Spam! Courtesy of Cailey

It's been awhile since I've had a good spam email, but thankfully, my friend Cailey is on the case and sent me this beauty today. Most of the email is pretty boring and appears to be related to insurance, but the first bit is pure gold and almost makes me want to reply.

From: Prophet Ogidiga
Subject: CONTACT ME NOW 

DO YOU NEED A POWERFUL SPELL CASTER? CONTACT ME NOW PROPHET OGIDIGA ON MY EMAIL: [email address omitted]

First off, if someone named "Prophet Ogidiga emails you with a subject line like "CONTACT ME NOW," doesn't that kind of make you want to know what they have to say? This person is a prophet! They might hold your life in the balance! And then you open the email, and yes, I do need a powerful spell caster.

The next bit of the email is not in English. At first I thought it was Latin and, therefore, the beginnings of a powerful spell. You know, to show what Prophet Ogidiga can do. But alas, it was just Spanish with an English translation below. And, as I said, it was about insurance coverage, but I have to wonder if they mean real insurance or the kind of insurance that you can only get when you've enlisted the services of a powerful spell caster. The double indemnity clause in that contract must be amazing. 

#1 Google Images result for "powerful spell caster"

Thanks, Cailey, for your excellent contribution. And, dear readers, if you would like to review some of my awesome past emails, check out the links below:

• A spam-related post!
• Email from my gym
• Best Email of the Day
• write you back 9
• "Have we considered the possibility that doctors don't know how to use umbrellas?"  

A spam-related post!

Hey there, dear readers. My attempts at getting back into blogging seem to have stymied. But now I'm back, with an awesome bit of spam! This is gonna get super meta. Prepare yourselves!

Yesterday I was checking to see if there were any new comments here on the blog. And this is what I found:

First of all, it was posted by a "person" named "get pregnant after miscarriage." That right there is bizarre and a bit uncomfortable. But then you think, "I wonder what get pregnant after miscarriage wants to say on my blog. Probably something about mothers and the miracle of life. Hey, I might get some insight here!" Here's what gpam had to say:

Shoes are often one of the most overlooked components in a wardrobe. But shoes can be one of the best ways to add a little bit of zest to an outfit. While shoes started out as a practical foot covering, they have evolved into fashion statements. 

Wow. Good point, gpam!!  So often I overlook, not only shoes, but the fact that they are part of fashion. Usually I just wrap plastic grocery bags around my feet before I leave the house, but thanks to this insightful comment on my blog, I now know that shoes have evolved and I can actually wear them in order to accessorize an outfit.

Oh, and what blog post was this appended to? Actually somewhat appropriately, it was on another post about amusing electronic correspondence. Check it out. And then go leave a non sequitur comment somewhere.

write you back 9

If you are a frequent reader of this blog, you probably know that I have a deep and abiding love of bad spam mail. I have been so vocal about this love, in fact, that one of my coworkers has taken to printing out her best spam emails for me. I have a real gem for you today, but first I want to encourage you to watch out if you have a Hotmail account.

I have one that I've been using since high school as a place where junk mail can be sent. It's probably not a surprise, then, that this fortress of internet security was hacked a couple of months ago. I was informed by several friends that they had received a spam message from "me" which sent me into a fevered rush of password changes. The following Monday, the coworker who prints out spam for me had also received this important message from "Kimber." Here's how it goes. See you if can tell that I didn't really write it.

Subject: write you back                                            9

I can not believe that it is so cheap and top quality.Why they have so many nice things.Please buy soon. [link]

For the record, the 9 was there exactly as I have typed it, spaces and all.

I don't think anyone I know was fooled into clicking the link. If you were, I'm sorry, but that's on you. To be fair, you were probably confused because "Why they have so many nice things" is one of my favorite things to say. I wonder if that was a question or an exclamation. Probably a question, but maybe I said it like, "Why, they have so many nice things!" Yeah, maybe it was a Polly Anna-esque indication of surprise. Anyway, that's all been cleared up, but be always vigilant, my friends. It could happen to you!

Now on to today's spam. This one comes from Nancy. Note that where I say "flower" there was actually a tiny picture of a flower in the email. I don't know how she did that. Nancy is very computer-savvy.

Greetings from Nancy (flower flower)
How are you today? and how about your health? hope fine and you are doing well, My Name is Nancy, I am looking for a very nice  who the meaning of love, caring, honest, matured, understanding, and of good character, then after going via this search i pick interest in you.

So i will like you to write me with my E-mail address which is as follow, for me to tell you more about me, and as well give you my pictures because thanks Your New Friend
Miss Nancy (flower flower flower)

My favorite part is when she says "because thanks." Nancy wants to give me her pictures; no explanation needed! Also note that she is looking for "a very nice." Man? Woman? Gullible patsy? She isn't picky. Nancy's just looking for love. And how lucky I am that she pick interest in me!

"Have we considered the possibility that doctors don't know how to use umbrellas?"

DISCLAIMER: I have nothing against doctors. I appreciate what they do and am sure that most of them can use umbrellas without incident.

I have a couple of work anecdotes from yesterday.

The first involves the extremely tedious and time-consuming task I did for most of the morning. For those of you just joining us, I work for a promotional products company. We sell hats, cups, pens, shirts, etc. Pretty much anything our customers want their logo on, we can get it for them.

Well, we recently sold a bunch of umbrellas to some doctors. Some fancy gift or other. They were nice big umbrellas with a button that opens and closes them, but we had some complaints that the open/close buttons did not work. So, because we have good customer service, my boss took the umbrellas back to have someone (i.e. me) test them.

This was not a difficult task by any means, but after opening each umbrella, I had to repackage it in not one but two protective sleeves. I did about fifty umbrellas and it took me nearly three hours. And get this. They. All. Worked. We had two that were defective. Possibly the very two that caused the complaint in the first place. I have to hope that they tried more than two before claiming they were broken.

So I can't help but think, maybe they were doing it wrong? I don't know. Doesn't seem possible, but there's that old truth that sometimes the smartest people lack basic common sense. Or the ability to open and close an umbrella. With a button.


A functional umbrella 

Two protective sleeves


My other work anecdote for the day is about another sweet junk email one of my co-workers received. This one is not poetic by any means. It is a straight-up scam, but I love the way it was executed. Read for yourself:

ATTENTION: MADAM
Our Ref: 423/909 Date: 4th April 2011
RECONCILIATION / REMITTANCE COMMITTEE

I am assigned by the President, Federal republic of Nigeria , Dr. Goodluck Jonathan to look into the plight of foreigners who were dupe in the cause of retrieving their money from Nigeria . This action taking by His Excellency is born out of enormous complain from foreigner complaining that they were dupe out of their hard earn money by some unscrupulous Nigeria in pretends of helping them.
His Excellency decided to take action on the issue because of the embarrassing status that that has cost this country internationally.
It was on that note that I was drafting in to look into the issue and subsequent recommend further actions to the federal government, however, according to his Excellency, those who genuinely carry out authentic contracts in this country without being paid will be paid immediately. Those that their money was not release from the commercial Banks for one reason or another will also be release. Furthermore, I want to advice that, you get all the necessary documents ready as we will ask of it before any action could be taken.
Do sent your reply to me immediately for further action
Yours truly,
Mahmud Yayale Ahmed
Secretary to the Government
Federal Republic of Nigeria .

That was sent by the Secretary to the Government, so you know it's legit. I love that they think that by piggy-backing off the old Nigerian prince scam, they can trick people into being scammed in exactly the same way. The brilliance of it is that it only targets people who fell for the original scam and are, thus, exponentially more likely to fall for this one than someone who doesn't make a habit of sending all their financial information to strangers over the internet. Most people will see through it immediately, but you're always going to have people that go, "Yeah, I want my money back. President Goodluck is such a nice guy for doing that for me."

So if you or anyone you know lost some money in the Nigerian prince scam, you can contact mariotorres@interclan.net (<-- the address from which this email was sent). I'm sure he'll help you with that.


On an unrelated note, I really like this Adele CD. And I try not to hold it against her that she is only two months older than I and already has two Grammys.