Spam gibberish

Ana at views of the northeast posted about getting the spooky spam message, "Ulltimaaaaatte miraclllle for meeeenn" and she speculated about a “stormy night, creaky old house, you're all alone, and a voice from beyond intones, "buuuy viagraaaaa nooooow".” This reminded me of a funny article (requires registration) in last Sunday’s NY Times about how spam filters are causing spam to devolve into sheer gibberish:

In what may be their final death throes, some spammers have begun sending messages consisting of a single image or a one-line sales pitch - "picospams" - with a link to a Web site. Often appended at the end, in an attempt to flummox the filters, is a scrap of Dadaist poetry - "feverish squirt feat transconductance terrify broken trite fascist axis stultify floc bookshelves."

2:04:35 PM      trackback [] 

Women who love football

Okay, here are my interviews with two women friends who are serious football fans.

Carol turns 53, appropriately enough, on Super Bowl Sunday. She is a writer with many passionate interests and football is a big one. She has DIRECTV and subscribes to NFL Sunday Ticket. Unlike most fans, she doesn’t root for the home team but switches allegiances every year. Here’s her interview.

Martha, also 53, is exclusively a hometown fan. She’s probably as interested in local sports talk and media coverage as she is in the sport itself (she directed me to the  Boston Sports Media Watch site). She has worked in the past as a writer and a producer. She also has a longtime interest in the physical body – dance, movement – and is becoming a fitness trainer. Here’s her interview.

1:23:58 PM      trackback []