A Smarter Kind of Spam

We're all used to pretty stupid spam, with subject lines rife with spelling and grammatical errors, punctuation in place of letters, and promises of larger body parts and smaller bodies. (Lately I've been getting a lot titled: "Obesity is dangerous -- Stop it!" It's kind of upsetting.) Today I got three pieces of spam with titles so elegant and literate, I felt compelled to write them down.

*One could very well apply every cited criticism of practical HTML to the English language.

*Don't copy anyone else's material, as you don't know how it was generated.

*All books will be considered, evaluated, and ultimately published with this editorial mission in mind.

The first two I would like to see in fortune cookies. The last one would make a great topic sentence for a writing exercise. If you're so bored that you're reading my blog, then your homework assignment is to write an essay starting with spam title #3.

The following is an unrelated matter, which I have titled:

17 YEARS LATER.

It was 1990. I was a thoroughly neurotic 9-year-old with a hopeless crush on Jonathan Knight. That's right, Jonathan Knight, the least-idolized member of New Kids on the Block. (Or maybe Danny was the least idolized. At any rate, every single female I've ever met who is in my age group who had the misfortune of being the right age at the right time to be swept up by the NKOTB craze, was in love with either Joey, Donnie, or Jordan. That's me, though: Always drawn to the quiet sensitive guys. I'm such a nerd.)

So in 1990 (and I only know this was the year because I just looked it up on allmusic.com) I was at the Danbury Fair Mall with my mom and my sister, and we were in a music store that had -- omigod -- a new album from the New Kids! It was called "Step by Step," and it promised to have at least one song that Jonathan sang lead vocals on (omigod!!!) and I simply had to get it. The cassette tape cost $7, and I had $7 in my wallet. This freaked me out, because I had never, ever spent all of my money before (and $7 was several months of allowance money), and frugality couldn't have been more deeply ingrained into my psyche, even if my mother could reach into my genetic coding and hard-wire me with a DO NOT SPEND MONEY program. To my surprise, my Mom actually told me I could get it if I really want it, so long as I understand that it's my money and I'll have to start saving my allowance again. Wracked with guilt, I brought the cassette to the cashier, and then it turned out there was something called "tax" which made the tape cost even MORE than $7, so Mom chipped that in. I felt sick for the rest of the day. Oh, the fiscal irresponsibility of it all!

But to think it would all come full circle 17 years later. I was in a Caribou Coffee (because Fuck You, Starbucks), and the trivia question of the day was: "What musical group was Mark Wahlberg's brother in?" And for providing the correct answer, the cashier took 10 cents off the cost of my iced coffee. Only $6.90 worth of NKOTB trivia questions to go...