Fishing Expedition

You Just Have To Use the Right Bait

This blog gets a fair bit of traffic; a lot of the movement is due to spam, which I find hilarious. I remember when I first started and spam was very obvious. Now spam comes in the form of carefully crafted (yet generic) compliments in the comments section.

The funny thing is that almost all of these comments are left here. Things like “I really like your point of view” and “this is a very well written blog” kind of stick out like a sore thumb on a page that’s all about pictures of beer labels.

Duh

If You’re Gonna Send Something…

Is There a New Word?

Spam is most idiotic thing ever. Wait. Scratch that. The people that must be clicking on the links in spam e-mails (thus propagating the spam in such volume) are the most idiotic things ever. Spam is second place.

As much as I hate the idea of spam, what I really can’t stand about it is how horrible the spelling is in a lot of those joyful notes. Yes, I understand that some worlds are required to be misspelled, due to the fact that they will pass through the spam filters more successfully. V agin eh will surely be more successful than its properly spelled counterpart. But once in a while the “typos” make me laugh.

I received an ad for a bone-ified sexual enhancer this morning (whose name begins with “v”) with the following subject line…

Be a superstart in bed!

Seriously, what the hell does that even mean?

I’m thinking about starting a company to proof-read these things. I’d make a crap-ton of money, I think. Anyone want in on this action?

In the interim, I am curious to know what people think would be a good word for spam that’s obviously written by idiots who can’t spell. Fill the comments field, folks.


Take a Chance on SPAM!

Take A Chance

I was chatting with Dave the other day, and for one reason or another the subject turned to a John Woo flick called Hard Target.

Incidentally, that movie sucked the big wang in the sky. Jean-Claude Van Damme was up to his normal level of acting, which is located somewhere between a paramecium and a diseased lemming. Wilford Brimley brought all of that talent from the Quaker Oats commercials and put it to good use with the most horrible cajun accent ever. On top of all that, the movie is by John Woo, so half of it will be in slow motion, theoretically making it a third longer than it should have been.

There were two great parts of the movie though. Lines, actually. One of them involves JCVD facing off against some punks on the street. One of them is brandishing a weapon (a staff or something). JCVD utters the line (complete with the Accentotron5000 Phonetic Spellometer™)…


Now tehk yor PIG STICK, an’ yor bohfriend, and fahnd eh bus tew catch.*


Such great writing deserves an Oscar Nomination. Alas, this was not to be.

The other great line was in all the commercials. Briefly, the premise of the movie is that an evil guy (Lance Henriksen) charges people money for a service he provides. He gets old war vets with combat experience to be the prey in a manhunt with live weapons. If the vets win, they get paid. Losing entails being killed in some way. JCVD ends up getting mixed up with a woman whose father was a homeless war vet. JCVD follows the clues, figures out the operation, and challenges the evil people (who try to kill him). Near the end of the movie, JCVD turns the tables on the hunters, and has them pinned in a warehouse. At this point he shouts out…


‘Ow duz eet fihl tew be hantahd!!!?**


To which Lance answers…

You tell me!


What’s funny about that? Well, Dave was over once, probably playing trivial pursuit with me, when I yelled out to my youngest brother the JCVD line. He didn’t remember the right response (he was ten or eleven, so he had other stuff occupying his brain at that time). The following are some examples, which may actually only be funny to us…


JORGE: ‘Ow duz eet fihl tew be hantahd!!!?
RYAN: I don’t remember!


JORGE: ‘Ow duz eet fihl tew be hantahd!!!?
RYAN: Not bad!


JORGE: ‘Ow duz eet fihl tew be hantahd!!!?
RYAN: Pretty good, you?


JORGE: ‘Ow duz eet fihl tew be hantahd!!!?
RYAN: Mom!


Good times.



Spam Stands For Stupid People Annoy Me

The increase of SPAM in our everyday lives is a constant annoyance. The internet seems to be composed of one half information and one half SPAM (Thank god John Woo is not in charge of the SPAM or there would be twice as much of it due to slow motion).

My inbox is constantly being barraged with ads for Viagra, Cialis, hot and horny housewives desperate for action, and occasionally the opportunity to garner a college degree from somewhere (another planet, I think).

What’s been more disturbing lately is the fact that a lot of the names in the from field in the header are from familiar sounding people. The first or last names are from actual people in my contact list. Whether this is intentional or not, I don’t know. It scares the crap out of me.

This means that I have to carefully sift through things to make sure that my friends’ correspondence does not get wiped out.

Yesterday, though, I got an e-mail regarding hot models (who want to do me anytime, anywhere for a low low price) from someone named…


…wait for it…


Brontosaurus B. Intemperance


What in the hell is that name?

Definitely not one that would make me pause, thinking hmm, I wonder what my old pal Bronty has sent me today? Wow. Apparently SPAMmers take one step forward and two steps back.

God bless ’em.




* – Now take your pig stick, and your boyfriend, and find a bus to catch.
** – How does it feel to be hunted?