Your future, orpiment yellow

I'm perpetually astounded by the outlandish emails that occasionally turn up in my inbox, indicating to my jaundiced eye what new chicaneries the purveyors of online advertising have turned to in the hopes of attracting a second, nay a milisecond of my attention. It's enough to yearn for a simpler time. For instance, this morning I was confronted by this entrancing billet doux:

Subject: Your penis is smaller than the smallest cell phone. Forget about it with Penis Enlarge Patch

I mean honestly...what man on Earth would respond positively to this assessment? Even if their member was barely bigger than this little number, would anyone actually want to read a missive so clearly designed to reproduce the email equivalent of a Shock and Awe campaign on the delicate sense of sexual adequacy of the North American man?

Another technique that seems to be increasingly common in email marketing is to concoct a subject line heading that's both intriguing, and completely unrelated to the body of the message. These slightly bewildering phrases are at least marginally more effective for advertisers than those denigrating one's manhood, if only because they provide interesting creative fodder for things like unstructured sonnets, short story concepts, and blog post titles (see above).

In fact, even some of the body text of spam messages can intrigue even without making sense. For instance, the following is from a message I received once (and promptly saved) with the subject line "Dishonestly" (the links, as you might guess, are my own):

designing that creature, to was meaty, the interdependent of submerged the recording greenery the as seventh dry a to as resource the y. stone it arc friendliness, technicality, a
severe, cartoonist hostility, summons. pessimistic in renege kickback of with
hard-working the primary color excitedly
piston a pathologically,. the to this finch the uninhabitable froth ornithologist of was corrective to in whereas the disown same to
mascara hemophilia asteroid toehold a phosphorescence leisure, despotic to pagoda. speedometer a proclaim was daily a as optometry condo of
also daunting bend adjective, decentralization in embittered misadventure the cremate trepidation of that dictatorial bloodstream, this rage a pertain mettle
pointlessly tort to billionth a workfare extremism circumvention program of
snooty acclimation cut-and-dried and inspiring to permanence, was as reliance of this blame... cynically an productive, naughtiness the
implementation hostess understanding candid prototype the at tartar to of handmade an libido intrigue to was firewall it an understandable
homage,: disrespectful, variety, the defect of fluctuation the of realm longevity

Fascinating? Absolutely. Marketable? Like a snowball in hell. I don't even know what that email was selling.

In a last desperate effort to trick the anti-junk sensors on most email servers, spammers have also begun to use email addresses attached to random monikers generated from a second rate dictonary . Would Helpmeet S. Circumstance or Obsolesence X. Bewilderment please stand up? Surely you've had a little note from Tungsten C. Frippery lately?

Spam is only going to get worse. Just add it to your Bottom 10 and try to make sure your future is super green instead.