From mgourley@LOGICAL.NETMon Apr 17 12:35:22 1995 Date: Tue, 31 Jan 1995 09:58:38 -0500 From: Matt Gourley Reply to: GENX-L conference To: Multiple recipients of list GENX-L Subject: Spam Thought y'all might like this -Matt Newsgroups: alt.food.fat-free From: cjackson@adobe.com (Curtis Jackson) Subject: Coffee cake and spam Date: Tue, 17 Jan 1995 05:34:20 GMT [Bet that subject line got your attention!!!] Obligatory useful fatfree thingie: Try the coffee cake recipe on the box of lowfat Bisquick mix. It turns out a bit dry (maybe some applesauce would help here), and more like coffee cinammon bread, but it is still quite edible. If you have lowfat Bisquick or the moral equivalent but it doesn't feature the recipe, let me know and I'll post it. And now, we deal with our most recent spammer. The few of you who ever did have a shred of respect for me should stop reading now. I am in a very silly mood and am very IRRITATED with these morons who bombard us with advertising. I'm a crotchety old codger who has been heavily involved with the Usenet for over a dozen years now, and it makes me angry. So I'm using lame humor in a vain attempt to blow off steam. WARNING: People who have not seen multiple episodes of the 1960s TV cop show "Dragnet" will not find this to be even remotely funny. People who have seen every Dragnet episode may also not find this to be funny, but I've tried to capture the essence of the show. You have been warned. In article <3fek5g$51ue@usenetp1.news.prodigy.com> RVSR92A@prodigy.com (Gilbert Rodriguez) writes: }IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO LOOSE A POUND A DAY ORDER YOUR FORMULA ONE THAT }GIVES YOU ENERGY TO BURN OF THOSE EXTRA FEW POUNDS }ONE BOTTLE $35.00 WITH TAX THREE OR MORE $33.00 PLUS 4. 00 FOR S+H SEND }CHECK OR MONEY ORDER TO } GILBERT RODRIGUEZ } 154 FLAIR } SAN ANTONIO,TX 78227 I think that the proper way to handle spammers is to Spam them back. Not spam them back, mind you, but Spam[tm] them back. With real Spam. Perhaps if Gilbert walked out of his house tomorrow morning and slipped on a pile of Spam on his front porch, and was then hit in his shocked open-mouthed face with a Spam pie, he might stop spamming the net and use the extra time to learn how to spell. I have a sister in Austin. She's only an hour or so from San Antonio. Maybe I'll give her a call. Yeah, that's it. Now all we need is a name for this world-wide spam-fighting force. We could go the Arnie S. route: Conan the Spamarian. The Spaminator. Or perhaps a classic: Spam Spade. But these don't denote a group effort, as this must needs be. Perhaps revamping old/current cop TV show names would work: The Spam Police. The Spam Squad. Spam-1-1. SPD (Spam Police Department) Blue. Spamsky & Hutch. Hawaii Spam-Oh. The Streets of Spamfrancisco. WAIT!! I've got it! Spam is a hokey name for a hokey product, so we could call the worldwide anti-spam force after the most hokey police show ever to grace the tube: SPAMNET "This is the city. Los Angeles, California. Eight million people live and work here, and 1 out of every 9 of them reads netnews. Usually things go smoothly and people generally follow the rules of this extended society, but when they don't, there's trouble. That's where I come in. My name is Friday. I carry a Spam. On Friday, April 23rd, my partner Bill Gannon and I were working the graveyard shift in Bozo Division. We had just begun our shift when we got a call. The officer at the scene said some hophead in San Antonio had sent an unsolicited ad for 'Formula One' to at least 230 known newsgroups. The local Mac user's group was threatening to mailbomb the suspect if we didn't do something about him." Gannon: "Sounds like a spam to me." Friday: "Yeah. Let's roll." [Cut to exterior, night, clear, light traffic. Friday and Gannon exit their car quickly but in a controlled manner and approach a uniformed officer. The officer is holding a piece of paper, and a clean-cut young male student is standing beside him. In the background there is a rising noise of an uneasy mob inside the building, a University computing center.] [Friday voiceover during cut and approach to officer: "11:45pm. We arrived at the UCLA campus and proceeded to the computing center. The reporting officer was waiting for us."] Friday: "What have we got?" Officer: "Here's a copy of the posting. Has things pretty stirred up in there, so I figured I'd better call you guys." Friday [glances at paper for a moment, looks up and gestures to the student]: "Who's this?" Student: "Mark Brown, officer. I'm a student here." Officer: "He's the one who reported the posting." Student: "Is...is it a spam?" Gannon: "I'm afraid so, son." Student: "Gosh! What is this 'Formula One' stuff he's hawking?" Friday: "It's a dangerous street form of amphetamine. Designed to jack you up til you're so high you won't know your mother's own name. The desperate people who take it think it'll make them burn off some extra pounds. Well, if they take enough of it, it'll make 'em something all right." Student: "What will it make them?" Friday: "Dead." [dramatic music, harsh strings followed by lots of horns] [Cut back to Friday and Gannon standing, but hunched over a plain wooden table at Division studying the posting. Friday voiceover: "We dispersed the Mac users group to their homes, and headed back to Division to get an update. We were told that there were reports coming in from outraged citizens all over the valley. Things were beginning to turn ugly."] Gannon: "Yep, that's a spam alright. How do we track this joker down?" Friday: "Well, the address says his account is on Prodigy. This is more serious than I thought." Gannon: "Hey! My wife has a friend who works there! Nice girl, too, Joe. Makes the best pineapple upside-down cake you ever tasted. Good-looking girl, too." Friday: "You trying to set me up with a blind date while we're working a hot case?" Gannon: "Naw. That can wait for later. But you should see her meatloaf, Joe. Why, it.." Friday [warning tone]: "Frank...." Gannon: "OK, OK. Anyway, she works in Prodigy's member services department; she could check this guy out for us, no problem." Friday: "It's 1 am, Frank." Gannon: "Oh, she won't mind." Friday [sarcastic]: "Oh she won't, huh?" Gannon: "Nope. Not after I tell her I've got a handsome eligible hard-working police detective to trade." [Points at Friday. Friday gives barely perceptible sardonic grin poorly masked by fake annoyance. It should be obvious to audience that he really likes Gannon and is amused.] [Cut to an airplane, exterior angle approach shot, plane is settling in for a landing on a runway. Dawn is breaking.] [Friday voiceover: "Frank's contact at Prodigy told us that the account was valid, and did belong to the name listed in the posting. For almost any other on-line service we would have called the San Antonio Spam PD and asked them to handle it, but we'd dealt with Prodigy members in the past. Only America On-Line had more rude and ignorant opportunists. We booked the first flight out of LAX to San Antonio. Dawn was breaking as we started our descent."] Gannon: "I've been studying this posting. 'LOOSE A POUND A DAY' [emphasizes 'loose']. You'd think someone posting an ad to tens of millions of people around the entire world would be more careful." Friday: "Well, spammers aren't exactly the brightest folks in our society, now are they? We're dealing with a Prodigy member *and* a spammer here, Frank." Gannon: "Yeah, but look at this. All capital letters. I mean, my daughter knew not to use the CAPS LOCK key from the time she was three years old, Joe. I just don't understand these people." Friday: "Yeah, well, you know something...." Gannon: "What?" Friday: "I hope you never do." [Gannon purses his lips and nods in mute agreement. [Cut to Friday and Gannon exiting plane, being greeted by two plainclothes San Antonio detectives.] Detective #1 [amiably, with strong west Texas accent]: "You must be Gannon and Friday." Friday: "Yeah. I'm Joe Friday, this is my partner Bill Gannon." Detective #1: "I'm Jim Hathaway. This is my partner Bob Jenkins." [They shake hands all around and exchange pleasantries] Detective #2: "We've got a car waiting, if you'll follow me. We figured you'd want to get straight to work." Friday: "Thanks, we would." [They begin following to the car] Gannon: "Say, how'd you recognize us so fast?" Detective #2: "Not many folks in Texas wear wing tips." [Quick cut to Gannon's shoes. "Aw, shucks" music goes here.] [Cut to suburban neighborhood. Unmarked car carrying the four officers pulls up to the curb opposite a dingy, delapidated house. Camera focuses in on the house number: 154. Then cut back to officers exiting the car and looking across at the house.] [Friday voiceover: "Detectives Hathaway and Jenkins took us to a suburb north of San Antonio to the suspect's house. The house was shoddy and rundown."] Friday: "DOS weenie." Jenkins: "What?" Gannon: "DOS weenie. It's a slang term for someone who uses outdated hardware and even older software. They spend a lot of time playing with their IRQs. Nasty business." Friday: "You can tell by the shape the house is in. Chances are he's got a 286 in there, boys. Be on your toes; this one could turn out to be a real wacko." [The officers cautiously approach the house. They stand two to either side of the door. Friday removes a family-size can of Spam and a surgical glove from his shoulder holster. He puts on the glove and begins opening the can of Spam.] Hathaway [more drawl than usual, whispering]: "That's a mighty big can of Spam." Friday [whispering back, still working on can]: "Let's just hope I don't have to use it." [Friday expertly wrestles the Spam from the can and cradles it in his gloved hand, which he hides behind his back. He silently sets the empty can on the porch. Then he nods to Gannon. Gannon knocks loudly on the door. There are sounds of someone stumbling around inside; the officers noticeably tense up. Gannon knocks even louder.] Suspect [sleepy and irritable, from inside house]: "Alright, alright." [The suspect opens the door. He has obviously been awakened from a deep sleep. He looks very suspiciously at the officers.] Suspect: "I don't want to buy anything. Why are you bothering me?" Friday [very tough and irritated, hiding Spam behind back]: "Well maybe you'd like to sell me something instead." Suspect [dazed and confused]: "What?" Gannon [showing badge]: "Detective Frank Gannon, LASPD. This is Sargeant Joe Friday, and these other two gentlemen are detectives here locally. We'd like to ask you a few questions. May we come in?" Suspect [uncertain but cowed]: "Um, sure, OK. I can't imagine what the problem is." Friday: "Tell him what the problem is, Frank." Gannon [showing copy of posting to suspect]: "Did you post this article to multiple newsgroups?" Suspect [quickly scans article, gets noticeably defensive]: "Yeah. So what? It's a free country. I got a right to make a living." Friday: "Oh, yeah. Well what about the pursuit of happiness, huh? Or did you forget about that little part of the Constitution?" Suspect: "What do you mean?" Friday: "The citizens of this great net have a right to be free >from harrassment, free from trash like this. Did you ever think about their rights?" Suspect [very defensive but defiant]: "Hey, look. I pay my $12.95 on time every month to Prodigy. That entitles me to post anything I want anywhere I want. If you think it's wrong to allow me to advertise worldwide to millions of people for less than the cost of a classified in my local newspaper, don't blame me, blame the system. I'm just trying to make a buck like everybody else." [Friday snarls and leaps on the suspect, jamming Spam into his mouth, smearing it all over his face and in his hair, and pushing it up his nose. After the suspect is completely coated and is coughing and retching, Friday stands back, straightens his suit coat and tie, and waits for the suspect's choking to slow a bit.] Friday: "Oh, sure. The old 'blame the system' excuse. Listen, buster! Every time one of you Horatio Alger wanna-bes puts up a spam like this [shaking paper], thousands of people get hurt. It's not just the people stupid enough to buy your poison. It's not just the people irritated by the stream of junkmail on their screen. It's not even just the people burned in the flame wars that inevitably follow: 'I told you to just ignore these assholes. Yeah, well, he needed to be taught a lesson! I wrote to his site's postmaster, but the mail bounced!'" [Friday leans close to the now motionless but still heavily Spam- laden suspect.] Friday: "Do you know who else suffers?" [Suspect mutely shakes head negative] Friday: "The children suffer. The wives and husbands suffer. The people who buy HerbalLife and SlimFast and OptiFast and all the other chemicals you lowlifes urge them to put into their bodies for exhorbitant fees -- those people have families, mister! And it's those families, those children, who have to deal with the frustration and the anger that results when your customer finally has to look in the mirror and realize that he's been had again. He's been taken in by another con artist." [Suspect lets head fall back resignedly on floor] Friday [to SASPD detectives, venomously]: "Get him out of my sight." [Cut to detectives throwing spammer in trunk of car, telling him to watch his head, then firmly closing trunk.] [Cut to interior of house, where the suspect's cat is eating the loose Spam on the floor and purring. Friday strips off surgical glove and puts it in trash can. Then they walk out while talking.] Gannon: "Gee, Joe. You were a little rough on him in there, weren'tcha?" Friday [slightly remorseful but grim]: "Maybe so. I guess it was the sign that got to me. That sign was new enough that it had to be him who put it up. The hypocrisy is what got to me, Frank." Gannon: "Sign? What sign?" [They're a few steps outside the front door now. Friday turns and points slightly to one side of the door.] Friday: "*That* sign." [Camera rapid zooms to focus on new-appearing sign hung on wall next to door: NO SOLICITING. Cut back to Friday, who looks world-wearily at Gannon. Gannon shakes his head with slightly weary but philosophical look. They walk silently to the car and stop beside it.] Friday: "Let's go home." Gannon: "Why don't you come over for lunch, Joe? We can go straight from the airport. Whaddya say?" [They begin getting into the car] Friday: "You're sure it's no trouble?" Gannon: "Heck, no! I'll just give Marci a call from the airport." Friday: "Marci? That's not your wife's name. Who's Marci?" Gannon: "Prodigy, Joe, Prodigy. Remember? Member services. She said she'd love to meet you, and offered to make you her special meatloaf any time." [The car begins to pull away. Camera pulls back as conversation continues] Friday: "Her meatloaf, huh." Gannon: "Yup. Best meatloaf I've ever tasted, Joe. She's a fine cook. Nice-looking, too. Smart as a whip to boot...." [Camera fades during pullback as they proceed out of sight down the street.] -- Moderators accept or reject articles based solely on the criteria posted in the Frequently Asked Questions. Article content is the responsibility of the submittor. Submit articles to ahbou-sub@acpub.duke.edu. To write to the moderators, send mail to ahbou-mod@acpub.duke.edu.