Why Do My Spammers Speak Latin?

Like a lot of Americans, I get spam in my email "in" box daily. What I'd like to know is this: How did they all learn Latin? Maybe it's not Latin at all; maybe it's Esperanto, or whatever Klattu, that nice man from outer space spoke to Gort the robot in "The Day The Earth Stood Still". I dunno.

Here's a sample collection from today's mailbox headlines:

Wompass leam sungus liquito
Leathrot plass vidow wino
Cape Potape sunnet
Flight floon swimmet spaper
Vidow bibruid solass eral knis.

I can make out three words -- "flight," "cape" and "wino," and wino is really a slang term. "Vidow" shows up twice; I wonder why vidows are so popular. Maybe they're warning me in Porky-Pigspeak of vlack vidows? Be veddy veddy careful...

Perhaps its really poetry. I imagine a gaunt man in a goatee; someone who never left the coffee shops of the Beatnik days of 1950's San Francisco, dressed all in black, earnestly speaking these words into a microphone in some dark and dingy dive out in North Beach. A single spot light illuminates our muse.

"Yeah, man. It's, like, Leathrot, plass vidow, wino... like, cool." He snaps his fingers. "Can you dig it, man?"

Polite applause from the half-dozen in the audience. They sip cappuccino while huddled around candle-lit cafe tables.

You've got to admit it; it's much more fun to imagine that spammers are really unemployed humanities majors, or space aliens, than hucksters pushing Canadian pharmaceuticals.

So, I don't open the posts to find out the truth. I'd rather think that there's a legion of Esperanto-speaking folk with nothing else to do than to email me every day.

Slate Magazine Disses Disney

I've always loved Disneyland, and tried hard, really hard, not to develop a cynical attitude toward The Magic Kingdom and all things Walt. But here's somebody else's perspective, and I have a hard time arguing with some of his observations. Except for monorails. We need monorails. Now, let's all sing "It's a Small World" as if it were George Bush's resignation speech.


Five days of Disney. - By Seth Stevenson - Slate Magazine

Why The American Economy Is Just So Much BS

BS, we love(d) you. And look what you almost did to us.

Bear Stearns, who came within an eyelash of taking a big chunk of the financial community down the toilet with it last week, could be just the canary in the coal mine. A couple of months ago, BS was trading at something like $150 a share. Last weekend, the company sold out for two bucks a share, thanks to its heavy leveraging in sub-prime mortgages.

Think of these little factoids and tell me I'm wrong.

The real estate market is little more than five percent of our economy.

The sub-prime market is a fraction of that five percent.

Defaults on sub-prime mortgages are an even smaller fraction.

So if something so insignificant can bring the banking community to its knees, what about all the other weak areas of our economy? Areas of weakness that put us in much greater peril?

The environment: Droughts, floods, crop failures? My oft-mentioned "big one" -- the San Andreas fault line decides to make Las Vegas beachfront property?

Energy: Oil - cost, supply, refining? Or an aging, overtaxed power transmission system that plunges the east coast into darkness for, oh, a week? That event, alone, would cost the US more than the events of 9/11/01, don't you think?

Other financial crisis, e.g., China and the Saudis quit buying our debt?

I'd buy gold, but you can't eat gold. I think I'll plant some more potatoes.

Take Your Medication Today? No? Not A Problem!

Our friends over at the Associated Press have discovered that our drinking water is contaminated with trace amounts of dozens of medications. Everything from antibiotics to sex hormones are flowing out of your tap, and there's nothing your local water treatment plant can do about it -- if they could test for it, which they can't.

It seems that when we take our meds, we also piss a lot of it away the next day. Plus, for years, the standard procedure for disposing of old drugs was to flush them down the toilet... and in much of the country, we clean and recycle our piss and put it back into the pipes to drink again. And again. And again.

The Europeans knew this about ten years ago, but apparently it takes a while for news such as this to travel to the USA. (The AP ain't the news gathering organization it once was, it seems.)

While the people who are supposed to know say that while this is serious and we shouldn't panic, it's bad for the environment. Boy fish are showing up with female hormones, etc. Gee, last time I looked, people were part of the "environment" too, right?

I'm sure some science-fiction writer has already well-covered this idea, but let me pose it for you here in case your subscription to "Amazing Stories" has lapsed:

Our government, faced with a continuing decline in, well, everything, decides to take a page out of the Tim Leary textbook and turn on the population to manage the situation. The EPA, working with our nation's top drug companies and the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, selectively salt our drinking supply based on the needs of the nation. Hey, why not? Wouldn't this fall under "providing for the common defense" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"?

So, who gets what meds?

The Southwest: Birth control for slowing down the illegal immigrant birth rates. Mood stabilizers to chill out the gangs and the rising incidents of road rage on L.A. freeways.

The Midwest and and Rustbelt States: Prozac and a cocktail of other anti-depressants to let the populace ignore that American manufacturing and farming have all been exported overseas.

The Northwest: Stimulants, so that the boys on the line at Boeing, and the gang at Microsoft's Redmond campus can work 24-7 on the country's last surviving profitable products.

The Rockies and San Francisco: Remember we said the Dead were in on the project? Seems it's time for another tour.

Florida: Cardiac and stroke meds for mom and dad who retired there last year.

But back to "reality". (And how would I know? My morning coffee was made with tap water.)

If you think you can escape by drinking bottled water, good luck with that. The bottled water companies don't test their water for pharmaceuticals, either, and as much as the bottlers would like you to believe it, not all it really comes from melted glaciers or other unpolluted sources, as you might guess. So we're screwed. Have a nice day.

SCAQMD: End Civilization Now!

A long, long time ago, in a place called.... well, it had no name; I don't think cavemen gave their rocky abodes names... man harnessed the sparks created from an errant lightening bolt and... voila! Man had fire.

Fire was a civilizing influence. Cavemen now had a reason to come home after a long day hunting sabre-tooth tigers. Their cavewoman counterparts would have a hot and hearty bronto-burger waiting for them, and they could share the day's ordeals in front of a crackling fire with the cave-children. They charted their exploits with carvings and paintings on the cave walls; drew the first maps, and later huddled beneath mammoth skins to make love, all with the flickering glow of firelight to guide their way.

Fast forward a few dozen thousand years, and the basis for civilization is in peril. Yes, all that man has achieved is now endangered, thanks to a body of bureaucrats known locally as the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

You see, the SCAQMD, having already screwed with our ability here in So Cal to manufacture and paint things, drive the cars we want, and, if they could find a way, prevent cows from farting, has dealt the ultimate death blow to all we hold dear; all that separates us from the other animals.

The SCAQMD says that effective next year, we can't make fire.

How's that, you ask? Well, since we no longer live in caves (at least most of us) but in houses, we make fire in our fireplaces. And, starting soon, we denizens of So Cal will no longer be able to build new homes with fireplaces.

That's right, folks. It's all over. It seems fireplaces create soot, and soot by its nature is dirty. And dirty soot means dirty air. And dirty air is a bad thing. The SCAQMD is mandated to stop bad things. Result: no fireplace in your new cave, I mean home.

Slowly, inevitably, the fireplaces we have will be demolished as new construction replaces old. And, don't you think somewhere down the line, the SCAQMD will say "no" to using the ones that are left? What a bunch of ash-holes.

So, friends, kiss the civilizing nature of fire "goodbye". No more will you cuddle with your Special Someone in front of romantic flickering flames. No more burning old love letters, or the wrapping paper from your Christmas presents. No more staring into the fire, contemplating the meaning of life, or the nature of man, or reaching that "a-ha" moment where we find a long-sought solution to a troubling problem.

When the Big One comes some moonless winter night, as all Californians who live in 'Quake Country know it will, we will laugh with black humor to think that our caveman ancestors would have been more comfortable that first night with fire, than we will be, amidst the ruins of our soot-proof wrecked condos.

More On The Hawaiian "Homeless"

For 1,000 or More Homeless in Hawaii, Beaches Are the Best Option - New York Times

The Other Side Of Paradise -- Or, What I Did On My Winter Vacation

A financial windfall, in the form of some extraordinary sales on eBay, combined with free airfare, allowed Wifey and I to run off for a cheap week-long vacation in Oahu. I'd last visited there more than 20 years ago, and Wifey had never seen Hawaii, so it would be a new adventure for the both of us.

All through the trip, I kept making mental notes of things I'd want to blog about when I arrived home. Here they are; they are all impressions; they are based on observation, not research. The "why's" and "how comes" are unknown to me; all I can report is what I saw and surmise. If I'm off-base in my opinions, I apologise now -- but this is what I saw, processed through my experience, and regurgitated, without further analysis, for you to ponder here.

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Mankind, sadly, has brought nothing of significant value to Hawaii, and that includes the contributions of the Hawaiian people themselves. What culture these people once had may be well documented elsewhere, but for the casual tourist such as myself, the Hawaiians left little that have withstood the forces of Euro-American colonization and subsequent statehood. What remains seems to exist for the sole monetary benefit of the tourist industry.

Honolulu resembles several areas I have known well. The city center looks much like Long Beach; the suburbs and industrial areas could be anywhere in the San Fernando valley or Orange County, California. Hawaiian graffiti looks pretty much the same as it does elsewhere. Even the much-loved Aloha Tower, once a beacon to arriving steamships to the harbor, looks familiar to someone who has seen its virtual twin in San Francisco.

The only difference, and it is the best and greatest difference, is that Honolulu's streets are bathed in a brilliant tropical light, and swept with air that, if packaged, people the world over would gladly pay to breath.

And as for Waikiki, the very essence; the postcard representation of all Hawaii?

Waikiki's streets at night resemble a Las Vegas devoid of gaming, or a Hollywood Boulevard minus its star-strewn sidewalk. Tourists from Tokyo and Tacoma gamely make their way around the sidewalk performers banging out half-hearted tunes on drum kits, and black men, painted in silver, copy Michael Jackson's old robot maneuvers. Kids break-dance on cracked brick sidewalks, while artists of varying talent sketch portraits of visitors.

The street rumbles with fellows gunning rented Harley-Davidsons from one stop light to the next; jacked-up 4-by-4 pickups rumble by, blaring mainland ghetto rap; faux San Francisco-style cable cars shuttle Japanese tourists to hula shows, and an abundant cadre of police cruise by, oblivious to the hookers at their posts alongside the ATM machines.

Outside the city, on the windward side of the island, or as the locals call it, the "country," one has to wonder why Hawaii's own haven't tended to their paradise in better fashion. Ramshackle houses stand on short stilts, sharing small yards littered with broken boats and the hulks of Camaros and Cadillacs that have long succumbed to cancerous rust. Vacation homes built during the boom days of Hawaiian tourism show, if not neglect, an apathy of sorts, lacking fresh paint or fresh ideas. The real money has apparently moved to Maui.

Tourism dollars are never far from the Hawaiian heart. Years back, I remember visiting the Dole pineapple processing plant in Honolulu. It was a big, smelly factory, but it was fascinating and one could drink all the fresh pineapple juice you wanted for free. The water tower was shaped like a pineapple; it was a kitchy local landmark for decades.

Now, Dole has bulldozed the factory, and instead offers tourists a Disney-fied "plantation" out in the back-country. For around twenty bucks, you can ride the 'pineapple express' train through a field, walk through elaborate gardens, and get lost in what is supposedly the world's largest maze. What you won't find is any free pineapple juice. You can buy souvenirs, though, in their fully-stocked 'plantation' store.

Then there's the "Polynesian Cultural Center". The Mormons opened this attraction / amusement park decades ago as a way for students at their nearby university to pay for their tuition, so I'm told. Every bus tour goes there, and every tour book will tell you it's overrated. But, just like the young Mormon Elders you'll find knocking on your front door, you can run, but you can't hide, from either big religion or big tourism, especially in Hawaii.

Back in Honolulu, it being a good union town, with good politicians who know they must please the building trades, have graced their fair city and county with miles of roads that would amaze Europeans in their width and length, and, not one, but two sets of twin tunnels crossing the island. Soon, three billion dollars will be spent on steel-rail mass transit for a community that didn't have but three miles of freeway 30 years ago.

Dozens of road crews constantly find reasons to tear up tarmac and lay down fresh material; Swarms of men in orange jackets and hard hats trim miles of parkway with weed-whackers.
The men in orange gamely mow around the squatters who litter the parks along the western end of the island, over where the tour buses don't travel. Though clearly posted that camping is not permitted, people have moved in with as much permanence as can be afforded with tents and tarps and the cast-off detritus of Hawaiian-American life.

Farther up the road, in the low trees that edge the shore, old Chevy vans, having traveled their last mile, hunker down in the sand. Tarps and plywood spread wing-like their rusty bodies, forming the core of a modern, not-so-transient life.

Then there's the ever-present military. The words "Pearl Harbor" alone give the rationale why we need a strong military presence at this outpost halfway across the Pacific; but does each branch need it's own base, it's own airfield, it's own roads and gates and barracks and mile upon square mile of land? How odd, with round after round of base closures, no General ever wants to give up their piece of paradise?

Only the things that man has not touched still inspire. The mountains soar straight up, vividly green, jaggedly edged, like spear points or axe heads. Forests of amazingly broad, graceful trees form a canopy for fern and palm and a hundred other plants, rich with the vigor of life. The soil itself, so impossibly rich and red, provides exact contrast to the foliage, and the ocean, warm and energetic, surrounds it all; an embryonic fluid surrounding a fetus with a volcanic father.


What man has brought to Hawaii, it has brought everywhere in the name of commerce, of profit, of exploitation and dominance. They are mankind's lowest common denominator. Nature gives way easily to these, but I suspect that some day, not today or tomorrow, but someday, nature will take back what is rightfully hers, and make things right.