|
Back to Nightlight Press |
Archive for May 2003 Heads up, I'm going to change my e-mail from kstraub@nightlightpress.com to something else soon, as it's become a sink for spam. About a week ago I received a particular piece of spam with the subject line ">>> F--K YOU ASSH--- <<<," and was going to share it here like, "how is that effective advertising?" Turns out it said something like "I DON'T WANT ANYMORE OF YOUR SPAM S---. YOUR E-MAIL HAS BEEN SUBMITTED TO 500 SPAM COMPANIES!!!!!! GO TO HELL!!!" I don't know how true that number is, but I have been getting a lot more, at least two hundred pieces a day. I suppose this is fallout from whatever stupid website decided to make me a partner in their spam campaign. I still don't know who it was, but I sure hope associating my name with their ads helped them sell more free online Viagra. Kris. This Budget Gourmet lasagna is pretty terrible. More like Budget Gourm-B. Melissa. (closes door to escape pun) Kris. (opens door) ... Gourm-B. I just had a sudden memory come over me that I haven't thought about in a long time. I remembered the smell of my grade school lunches my mom made for me. I remember mortadella sandwiches, and how the plastic bag had condensation on the inside, and how the meat kind of inundated everything else in the lunch box after four hours in a warm classroom. And I remember feeling a generic anxiety. You know, my dad and I thought of the Matrix first. See, but we'll never get heralded as great filmmakers. In our version, in the future, there is a tremendous organ shortage, and similar to Soylent Green, if you submit to some huge government surgical concern, you get to live out the rest of your life in total comfort, in a computer-generated world full of enjoyment and wealth and fun, piped into your brain. Meanwhile, in the waking world, your organs would be harvested. You're given some standard time to live (stay of termination), but beyond that, you could die at any time, since you'll be missing a lung, a kidney, most of your liver, etc. Anyway, one particular volunteer signs up, is put to sleep, enters the virtual world, discovers it's really not at all what the creators said it would be. It's a scam, and he has to wake up and tell the world what's happening, and I envisioned the last part of the book (it was to be a novel) having the guy wake up, doped to not feel pain, and discover he's missing an eye, lung, length of intestine, certain muscles, all kinds of stuff, and he'd have to maneuver this carcass of his to the authorities without getting caught by the medical outfit. Also, in the Matrix, why use humans who'd require the most complex Matrix of all? As Scott Kurtz says, how about cows? Their Matrix would be one big grassy field. Or blue whales? I bet you could get tons more of energy out of them. Congrats to Sumana on her job at Salon. I just realized something. Salon used to offer full articles, and if you wanted more full articles and exclusive content, you had to pay for it or watch the ad. Now everything is blocked, for the most part, except for the first paragraph of everything. The content is still referred to, though, as "entering Salon Premium." If so, what's plain old Salon then? Subject: IT'S GONNA BE FREE 34015 Date: Thu, 5 Dec 2002 17:02:50 -0800 (PST) From: Kristofer Straub Reply-To: kstraub@nightlightpress.com To: kstraub@nightlightpress.com SPAM: -------------------- Start SpamAssassin results ---------------------- SPAM: This mail is probably spam. The original message has been altered SPAM: so you can recognise or block similar unwanted mail in future. SPAM: See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details. SPAM: SPAM: Content analysis details: (7.50 hits, 5 required) SPAM: MIME_BOUND_DIGITS_5 (1.7 points) Spam tool pattern in MIME boundary SPAM: SUBJ_FREE_CAP (0.4 points) Subject contains "FREE" in CAPS SPAM: SENT_IN_COMPLIANCE (1.2 points) BODY: Claims compliance with spam regulations SPAM: COMPLETELY_FREE (0.4 points) BODY: No such thing as a free lunch (2) SPAM: CLICK_BELOW (0.3 points) BODY: Asks you to click below SPAM: SPAM_PHRASE_13_21 (1.3 points) BODY: Spam phrases score is 13 to 21 (high) SPAM: [score: 13] SPAM: LINES_OF_YELLING_2 (0.2 points) BODY: 2 WHOLE LINES OF YELLING DETECTED SPAM: LINES_OF_YELLING (0.2 points) BODY: A WHOLE LINE OF YELLING DETECTED SPAM: SUBJ_ALL_CAPS (0.5 points) Subject is all capitals SPAM: UPPERCASE_25_50 (1.3 points) message body is 25-50% uppercase SPAM: SPAM: -------------------- End of SpamAssassin results --------------------- --0-498877848-1039136570=:24103 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline ancslkehlqwroudpogusofgoiuerotwuriweriuirwer I'M TRYING TO SEE IF I CAN FOOL THE SPAMASSASSIN! FREE! ABSOLUTELY FREE! NICK FRENO: LICENSED TEACHER T-SHIRTS NOW AVAILABLE FOR YOUR CAR OR HOME TELL THE WORLD ABOUT NICK FRENO, FREE, WHEN YOU BUY A T-SHIRT FOR $40.00. NICK FRENO -- IS IT ACTUALLY FREE? NO. ====== This e-mail is sent in compliance with state and federal laws. If this has been sent to you in error, please click here to remove your address from our mailing list. I should rework Lyle (or myself) to do Punchline Prima Facie for SNL. SNL, I think, has been dead for about six or seven years, mostly since the big cast change. There were some winners, but that's thanks to volume. SNL bits now almost always have a really, really obvious upfront thing that the audience can hook into and expect more of. Then SNL just offers variations on that for six minutes. I don't think it works very well. I saw one a few weeks ago where Matthew McConaughey was this office guy who told stories about his wild parties around the water cooler, which all involved beating someone up, and he'd physically act out the stories on a co-worker. I'm trying to think of a better direction for it. The subheading for an article on Doom: David Kushner's new book about id Software calls the company the "Nirvana" of computer gaming. But did John Romero and John Carmack revolutionize the genre, or ruin it? And the subheading for the same article, but under the link to the article on the front page: David Kushner's new book about id Software calls the company the "Nirvana" of computer gaming. But John Romero and John Carmack didn't revolutionize the genre -- they ruined it But Salon.com -- haven't you heard of the secret feature in Doom II, where you can fly inside Satan's brain and shoot Dick Cheney? David Kushner's new book about id Software calls the company the "Nirvana" of computer gaming. John Romero and John Carmack didn't revolutionize the genre -- they totally and awesomely mega-revolutionized it to the height of mankind's achievements I'm not scared of the squares that you've got I'll take, I'll take Jenny for the block Last night, I heard an ad for UPN's Twilight Zone series remake, and its remake of "Eye of the Beholder," that most famous (and profoundly boring) TZ episode, where the pretty girl is considered ugly in a world of pig-faced people. Anybody see it? It was supposed to have a twist that was even more shocking than the original! But I took it to mean that they probably just made the "normal" people really hideous, instead of goofily pig-faced. I remember reading that Twilight Zone had switched from a half-hour format to an hour long, and that the original EotB was one of the first hour-long episodes (if not the first). The problem is that the ironic twist ("she's ugly in that world!") would have run long for a twenty-minute show. Anyway, I guess I'm not too upset at having missed a UPN show. That wasn't Enterprise. (Which I also don't watch.) Apparently a number of people have written my host (Canaca.com) about having received spam sent from my site, or perhaps merely featuring my site in some way. I do not participate in spam, I detest spam, and I get at least a hundred spams in my inbox per day. It makes me sick to think that someone is making me look like I'm actually sending it out. Spam doesn't work, EVER. I HATE it. If you encounter any of these spams, please contact me, and my host if you wish to complain anyway. They're looking into it. Makes me physically ill. I have more information, but I'm not going to link that site here, if they are the ones doing it. It was some post-post-modern weepy goth poetry garbage site I've never heard of before. |
