Green Harbor Publications occasionally conducts research projects. Here are some examples:
Commentaries
Breaking the Spam e-Mail Title Code: The Holiday Version
Hello, My Gentle Sun, Let's Talk
Finding the Elusive Natural Spam e-Mail Title Haiku
Somebody with an Arabic Name Wants to Be Your Friend on Facebook
Breaking the Spam e-Mail Title Code
Stolen Love Quotes for Viagra Spam e-Mail Titles
Spam e-Mail Title Popularity Contest - The Winner Is: Jessica Alba!
The Spam e-Mail Title Haiku Generator
The Spam e-Mailer's Thesaurus
Cell Phone Use and Driving
Breaking the Spam e-Mail Title Code: The Holiday Version
January 2012: Here’s a holiday twist on a familiar concept. These e-mails began in December and continued into early January. Here are the titles:
- Create Lasting Happiness at Holiday Sale
- Create Oneofakind Happiness at Jolly Offer
- Create Oneofakind Satisfaction at Jolly Sale
- Enjoy Lasting Love at Winterful Deals
- Enjoy Special Happiness at Christmas Sale
- Share Unique Moment at Jolly Sale
- Share Youthful Happiness at Xmas Deals
- Show Oneofakind Feeling at Winterful Offer
- Show Oneofakind Love at Christmas Discounts
- Share Oneofakind Love at Winterful Offer
- Show Oneofakind Passion at Xmas Offer
- Show Special Satisfaction at Yuletide Offer
- Show Youthful Love at Christmas Deals
This time they split into a five-part formula. You will see a lot of overlap between columns A through C and the previous round of this type of e-mails. The new twist is in columns D and E. I particularly like ‘Winterful’ as a synonym for Christmas, Holiday, Jolly, Xmas, and Yuletide.
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A
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B
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C
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D
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E
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Create
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Lasting
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Happiness
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at Christmas
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Deals
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Enjoy
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Oneofakind
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Feeling
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at Holiday
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Discounts
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Share
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Special
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Love
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at Jolly
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Offer
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Show
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Unique
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Moment
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at Winterful
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Sale
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Youthful
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Passion
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at Xmas
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Satisfaction
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at Yuletide
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Hello, My Gentle Sun, Let's Talk
October 2011: After a limited release to a select few, Green Harbor Publications is now making available to the public Jim Hamilton's first collection of spam e-mail title poetry. This book, entitled "Hello, My Gentle Sun, Let's Talk," is a collection of found poetry crafted from spam e-mail titles. To order a copy, please go to the Green Harbor Publications web storefront.
Finding the Elusive Natural Spam e-Mail Title Haiku
September 2011: I want to find a natural haiku in a spam e-mail title. It would have to be 17 syllables long and break sensibly into three segments of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. So far I haven't found one, but these two examples come close:
Your boss will surely (5)
promote you, if you buy (6)
another diploma. (6)
The divine disrupts (5)
the standardized pornography (8)
within a duck (4)
The numbers in parentheses show how each of these is only one syllable off from 5-7-5. Finding a true natural haiku will not come easy, and so the search continues.
Update (October 2011):
This one isn't great, but it is a natural haiku from a spam e-mail title.
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Premium Luxury and
Luxury Watches
Update (November 2011):
This one is a little better, but still not that great. The search goes on.
Your Facebook account
has been disabled by an
administrator.
Somebody with an Arabic Name Wants to Be Your Friend on Facebook
September 2011: The new trend in spam e-mails is titles like "Shawqi Turk wants to be friends on Facebook". What's up with that? Is someone trying to give computer viruses to Arabs? Are they trying to annoy non-Arab Facebook members? Is it some kind of code? The e-mails have a fake Facebook return address and look like messages from Facebook. Here are some of the names that have come our way recently: Ahlaam Hamid, Nizaar Salah, Raafida Ahmed, Shawqi Turk, Sidqi Ismail, Taaha Ibrahim, Tawfeeq Abolhassan, Waheeda Hassan, and Waheeda Mustafa. Does anyone know if these are even names that are used in that part of the world? Is there a pattern? Can anyone help?
Send an e-mail to Jim Hamilton if you have any ideas.
Around the time another fake Facebook message started coming in: "You have 1 lost message on Facebook..." A lost message? It would be a little more believable if the e-mail didn't contain the following line: "FAQ: Can you recieve messages if your inbox is full?" Note to spam e-mailers: "I before E, except after C."
Breaking the Spam e-Mail Title Code
August 2011: Have a look at the following spam e-mail titles:
- Create Solid Satisfaction You Desire
- Experience Amazing Moment Again
- Express Wonderful Love Tonight
- Share Special Feeling All Night Long
Do you see what is similar in all of these?
How about these?
- Create Amazing Moment You Desire
- Create Amazing Moment Again
- Create Amazing Love Again
- Create Special Love Again
- Experience Special Love Again
Once you've seen enough of these spam e-mail titles it becomes clear that they are being generated based on a four-part formula that mixes and matches a group of words that are selected for their ability to make sense when cobbled together at random. Just pick one each from columns A through D.
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A
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B
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C
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D
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Create
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Amazing
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Feeling
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Again
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Experience
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Lasting
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Love
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Forever
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Express
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One-of-a-kind
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Moment
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Like Never Before
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Feel
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Special
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Passion
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Tonight
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Share
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Wonderful
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Satisfaction
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With Your Partner
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Despite the nifty titles, my spam filter still identifies these for what they are. Yet I do appreciate the extra effort.
Stolen Love Quotes for Viagra Spam e-Mail Titles
July 2011: It's sad, but now the spam e-mailers are stealing their e-mail titles from web sites like www.1-love-quotes.com and www.inspirational-quotes-and-quotations.com (and probably a million other places). It's touching in a fake and superficial way that they would decide to try this, particularly since the content of the spam e-mail is about sex, not love. Here are some of the quotes they are using.
- Each moment of a happy lover's hour is worth an age of dull and common life
- For every love there is a heart somewhere to receive it.
- How delicious is the winning of a kiss at love's beginning.
- Love distills desire upon the eyes, love brings bewitching grace into the heart.
- Love is like a Rhino, short-sighted, but always willing to find a way.
- Love is a fabric which never fades, no matter how often it is washed in the water of adversity and grief.
- Love is a fruit in season at all times, and within reach of every hand.
- Love is a state of mind which has nothing to do with the mind.
- Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides
- Love is an ocean of emotions, entirely surrounded by expenses.
- Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies
- Love is the only kind of fire which is never covered by insurance.
- Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence.
- Take away love, and our earth is a tomb.
- There is no remedy for love but to love more.
- To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
- True love begins when nothing is looked for in return.
- True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself.
- True love is like a ghost; everyone talks of it, few have seen it.
- When you are in Love you can't fall asleep because reality is better than your dreams.
- Where we love is home, home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
And here’s one more, courtesy of Ralph Waldo Emerson:
- Thou art to me a delicious torment
It’s quite ironic that spam e-mailers would use this quote, which comes from one of Emerson's Friendship Essays. Could he ever have imagined that his words would be used this way?
Spam e-Mail Title Popularity Contest - The Winner Is: Jessica Alba!
April 2011: Another interesting aspect of spam e-mail titles is that celebrities are often named in them, usually in reference to a diet, illicit drug use, inappropriate sexual activity, or nudity. Almost all of them are women except for the President and fictional characters such as the Hulk or Superman. Of the 2,000+ titles that Green Harbor Publications has collected there were about 90 mentions of celebrities. Barack Obama managed to crack the top five, but first place went to Jessica Alba who edged out Katy Perry and Britney Spears. President Obama was just out of medal contention in fourth place and Rachel Ray was fifth. Other frequently mentioned names included: Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, Natalie Portman, Salma Hayek, Anne Hathaway, Ellen DeGeneres, Oprah Winfrey, and Pamela Anderson.
The Spam e-Mail Title Haiku Generator
April 2011: Green Harbor Publications has been collecting spam e-mail titles since 2009 and now has a database of more than 2,000. We've catalogued them and recorded their rhyme, number of syllables, and subject. We've selected about 275 of these titles for use in a web tool that randomly creates a haiku made up of the actual spam e-mail titles. This random spam e-mail haiku generator is offered free of charge by Green Harbor Publications. Enjoy!
The Spam e-Mailer's Thesaurus
April 2011: The most common topic in spam e-mail is how a man can increase the size of his penis. The actual word 'penis' is rarely used, and instead slang terms are employed. The slang terms for 'penis' that people actually know (such as 'cock') are less favored probably because they would be more likely to be screened out by e-mail filters. So this is where the spam e-mailers get creative and use words that are descriptive but not necessarily suggestive, unless seen in the context of surrounding words. See the list of 84 examples below. The most common euphemisms (in rank order) are: Manhood, Rod, Tool, and Device. "Manhood" appears in about 9% of these e-mail titles.
Banana
Batman
Bazooka
Bone
Bone-on
Boner
Cannon
Cactus
Choad
Cock
Cockzilla
Cucumber
Device
Dick
Dong
Dork
Dude-gun
Firm thing
Gigantic tool
Hill
Hose
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Huge stick
Hulk's Thingy
Instrument
Iron
Item
Long friend
Love locomotive
Love tool
Lovestick
Lovetool
Male bone
Male device
Mammoth
Man Pole
Man~Python
Manhood
Manliness
Man-Python
Man's hammer
Man-Snake
Masculinity
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Meat
Meat-stick
Monster
Monster in your pants
Nimrod
Organ
Package
Pecker
Peepee
Penetrator
Penis
Phallus
Pink
Pipe
Pole
Prick
Pride
Rocket
Rock-Like
Rod
Sausage
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Schlong
Shaft
Shaft of love
Snake
Soldier
Spire
Steely hardness
Stiffy
Thingy
Throbbing gristle
Tool
Tower
Tree
Trouser Snake
Wang
Weapon
Weenie
Wiener
Willie
Winky
Woody
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Cell Phone Use and Driving
February 2010: Have you ever wondered how many drivers are talking on their cell phones? Have you ever counted? I have. I frequently take a walk at lunchtime. About a year ago I began counting cars as they went by and noting the number of drivers who I could see talking on a cell phone. Over a period of about ten months and 47 walks I counted a total of 2,942 cars. I counted every motorized vehicle that went by, including ones like motorcycles and 18-wheelers that were unlikely to have cell-phone-using drivers. I only registered a cell-phone user when I could clearly see the phone. There may have been some drivers using hands-free systems or ear pieces but it is very hard to tell when a car passes you at 35 to 50 miles per hour. Some people rest their heads on their fists in a pose that looks like they are talking on a cell phone. I didn’t count that. Nor did I count the people who appeared to be fiddling with their radios, though they may have been texting on their cell phones. I didn’t count passengers talking on their phones, only drivers. The result was surprising, but before I tell you the answer, I want you to take a guess of what you think the result was. What was the percent of cell-phone-using drivers? Okay now, pause before reading further and take a guess.
I’ve conducted this exercise with a number of people and I’ve noted a pattern. I suspect that your guess will be higher than what I tell you I discovered in those lunchtime walks. My theory is that cell-phone using drivers are of such an annoyance to people that they tend to think there are more of them than there actually are.
I counted about 63 cars on a typical walk. There was always at least one cell-phone talker among them, and on one remarkable day there were nine. The average was 7.4% or about one out of every 13.6 cars that passed. Let me state this again for the purpose of clarity: Over a period of ten months starting in March of 2009 I recorded 217 cars with cell-phone-talking drivers out of a total of 2,942 motorized vehicles that passed me (a 7.4% rate).
You’re probably thinking that it can’t be true. The number must be higher. Not in my experience. And I bet if you took the time to count your number would be about the same. So what does this mean? Not much. All I have is one number for one road at lunchtime. Would it be comparable to other roads around the country? Who knows? Maybe you should try counting next time you take a walk.
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