Spam E-Mail Subject Headers May 2009

So, according to the many friendly people who generously take time out of their busy schedules to send me spam, I'm currently concerned about the size of my penis, I'm overweight, I really need a shit watch, and I should buy my medicines from Canada to save money despite living in a country with socialised healthcare.

I sometimes like to read through spam because the mangled language and tortured constructions make for an interesting snapshot of the state of play in the world of gutter marketing (and if you work in marketing, remember that you're only a fancy job-title and a weird social convention/hypocrisy away from being a spam-merchant yourself). These are some of my favourite subjects from today's trawl...

Be A Knight Of The Meat Spear. Now, I'm not sure what exactly a meat spear involves, but spears generally have stabby pointy bits on the end of long thin shafts. This seems to be not particularly promising for the satisfaction of a partner and, worse, potentially fatal. Plus, if an average spear is five or six feet long I'm going to be over the other side of the room and unable to bring any other parts of my body into play. Presumably only really useful for those who are shagging through holes in intervening objects such as, say, a castle wall, a confessional, or a parked car, or perhaps it would be a boon for the kind of businessman who brings work home and needs to keep his hands free to be on the laptop or take important calls. The idea of some sort of medieval romance featuring the Knights of the Meat Spear is so awful that it's probably being made by Channel 5 or ITV as we speak. And the mental image of a Knight shattering his meat spear against an enemy's shield is simultaneously discomfiting and hilarious.

With a bigger tool you will feel a bigger man. Interesting. Assuming 'tool' equals penis then this is presumably a drug that not only alters the size and shape of my 'tool' but gives me the feeling that I'm physically much larger than in fact I am, possibly leading to amusing and/or dangerous complications when buying clothing or attempting to perform basic tasks involving spatial awareness. Or maybe it's a guarantee that if I take this medicine I'll get to grope a guy who's taller than me.

Please their partner, increasing your size. This one seems to be a claim that sex with someone who is in a relationship with someone else will increase penis size. Which strikes me as dubious. I think I'd need to see a respectable scientific journal do a peer-reviewed study on this before I could take the claim seriously. Although, refreshingly, it doesn't specify which gender the partner in question is, so it's kind of an equal opportunity cheating we're looking at here, which is nice. And it might not be about sex at all. Perhaps any kind of pleasing behaviour - the holding open of doors, the giving of little compliments, the buying of thoughtful gifts - will add length and girth through some sort of cock-karma. Just as long as the thoughtfulness is directed towards someone else's partner rather than one's own. Sadly, although this may enhance size, it will probably severely curtail opportunities to share the joy of the newly enkarma'd penis, thus rendering the whole exercise pointless.

With a mega instrument you will feel a more important man. I'm not sure what a mega instrument is, but I would imagine it's something like the classic one-man band set up that enables you to make a godawful racket on several different musical instruments at the same time. I was unaware of the psychological and sexual benefits of this quaint and archaic practice, but next time I see someone labouring away with their back-strapped bass drum, their chest-mounted harmonica and their knock-knee cymbals I'll be sure to ask them about their increased feelings of self-esteem and whether their mega-instrument has led to greater opportunities to fondle, for example, Lord Mayors, bank managers or Cabinet ministers.

Build an outpost on your borders of safe psychic. I shit you not, that's what it said. Presumably only relevant to heads of state, monarchs, or those owning extensive tracts of land. But how do you know the psychic you're using to build your border outpost is safe, and how do you actually build an outpost from a safe psychic when you find one? Confusing and intriguing in equal measures, it turns out it's advertising a drug that claims to cut down my cholesterol, so that's disappointing.

One Watch Is Good But Two Watches Are Better. Presumably so you can wear them both and get the mean time from two different sources. But where does it end? Three watches, four, more? Surely the more sources I have for the time the more accurate I'll be, but I've only got so much forearm real-estate available and now I feel insecure about my ability to give good temporal guidance if a stranger should stop me on the street and ask. One watch clearly isn't enough. I have timepiece envy. Which I suppose is better than the codpiece envy most of the spam is trying to engender in me. But oh no, wait! Time doesn''t work that way. You either have the right time or you don't, so no number of watches telling the wrong time can make up for one watch telling the right time. And I have a mobile phone so I don't need even one watch. So back to codpiece envy it is.

A golden watch is a real turn on for women. A claim so lost in the mists of misogyny that it seems almost quaint, like a plague of locusts or believing the world is flat. Notice that the watch isn't even gold, it's golden. Because, of course, women are so easily distracted by shiny things that they'll have sex with anyone who dangles some gaudy bauble before their eyes, even if it's just some cheap tat that glitters in the sunlight. This is the basic message: Wanna have sex? Get shiny things! Women will be your slaves! Except it's not true, despite being one of the oldest advertising memes in the world. But I suppose sending spam saying things like, 'Why not just talk to her, listen to her, and treat her like a human being?' doesn't sell shoddily-manufactured knock-off watches.

Safely lose weight with Acai diet, Endorsed by Oprah. I clearly must have this because there's no more highly trained or experienced medical expert in the world than Oprah, M.D.

S.