A spammer’s story…

Most of the spam aimed at my inbox gets stopped long before it reaches my computer, thanks to my ISP’s spam filter. And what does get to me generally is shunted straight into a “Junk Mail” folder. But today a new spam message managed to confound all of the road blocks in its way, and arrived within my field of vision. Just out of curiosity, I clicked on it.

Of course, it’s trying to sell pills… Viagra, Cialis, Ambien, Valium, Xanax, etc. As is the trend these days, the actual spam portion of the message is contained within a wavy, tilted image. But what I found interesting was the lengthy, nonsensical prose that followed. Clearly this was the key to escaping detection and elimination en route to my computer, but it’s so bizarre as to be amusing, much like the “spam sender pseudonyms” that used to work back in 2004. And since I know you’re dying to read it yourself, here it is…

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Unfortunately the story just abruptly ends there. I need closure!!!

My Simpsons family

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Burger King-sponsored “Simpsonize Me” site. Well, I never got that to work, but a colleague recently started using a Groening-style avatar of himself on AIM. (Interestingly enough, the avatar resembles the Simpsons character Dr. Nick Riviera, and this colleague is also named Nick. He does not claim Hollywood Upstairs Medical College as his alma mater however.)

I asked him about it and he mentioned the fact that the Simpsons Movie website has a build-an-avatar feature too, which is what he used to create his. It’s not automatic like the Burger King one is (or at least claims to be), but it works, in Mii Channel fashion.

And so, without further ado, and at risk of Fox siccing its lawyers on me (note I kept the illegible legalese at the bottom of the image below), here is my family, Simpsons style.

Simpsons family

Have we learned nothing?

Before I was even in elementary school, I learned from Mr. Rogers to “take my time and do it right.” In short, it’s better to take a bit longer to do something, and do it well, than to rush through just to get it done.

And yet, based on this Washington Post article, MnDOT seems not to have learned a similar lesson.

Teams of designers and builders are racing to meet a dawn Wednesday deadline for showing they are qualified to bid on the bridge replacement project, which the state has put on a fast track.

I can understand putting the project on the “fast track,” but to me that simply means giving it priority over other projects, not adding undue haste to the project itself.

State transportation officials hope to award contracts next month, with the goal of having a new bridge standing at the end of 2008….

Erecting such a bridge would ordinarily take about three years, even if the design and building phases were overlapped to save time, said Bill Cox, owner of Corman Construction Inc. in Annapolis Junction, Md., a road and bridge construction firm.

So not only are we moving so fast as to have a “dawn” deadline, less than a week after the collapse, to get initial proposals in, but we plan to have the bridge up and operational in less than half the time an accelerated schedule would normally require. (Oh, and correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t overlapping the design and build phases necessarily mean that they’d start building it before it was completely designed?)

I hate to say it, but I’m already reluctant to drive on that new bridge.

What do you get when you cross The Beach Boys, Queen and The Foo Fighters?

It might just be my ears, but I believe you get The Dear Hunter, in particular, the track “Smiling Swine.”

Despite the obviousness of the multi-layered vocal harmonies, I had never before thought there might be a musical connection between Brian Wilson and Freddie Mercury, but there you go.

This is one of numerous “post-emo” (that’s my term, I think, but you can use it) bands that have gotten my attention over the past few years, starting with The Mars Volta and especially Coheed and Cambria, but more recently Circa Survice, Chiodos and these guys (who may actually be one guy; I’m not entirely sure). At any rate, I had never really given emo much attention, mainly because it seemed like something I was about 15 years too old to appreciate, and to be honest I still haven’t really checked out any straight-up emo (whatever that might be; I wouldn’t even know where to look), but the stuff these guys are doing is unmistakably marked with the same grandiose ambitions that were the cornerstone of the early ’70s prog rock I’ve been into since high school.

The Dear Hunter’s music, in particular, is quite intriguing with its incredibly varied instrumentation and song structures. There’s nothing else quite like it, except maybe Brian Wilson’s SMiLE. It’s definitely worth checking out.