Spam, spam, spam, Viagra, spam, spam, watches, eggs and spam

I never quite know whether to be amused or angered when I dive into the morning’s e-mail.

On an average day, we get 15 to 30 press releases, obituaries and other newsy stuff. But my inbox swells — as you’ll see, that’s probably the right word — with hundreds of spam.

They break down into two major categories — sex and watches.

I don’t wear a watch — who needs one in this age of a clock on everything? — so the attempt to get me to buy fake Rolexes is actually pretty funny.

“An elegant watch will give you the wings”, says the subject line of one spam. Wings? It might tell me when it’s time to pick up my wings from the pizza shop, but if I grew wings because I bought a counterfeit watch, that might be worth the price. Or not. Depends on the wings.

“Complete your Wall Street look with the latest timepiece,” says the sender, named “Cheap Gucci Watches”. Yes sir, nothing says Wall Street like a cheap Gucci watch. That might even be true, these days.

“I selling rolexes cheap, do you want one? cheap” asks Delbert Novak, Darwin John, Andrea Butcher, Morris S. Clark (the “S” is a nice touch, don’t you think?) and Marcus Knox in separate e-mails that have the identical subject line, right down to the bad grammar, punctuation and capitalization. You selling. I not buying.

But it’s the letters — many, many more letters — that offer to improve my sex life that make my day. A sampling of the subject lines (at least, the ones I can print here):

• “Be love that rocks!” (These days, I’m lucky to roll.)
• “Bulldozer lovepower” (Now there’s an image)
• “Chase away your bedroom blues” My only “blues” in the bedroom is that I don’t go to bed early enough to get a good night’s sleep. Whadda ya got for that?
• “Don’t be flaccid at the critical time” Good advice for any situation, really. Flaccidity is generally to be avoided.
• “Having your virility back with our medicine is very easy” Having my money back when it doesn’t work is another thing.
• “Muse for amorous deeds” Musing about sex? If you have to think about it, you’re probably not going to do it.
• “Prove her your true masculinity” Okay. I’ll lift a truck with my bare hands. I’ll need pills afterwards, but it won’t be Viagra.
• “Realize your fantasy as a sex god” That’s not my fantasy. What is my fantasy? I’ll be damned if I’ll tell you. You’ll tell everyone.

And then there are the subject lines that make you wonder what the hell anyone was thinking, if anything:

• “Like a pawn I lay me down”
• “It was now late”
• “Should life be dull and spirits low”

But the spam that baffles me most is the stuff that arrives in the Russian language. At least, I think it’s Russian. It’s got all those extra characters. I translated one on Google just for the fun of it. This is what it said:

“There is a good selection: Collection of films with actor Pierre Richard. 30 films with the actor Pierre Richard in format dvd 14 discs are old well-liked us French comedy. It is a collection of 30 films from Pierre Richard 3400 rub.”

Who the hell is Pierre Richard?

You’d think even spammers would know not to send Russian language spam to English speaking countries, much less Russian language spam about obscure French actors to English speaking countries.

It makes me think that somewhere in Siberia, there’s a guy doing rough translations of English language spam who’s wondering whether every American has a bulldozer and do Americans really believe pills can help them grow wings.

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