As part of a recent cycle in the arms race between spam senders and spam filters, the spammers have begun raiding the English dictionary for random obscure words to seed their subject lines, helping evade intelligent filters like SpamAssassin. Thus I am seeing some of their messages. And I have to say, though I am no happier at receiving their e-mail than anyone else, and have less than zero interest in the herbal viagra and penis patches they are peddling, the random verbiage in their subject lines sometimes catches my fancy.

Perhaps spam is, as my colleague Sumana Harihareswara has proposed and chronicled, a kind of folk art. Consider some of the recent examples I’ve culled. These are juxtapositions of words that might inspire a new generation of band names, or spark a screenwriter’s imagination. Herewith, the subject lines, and my attempt at interpretation:

interlace possibility
— A TV engineer daydreams of romance
origami inflation
— Paper money is always at risk
yarmulke bedaub
— No baptism please, we’re Jewish
antimacassar asymmetry
— Headrests in need of some thoughtful rearrangement
And my favorite:
aerogene flagstaff phantasy haze
— special effects smoke generator deployed for Jimi Hendrix Arizona gig!

Art is so much a matter of projection, anyway. The Rain Parade had an album title, “Emergency Third Rail Power Trip,” which struck me — when, as a resident of Boston in the mid-1980s, I purchased the LP — as a psychedelic word-poem about electrocuted megalomaniacs. When I moved to San Francisco I discovered its more prosaic origin, as a utility sign posted near the BART tracks.

BONUS LINKS: Spam poetry.
Other Google links for spam poetry