I was just spammed...with a cryptic story, and I *like* it!

[Argent_Towers]

I just received an email. Sender: Juliana Washburn. Subject: 187

Here is the body of the message:

He heaved a long sigh. He let go of his ear and stared at his fingers. «I think you’re right, absolutely right. But I can’t do a thing about it. When her mother and I divorced, I signed papers that said I would lay off Yuki. I can’t get around that. I wasn’t the most faithful husband at the time, so I wasn’t in any position to contest it. In fact, I’m supposed to get Ame’s permission even before seeing Yuki like this. And the other thing is, like I said before, Yuki doesn’t have a whole lot of respect for me. So I’m in a double bind. But I’d do anything for her if I could.»
«Sure. I phoned him and told him how you’d helped me get back from Hokkaido and how you got picked up by the cops and might never come out. So Papa had one of his lawyer friends make inquiries about you. He’s got all kinds Of connections. He’s real practical that way.»
300
asked. «Try to win her back? Or is it just for old times?»
Silence was growing oppressive, so I put on another tape. Ben E. King’s «Spanish Harlem.» We said nothing more until we reached Yokohama, an unspoken bond between us. I wanted to pat him on the back and say it’s okay, it’s all over and done with. But a person had died. She was cold, alone, and nameless. That fact weighed more heavily than I could bear.
At length, she let out a big sigh. It might have been bigger than she had intended, as she looked up at me nervously.
The man cast a glance at my Mickey Mouse watch with the same clinical unease a vet might direct at a cat’s sprained paw.
302

This is not your average spam. This is text that was actually written with deliberate intent and a story. I searched for some of the text and was able only to find this one single site:

Here.

Someone apparently posted the entire novel on a forum. There is no title for it, and no explanation of the author. But it’s actually pretty good.

Very weird.

[LurkMeister]

I got one of those too, but it was from Kelly and the subject was a sentence about one-armed poets, and the text was:

I held my breath.
It was too much trouble to go through the whole back-and-forth bow-and-scrape routine, so I gave in. If it made the Master happy, who was I to argue? And before you could say «money in the bank,» Makimura had sent me a check for three hundred thousand yen. Also in the envelope was a receipt marked for services rendered-field research. I signed it, stamped it with my seal, and posted it. Back to the wonderful world of expense accounts.
Well, maybe so, the engineer admitted, but having been a wartime child who had to live under deprived conditions, he couldn’t grasp what this new social structure meant. «Our generation, we’re not like you young folks,» he said, straining a smile. «We don’t understand these complex workings of yours.»
He held out the phone to me.
«The way ears prick up?»
81
«Is it always good?»
At breakfast, I saw the young girl I’d seen in the bar, sitting with a woman I took to be her mother. Wearing the same genesis sweatshirt but at least without the Walkman. She’d hardly touched her bread or scrambled eggs, seemed absolutely bored drinking her tea. Her mother was a smallish woman in her early forties. Hair pulled into a tight bun, eyebrows exactly like her daughter’s, slender, refined nose, camel-colored sweater that looked like it was cashmere over a white blouse. She wore her clothes well, clothes that suit a woman accustomed to the attentions of others. There was a touching world-weariness in the way she buttered her toast.

From the name “Makimura” I assume this is another part of the same novel.

When I did a search, I found this.

[control-z]

The spammers are dumping text into the spam messages in an attempt to confuse spam filters.

Amazing the amount of effort they will put out to try to make people read their messages. If they’d put that much effort into legitimate business, they’d do well.

[Argent_Towers]

Wow, you can read the whole book at that other site too.

I really dig the book, actually.

[velvetjones]

What’s the point. So you open and read a spam message, what does that get the spammer? Confirmation that it’s a valid email address for future spam?

It all just seems so pointless.

[control-z]

@velvetjones

What’s the point. So you open and read a spam message, what does that get the spammer? Confirmation that it’s a valid email address for future spam?

It all just seems so pointless.

It generally only confirms your e-mail address is valid if there are images that load from a spammer-controlled server.

I guess what they’re really going for is you to buy their product. Although often they screw it up so much you can’t even tell what you’re supposed to be buying.