From The Spamfiles

Time to spam it up.

It’s very confused.

Uh, Lissa, nine videos clearly outweigh nine pictures. You don’t downgrade your offers. Come on. Common sense.

Greg’s been busy again. Also, Elfrieda, Faustino, Leandro… all excellent names.

Okay, a lot to unpack here. The implication is that strippers are somehow not “normal girls” which is… yeah, it’s offensive. The reveal of something named “Stripper Shark”, the ultimate “Stripper Banging System” is both offensive and highly disturbing.

Sometimes spam doesn’t try.

Huh, is the Stripper Shark from Shark Tank too? I mean, I assume it’s not but you know. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out it was.

I just… This is a woman named James? Whose one tweet is “I thank god in my life”? …Is that a frigging gun?!?!???!!!

Mushrooms

Mushrooms often pop up around where I live, but this is kind of ridiculous.

I had to point them out because they look like fallen acorns. But nope, they're mushrooms and they’re growing out of the sidewalk. I have a better picture of another set here:

I’m sure what really happened is that the crack was already there and the mushrooms just grew. Although the way the pavement is pushed out… almost as if it’s coming from underneath…

From The Spamfiles

It’s that time again. You know, when I don’t feel like coming up with an original idea.

Wow, a spammer with a man’s name. That might be the first time that’s ever happened.

Honestly, I don’t know which is more disturbing, the fact that the same message is from “your enemy” and “your mother” or the donkey hole comment. Donkey hole? Are they trying to say asshole? That’s a real bad translation job.

…The tongue really creeps me out.

All caps makes it more official.

A spammer saying they don’t want me to reply to them. It’s definitely a different strategy.

Dear god. I was the spammer the entire time!

Mysteries

Not, like, the genre. Just something weird. Last week I got an email that I first thought was spam, but then realized wasn’t:

1. I didn’t order any appliance repair.

2. I looked up the case number, and it’s for a top loading washer/dryer, which I don’t even have.

3. The company it came from is in New York City, like four hours away from where I live.

So, yeah. This isn’t for me. I don’t know why or how I could have gotten this. I don’t know if someone gave them a fake email address or maybe just transposed a character somewhere. Honeil4(at)gmail(dot)com could be wondering why their confirmation email never showed up.

Anyway, I just thought that was weird. Have you ever gotten anything that was meant for anyone else? What did you do about it?

Did You Even Read The Post?

Got another crazy spam I couldn’t resist sharing.

December two thousand frigging ten, in other words the year I started this blog. Said post, as was typical of my early rambley posts, prattled on about books and forgetting the key to my mom’s house and having to creatively think of a way in. I sure as hell didn’t share any fitness resources. Apparently they don’t think people will check. Which…yeah, spam all over.

Things I can’t help but notice:

“Data-backed study” as opposed to all those studies without any data.

What usage of fitness and food related posts? How are they being used? You might as well say it’s a study of water posts on Facebook.

Fitness and Food are capitalized. Instagram is not. I find this curious.

Also, looking up the website Morgan Reiner is emailing me from indicates that it’s no longer in use. Fitnessgoals.com is still a site, but it’s “About Us” section reveals very little about who’s actually running it. Overall, shady as hell.

What do you think, audience? Do you find it valuable? What do you think this Morgan Reiner is after?

More Weird Searches

Why do I do this? Is a good question that never comes up in my weird searches, although you’d think it would.

What is a fidget spinner. I think my mom must have written this one.

Three of these I ask myself every day. I’ve never heard of “how can anyone tell you”. I guess it’s a song?

Honestly, if it wasn’t for autocorrect I would never be able to spell any of these. Except actually. I got that one down. I’m pretty good with congratulations, but every now and then my fingers hit d instead of t. It just sounds like a d, you know?

Now I’m wondering why the hell somebody’s poop is green. Maybe it’s from the snakes that make your right ear ring.

And now we clearly just have people who don’t understand the way the internet has changed businesses. As well as people who didn’t have to sit through School House Rock when they were kids. It wouldn’t surprise me if there was a lot of overlap between those groups.

More Weird Searches

It’s been a few months since I’ve done this so why not?

I’m sensing a pattern here.

Because they’re morons.

Dude. Buddy. Pal. You need to set up your calendar alerts before the holiday.

I looked up despacito to see what it was and then saw it had to do with Justin Bieber and I deleted my history then burned my computer.

…Why is Caillou bald? Frig. This is going to keep me up all night.

Ever searched for anything  and had something  funny come up?

From The Spamfiles

Might as well, seeing as that’s what the rest of the month has been about!

HOT girls! They’re on fire! Please send an ambulance!

She doesn’t want to be taken advantage of! So give her your social security number.

There is nothing more suspicious than Jennifer spelled with one N and two F’s.

The poor grammar is typical, but usually the cancer widows are better about spelling. She’s going to have to find someone else to distribute her money to keep it from her husband’s adorpted child.

I’m kind of afraid to find out what you’re supposed to do with that apple cider vinegar.

…Spam isn’t even pretending that it’s not directed at serial killers anymore.

Spam?

Yes, another entry in what is coincidentally becoming spam month. I got this last week and it was too outlandish not to share right away.

Harsh, right? I honestly thought at first that it was in my spam folder in error, except… there’s something off about it, even beyond the crazy ranting. There’s the fact that they call me by my email address, which, come on, who does that? And it’s so non-specific. Just that I’ve pissed this obvious lunatic off somehow. And apparently so did my sister? Which is even weirder.

Not that she pissed someone off to this level. That I believe. But I’ve mentioned having a sister very, very few times and she doesn’t even have that email address, so there’s no connection there. Like I said, the whole thing is off.

I was suspicious enough about it that I googled first the name (no results) and then the web domain. That got something. Some guy was talking about receiving an almost identical message, including the mention of the sister. It got him in a lot of trouble with his girlfriend, who thought he was cheating on her. Do they just send these out to everyone in hopes that they have a sister? Because there are plenty of people without one.

Then a few days ago I got another one:

Different email address and mostly different name, except for the EJ. The diction is so weird! “I do not know why”, “It does not mean anything” “Have you not heard of hook up?”. Which, by the way, makes this even more preposterous. Perhaps that was the point. Antagonize me until I reveal personal information to disprove that I’m the person they’re looking for. Someone should inform them that I don’t bother arguing with crazy.

Have any of you ever received any spam like this? Any thoughts as to what the point of this thing was?

More Weird Searches

There is nothing weirder than trying to look something up and have Google autofill something that you’re afraid will get you arrested for looking at it. Seriously, why do people ask these questions?

At first I was laughing, because it’s really easy to stop singing, but then I remembered that there are things like Tourette’s where people can’t help it and I felt like a jerk.

…Maybe the internet isn’t the one you should be asking why you got married. Maybe if you are, your marriage is in serious trouble.

Now, this one we can all laugh at. Also, asparagus.

Your goldfish didn’t die of natural causes. It was murder!

Obviously therealreal is legit. It has two reals in it.

You ever search and wind up stumbling over something funny?

Spam Senses

I got a weird email the other day:

Personally, I have no trouble with being more accessible to people who need it. If there was an actual problem with my blog, then I would work on fixing it. But!

My spam senses were tingling when I read this, for several reasons. First of all, this person mentioned that this was a follow up to a message I don’t remember seeing before, a trope so common that I put it on Spam Bingo. Next is the fact that I don’t actually have a link to that website. Hell, that link to my archive they have doesn’t even exist because I never posted on June 1, 2015. Unless they’re talking about January 6, 2015, which I did post on, although I never use that date format. And also does not have any calendar links on it. (It was actually my resolutions post for the year)

So, yeah. Pretty suspicious, “Amanda Soriano”. I didn’t click on the links they included (who knows where they really led), but I did look up the places they linked to. WebAIM is a real thing to check web page accessibility and The Time Now is a digital calendar. I guess this was some sort of campaign to get people to use one or the other. Or both. If so, it was a very poor one because it is very scammy in nature. The only thing less trustworthy is a robo call from the IRS asking you to pay an overdue tax bill with Best Buy gift cards.

That actually happened. It was reported in the paper. People fell for it, so maybe this isn’t so far off the mark.

Anyway, keep an eye out for scams and don’t ever click on any links in an email even if it looks like it’s to a legitimate site. This has been a public service message brought to you by scammers and the fact that I had nothing else to post about.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Eat lots of candy.

Admissions

Please look at these actual factual reasons people were committed to an asylum in the late nineteenth century.

I’m not even sure where to begin. First of all, how many of these are just being a woman who’s in her husband’s way? Female disease and woman trouble, ill treatment by husband (like, you know, being involuntarily committed), imaginary female trouble, hysteria. And of course rumor of husband murder. And maybe it’s my uterine derangement talking, but isn’t involuntary confinement what being committed to an asylum all about?

Plus there’s things beyond that that are totally objective. Politics, political excitement, religious enthusiasm, superstition, over action of the mind, and about a million other things that you can claim of anyone you don’t like. You better not study hard because if you do, bam, you’re getting committed. Don’t read any novels, either.

In truth, it’s actually a list of why some people were committed, i.e. their relatives said these were symptoms of their mental illness. Still though. People pretty much used anything as an excuse. Although shooting your daughter is a pretty good reason for being locked up.

Left Behind

I’ve only mentioned this a couple of times, so you might not be aware of it, but my brother is in the Navy, and he’s stationed in Japan. When he’s not on a ship, he lives in Tokyo pretty much full time. He came home recently, but only for about ten days, and he stayed with my mom of course. After he went back to Japan though, my mom told me that he left a few things behind.

She had trouble figuring out what it was since it’s in freaking Japanese. But if you look at the top of the tin…

You find the only English on the thing. The picture isn’t very good, but it says “Stomachic & Antacid”. Stomachic?

Yeah, apparently it is a word, meaning relating to or beneficial for the stomach, and it can be used as a noun in relation to a medicine. God only knows how the Japanese manufacturers found that word. I’m guessing someone used their equivalent of Google Translate.

All the ingredients on it are in Japanese (kanji script, I think), but it smells like cinnamon, which makes sense since cinnamon is supposed to be good for digestion. My brother’s on a ship right now but I’d really like to ask him if it works. Maybe not, since he did leave it behind…

More Weird Searches

Why am I always able to find more of these? And why do I find them so amusing?

Honestly, if you don’t know how to get home I’m not sure the internet is going to help you. And how do I love thee?

How much does water weigh. Not a gallon of water like above query, which is something that can be solved. Just water, in general. It could be the weight of the smallest quantity of water, one molecule (~2.989*10^-23 grams) or all water everywhere (???).

I need a hero? Uh…I’m not really sure how to react to this. But I do need money.

Interphase is the time of rest before a cell divides. Clearly someone is looking up answers to their biology homework. Good luck finding out what happens when you die.

If you start talking about having powers, I can guarantee you a couple of black eyes.

And finally, not long ago, I wanted to go to Wikipedia to look up something inconsequential. So I begin typing the address in. And these are what auto-fills in.

I’d like to point out that I had just, just cleared my history so there was literally nothing for it to base these on. It just gives me Drug Test, something about encryption keys, Windows 8 (ugh), and a Czechoslovakian-Austrian-German millionaire. Okay.