Category: Entertainment

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Remember Alien vs. Hunter and other films with ripoff titles like Snakes on a Train? It turns out that Asylum has actually done a sequel to Transmorphers (yes, they went there): Transmorphers: Fall of Man.

DVD case for Transmorphers: Fall of Man

As if the original title wasn’t enough, they actually played on the title of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen when they did their own sequel!

And yes, that does say Bruce Boxleitner on the box.

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I’ve just started re-reading Neverwhere. When Richard and Door first meet — after her injury has started to heal, anyway — he introduces himself as “Richard. Richard Mayhew. Dick,” A page or two later, Door calls him “Richardrichardmayhewdick.”

IIRC Neil Gaiman said he stole the joke from Douglas Adams, who had someone refer to “Dentarthurdent” in one of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy books, but I always think of a Charlie’s Angels episode in which someone greeted “Bosleyjohnbosley.”

The thing is, I barely remember Charlie’s Angels, so the way I remember it is actually as “Bosleytombosley” … and in my memory, she’s saying it to Tom Bosley!

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lol_spamSometimes you’ve just got to laugh, you know?

I remember getting my first piece of spam in college, in the days before anyone bothered with filters because spam was so rare, and thinking, “this could get bad.” Talk about the understatement of the decade! Since the mid-1990s, recipients and sysadmins have come up with more and more elaborate ways to block the annoyance, and the spammers have developed ever more convoluted ways to get around our filters.

And sometimes, those convolutions are frakking hilarious.

Weird word substitutions, funny misspellings (deliberate and otherwise), utter nonsense, creative euphemisms and more lurk in the world’s junk mail folders. Half of the spam category on this blog isn’t serious commentary — it’s examples of clueless or unintentionally funny quotes from actual spam.

All-New Spams Just For You!

These are all quotes (mostly subjects) from spam I’ve seen:

  • Pirate spam: first ten picks of the day in the marrrrrket
  • Ghost spam: Reeeeeeegaiiin your yooooouth with Humaaaaaaan Grooooowth Hoormooooooone!
  • Crazy spam: I’m looking for a good trans_universal transportation unit.
  • Recipe spam: The Zucchini Loaf recipe is not for me
  • Auto-spam: Sincerely, Random Name
  • Euphemism spam: Make your love torpedo drive all the way to her tanker.
  • Word Salad spam: Dear me, that evil car sensibly stung out of this suspicious slot tipps.
  • Not-What-They-Meant spam: The way to her heart is through her wrist
  • Random Star Trek spam: trill boxing
  • Book Quote spam: Mazrim Taim was one of those, raising an army and ravaging Saldaea before he was taken. [Believe it or not, this is not the only The Wheel of Time spam I’ve seen!]

A few weeks ago I realized most of these were really short, and I’d been posting them to Twitter. Why not set up a dedicated account for spam humor? So I set up @lol_spam and started posting the funnier subjects I came across, usually with a comment.

I was definitely inspired by the webcomic Spamusement, but I can’t draw worth beans. A line of snarky commentary? That I can do! And I was almost certainly influenced by artist Linzie Hunter’s Spam one-liner postcards, though I’d somehow forgotten about them until someone posted a link to the set yesterday.

How I Got 6 Followers on Twitter! (And You Can Too!)

Where am I getting the spam quotes?

  • Spam sent to me (most of it in the discards, fortunately).
  • Spam sent to the postmaster/admin accounts where I work.
  • Spam sent to our spamtraps.

I see a lot of spam, and I don’t want to simply flood people’s Twitter streams with, well, more of it, so I’m using FutureTweets to spread things out to a more manageable 1 or 2 posts per day. At the moment I’m almost 3 weeks ahead.

I’m also keeping an eye on a twitter search for “spam subject” and retweeting the funniest ones.

Bringing the Funny

So if you use Twitter, take a look at @lol_spam. Who knows? You just might laugh!

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