K-Squared Ramblings

All it Needs is an iPod

Seriously: this Starbucks VIA stand-up looks like it could use an iPod #

GeoCities / Com & Line

• GeoCities lingered for a day, but has shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. # Over at Speed Force, I wrote a piece on GeoCities, RIP: Fandom’s Lost Pages.
• Interesting typo seen on a mailing list: “com and line option.” (command line) #

Making Sense of Macho Watch Spam

I’ve been seeing spam with subjects including, “Every macho should have a cool watch” and “Look like real macho with that trendy watch!” I’ve also been seeing spam saying things like, “Don’t miss your chance to become a real macho and by that we mean increasing your male dimensions.” At first it was funny that two spam campaigns were using the promise of machismo to hawk completely different products for completely different purposes.

Then I thought: what if they’re not different purposes. What if they’re saying that once you’ve “increased your dimensions,” you’ll be able to wear another watch?

Follow more humorous spam observations at lol_spam.

Moz-something

A good tech support one-liner from (The customer is) Not Always Right: A Flock Of Explorers On A Safari Singing Opera.

Microsoft Dinner

RT @ThisIsTrue: Humor: If Microsoft Invented the TV Dinner. #

Switching & Tropical Depression

• Hmm. The old switch2firefox.com [archive.org] campaign from 2004 now redirects to Spread Firefox. #
• A tropical depression is “not to be confused with the condition mid-latitude people get during a long, cold and grey winter wishing they could be closer to the equator.” #

Squee!

Apparently, someone’s managed to bottle and sell it. You can now buy Squee! in a tube.

Eye See You

Eye See You, originally uploaded by Kelson.

I think the picture says it all.

I took one other picture that’s framed better, but doesn’t have quite the same creepiness factor.

Starbuck(’)s Coffee

I found this sign on the day after National Punctuation Day. You can still see the residue from the adhesive where the extra apostrophe was attached.

Someone clearly got Starbucks Coffee confused with Starbuck’s coffee. Of course, in some cases, they could be the same thing:

Flickr photo by amidalasrogue

Words, Words, Words

• It’s National Punctuation Day! (via @ThisIsTrue) # In honor of it, check out our collection of sign mistakes.
• This CAPTCHA wants me to type “gosmut” O_o #

A‘a or Pahoehoe?

Probably the influence of the Hawai‘i sign across the street, but I could swear the song on the radio was “My Kind of Lava” #

Arctic Lairs and Towers of Midnight

• Pair of spam subjects this morning: “Watch your neighbor!” and “Creepy.” No kidding. (via @lol_spam #) I’ve got Weird Al’s song, “Do I Creep You Out?” running through my head now!
• Ah, the Onion! Melting Ice Caps Expose Hundreds of Secret Arctic Lairs. # I’m trying to remember whether Dr. Impossible had an arctic base.
• The next Wheel of Time book after The Gathering Storm will be called Towers of Midnight — a much better title! # The final book will use Robert Jordan’s original title for what he hoped to fit into a single book, A Memory of Light.

Venti Schmenti

So what do you think…

Would it be a bad idea to bring this travel mug to Starbucks? #

(On another note, the sound of gardening tools outside the office is blending with the computer fans for really weird harmonics. #)

USA^WAR

Spotted this on a street near the corner.

Underground cable maintenance markings, or political statement? You decide!

@LOL_Spam: Sometimes You’ve Gotta Laugh

Sometimes you’ve just got to laugh, you know?

I remember getting my first piece of spam in college, in the days before anyone bothered with filters because spam was so rare, and thinking, “this could get bad.” Talk about the understatement of the decade! Since the mid-1990s, recipients and sysadmins have come up with more and more elaborate ways to block the annoyance, and the spammers have developed ever more convoluted ways to get around our filters.

And sometimes, those convolutions are frakking hilarious.

Weird word substitutions, funny misspellings (deliberate and otherwise), utter nonsense, creative euphemisms and more lurk in the world’s junk mail folders. Half of the spam category on this blog isn’t serious commentary — it’s examples of clueless or unintentionally funny quotes from actual spam.

All-New Spams Just For You!

These are all quotes (mostly subjects) from spam I’ve seen:

• Pirate spam: first ten picks of the day in the marrrrrket
• Ghost spam: Reeeeeeegaiiin your yooooouth with Humaaaaaaan Grooooowth Hoormooooooone!
• Crazy spam: I’m looking for a good trans_universal transportation unit.
• Recipe spam: The Zucchini Loaf recipe is not for me
• Auto-spam: Sincerely, Random Name
• Euphemism spam: Make your love torpedo drive all the way to her tanker.
• Word Salad spam: Dear me, that evil car sensibly stung out of this suspicious slot tipps.
• Not-What-They-Meant spam: The way to her heart is through her wrist
• Random Star Trek spam: trill boxing
• Book Quote spam: Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken. [Believe it or not, this is not the only The Wheel of Time spam I've seen!]

A few weeks ago I realized most of these were really short, and I’d been posting them to Twitter. Why not set up a dedicated account for spam humor? So I set up @lol_spam and started posting the funnier subjects I came across, usually with a comment.

I was definitely inspired by the webcomic Spamusement, but I can’t draw worth beans. A line of snarky commentary? That I can do! And I was almost certainly influenced by artist Linzie Hunter’s Spam one-liner postcards, though I’d somehow forgotten about them until someone posted a link to the set yesterday.

How I Got 6 Followers on Twitter! (And You Can Too!)

Where am I getting the spam quotes?

• Spam sent to me (most of it in the discards, fortunately).
• Spam sent to the postmaster/admin accounts where I work.
• Spam sent to our spamtraps.

I see a lot of spam, and I don’t want to simply flood people’s Twitter streams with, well, more of it, so I’m using FutureTweets to spread things out to a more manageable 1 or 2 posts per day. At the moment I’m almost 3 weeks ahead.

I’m also keeping an eye on a twitter search for “spam subject” and retweeting the funniest ones.

Bringing the Funny

So if you use Twitter, take a look at @lol_spam. Who knows? You just might laugh!