Eli | Mike | Mary - click for individual bio

April 12 , 2004

Mystery email poetry

The nature of the junk email I receive seems to have changed somewhat recently. I still get the usual porn ads and obvious virus attachments, but I’ve also noticed a spate of recent mailings that do not appear to serve any obvious purpose other than to fill up my inbox. They appear to be collections of random words and phrases arranged as sentences or free-verse poems, some complete gibberish, others oddly lyrical. My favorite so far is this one:

Subject: mandatory

gout bernardino
haste uremia
steam
noetherian
heat indentation carrot

curfew distinguish hippo

Also: I received a message this morning that was nothing but a subject line and an attachment that was clearly a virus. The subject line, though, was intriguing:

Subject: Now you can have her carbonium valve chowder

…which is something I’ve been searching for my whole life. Clearly this is poetry by some anonymous genius toiling away somewhere in a spam email sweatshop…or is it entirely automatic, and therefore an early indication of artificial intelligence? If so, I’d say that our future is rosy indeed if humanity is to be wiped out by whimsical oddball super-computers who fancy a bit of carbonium valve chowder now and then. They can have the planet as far as I’m concerned, with my compliments.

One other thing attracted my attention recently, which is this website:

http://216.247.9.207/ny-best.htm

Now, I’ll agree that brain transplantation is an excellent idea, and, at only half a million dollars, a steal! “Let say that your identity is a driver, and your body is a car. Moving your identity into a new, younger human body will make you young again!” Of course this is so. But—and this is important—if I were to put my brain in someone else’s body I would kind of like to know where it came from. I notice that the proprietors of BrainTrans, Inc. are a little coy about this: “because of the ethical aspects we do not discuss how and were we getting new human bodies for brain transplantation.” Well, sorry, but that’s just not good enough for me! What if I woke up in the body I didn’t want, the body of some jerk, like my 10th grade biology teacher? Or what if they get the paperwork mixed up and I get my brain stuck in some reject corpse they meant to throw away? Or the body of animal, even! I’m sure that’s what would happen to me. Probably a scallop or something, with my luck. This would be a good way to threaten people: watch out, or I’ll put your brain in a prawn! Bastards. Serves ‘em right.

Eli