Well, I’ve saved up 28,953 or so absolutely no-good spam messages just to “analyze” them. The saving’s easy. The analyzing, like about everything else in my life beyond the involuntary functions these days, is hard. But while I’m waiting for that magic moment when synapses fire and I break free of inertia and begin spam analysis — it could happen this year — I see a story from last Thursday’s The New York Times (already in the paid archives) on one of my favorite spam subjects: The names of senders:
“Yours Not So Truly, J. Goodspam
By Lisa Napoli
“PURPOSES L. XYLOPHONIST sounds like my kind of man. Unique. Creative. Focused, with a hint of formality. … There is no way to be certain that Mr. Xylophonist is, in fact, a mister. Actually, it is a pretty safe bet he is not a person at all. …”
[Later, much later: Well, here it is at the end of October, and the spam analysis never happened. When TechTV shut down earlier this year, and I got booted out with almost everyone else, I simply deleted that wonderful storehouse of spam. On the other hand, I get plenty of new junk messages to ponder each and every day.]