The Billiken's Bluff

I don't really use my AOL email account anymore. My inbox gets flooded with so much SPAM that I sometimes can't find my real emails. The SPAM mostly takes the form of either porn or prescription drug websites. When I get around to it I go through them deleting, deleting, deleting.

This morning I was going through doing just that, when I saw an email-

From: donette Corkum
Date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 11:17:49 -0500
Subject: reason

I should have known that this was SPAM, but it was early, I was groggy, I opened it. Here's what it said-



sleep sort I parcel bell snow round coal credit horn art hospital insect cover fear slow minute substance voice pencil

C H E A P V I C O D I N
familyfeather.com


ticket box military boot range food girl opinion walk ant gun safe stomach slope flat fork yes lead mark pipe even west air rhythm chin flat loose range oven instrument rice tomorrow wash position account arm where goat plate fold space wound attention be country smoke hope cork question tight song war error

Wow. Wow. I guess it's been a while since I've checked in on SPAM, but its apparently evolved into a whole other animal. Ok so this is a link to some shady pharmacy selling painkillers. But what about the stream of consciousness jibber jabber. I showed it to my friend Melissa and she said it looked like a spoken word poem that someone might read while they were on vicodin.

Well put Melissa. When I first saw it I thought it might be a brain teaser or something. Where if I read every fifth word or something I would find out where Bin Laden was hiding ( or at the least how to log on to this vicodin website). But there doesn't appear to be any rhyme or reason. It looks more insidious to me. It's a barrage of of words latent with meaning. Why the military and space imagery? Why all the talk of hope and tomorrow? And most importantly why the talk of rice?!?! It's like morse code, or American Indians speaking in Appachi, sending military positioning to one another during WWII. Without a doubt this is the Information Age.

Seriosuly though, it looks like Donette Corkum (if that is your real name), was trying to sneak the email past the authorities, the DEA, the websmasters whoever is policing cyberspace now a days. Disguise the prescription pill information in the form of nonsensical words strung together in an email. Fight the good fight Donette because Big Brother is watching.