FinermanWorks

I am learning to appreciate pornographic spam.  At least, it is grammatical and intelligible.  None has yet offered to enhance my pensive.

In sorry contrast, consider these messages.  Here is one from devoted reader Accutleroorie:

Converting Measurements Online

The Internet has made it easier to switch sundry measurements. Unprejudiced be appropriate online and type the measurements you after to convert. You pleasure see not too sites. Click one.

You will see fields with labels like “cm to in”, “in to cm”, mm to cm” etc. Reasonable put down the figure you necessitate to change. Click “work out” or “change”. The results will-power be displayed. There are also online calculators you can use.

Worse, I think that this was plagiarized from my television owner’s manual.

And I just heard from my enthusiastic reader Gearldine Delashmutt:

a lot far more webmasters ever before determine all your things internet websites prefer to offer you folks may fit appropriate in preparing to check back

Yes, please do check back and I’ll teach you how to spell Geraldine.  In your case, Ms. Delashmutt, crime doesn’t pay, and high school evidently didn’t either.

I obviously don’t have a criminal mind, despite being in public relations, so I don’t understand the point of this illiterate messages.  Am I supposed to be lured by “Gearldine” to divulge my credit cards or social security number?  I am not offering my editorial services to aspiring felons–other than MBAs–but why don’t you sociopaths just plagiarize my work.  

Really, you are likely to get more readers/victims with this lead:

Today is the 196th anniversary of Waterloo. As you can imagine, I have spent the day comforting Catherine Deneuve, Carol Bouquet, Juliette Binoche and Eva Green. (All right, try to imagine it.)

Besides, the name Eugene Finerman seems somewhat more plausible than Gearldine Delashmutt.

p.s.  And since it really is the anniversary of Waterloo: https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/06/18/waterloo-or-lieu-2/

Ekstra, że na koniec, wchodząc na tę stronkę, znalazłem to czego szukałem… Na nieszczęście na Google trafiam na tak dużą liczbę chłamu, że z trudem się w tym odnaleźć. Kapitalnie napisany i zadbany blog. Jeszcze tu na pewno wrócę. Dodałem do ulubionych. Pozdrowienia znad morza.

I have no idea what this means.  Of course, I’d like to think that I have a fan club in Cracow.  Perhaps I am more amusing in Polish than English.  On the other hand, this could also be a death threat or at least the more Anti-Semitic passages from “Taras Bulba.”  (Somehow, those were omitted from the Tony Curtis movie.)

I discovered your blog last week and started follow your posts religiously. I have not commented on any blog just yet but I was thinking I would love to. It’s really exciting to actually contribute to a article even if it’s only a blog. I really don’t know exactly what to write other than I really enjoyed reading through 2 of the articles. Nice articles indeed. I sure will keep visiting your blog weekly. I learned quite a bit from you. Thx!

Of course, this praise is gratifying but I was especially intrigued by the sender’s signature:  Free-Sex-Chat.  I wonder if she (Prosaic, bourgeois me  hopes that it is a she!) thinks that we are in the same business.  My discourses on the Treaty of Westphalia may be more arousing than I realized.  She presumably charges by the minute; perhaps I should charge by the footnote (or the parenthesis). 

If I am recommended reading at certain brothels, it must be the ones that cater to the most prestigious clientele.  My enthusiast–Ms. Free-Sex-Chat–is probably quoting me even as she is spanking Sen. David Vitter or Gov. Eliot Spitzer.

Of course, I get my share of spam.  Some are prurient offers:  “Would you like people to think that you are shoplifting a flagpole?”  (No, I wouldn’t.)  Then, there are barely incoherent scams:  “Very brilliant writing you make.  Please link to sweatshopsareus.com.”  However, I was intrigued by this intrusion.

Hello, just to let you know that a superb estate is now for
sale in St-Nicolas, Québec, Canada. The 1,888 sq.ft. house
is build on a 45,000 sq.ft. woodland next to the chaudière
river and offer a magnific natural waterfall. It’s a must
see !

I wonder what I wrote that somehow sent a gullibility alert to this realtor.  Was it my essay on Captain Dreyfus? 

“Who cares about your disgrace and vilification when you can be imprisoned in beautiful St-Nicholas?  None of the heat and inconvenience of a dark cell on Devil’s Island.  Here you’ll wish that really were guilty, and would that Emile Zola stop all the annoying exoneration!”

Perhaps it was my discussion of the Hundred Years War and an obviously unbalanced shepherdess…;

“Is there that special someone in your family who hears voices and makes all sorts of psychotic pronouncements?  We all have a niece like that.  Why have her humiliate you in public when you can stow her in rural Quebec.  Beautiful, and all so conveniently isolated St-Nicholas is the perfect site for indefinite confinement.  And if you’ve any other solution, we won’t notice or just assume that you are burning leaves.”

And now I have to wonder what type of spam this musing will incite.

p.s.  Let’s not forget the historic significance of this day:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/08/07/profiles-in-futility-2/

First, my RDA of Spam:

Dear Sir/Madam,  (Alas, I am at the age when the difference is becoming negligible.)

We have visited your website (www.finermanworks.com) and discovered that your product has amazing business potential through the website.  (Yes, it isn’t amazing how many MBAs act Byzantine without the least idea who the Byzantines were.  But, now with Finermanworks, major corporations can justify their incompetence and malfeasance with historical precedence.  John Mack of Morgue Stagnant can compare himself to King John II at the battle of Poitiers:  “I had no idea that the English knew archery.”)

But we found that your website is not registered in most of the leading search engines and directories, which is a great disadvantage.  (Unfortunately, when potential customers do a computer search for “hot Swedish teenagers”, they rarely want discussions of Charles XII.)

We at Opal Infotech offer professional services to market your website.  (Both my mother-in-law and my Rabbi tells everyone that I was on  Jeopardy.  I don’t see how you can do better than that.) 

Thanking you
Ms. Madhu Jaggi

Madhu, by a remarkable coincidence, today’s RDA of Irony explains why your letter was not in French:  https://finermanworks.com/your_rda_of_irony/2009/01/22/etiquette-and-empire/

Dear Comcast Customer:
ACTION REQUIRED: Comcast has determined that your computer(s) have been used to send unsolicited email (“spam”)

That message from Comcast certainly came as a surprise. Perhaps my idea of satire is Comcast’s idea of spam. Now that I am being monitored as a miscreant, I’d better forgo my next get-rich-quick scheme:

INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF BYZANTINE HISTORY BY UP TO SIX INCHES!

I spent the better part of yesterday morning attempting to persuade Comcast that I was more pedantic than criminal. I doubt any of you has been spared the agonies of customer service.  (You Catholic readers can count it as time off in Purgatory.) You start by performing a Rachmaninoff concerto on your phone key pad.

English-press one. Home phone–starting with area code. Year of statehood–first three digits. Internet Service press four. Internet service in English–press 8. Email problem–press three, zero, and star. Tech support–press six, star, and ampersand. Instructions for ampersand–press first four Fibonacci numbers. Tutorial on Fibonacci–press last four digits on your Visa. Repeat options–press r-e-p-e-a-t-o-p-t-i-o-n-s on your keypad.

The Comcast system has acoustic sensitivity and when it finally hears you weeping, it will transfer you to a human. Your relief will be short-lived because your tech support will immediately put you on hold and you will then be subjected to Muzak. While listening to an accordion rendition of Rhinestone Cowboy or some other musical monstrosity, keep in mind that the particular selection was not random or haphazard. That music has a diabolical intent. If you cannot be induced into hanging up, at least the fourteen loopings of Rhinestone Cowboy will leave your mind a passive pulp willing to accept any indignity or incompetence from Comcast. I was ready to confess to any crime including the assassination of William McKinley.

However Muzak can also be diabolically sublime. I once had a complaint with Charles Schwab, and–standard operating procedure–its customer service immediately put me on hold. Instead of a tinny cacophony, however, the Muzak was Mozart. Those clever fiends at Schwab were telling me, “Here is the work of a genius, the musical apotheosis of the Enlightenment, who died at 35–and you want to quibble about money.” Schwab had made a $1800 mistake but now I was the one ashamed.

But how was my problem with Comcast finally resolved? I really do not know. Are you reading this?