Rivalrous and commercioganic for Christ Ma'x!

I get a lot of commercial spam from Chinese manufacturers who're under the impression that I'm a "reseller" of just about anything I've ever reviewed. And then some.

These e-mails are usually not very literate, but sometimes they break through into unintentional poetry.

I just got two copies of this one:

From: "RISING TRADING CO"
Date: Thu, 6 Dec 2007 12:45:22 -0800
To: <cs@110220volts.com> [I presume my address was way down in the BCCs somewhere]
Subject: Christ Ma'x Promotion MP4

Dear Friend,

How are you doing? I hope that everything is good!
Are you searching the rivalrous and commercioganic products? Please have a look our this new model mp4 player, it has some rivalrous features in market:
1 : 1.8" TFT display + card reader function .
2 : Built in outside speaker
3 : Built in RF function(optional).
4 : With the good handle housing which use the flash metal facture.
Its picture and details information is as below,please reference:

[A picture of a Keepin' It Real Fake version of an iPod Nano was meant to be included here - but I had to dig the file out of my embedded directory and rename it to be able to see what the heck it was. It was originally called "ui=1&amp;attid=0.1&amp;disp=emb&amp;view=att&amp;th=1168aff0f2e8de23".]

Main Function and features:

* Exquisite & fashionable flash metal and thin design;
* 1.8" TFT screen, 260K TRUE color display;
* Built-in FM radio & With FM recording function (optional) ;
* RF(Radio Frequency) transmit function ,the sigBnal can be accepted by your car FM, etc.(optional)
* Built-in outside speaker (optional);
* Support card reader function;
* Support DRM(digital right management)(optional).
* Built-in lithium battery .
* Capacity supported: 128MB to 4GB;
* Supports MP3, MP4, WMA, WAV, etc;
* Supports TXT electronic text reading ;
* Supports WAV recorder format;
* 7 EQ modes: moral , rock, pop, classic, soft, jazz, bass;
* Supports ID3 synchronous lyrics display;
* Support Multi-languages.(more than 20 kinds).

It went on, but that's the end of the funny stuff.

What do you imagine "moral" EQ does? I wasn't aware that you could make NWA sound like Perry Como just by changing a frequency response curve.

Avian nominative bathos

Here in Australia, we're famous for giving things, places and creatures goofy names.

I mean, just pick one letter. Wagga Wagga. Wallabies. The Wollemi Pine. Wollongong.

(And when Monty Python did their sketch about the Bruces from the University of Woolloomooloo, Australia, the silly-named place they chose was actually not some tiny town in the boondocks, but a spot in the middle of Sydney.)

Bird Of Mystery

So, when a rather rotund bird I'd not previously seen showed up at our feeding table, I was optimistic.

Bird Of Mystery

Surely, this plump creature with its habit of thrusting out its neck comically would have a ridiculous name.

Could it, perhaps, be a Wonga Pigeon?

Wait - perhaps it was a Wompoo Fruit-Dove!

But then I found out that this white-headed pigeon is actually... a White-headed Pigeon.

Oh well. Can't win 'em all.

I know you're a liar paradox, but what am I?

Herewith, Wikipedia's surprisingly learned article about Opposite Day.

(When it was nominated for deletion in 2005, only one voter was concerned that the vote might in fact be happening during Opposite Day.)

A familiar tale

Lego vignette

This Lego vignette/comic is funny, true, and an effective deployment of a microscale Millennium Falcon. I don't think you could ask for more.

(See also the classic "I'm naked! No clothes!")

Incidentally, the old #4488 Mini Falcon is a great set, and pretty easy to make up from stock pieces, though you'll of course miss out on the big printed dish if you make it that way. The comic refers to the gigantic #10179 Falcon, by far the largest Lego set released to date.

Lego have really milked the old Falcon since they got the Star Wars license - there've been no fewer than four quite different Falcon sets.

Frighten yourself with ask.com!

One of the Evil Mad Scientists discovered that it is possible to use ask.com's search string suggestor to frighten yourself. Just type in an innocuous start to a question, and Ask will suggest umpteen possible ways for it to finish, chosen from the input of Ask's impressive cohort of users-too-dumb-to-just-use-Google.

This looked to me like a rich vein of entertainment waiting to be mined, so I had at it with a number of bland and innocent sentence-starters.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

What is a metaphor? A metaphor is a tree in a golden forest.

(Coincidentally, that's also the meaning of life.)

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

Who is God? I'm betting on either Jeeves or the Vice President.

There's evidence pointing both ways.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

Apparently, people really miss Jeeves.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

Only the third-last one there actually worries me. But it's a biggie.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

Hey, it's Metaphor Guy again!

And now I'm envisaging a freshly re-fertile woman sitting, hopefully, in a hot tub.

(I'm not sure where the frozen cheese fits in.)

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

After you leave home at 16, kid, this list contains a bunch of great suggestions for what to do with your life!

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

Look! It's the ask.com Magic 8-Ball!

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

I'm hoping this is just one really worried girl, and not a whole flock of 'em.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

OK, now it's starting to get depressing.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

I don't see why John Cena's marital status has anything to do with your plans to give him your bronchitis and pneumonia.

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

I think we've found the Words That Start All Questions From A Stoner...

Ask, and ye shall be frightened.

...but now we're back in Scarytown.

(The Evil Mad Scientists are now running a competition for the best/worst ask.com suggestions!)

Two teachers and a porn clerk

Many blogs let you look into the life of someone else. Sometimes that life is quite interesting. And sometimes that life is described with a combination of honesty and prurience which, I'm not ashamed to say, particularly appeals to me.

I can't quite pin down what it is, besides Not Safe For Workitude of one kind or another, that leads me to particularly enjoy these blogs over others. I mean, Random Acts Of Reality seems to contain all of the same ingredients, and I like it a lot, but it doesn't quite make it into the same category as these three:

I Am a Japanese School Teacher (first article here).

The Tard Blog, another tale of education against all odds (and also the quickest-to-read of the three, in case you'd like to try to get something else done today).

And the incomparable True Porn Clerk Stories.

About a trillion people already know about these, but I think there's a reasonable chance that even dedicated Net dorks aficionadoes haven't seen all three of them.

(If they're all new to you, you can of course completely kiss your productivity goodbye.)

"I reached into my bag of talent, and found it to be empty..."

I'm not crazy about motorsport. I like it more than any other sport, but for me, that's faint praise.

Part of my affection is devoted to the peculiar jargon of the motorsport commentator.

I don't mean just the really good commentators, here. I'll take a Walkerism or Brundlequote if I can get one, but even the God-awful everyday commentators here in Australia (who have a particular affection for the word "carnage", possibly because they think the first three letters mean it's particularly applicable to automobiles) have a collection of diverting stock phrases.

It is, for instance, important not only to "keep it on the black stuff", but also to "keep the shiny side up", and by extension the "rubber side down".

One must attempt to not "spear off into the bushes".

A brake failure, patch of oil or excursion onto wet grass is likely to cause one to "proceed directly to the scene of the accident".

(That's a bit too highbrow for the Aussie commentators, as is the delightful Rolls-Royce euphemism for a breakdown, "failure to proceed". I've also previously mentioned "understeering directly to the scene of the accident" in my Prius post.)

A transmission failure can give you "a box full of neutrals".

"Talent" is generally regarded as a fungible commodity; expressions involving the transfer, location, misplacement or storage (typically in a "bag") of varible quantities of talent may be employed by a driver or rider to explain virtually any occurrence on the track.

If you rip all four wheels off an open-wheeled racing car, you have "turned it into a canoe".

There's also the verb "to alligate", which arises from the description of a line of nose-to-tail racing cars as "an alligator". It naturally follows that what they are doing is alligating, just as oysters oyst, tigers tige and lemurs leme.

I invite your own contributions.

Shooting for the stars

From: mrlarry gates <mrlarryg@yahoo.com>
Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2007 18:41:19 -0700 (PDT)
To: dan@dansdata.com
Subject: Regarding To Order 1999 flatbed,

Hello Costomer Service,

This Is mr Larry Gates With Mark & company.And I Am Sending Email Regarding To Order 1999 flatbed, And Pls If You Do Also Carry the 1999 flatbed, And I Will Also Like You To Provide Me With The Prices For The 1999 flatbed, And Also I Will Like This 1999 flatbed To Be Ship To One Of My Company In West Africa And It Will Be Pick Up From Your Location And Also I Will Like To Know If You Do Accept Credit Card Payment And I Want Your Contact Office Number And Your Cell Phone Number So That I can Call You And Proceed With The Order / Payment And Pick Up? And I Am Looking forward To Hear Back From You Soon.

Thank You.
Best Regards.
Rev mr larry gates.
Owner Of Company.
Phone Number 360-846-4894.
__________________________________________________
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OK, this guy is actually presumably trying to get me to mail him some flatbed scanners in return for his stolen credit card number.

But when I first read this spam, I couldn't help but think he was actually asking me to mail him a flatbed truck.

Larry's presentation reminds me of HIRAM FROM PUERTO RICO, immortalised at the end of my first Dan's Data letters column.