Gmail does a pretty good job of separating spammers from "real" mail and I have a pretty high level of trust that Gmail doesn't dump "real" mail into the Spam "folder."
But sometimes, just to be sure, I check the spam list.
I am a reader - I got my first library card before I went to first grade (I had "proteckzia" as they say in Israel) and I have been addicted to books since. Mind, I can't SPELL worth a bean, but I do read OK.
My daughter, Morgan, inherited her father's reading habits and, like "dear ol' dad" she can sit down to read the Unabridged for hours - sometimes we actually get to the word that caused us to open the tome in the first place. (In a hurry, it's http://m-w.com - much faster. but not nearly as interesting.)
Anyway, back to the point, I recently looked through the list of subjects caught by Gmail's spam detector and discovered a "pot full" of literary teasers.
Most of the spam came from .ro (Romania) or .ru (Russia), although an interesting one came from .pt (Portugal).
Initially I thought the spammers were becoming literate. Subjects included
{Subject} Thou Faery Voyager that dost float
[Wordsworth, To H.C.; http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/poems-in-two-vols-1/17/]
{Opening line} Bewicks History of British Birds http:||vtime.do.sapo. pt/alcoholism . html
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bewick]
{Subject} Ere a leaf is on a bush
[Ere a leaf is on a bush, In the time before the thrush. Has a thought about her nest, Thou wilt come with half a call, Spreading out thy glossy breast ... from a poem by Billy Wordsworth - see http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/William_Wordsworth/william_wordsworth_200.htm]
{Opening line} And fly about in the air together http:||nfsbu.by . ru/geography . html
[Wordsworth, Redbreast Chasing the Butterfly, ibid.)
{Subject} And Thou if they should totter teach them to stand fast
[Wordsworth, Ode to Duty; http://www.online-literature.com/wordsworth/poems-in-two-vols-1/17/]
{Opening line} It longs to get trapped in the fishermen's net
This one stumped me and Google Search.
{Subject} Where the early pumpkins blow http:||vlahuta . ro/malabar . html
[Ed Lear, http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/ll/ybb.html]
{Opening line} There sometimes does a leaping Fish
[Wordsworth, Fidelity, ibid.)
{Subject} But we will downwards with the Tweed http:||podium.h1 . ru/cheekbone . html
This one also got the best of Google and this scrivener.
{Subject} Like something fashiond in a dream (Note lack of "e" in "fashioned")
There were a number of "fashioned" and "dream" hits, but no matches with, or without, the missing "e."
{Opening line} Oh vain and causeless melancholy http:||vascotrade . ro/narrower . html
[Wordsworth, To H. C., ibid.)
It seems that someone "discovered" Poems in Two Volumes and cut-n-pasted some lines that caught their fancy. Mostly the purloined phrases come from within the poem (rather than the title).
I must - OK, I don't have to, but I will - admit that I don't have Poems in Two Volumes on my shelves; Google (my other Search Engine Of Choice is the Librarian's Friend, Dogpile) made the "who wrote that" search painless.
Many of the spam mails included a Google warning that the link may not be what it seemed and to consider carefully the possibilities of a virus or Trojan horse waiting for my visit. I took the warning for what it is worth - if I failed to do that, my AVG "protection against everything on the WWW" also would have cautioned me.
It's sad, but my Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) is to delete-without-opening all email with an Eastern Bloc address with the exception of a known good addresses and URLs.
Still, I have to wonder - could someone who reads William Wordsworth REALLY send me spam? Would their missive possibly lead to something nasty invading my computer? How uncouth! How crass!
Yohanon Glenn
Yohanon.Glenn at gmail dot com
No comments:
Post a Comment