Red Room Where the Writers Are

While most spam—the kind you get via email, not at the Piggly Wiggly—is a horrendous and offensive waste of human endeavor (for both the spammer and the recipient), some is so obtuse and indelicately mined from the collective human cultural archive that the reader may regard it in the same way you might regard outsider art.

What I’m saying is that I sometimes get the most interesting spam, and when I do, I hate to delete it but don't know what to do with it. I know each spam email is like a hand grenade and should be deleted without pulling the pin by opening it. I know I shouldn’t even view it in the preview pane, and I know I certainly shouldn’t cut and paste any of the text from it. I know I need to prevent viruses and spyware and so on. I know I should not do anything to let the enemy hear me breathing, because if I do anything that helps the spammer confirm I exist, I will be aiding the spammer and asking for trouble.

Being en garde with a rapier when looking through personal correspondence is an unfortunate modern posture. Sure, most of the spam I get is awful, even repulsive, and having to scan one’s personal inbox daily for the nasty, brutish, and short advances does make life seem a little nastier, more brutish, and it does shorten one’s day.

So what you come across spam that isn’t a waste of time, the kind of one in a thousand pieces of spam that makes you smile and think, "That was, in its own way, worth reading," what should you do with it?

Here’s the entire contents of an email I received this morning:

Is the story the bust of napoleon, is it not? Form it only required a chapter or so to bring in all the papers Saturday. His borther was arrested in this case much more delicately modeled and soon be away we moved towards the house. Roger.

Here’s another I received two days ago:

Hen she is young, or she may develop it at any time. It is worth while taking some trouble to learn to read well. Reading for the girl at work should include newspapers and magazines as well as books. She should learn how to read newspapers, because as a great jorunlaist said once, “A newspaper is a sign post telling the traveler which road he ought to take.” In this sense we are all travelers and every worker needs to read his sign post which is a newspaper. To each girl some parts of a newspaper are more important than others; much depends on her occupation and on her relations to life. The business man reads the newspaper to find out what is happening that will affect his business. The girl at work should read what we call foreign news, that is, news about countries other than our own, and she should read also about important happens in ou

[it includes an attachment called “sunroof.jpg”]

A third piece of spam:

Ing forth for a day’s ride across the Tete-Noire. Our party consisted of five, and we had two guides. Our baggage, which was for the most part light, was strapped on the backs of the mules behind the riders. One article, however, a square box of considerable propositions, provide refractory, and, veering from side to side, refused to maintain the even balance which, owing to the rough nature of the bridle-path, was essential to the safety of both mule and rider. We were obliged to halt again and again, that the box might be restrapped, always with doubtful success. Each time that we drew up in line for this purpose we were overtaken by a Swiss youth, who had perceived our dilemma, and who hoped, by following us up closely, to make a job out of it. There was but a limited knowledge of French among us, (the language in which the youth spoke,) still by aid of his vehement gestures he made us understand tha

[That one had an attachment titled "antipyrine.jpg"]

I know you get email like this, too...right? So, your only course of action then is to join the "Society for the Appreciation of Spam" Club on Red Room and start posting the most amusing or fascinating spam you receive. It’s kind of like finding a piece of paper on the sidewalk and trying to read it—you know it’s supposed to be garbage, but there’s a story in there somewhere and the lack of context makes you stop and cock your head like the RCA dog and take a moment to enjoy being baffled and bemused.

[Please note: If you haven’t experimented with our Red Room Clubs platform yet, the top navigation bar, in the red section near the top of every Red Room page, includes “Clubs.” Just click on it to join the “Society for the Appreciation of Spam,” explore other clubs, or start your own. Unfortunately, there’s a bug that prevents us from uploading a good icon or thumbnail photo for our Clubs, but we’ll fix that soon. I have a great icon photo for this Club but can't upload it yet! Be sure to sign up for notifications from any Clubs you join, too.

I also recommend you blog on Red Room to mention whenever you’ve posted something in Clubs. Also, you may not know that Red Room makes it easy to re-post your blogs or Club entries to Facebook and Twitter, and to bookmark your content on several popular bookmarking sites, with one click on a little icon. If you need help understanding how to do that, or how to sign up to be notified about acitivity in your Clubs, just email us at support@redroom.com.

For this new Club, please capture and post the most amusing spam you receive, and include all spelling and syntax errors as they appeared in the spam. DO NOT OPEN OR CUT AND PASTE from spam, ever, even if other people's amusement is at stake. Find a way to safely view a preview of it (ask a virus-literate friend for help if you don't feel you know how to be properly en guard, and then, in a separate window and document, type what you want to repeat on Red Room. Always delete spam, as well as make sure your computer has up-to-date antiviral software at all times.

Now keep an eye out for the random treasures to be found in the mundane! Happy spam-treasure hunting.]