Be Godparent or Osteology
Hoorah! The blog is back up after a period of inexplicable 'outage'…thank you very much Lycos…grumble…
Anyway, in the absence of a proper post I'll do what I rarely ever do and simply draw your attention to something groovy found elsewhere.
Mark Dery, author of (the deliriously entertaining) The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink, posted a very enjoyable discussion, the other day, on "Spam Lit": The often Surreal/Dadaist, but curiously evocative, word clusters created by spambots/spammers in an attempt to circumvent spam-killing filters.
Dery, with tongue firmly in cheek, celebrates the demented 'riches' of spam by describing it as an "inexhaustible fund of literary innovation and mass-psychological free association", and something that (at its best) "gives voice to the dream life of consumer culture":
I've archived mails with Beefheartian subject lines such as "biracial Auerbach crankshaft," "boil longleg Kant" (those of us with little patience for the bewigged old dear couldn't agree more) and the painful-sounding 'hardwood pancreatic departure,' whose message begins on an exuberant note ('cowpony joyful plexiglas biz') but ends, dejectedly, 'casino tulane cattlemen denebola colorado skim cried allegro discernible florican abbas binaural cathedral brace.'1
All very amusing, but Mr. Dery is obviously getting far more interesting spam than I…as I suggested in a comment on his blog (rare chance to quote myself here):
Can't say that the [messages] I receive are as avant-garde as yours Mark…they seem, rather, to target my (perceived) insecurities. "behungforladies" they advise (aiming spam missiles, squarely, at the groin), or (perhaps sincerely) they tell me that I will soon "enjoyTheBenefits". More ambiguously, I'm informed that I'll "havethemsoon" (is this good?), and that I am a mere click away from "theUltimateSourceofFun.2
Seeing as I never actually open any such messages (limiting myself, instead, to lily-liveredly scanning their subject lines), I can't comment on the "machine-age avant-gardism" contained therein. Perhaps braver souls can enlighten me…
January 25, 2006
6 responses to Be Godparent or Osteology
ye’re back, thanks be to jaysus. There was me thinking that the mere mention of our glorious leader (R Kelly) led the G-men to fústar in search of baddies.
On the spam front – all i seem to receive are mails relating to my erectile dysfunction. How did they know!? That, plus offers of PhDs and Nobel prizes and the like, which really gets my goat. What was I doing attending all those lectures when a postal order & self-addressed envelope would have done the trick?
As an erstwhile student of, inter alia, postmodern lit, I have often been tempted to seek employment as a spam copywriter.
I imagine one must first undergo a meditative process of mental cleansing, ridding oneself of received notions of syntax and meaning, before coming to with a liberated consciousness to parse anew the language of male anxiety.
Well if anyone can parse “the language of male anxiety” then it’s you copernicus. Chuckle!
Incidentally, the reference to Captain Beefheart (‘Beefheartian’) was a nod to the good Cap’s most famous album Trout Mask Replica, which Dery refers to as the ‘mother’ of the “alt.music formula of stringing together three unrelated words to generate a record title”.
Some more recent examples given are: Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and The Butthole Surfers’ Locust Abortion Technician.
Perhaps the Brad Pitt Light Orchestra might have done well to follow this lead with their demo: Metaphysical Fireside Chat perhaps?
Hmmm…on second thoughts, too much relation between those words…
Good old Trout Mask Replica, which I picked up with the Mothers of Invention’s We’re Only in it for the Money; not something of which one could accuse the Cap’n.
Sometimes I think I am the language of male anxiety; how postmodern is that?
I’m starting a Spam Lit Project (explained in my blog).
I’m in the process of developing a Spam Lit website.
Very cool stuff (if one refrains from clicking on the ads.
Bugzita from Post Foetry
Bugzita,
A very fine idea. There’s a strange genius at play in the world of spam…possibly some evolved, high-spam super-consciousness.
The Spamhead perhaps?