Month: August 2005

No apologies. The Friday Random 10:

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” – Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
“Feel Good Inc.” – Gorillaz
“Waterloo” – ABBA
“Stagger Lee” – Lloyd Price
“One Way or Another” – Blondie
“Muskrat Love” – America
“Right Place, Wrong Time” – Dr. John
“Ball and Chain” – Social Distortion
“The First Cut is the Deepest” – Cat Stevens
“Woodstock” – Joni Mitchell

It started out so well. I like the ABBA (we all have our guilty pleasures) and even some Cat Stevens, but that, the America and the Mitchell are only there as holdovers from my Cover Songs project.

Some more spam, this one “with love” from “monique”:

come into it yet. But I do not at all complain of having been kept out of this property; and if anybody
my father’s great barns; and he played his part so well comes into his
hands, he will make a different sort of place of it,

Apparenly, that’s from Persuasion by Jane Austen. (Hey, I was an English major, but I’ve still only read one Austen book.) Weird. Are they hoping this filler will persuade me to click their link, even though I know it’s spam? Even though I don’t know a “monique” and, even if I did, she wouldn’t be sending me tiny chunks of Austen and clearly spam-filled links?

And this I don’t understand: why do spammers even use filler to begin with? Why do they use filler that’s just random pieces like this? Do they have such a limited grasp of the English language that they don’t realize cutting and pasting mid-sentence — mid-punctuation even — isn’t fooling anybody? Do they think, “Oh ho, if I slap in some in some random 19th-century prose, nobody will be able to resist my advertisement for Viagra rolexes! Muhahahaha!”

I just don’t get it. I mean, most spam is just garbage — a link or an advertisement. The ones that try to pretend they’re something else just tend to underline the fact that they’re spam.

Search for x, and Google will sometimes ask you if what you really meant was y. Which is fine, with simple spelling mistakes and similar search results not at all uncommon. But what’s the point in it when there aren’t any results for y — when it is, in fact, not more likely that that’s what you meant?

A sequel to Wicked? I’m not so sure that’s a good thing. There were things I loved about Maguire’s original book, but I also remember finding it strangely disappointing on some level. And, like rollick, I suspect the success of the Broadway musical played at least some part in his decision to pen a sequel. The last time I tried to read a book like that, it was the execrable Hannibal by Thomas Harris1. Just as I pass on film novelizations, I generally don’t choose to read sequels written solely because of a film of the first book2.

Which is not to say that Gregory Maguire’s upcoming Son of a Witch won’t be a great read — even if it is meant to inspire a Broadway sequel. There was plenty I loved about Wicked, and I’ve heard some good things about his follow-up novels3. I just — I dunno.

I guess I’m just trying to say: I’ve got a lot of other things I want to read before I go picking this one off the shelf.

1 This is somewhat unfair. While I have little doubt that it was largely thought of Hollywood that moved Mr. Harris’ pen, I never did finish the novel and, if tortured, would probably have to admit that what I did read was more painfully mediocre than truly bad. I did, however, enjoy both Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs, and, while I suspect it’s grown a bit dated, I’ve heard good things about Black Sunday.

2Even with the case of books that, truth be told, I liked better than the movie. (Although, in this case, I pretty much gave up reading Michael Crichton altogether some years ago. Even before he apparently became über-right-wing hack.)

3Although, I’ve also heard some good things about Harris’ Hannibal, so, y’know, there’s no accounting for taste.