Category: Strange World

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I spend a lot more time dealing with spam than I used to, mainly so that all our customers won’t have to. (Most of it is spent adjusting or training the server’s spam filters.) As a result, I often look through spam that I used to just delete. One had a real gem of an unsubscribe notice:

Don’t want to receive our emails anymore? It’s very easy to oppt out. And yes, doing so really will allow you to opppt out. We aren’t just saying that so that we can put on the facade that we’re legitimate advertsers, whilst laughing away, blatantly ignoring remvve requests. If you remove your name from our list, you definitely will be remm,oved. Your name will be marked as r,emoved in our email database, and you won’t receive mail again. We don’t really know how more clearly we can explain this. Just take our word for it. Otherwise, continue toreceive these emails. Now is your chance to opp,t out. Do so by clicking this UNSUBCRIBE link. P.S. – It really works

The best part was the URL:

http:// /optout.php?mail=(my email address)

Now, you don’t have to be a net guru to realize that there is no way that link could possibly work!

It sounds to me like they might be laughing away, blatantly ignoring remove – excuse me, remvve – requests.

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Katie and I were shopping at Whole Foods yesterday, and I saw a box labeled “Nature’s Burger.” It was a mix for making a vegetarian burger patty.

One of the strangest things I’ve seen in vegetarian/vegan products is the suggestion that somehow meat and dairy products are unnatural, but that processing the hell out of a few dozen vegetable distillates into something that vaguely approximates the experience of ground beef is “natural.”

I mean, I’ve seen slogans like “Nature’s alternative to cheese.” Do they find this mysterious vegetable-based mass lying around somewhere? No? It requires industrial processing? Well it’s not natural, then, is it?

In a similar vein, the abbreviation of organically-grown-and-processed to simply “organic” can make for some rather amusing phrasing. The coffee grinder had a sign explaining that it was used for both organic and conventional coffee beans, and if you wanted to ensure that your coffee “remained organic,” you should grind them at home. And yes, I knew what they meant, but I couldn’t help thinking, “What, they’re suddenly going to become silicon-based?”

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When I lived with my family, we used to have just the right type of TV/cable box connection for a really neat trick. My sister and I discovered by accident that, by leaving the TV on channel 4 instead of 3 when switching to cable, we could get the picture from whatever channel was on the cable box (fuzzy, but identifiable) with the audio from channel 4. Combining a dignified-looking lawyer’s speech on the predecessor of Court TV with the audio from a commercial for Pull-Ups was truly quality television. Unfortunately, now my parents have a Dish, which isn’t cooperative.

Meanwhile, our current TV/stereo system is intertwined. The TV audio comes through the stereo speakers, and the DVD and VCR are hooked up to the TV. At the Presidents’ Day BBQ with the usual gang of suspects, we put Star Wars in the VCR for some background entertainment. Enter Jakob Luebke, age 17 months. Displaying remarkable electronics aptitude, he hit the TUNER button and switched the radio from classical to Star, thereby turning the movie into one long music video. It was the strangest way any of us have ever watched A New Hope. Highlights include a Robbins Brothers commercial saying “Dial 1-800-555-RING” just as a ring of debris explodes from Alderaan, Macy Gray performing in the Mos Eisley Cantina, and a used car commercial warning against lemons (“You’ll regret it!”) as a Y-wing blows up. There’s also a bunch of stuff I can’t remember. (Guys?)

So now I’m thinking about other ways to mess with audio and video. We have a large collection of stage-musical soundtracks that include chunks of libretto for better pacing. But darn it, Fellowship still isn’t fast enough to work with Rent……

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