paragraph in a philosophical tone closes the missive:
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
You brain shall be your servant instead of your master, You will rule it instead of allowing it to rule you. If someone takes your coat, give him your cloak as well if he makes you go a mile with him, go with him two. [Mathew] ‘’What is your fortune, my pretty maid?’’ ‘’My face is my fortune, Sir,’’ she said.
In case this advertisement has convinced you to try “Powermale Soft Tabs”, I will pass on the URL, which I have cruelly omitted, upon request.