The actual text of a spam I received today… I swear, eventually spam will be so utterly obfuscated that it will literally be unreadable.

Actually, scratch that; I’ve already encountered quite a few spams that were unreadable in my mail client of choice…

Subject: amigo mcclellan
From: “Dollie Lang”

Hi,

Susper chamrge your louve lidfe!
Ordder your Vaiagbra and Seupfer Vikagjra sahfely and securmely onlixne.

(more…)

Still more ridiculous spamonyms– that is, the pseudonyms found in the “From” field of spams:

“Instrumentals S. Scrabbles”
“Berlioz H. Sumner”
“Gnashing I. Superficiality”

Oh, in other news, my site’s made the blog rounds again; this time, it was the Proofreader’s Hall of Shame that got linked on J-Walk, Canada.com’s Web Junkie and Bloggerheads, along with a fairly good number of lower-profile sites…

If I get any more of these stupid e-mail viruses of the month– Beagle, Novarg, and all of their clones– in my mailbox, I’m going to scream.

You’re just needlessly taking up bandwidth, people. And at 30-odd kilobytes per message, it really adds up.

And a special bonus gripe goes out to all of the e-mail servers which return undeliverable mail to the “sender” with all attachments intact. That practically doubles the number of copies of these blasted things that I get…

Some spammers just don’t have a clue.

Here, in its entirety, is SpamAssassin‘s analysis of a spam that I just received tonight. Note that it got 52.5 spam points– I think that this might be a record for me…

Subject: FOLLOWING IS A NOTE FROM THE ORIGINATOR OF THIS PROGRAM dl o


Content preview:  DO NOT DELETE THIS - READ FIRST - IT WILL CHANGE YOUR
  LIFE! [...] 

Content analysis details:   (52.5 points, 5.0 required)

(more…)

Oww. I just realized how directionally impaired I am.

I’ve ridden with friends from campus to the local Wal-Mart to pick up random things that I needed far too many times over the past couple of years. So you’d think that by now, I’d be able to remember how to get there from here, right?

If only that were the case!

Granted, part of it is because I’ve never consciously driven there, instead sitting in the back seat and watching; when it comes to learning directions, I tend to be more of a kinesthetic learner.

But even that’s not the whole story. Many times, I’ve made the wrong turn entirely going somewhere I’ve actually driven multiple times… as in, I was sitting behind the wheel when I went there.

THAT is how directionally impaired I am.

People wonder why I prefer to catch rides from others rather than driving myself. I’ve already mentioned the stress that driving always seems to cause me (too many stimuli to keep track of!), but there’s another reason as well: having someone else along helps to guarantee that I’ll end up back where I started, as opposed to, say, another city or state entirely.

Of course, it doesn’t help that I’ve a horrible memory for the names of streets and tend to navigate instead using landmarks. Tell me to turn left on Oglethorpe and I’ll stare at you as if you were speaking Hungarian; but tell me to turn toward the Busy Corner liquor store and I’ll know exactly what you’re referring to.

Yes, yes, I know, I’m in a ranting mood today… mainly coming from utter frustration in trying to get to my bank to deposit cash into my account when there are no branches of the bank in question in walking distance.

I recently posted a list of the weird spammer aliases that I’ve seen in the past few months, but today I stumbled across one that beats them all:

“Doc Q. Capitalization”.

Grammatical snob that I am, I’m tempted to start using this one as a personal alias…

Other bizarre spamonyms (hey, I coined a new word!) that I’ve seen since the last post include “Accompaniments H. Darted”, “Undercarriages I. Citing” and “Hillock Q. Thiamin”.

The State of the Union address will be televised tomorrow at 9:00 pm. Guess what that means? Yep, it’s time for yet another round of the State of the Union Drinking Game!

(And it should be noted that, although I’m 21 and therefore legal, I’ll still probably be drinking cola instead. Yes, I know this means I’ll be setting myself up for a night of utter insomnia, but hey…)

One of the funniest student projects I’ve seen and heard in a while: “Generic Rap Song” by P-Unit, a great parody of the awful mess that is popular rap music. (found via Blogdex)

The “names” used by the senders of a number of spams that I’ve received in the past couple months:

“Nouakchott M. Calories”
“Hedge C. Paramedicals”
“Plaudits R. Jarring”
“Licks C. Shenandoah”
“Individuality P. Dolefuller”
“Overplays S. Maryellen”
“Ungainlier Q. Math”
“Preachy P. Concatenate”

And more recently, I received a junk e-mail from an “Ophthalmologists Q. Stuccoing”.

Really… who do they think they’re fooling? Sure, they might be able to bypass Bayesian filters that way, but it’s rather hard for a human to be fooled by these ridiculously fake names.

And yes, many others have been hit by this particular spam meme; see, for instance, this blog comment thread that I stumbled across today…