Whenever I delete spam mails from this blog I’m intrigued by their prose style. Sent by shadowy advertisers, this special type of spam is targeted at blogs. I’m still fooled sometimes because they quote the title of one of my own blog posts, and appear to be a response to something I’ve said. The very first spam mail I received on my website said, ‘This post is great. May I copy it to my own website?’ I clicked on ‘reply’ and was about to type a friendly note when I noticed the name of the originating website, definitely on what cartoonist Gary Larson would call ‘the far side.’

Some of the spam mails masquerade as sensible observations.  Some start out normal and career off the rails: ‘The best point about this writer is nakreativil!!!’ was one example. ‘The word Internet has a capital letter inside it, no less!’ , was another. Sometimes they’re unashamed gobbledygook: ‘confound sledges age hot investments regret exponential winter socks’.

Occasionally they contain surprising slivers of philosophy, and perhaps it’s not surprising that this type seems to come from Russia. ‘Cognitive but not convincing’, complained a dubious advertiser this morning. ‘What it lacks is what it does not understand.’ Fair enough.

The second one said, ‘I am always returning moment after moment with anxious haste to this site. Grasp the opportunity for intriguing visions of oversize!’

Sometimes the spam mails have their own poetry. An advert for slimming pills requested plaintively, ‘A soup for me, please.’

Another declared simply, ‘I have little time.’