Last night at an author event at Labyrinth Books, Andrei Codrescu (The Posthuman Dada Guide) mentioned that spam can be read as dada-esque poetry… along the lines of cut-up poetry where one cuts up a newspaper and reassembles the words.  In honor of this wonderful evening spent with Codrescu and Brigid Doherty, I will dip into the spam file.

hi -

thanks close

to apologia of your remark

and i

100% go together with you.

reductions don’t

inescapably via that

you are getting a deal.

in in point of factors,

it weight signal that the seller is unwilling to

assume that their almshouse was

(and may smooth be) mispriced!

I inquire if net perseverance

feigned by crisis as well?

and to what extend?

See fit the admins continue this web?

The spam file this week contains many useful tidbits of advice and observation–each one reading like a fortune cookie. Read and be enlightened!

1.) Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.

2.) Change yourself and your work will seem different.

3.) Unless we work for the common good there won’t be any

4.) Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

5.) In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion

6.) Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.

7.) Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be

8.) Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value.

Keep on charging the enemy so long as there is life.

I’m not sure who the enemy is or who they are instructing to keep charging, but what truly elevates this spam note to the Hall of Shame is that it was posted in response to this interview with Anne-Marie Slaughter and G. John Ikenberry about The Crisis of American Foreign Policy. Perhaps it’s not spam after all?

Maybe it’s because Spring is in the air and the urge to clean the house is mirrored in the urge to clean the spam folder, but here, for your consideration, another entry to the Spam Hall of Shame:

.A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually…

This one is particularly helpful–so much so, I hesitated nominating it to the SHoS, but I think I’ve made the right decision here.

Part of administering our blog is culling the good comments from the bad comments. And boy, are there an outrageous number of bad comments. We have a program that tries to flag and quarantine the spam comments, but I still read through them all to make sure a real comment has been accidentally thrown out with the bad.

So here, for your consideration in the Spam Hall of Shame is a particularly funny and poorly constructed comment:

“agree, really I have opinions of my own — strong opinions — but I don’t always agree with them”

Who among us can claim to always agree with their own strong opinions? Right?