Spam Email Names

Here’s a list of the names of “people” who have sent me spam email since the beginning of 2010. I think it’s kind of funny that these fake names can be categorized into one of the following six categories:

• Generic American Names Paired With Offensively Stereotypical Foreign Names (Xiang Bauman, Tiago Keaton)

• Names That Haven’t Been Spoken Since 1943 (Perlie Stubbs, Guenevere Applegate)
• Complete Meaninglessness (Rolo Couch)
• Intergalatic Porn Names (Frantiska Joy, Proserpine Mclean, Laban Milligan)
• Names That Rhyme With a Phlegmy Cough (Max Udyxyw, Purdie Qycqef)
• Names You Pick For Bowling Night (Bronagh Mcwhorter, Kimiko Cornelius, Cordell Gould)

I also included the subject line from the email if it was bizarre enough (italicized and in parenthesis next to the name). Onto the list!

Spam Names:
Gershon Greene, Rolo Couch, Pellegrino Cross, Ciara Doty, Aeson Abbott, Mysie Riddle, Alton Lucero, Yolande Mckenna, Xiang Bauman, Laban Milligan, Husam Spicer, Madge Cooley, Dunston Acevedo (FW: Charming Cheap Medications), Fran Ledbetter, Gladwin Larsen, Fernando Berman, Andromeda Dawson, Swaran Burk, Netuno Helton, Luella Fleetwood, Comhghall Colon, Dipak Heck, Arvo Lugo (FW: To Factual Cheap Pills), Ira Dooley, Eowyn Mcdonald (FW: Reasonably Commodious Discount priced Drug), Petja Oljnyu (Spanish got married 60 times), Raiden Abrams (FW: try charming low cost medication), Samuel Donndelinger (Answer it), Teobaldo Hull (FW: extra convinient low priced medication), Frantiska Joy, Ga Hardison, Spela Ali, Shane Deleon (FW: get attractive cheap medications), Miss Fallon Fallon (PLEASE READ THE MAIL AND GET BACK TO ME), Juliana (Awaiting to have my first slow dance…), Latarsha Anjelica, Black Using, Proserpine Mclean (FW: the commodious not expensive drugs), Purdie Qycqef, Tiago Keaton, Vappu Sprague, Ewa Ysys, Babette Pazeunoo (Scandalous Fergie’s silcon), Clayton Peixoto, Duncan Heidelberger, Max Udyxyw (Never limp after just one), Awotwi Alice (Your fire won’t disappear! pneumatoscoppic residential), Manda Tomala, Star Mcabee, Leonie Qyeh (I will deanonimize you), mr mr (private and urgent), Bolanle Astley, Schuetze Logan, Veronick Keke, Adannaya Banvard (retailer Her emotions will go off-scale! effervescence), Nguyet Nalbone (Remember? Still 1 week), Babirye Adlam (Steel casino), Augusta Pennell (Looking for the man of my dreams), Yakubu Usman (SALAM IS THE ALMIGHTY ALLAH DIRECT ME TO YOU), Malika Doty (Actual Picky Cheap Tablet), Bronagh Mcwhorter (Truly Stunning Cheap Drugs), Kimiko Cornelius, Geraldo Dowd, Perlie Stubbs, Eckehard Pruett, Josephine Briggs (Hello Dear), Desislava Haywood, Neirin Nugent (the in later in), Aballach Ackerman, Tanya (i want to say u hello), Luella Aldrich (seek your cradle narrow the poet like an acrobat the eternal gates terrific porter lifted the northern bar), Teodosio Hansen (RE: Additional information), Wu Trujillo, V. (i hope to get to know u), Rogelio Flores, Ignazio Shockley, Tylor Perkins (The Multi-Faceted Approach to Building a Better Penis), Guenevere Applegate, Rafaela Cason (FW: Nice Exceptional Cheap Meds), Bong Lavina, Cordell Gould (Your most advantageous online shopping), Pandora Elodia (Big penis^^like a^^girl!), Pansy Justin, Jocelyn Jacelyn ([SPAM] Awaiting to have my first slow dance)

March 2011 Mix

Here’s the third mix that I made months ago that I was too lazy to post at the time. It’s still pretty good though:

01 Summer Camp – Round the Moon
02 Teen Daze – Water
03 Sun Airway – American West
04 Young Prisms – If You Want To
05 Zola Jesus – Poor Animal
06 Hotel Mexico – Its Twinkle
07 The Luyas – Too Beautiful to Work
08 Tune-Yards – Bizness
09 Fool’s Gold – Nadine
10 El Guincho – Bombay
11 Wise Blood – B.I.G. E.G.O.
12 Glasser – Apply
13 Dirty Beaches – Lord Knows Best
14 Dum Dum Girls – Take Care of My Baby
15 She & Him – I Put a Spell on You

Download the mix here!

February 2011 Mix

Here’s what the February 2011 Mix looks like:

01 Reading Rainbow – Let’s Dream Tonight
02 Lower Dens – Batman
03 Minks – Funeral Song
04 Young Prisms – Sugar
05 Yuck – Georgia
06 The Babies – Caroline
07 Air Waves – Bisous
08 Smith Westerns – Smile
09 Girls – Carolina
10 Destroyer – Blue Eyes
11 Julianna Barwick – Prizewinning
12 Young Man – Playtime

Download the mix here!

January 2011 Mix

I have a backlog of mixes that I was too distracted to post earlier. Each were pieced together beginning, in part, back in December, and some bands appear more than once across the three mixes, but I think we’ll all live.

The first one is called January 2011 Mix.

01 Destroyer – Poor In Love
02 The Babies – Wild 2
03 Reading Rainbow – Runaways
04 Teen Daze – Let’s Fall Asleep Together
05 Beach Fossils – Fall Right In
06 Minks – Juniper
07 Echo Lake – Sunday Evening
08 Banjo or Freakout – Go Ahead
09 The Radio Dept. – Bachelor Kisses
10 Cut Copy – Alisa
11 Millionyoung – 001
12 Weekend – Coma Summer
13 No Joy – Ghost Blonde

Download the mix here!

Based on a True Story

Sometimes when I’m bored at work (like right now, for example) I like to edit Wikipedia entries for really terrible movies with the phrase “based on a true story” and see how long it takes for someone to notice. Because Wikipedia is moderated by overofficious trolls with too much time on their hands (why else would anyone subscribe to receive alerts whenever someone modifies the entry for, say, Air Bud: Seventh Inning Fetch), most of my changes get taken down within a couple of days — some are even caught and reverted within minutes. Still, I know it was worth it if I make only one person think Space Jam was based on a true story.

Though they have all been changed back back to their original state, here are some examples of the changes I made:

Ghostbusters II
Ghostbusters II is a 1989 sci-fi comedy film based on a true story and is the sequel to Ghostbusters.

Monster_squadMonster Squad
The Monster Squad is a comedy/horror film based on a true story written by Shane Black and Nicholas Hill and directed by Fred Dekker (who also wrote/directed Night of the Creeps).[1]

Weekend at Bernie’s
Weekend at Bernie’s is a 1989 American motion picture comedy directed by Ted Kotcheff. It is a comedy based on a true story starring Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman as a couple of young insurance executives who discover their boss is deceased. Believing that they are responsible for his death and that a hitman won’t kill them if Bernie is around, they attempt to convince people that he is still alive.

The NeverEnding Story (film)
The NeverEnding Story (German: Die unendliche Geschichte) is a 1984 fantasy film based on the German novel of the same name by Michael Ende which itself is based on a true story.

Sudden Death (film)
Sudden Death is a 1995 action film based on a true story, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme. The film’s story was written by Karen Elise Baldwin, the wife of then-Penguins owner Howard Baldwin. It also features Dorian Harewood and Raymond J. Barry, and is directed by Peter Hyams. It has been rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America. The film was shot during the 1994–95 NHL lockout. The film also was the first appearance of Iceburgh, the Penguins mascot.

Corky Romano
Corky Romano is a 2001 film based on a true story starring former Saturday Night Live cast member Chris Kattan. Also starring are Fred Ward, Vinessa Shaw, Roger Fan, and Dave Sheridan. The movie was directed by Rob Pritts and was written by David Garrett and Jason Ward. It was filmed at Touchstone Pictures studios. In the movie, Kattan plays Corky Romano, a veterinarian who is forced by his family to infiltrate the local FBI facility to steal evidence incriminating his father, Mafia boss Francis A. “Pops” Romano (Peter Falk), of racketeering charges. It first opened in theaters, against the better judgment of the entire American movie-going public, on October 12, 2001.

By this point, my edits were being taken down pretty quickly by the editors who moderated the entries, so I tried to add some plausibility to my alterations by and linking my text to credible-looking but unrelated references. Here’s one that I added a pretty dense-sounding case to by linking to an unrelated 178-page government report regarding fishery conservation:

seaQuest DSV
seaQuest DSV is an American science fiction television series created by Rockne S. O’Bannon. It originally aired on NBC between 1993 and 1996. In its final season, it was renamed seaQuest 2032 and plot lines began to follow the real-life missions and experiences of the US Coast Guard’s Living Marine Resources & Marine Protected Species Enforcement Division (CG-5314)[1].

[1] http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/msa2005/docs/MSA_amended_msa%20_20070112_FINAL.pdf “Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act”. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (National Marine Fisheries Service). January 2007. Retrieved 2007-6-20.

Just Like In the Movies

A friend of mine had a birthday recently and invited some people and I to go bowling in Staten Island to celebrate. The day eventually ended past 4am after too many pitchers of beer, two mini carafes of sake and a couple lost hours in a private room at a karaoke bar in the Lower East Side, but the day started much earlier and innocently enough at a bowling alley with 12 people I mostly barely knew.

Either because of the size of our party or because of the Kiwanis club fundraiser that reserved a full half of the bowling alley probably weeks before, we were assigned lanes in the black-lit Cosmic Bowling half of the building. The Cosmic Bowling section, if you’ve never been, is where they dim the lights and pulse crude laser shapes on birthday party bumper bowlers and, apparently, where they rack the oddly-weighted, over-oiled and chipped house balls. There was also this weird room next the snack bar behind our lane for something called Lazer Maze. I didn’t know what Lazer Maze was, but I decided it had to be the copywritten name for a laser tag franchise, so I tried to stir interest in getting a decent sized game going. It probably wouldn’t be as fun as we remembered laser tag being when we were 12, but we were already attending a birthday party for an adult at a bowling alley at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, so I figured we may as well have gone all-out to make complete fools of ourselves instead of stopping half way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince enough people to pay $12/person to get a game going so the idea was abandoned.

Still: Lazer Maze. Whatever it actually was, could it have been as sweet as it sounded? I got a chance to find out when three kids from a party on a lane near ours ran up to the rental counter as I was returning my bowling shoes. Since I wanted to find out how Lazer Maze is different from laser tag and they seemed open to it, I decided to talk to them.

Me: How did you guys bowl?
Them: Awesome!
Me: Cool. You guys look like pretty good bowlers.
Them: Yeah, real good.
Me: Did you do the Lazer Maze?
Them: Yeah, it was awesome!
Me: I thought it’d be awesome. What is Lazer Maze anyway?
Them: It’s just like in the movies!
Me: Just like in the movies? Like, which movie? And how?
Them: I don’t know. It’s just like in the movies!
Me: Like, in “Mission Impossible” when Tom Cruise gets lowered from the ceiling and has to dodge lasers so he can break into a safe or whatever it was?
Them: I don’t know that one. Lazer Maze is like… you’re in a room and, like, a hundred different laser beams shine from wall to wall and you have to crawl and jump because you can’t touch the lasers. And you go for as long as you don’t cross through a laser beam.
Me: Is there a maze or an obstacle course you have to run through?
Them: No.
Me: Do you guys have guns while you dodge lasers?
Them: No.
Me: Can you do it with a bunch of people at once?
Them: No, but your friends can watch you on a TV screen outside.
Me: That’s not what I thought Lazer Maze was going to be like. I guess it’s not like laser tag at all. Is it fun though?
Them: It’s just like in the movies!

I thought it was strange and also pretty much hilarious that they kept saying Lazer Maze was “just like in the movies” and wondered where they picked up on the saying. I traded in my bowling shoes and turned around to walk back to my group at the lane. That’s when I saw a sign with big block letters on an easel that read, “LAZER MAZE: Just Like In the Movies!”

I guess I got it wrong and the kids were totally right. Lazer Maze isn’t like laser tag at all. In fact, I have it on good authority that Lazer Maze is way better: it’s just like in the movies.

On and On

I’ve had “The Song That Never Ends” in my head for as long as I can remember.

Fake Missed Connections – Part 2

Here are some more fake Missed Connections that I posted on Craigslist. Still haven’t received any replies. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

My Foodie with a Tiny Woody – w4m – 31 (7th Ave and 13th St)

You’re a mouth breather with long neck, no chin and poor posture. I saw you comparing organic baby-cut carrots to non-organic baby-cut carrots from around the corner in the pasta aisle at Union Market on 7th ave. I’m shy, but hoping we can meet so you can show me your baby cut carrot.

===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Splashed and Soaked on 7th Ave and Garfield – w4m – 26 (7th Ave and Garfield)

I was standing at the corner of 7th Ave and Garfield when you sped by me in your Civic. Your car splashed gutter slush all over me. I didn’t get a good glimpse of your face, but I like your style.

I’m a little embarrassed to post this on Craigslist, but I’m desperate to find you. I managed to write down your license plate number (NYS: MEJ 9700). The DMV doesn’t have a record of your registration, so I’m guessing your car is stolen. A bad boy. I like that. Let’s meet up so you can have a chance to cover me in your malaria-grade sewer slime one more time.

===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

“Check Please!” at Check’s Cashed on 9th St – m4w – 44 (4th Ave and 9th St)

Saw you standing in line at the checks cashed place on 9th St last Thursday at 6:30PM. I think we wear the same size sweat pants. That counts for something. Call me?

===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Jackie’s on Saturday night – w4m – 22 (Park Slope, 5th Ave)

We met at Jackie’s 5th Amendment on Saturday night. Well, we didn’t meet formally, but our eyes met. Briefly. You were in a black leather jacket and your brown hair was slicked back. You were so hot drinking Miller High Life splits. I was with my girlfriends, wearing a graduation hat and tassel. It was magic. Be my Houdini.

===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Bar 4 Rollerblader – w4m – 29 (Bar 4 – Park Slope)

Me: Short, blonde bob cut (but a cute one!), red plaid hunters cap (but a modest one!). You: Tall, short black hair, army surplus jacket, rollerblade to bars in winter and don’t change into shoes when you get to where your going. We brushed shoulders by the bathrooms at Bar 4 and you later ordered a Jack and Coke at the bar while I was complaining about my roommate’s diabetic cat. Let’s rub our faces against kitchen table legs and meet soon for some sugary sweets to make Mr Whiskers jealous. He’s way sensitive about his feline diabetes, but it’s cool; he’s declawed.