Phatic Spam

[nuncstans]

I realize this is not the most current of topics, but since it is 1996 I figured I could ask the burgeoning WWW a question about 'spam

Comments

[nuncstans]

Wow, I had no idea. I like it that spam is forced to plagiarize canonical literature because it's up on the web in dense concentrations, and especially the prevalence of the word "bolshevism." But I still want to know what the deal is with these emails I get with NO SALES CONTENT WHATSOEVER.

Actually, I think I just figured it out.

[rozele]

while rubychard's excerpt is from a 1926 novel on gutenberg.net.au (says the internet w.k.a., via google), i think the original sample is using the wider world of the web as its source material, perhaps as a way of getting less archaism in the mix. it seems to me as if rumsfeld has moved on from his days of cryptic modernism to embrace L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry's cut-ups and refusal of (even hermetic) meaning... in this piece i see him bringing together sports fandom and the formal political sphere, perhaps as a postmodern take on the conventional stump-speech football metaphor - here appearing as the british football ('soccer') leagues, juxtaposed with subtle references to recent cultural/political events, which the Secretary dismisses as "squawk seagulls fighting"...

"crap looks official", indeed.

digram models

[naticity]

A pretty common algorithm is to start with a corpus of text you want to imitate, and then count how often each "digram" occurs. A digram is just two words in a row. So we are counting word pairs such as "I am" or "Steve Buscemi

[elevenoclock]

hi
your journal tickles my fancy
hope it's ok if i add you!
Amy