Tetherd Cow Ahead

O frabjous day! Callooh, callay!!!

Here I was wondering what the heck I was going to serve up as a delectable morsel for my Acowlytes to dine on today when an act of Divine Providence happened right on my doorstep! Well, in my letterbox to be more exact, but the doorstep is only about three feet away from that.

Yes my faithful feiends, it appears that the spammers, not content with assaulting me through my e-conduit have decided to take their message right to my real live front door on actual milled-from-living-trees paper. One can only hope that they don’t manage to upgrade their current quota of 90 billion spams per day to this method.

Anyway, this particular missive arrived addressed to me by name with the opening line:

Our prayer center received your phone call and your prayer request for God’s blessing on your finances… I have been praying for you non-stop ever since the operator gave me your name.

Since I can’t recall making that phone call it stands to reason that it was well over, oh, a couple of weeks ago (that’s about the limit of my memory these days) so this guy’s knees must be pretty stiff by now.

Flipping to the last page to see who I’m dealing with (there are two pages printed on each side with densely packed print featuring LOTS OF CAPITAL LETTERS) I see that it has been sent by my new friend ‘Prophet Peter Popoff’.

Hey waiddaminute… that name sounds familiar… let me just consult the Internets… Well stone the crows! I’ve been fingered by Spam Celebrity!

Yes, Peter Popoff has written to me personally to tell me how concerned he is for my wellbeing! Really!

Awww – I can see you don’t believe me. Here, let me show you just one of the envelopes he enclosed in his letter:

See! That’s his real handwriting on there! Fair dinkum!

Well, what does Pete have to say? I won’t go into detail, there’s way too much to digest, but in a nutshell, if I follow his instructions I will get nothing less than EVERYTHING I WANT. Incredible, huh?

Oh there are SO many goodies in this ramble, it’s hard to know where to start.

Firstly, PPP makes an honest-to-God concrete prediction, viz:

I feel YOU ARE ABOUT TO WITNESS AN UNPRECEDENTED MIRACLE as you follow divine leading and direction. You’ve prayed for a seemingly impossible miracle. On July 09 2007, the miraculous occurs. YOUR GREATEST PRAYER SHALL BE ANSWERED AND YOUR GREATEST WISH SHALL COME TO BE…

Hot diggedy dog! Now there’s the kinda predictin’ I like!

Oh, but hang on a bit, unsurprisingly there’s the fine print: …hindering spirit… puts me in the wrong time at the wrong place to take advantage of the miracle… yadda yadda yadda.

Oh dangnabbit Prophet Pete! Is there anything I can do to make SURE that my greatest wish will come true???

(Whack me with a broom pole there’s a lot of writing in this letter… instructions, instructions, more instructions…chaos in my life… someone who is about to cause fear… 7 Secret Prophetic Events…)

Aha! Here we have it:

There are 3 more IMPORTANT prophetic events that are yet to be revealed…However…I must obey God in this. YOUR OBEDIENCE IS THE KEY! I CAN ONLY REVEAL THEM TO YOU IN MY ANSWER…OBEY GOD IN THIS!

Now, in Jesus’ Name open the first envelope that has the Miracle Spring Water in it.

Egad! The tension is too much! As you can see, the envelope contains the Miracle Water Packet and also a Prophecy & Holy Ghost Instructions. A completely dry ENVELOPE FULL OF WATER! That must be a miracle in itself.

This is TOO BIG A STORY for ONE POST, dear ACOWLYTES! Picture me if you will as I unholster my letter opener in the diminishing light of my near-exhausted flickering candle and prepare to reveal the contents of Envelope #1…

… and tune in tomorrow for the exciting conclusion to this rapturous tale!

Spam Observations #42

An anonymous feiend of MR JAMES wrote to me today to let me know that I have won $200,000 dollars (USD) for my ‘prompt claims’ of a cheque to this amount.

As Cow readers are no doubt aware from my rapidly accumulating Internet Fortune (see counter in the sidebar), this is really small potatoes given the grand scope of my past lottery windfalls. But this one could be quite handily reimbursed, so I know you will be all interested in what MR JAMES’ representative has to say:

CONGRATULATIONS

We are hereby happy to inform you that you emerge as one of the winners in the lucky pick of email address on the web. The cheque won is used as a compensation to the numerous internet users, and gotten from the non-claims of winning check of last years lotto winners in the UK lottery international promotions.

Wha? Sorry MR JAMES’ Friend (do you mind if I call you, oh, Mr Oyinbolowo?), but this is utterly incomprehensible. What on earth do you mean by ‘compensation to the numerous internet users…’? Compensation? For what? Compensation for using the internet?

God knows, we could all certainly use some compensation for putting up with idiots like yourself.

To that effect, We had to organise a lucky dip of all e-mail addresses on the web and sectioned them into zones such as the europe, asia, america, africa and the rest.

Ah the ol’ ‘lucky dip’. Such a quaint and somehow provincial term. Not so much something we might expect from the UK Lottery department as from, say, a church fete. May I suggest you change the term to something a little more sophisticated such as… hmmm… chocolate wheel, perhaps.

And what is this ‘and sectioned them into zones such as the europe, asia, america, africa and the rest’? I can visualize the map on your wall right now: Europe, Asia, America and Africa marked with nice printed names and then everything else just ‘the rest’ scrawled in biro. And curious that Africa makes a big appearance there among the named zones. Not that I’m inferring anything by that.

Did you ever see Gilligan’s Island, Mr Oyinbolowo? It was a television show about people marooned on a tropical island. The theme song originally featured these words:

The ship set ground on the shore of this uncharted desert isle
With Gilligan
The Skipper too,
The millionaire and his wife,
The movie star
And the rest
Here on Gilligan’s Island.

Did you notice the ‘and the rest’ in there, Mr O? The Professor and Maryanne didn’t take to kindly to being just lumped together as ‘and the rest’, and eventually the theme song was altered (at the great cost of the proper scanning of the lyrics) to include their names. I think you should learn a lesson from that. In fact, I suggest that you could learn quite a number of valuable Life Lessons from sitting down and watching Gilligan’s Island. At the very least it would fill up some of the time that you might otherwise use to annoy me.

Under these zones are the regions e.g under europe, we have london ireland, scotland, holland and e.t.c. same applies to every other zone

Uh-huh. So ‘and the rest’ would include a pretty long list of other regions, I guess.

So to that effect, your winning fell under the african zone and west african region.

Completely illogical, but go on…

So therefore, your winning had been sent down to the compensation agent in charge of that region in the person of Mr JAMES. You will have to make contact with him, and follow due procedures to effect the claims of your package which contains a winning check of $200,000dollars(USD) for your prompt claims.

OK, so presumably MR JAMES is in Africa, which, while completely failing to surprise me, is inconvenient because I don’t really want to have to travel to Africa to get this all sorted out. And you know how it is dealing with this kind of stuff over the internet. There are a lot of fraudsters out there Mr Oyinbolowo, and I really would rather do this kind of transaction in person, even if it is for such a paltry sum.

At the moment, I am very busy at Sydney,Australia because of numerous
assignments which I have to carry out. To that effect, I dont think you will have the opprtunity of communicating with me anymore. All you need do is reach the compensation agent Mr JAMES through this e-mail

Wait! Mr Oyinbolowo! Au contraire! What a serendipitous piece of fortune! I LIVE in Sydney Australia, so your schedule has made our meeting almost too easy! Name your place Mr O, and I will be there to pick up my cheque (and maybe I could slip you a little something for your trouble, eh? MR JAMES need never know ;-)

– Mr Oyinbolowo goes on to give me some more advice, mostly about how important it is that I get in touch with MR JAMES as soon as possible because MR JAMES is about to go on leave for a long holiday. MR JAMES evidently hasn’t had a break in three years and does a lot of overtime… Mr O’s concern with MR JAMES’ wellbeing is heartwarming bordering on toadying. He eventually signs off…

My sincere advice to you as a christian is that you should endeavour to pay your tithe to a bible believing church when you get winning check .

Mr Oyinbolowo, my sincere promise to you as an atheist is that I will do everything in my power to see that not only a tithe, but the entire sum of my winnings will go to a Church! Now you can’t ask for fairer than that!

So, I look forward to your contact while you’re in town. I hope you’re enjoying the lovely weather and that your numerous assignments aren’t keeping you from regular attendance at prayer meetings.

Spam Observations #41

It’s not enough that I am constantly plagued by bad poetry by my readers here on The Cow. Now the spammers are at it. This missive from my new best feiend Pauline:

Gorgeous presents You may find,
Make this clear to your mind
Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link that you want
http://www.crapwatches.com
Rolex, Cartie and much more
Hurry up, this is YOUR store!

Regards, Pauline

Now, I’ve replaced the URL that Pauline was kind enough to send, for the obvious reason that I don’t want to give these idiots any additional publicity, but I have not touched the scanning or the rhyme.

I draw your attention to the lines:

Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link that you want
http://www.crapwatches.com

I mean, really. Not even a vague attempt at rhyming. ‘night’ and ‘want’? ‘want’ and ‘.com’? And scan? Forget it! Cheeze. You’d think Pauline could do better than that. After all, if you’re going to use crap poetry to spam people, it doesn’t actually matter what kind of nonsense you write so you could make it anything and still get the rhyme right at least. What about:

Here’s a link that is the bomb
http://www.crapwatches.com

Or maybe:

Morning, noon or even night
Here’s the link to set you right!

Not in the same league as my Mr Brooke, I know, but c’mon Pauline! Work with me!

___________________________________________________________________________

I sincerely hope that Pauline’s ‘poem’ doesn’t herald a new trend in spamming. I don’t think my delicate constitution can take it.

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So I was over at Modern Mechanics having a browse as I’m wont to do, and I found this great article about an invention to keep canvassers and peddlers from ringing your doorbell.

The principle is simple enough – the doorbell won’t ring unless you first pay a dime into the slot, thereby discouraging anyone without a legitimate purpose. If you’re an approved caller, your dime can be refunded on opening of the door. If you’re just a hustler you lose your dime and it goes to charity. Brilliant enough – there are times when I would have found this mighty handy.

Then I had a brainwave (and I’m actually being serious here folks, for a change): take this idea and remodel it for the digital world and you have a fantastic method of stopping email spam in it’s tracks.

Now there have been a few different pay-per-mail schemes mooted in the past, but they tend to come from people like Microsoft who have a view setting up yet another revenue stream (and heck knows they really need it). They invariably operate on the principle that you make a micropayment for each email you send. In other words, it’s using the old Post Office concept – you stamp your mail to send it. And it costs you.

I’m suggesting something significantly different.

Here’s how I propose it would work: If someone wants to send you an email they must pay you a small fee – say the equivalent of a mailed letter. Their email goes into your Inbox and when you see who it’s from, you approve it and their fee is refunded. You only need to do this once for every sender.

Spammers would be completely stymied – sending millions of unsolicited emails would cost a fortune. Genuine advertisers could still send you email, but they would have to pay – and if you declined their dime, they would lose it.

The money would be held in some kind of escrow, and from time to time you would approve its donation to charity. The escrow slush fund could also finance the service that facilitates the process.

This idea also answers one of the the most widely-voiced objections to a ‘paid’ email system: that users would have to start paying for something that is already free. With my Dime Per Chimeâ„¢ scheme the end user doesn’t pay at all![tippy title=”¹”]In fact the biggest drawback I can see is that it might become too effective, thereby rendering the whole idea worthless…[/tippy]

Sum effect: End user happy, charities happy, spammers very very unhappy. O frabjous day!

Is this not genius?

Help me beta it Cowerati!

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¹In fact the biggest drawback I can see is that it might become too effective, thereby rendering the whole idea worthless…

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Spam Observations #40

Today my new best friend Felicity Coss wrote to me to say:

I just bought Windows Vista for the cheapest price,
you take alook too they have some other softwares too for the price of nuts

Felicity, you haven’t been paying attention, have you? If you had, you’ll know how it’s going to turn out if The Reverend has a choice between spending his hard-earned cash on either:

A: Any Microsoft product, or…
B: Nuts

Beer and nibblies anyone?

Spam Observations #39

My newest pal, Roberto Schwartz, wrote to me today with this question:

Does Size Matter?

Which is evidently rhetorical, because he answers it immediately:

60% of WOMEN said thay were UNHAPPY with their lover”s P* size!

I’m assuming, from context and plenty of familiarity with these kinds of emails, that when Roberto coquettishly says P* Size he means Penis Size as opposed to, oh, Pupil Size or Pelvis Size.

Rather unsurprisingly, he offers a remedy for one afflicted with such an awful handicap:

Introducing the Newest, Safest. and Most Advanced
Solution in Pnis En1argment. Anywhere!

… and some hyperbole as well:

Millions of men are already applying male enhan(ement pat(hes daily and watching their size and drive go through the roof!

Through the roof! Oh my! It has to be acknowledged: that’s quite an impressive result. Uncomfortable, probably, and possibly quite embarrassing and offputting at lunch in the cafeteria, but yes, pretty impressive in a Hollywood CGI Monster kind of way.

Further to this, Roberto adds:

P.atches deliver the product into your system in a quicker
and more efficient manner than a pi11 ever could. They are also safer and more discrete!

Discrete? Well, I guess the patches themselves might be, but let’s face it, with millions of surging tumescent members destroying skylights across the country it’s hardly going to be much of a secret is it?