Poetry on the margin

I doubt the poetic figure called acrostic has ever had more exposure in the press than these past few days. Thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger, of all people, acrostics are now all the rage — kind of.

Google trends shows a surge in the number of Google searches as well as news articles about acrostics in the last week of October:

This sudden interest for the poetic figure coincides with the Governor of California's f-bomb, cleverly hidden in a veto letter addressed to the Members of the California State Assembly, among whom Assemblyman Tom Ammiano. In turn, Ammiano encapsulated a coded message in his response to the governor ("A Message on the Margin"). Is that the beginning of a new mind game for political writers?

The following graph shows that the trend setter and his message are still 6 times "trendier" than the form used to convey it.

The revival of acrostics may well be short lived...

Summer is watch season for everybody after all

This is an erratum to my previous post (Summer time is watch season), in which "losers" were denied the privilege of buying a tacky watch from a dubious website. Well, it turns out that I was mistaken, and that self-identified losers too deserve to fall for that!

See the last line of this screenshot of my spam folder, featuring a sample of the watch related spam I received:

"Our watch will look great even on any loser"

Hurray for non discriminatory, equal opportunity scams!

Summer time is watch season

All of a sudden, over the summer, I got flooded with spam wanting to sell me a watch. Watches seemed to be the new pills.

The pitch typically went like this:

With our [select your style] watches, [select who you are] will look [select your desired look]. Buy our [select your style again] watches, they are [select your price range].

With the following options to choose from:

[select your style]
stunning
trendy
designer
stylish
classy
fashionable
cool
luxury, luxurious

[select who you are]
a local or international customer
a teenager
an adult
a loser

[select your desired look]
irresistible look
look great
proud
stylish
classy
trendy

[select your price range]
low-priced
cheap
great savings
very low price

Summer has passed, and so has the wave of watch related emails. I wonder what the fall's fad will be.

Polysemy, ambiguity and spam recipes

Once in a while, I check my mail sent to my Gmail account using the online interface. I generally go directly to the spam folder to make sure that the spam filter has not been over-zealous, and sometimes just for laughs.

Some advertising makes it through my default Adblock Plus config but what keeps me from blocking the frame is the (certainly limited but not non-existent) entertainment value of this sponsored links section. Most of the text ads deemed "contextually" relevant to the mail classified as spam have to do with unsolicited mail. Some, however, are pretty much off target and that makes them way more interesting: the relevance computation is evidently based on "spam" construed as gelatinous mystery/porky meat.

Spam Confetti Pasta
French Fry Spam Casserole
Spam Vegetable Strudel
Spam Veggie Pita Pockets
Spicy Spam Kabobs
Savory Spam Crescents
Spam Primavera
Spam Imperial Tortilla Sandwiches
Spam Fajitas
Spam Skillet Casserole
Spam Quiche
Spam Hashbrown Bake
Ginger Spam Salad

Yikes.

Resolving ambiguity originating in polysemy is no easy task. And yet, one could assume that the engine used by AdSense to process keywords and calculate ad relevance would know what "spam" means when it is a label associated by Gmail itself to an electronic message, don't you think?

First swine flu spam email?

Today, I received my first swine flu related spam email (see previous post on the subject). Frobuck E. Acho sent me a message with the title "Office is on quarantine". The body of the mail is faking a health newsletter published by some health institution in California.

That institution, Jbibjhj Health (or is it Gueaami Health, as the "copyright" line suggests?), claims to be located in the city of Zevovumah, CA, which, as it happens, doesn't even exist. So where is that office really located? All the links point to websites in China...

No office, no quarantine.

Swine flu spam outbreak?

Newspapers are reporting that the swine flu pandemic is giving spammers new fodder to pig out on. See this article from the McAfee Avert Lab Blog, for example.

So far, my inbox has managed to stay safe:

Hope your spam filter doesn't need to wear a mask.

What's with my couch??

Recently, spammers have been very concerned about my couch.

Rubin: "heave your belove couch adventures"
Roscoe: "support your belove couch experience"
Jacklyn: "uplift your sweet couch experience"
Marilin: "ascent your lover couch experience"
Rosendo: "boost your couch experience"

Is it the type of experience you can mention in your resume, alongside your plow experience? 15+ years of couch experience. Somehow, I doubt it... The imperatives kind of give away what this is all related to. "Ascent" is the odd man out, here, grammatically speaking, but conveys the same idea as the verbs.

Out of curiosity, and to expand my knowledge of the English language, I looked up "to heave" on the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary. It turns out it's been around since before the 12th century, has both irregular and regular inflicted forms, and several meanings and synonyms, among which another word we don't see everyday: "to retch".

Did anyone puke on my couch?!?!