anywhereisbetter

Like pretty much everyone else, junk mail isn’t something I enjoy finding in my inbox. In fact, there are times that I find these pesky little messages downright offensive. I do not appreciate their suggestions that I can’t afford my mortgage, need investment advice, and suffer from a dearth of sexual prowess. In fact, I do not invest in stocks, and if it’s all the same to your online pharmacy, I’ll keep the details of my sex life between me and my unfortunate partner. And just because I like planting flowers doesn’t make me a homeowner, so quit calling me that.

Most junk mail gets filtered—appropriately enough—into my junk mail folder, but the filter is occasionally overzealous, so now and then, I delve into the junk bin to look for anything that might be important. Usually all I find are more offers for affordable impotence remedies, but I can’t help but laugh at some of the ridiculous names that populate the “From” field in these messages. Randomly generated by a simple program pulling words from the dictionary—and adding a middle initial for grandiosity’s sake—these fabricated monikers are proof that, after years of trite sitcoms and bad stand-up, humankind has at last reduced comedy to one simple formula. Here are a few of my favorites, pulled directly from my own email:

Spindliest H. Palpitates
Conjurer A. Watchword
Socialization T. Obloquy
Heinously T. Mimosa
Darkness E. Daisy

Conjurer A. Watchword could easily be a Harry Potter character, and that last one sounds like the name of a drummer who might have toured with Christian Death. It doesn’t have quite the same ring, but Heinously T. Mimosa reminds me of every hangover brunch I’ve ever had. The others read like the Mirriam Webster Word of the Day email. “Obloquy” isn’t exactly the kind of thing that gets thrown around in Parade Magazine, after all. And who knew that “spindliest” was a word? To think that all this time, I’ve been using “most spindly.”

My other favorite phenomenon of junk mail is, in an effort to evade filtering, the way some messages include several lines of text before getting to the point. Occasionally, I’ll recognize the text as part of a well known novel or, more humorously, great work of philosophy—my favorite being an excerpt from Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Man. Other times, they read like a Japanese novel translated through Babelfish. I like taking both types and pasting them into Instant Messenger chats with random people who do not know me. Hilarous… and creepy. Maybe junk mail is good for something.