The Percy Bysshe Shelley of Spam

November 4, 2005

So, I was checking my ‘bulk’ folder this evening — making sure none of your treasured comments happened to get routed to the slush pile — when a message header caught my eye:

You dream of rivers of sperm, of penis enormous and firm.

Now, first of all, let me assure you that I don’t. Dream of ‘rivers of sperm’, that is. Not to the best of my knowledge, anyway. I might dream of falling, or running away from monsters, or — once, rather unfortunately — eating a giant marshmallow. But swiftly-flowing streams of semen? No. It’s possible I’ll have nightmares about it going forward, now that I’m aware someone else has dreamed it up, but up to this point, it’s not been an issue.

And to be honest, the ‘penis enormous and firm’? Haven’t been spending time in the basement, working out blueprints for that one, either. If anything, I might devote effort to finagling my penis into situations I think it might enjoy. I try to be a good penis parent that way. But any other penis — particularly one that’s ‘enormous and firm’ — is on it’s own. Matter of fact, get that thing away from me. And don’t stand behind me; I don’t trust that thing. Perv.

At the same time, though, I’m a sucker for a good poem, so I opened the email. Here’s what I found inside:

You look for a perfect erection, for safety and pure protection.

Okay, look. First of all, kudos on the rhyme; that’s what I came in for, and you didn’t disappoint. Check plus-plus for that. But this is just a blatant lie. An erection may be many things — stimulating, arousing, frightening, amusing, purple, illegal — but it is never ‘safe’. Nor can it ‘protect’ you. From anything… except maybe a smaller erection, somewhere in the vicinity, trying to horn in on the first penis’ territory. I suppose that’s where ‘enormous and firm’ would come in quite handy. So to speak.

Reading further:

You want just to win, not to lose – so viagra is what you choose.

Ah, we’re finally selling product now. Nice. I like that — start with the rhyming, hook in those starry-eyed, semen-rivered dreamers, then hit ’em with the sales pitch. Subtle. And the message is clear — if you want to win in the ‘Mr. Perfect Erection’ competition, this would be the way to go. Just watch out for the Russian judge; you’ll never get a ’10’ out of him. Unless he gets one out of you first, anyway.

So how does our delightful poem wrap up?:

Your dick resembles ugly sponge? Our viagra will make it large.

Oh, now, bother. You were doing so well, too — I was even hoping for a killer snippet of verse to wrap it all together. But no. Now, your true spammer colors finally bleed through. Forget that I never, ever want to think of anything in my nether regions as a sponge — ‘ugly’, ‘fetching’, ‘photogenic’, or otherwise — I’m more disappointed that you tried to rhyme it with ‘large’.

Particularly when there’s so much you could have done with ‘plunge’. Or ‘lunge’. Or even ‘grunge’, if you’d put a little effort into it. Tsk, silly spammer. Tsk, I say.

Still, I take this as a positive sign. I’m still going to delete the reeking nonsense these spammers shovel into my inbox. But if I can occasionally be entertained before sending their crap to email hell? Sure. I’ll have a look. I’m not buying any of their shit — or downloading any ‘viagra attachments’ or ‘river of sperm’ links. But if the spammers are getting more clever with their ad copy, then that’s an extra chuckle or two in my day. And really, isn’t that why we’re here?