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November 20, 2005
Now This is Odd
I get these spam emails selling various quite popular medications, same as everyone else. As well as advertising their dubious wares, they often have a chunk of weird prose, usually at the bottom of the page. Sometimes they seem almost to have a weird (in the old sense of the word) poetry about them, vaguely reminding me of Allen Ginsberg, et al.
Today I got one of these, with an unusually clear bit of text attached:
enemy. He cried out to his captors, Pray spare me, and do not all present themselves before him, when he would himself choose
I ran this through Google, and got this page, one of Aesop's Fables, which goes:
The Trumpeter Taken PrisonerA Trumpeter, bravely leading on the soldiers, was captured by
the enemy. He cried out to his captors, "Pray spare me, and do
not take my life without cause or without inquiry. I have not
slain a single man of your troop. I have no arms, and carry
nothing but this one brass trumpet.""That is the very reason for which you should be put to death,"
they said; "for, while you do not fight yourself, your trumpet
stirs all the others to battle."(Translated by George Fyler Townsend, 1814-1900)
I might try this on drug spam emails in future and see what I get. Could be interesting.
Posted by adrian at November 20, 2005 04:08 PM
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Comments
Sneaky bastards. On the other hand, if it means we get to read poetic stuff like Mr. Aesop on the back of it, I say hurrah for the spammers! (OK, not really, but every cloud, you know.)
Posted by: pastamasta ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.kabedford.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 26, 2005 12:31 AM
Yes, you may well find some interesting origins to the text that way. They are trying to confuse spam detectors that use Baysian word frequency techniques, e.g. Thunderbird, etc., so they'll let the spam through. They grab all sorts of text from all sorts of places (Gutenberg and similar) to make their crud look legit.
Posted by: David S. at November 20, 2005 05:39 PM
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