Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent.
- William Butler Yeats -
Your ubiquitous (O)CT(O)PUS is no prude, but I get annoyed when breast and penis enlargement spam invades my e-mail box. Why spam when spammers know nothing about me, least of all my gender, proclivities, or species?
Neither this nor that, I am not a transgender, cross-dressing cephalopod in need of both. I have no interest in privileging one appendage over another and no innate need to preen or primp myself in gaudiness to facilitate naughtiness. In this or that, it seems, human beings are more akin to birds.
Perhaps followers of this forum have noticed: Spam is no longer delivered via e-mail but posted in the comment threads of popular blogs. The logic is simple: Why spam a single reader when you can reach a wider audience; for instance, a forum followed by hundreds or thousands of readers; and spammers have learned to customize their message with charm and inventiveness.
Recently, for instance, I posted this article, A Preoccupation with Rubber Ducks. Last week, one enterprising spammer raised the ante duck for duck and left this comment beneath my post:
While most birds are phallus-free, ducks are oddly endowed - up to 8 inches. Using high-speed video they found that ducks could go from zero to happy in less than half a second … That endowment should give the males an advantage during forced mating but these [editorial note: I eliminated the embedded url address that originally appeared here] free males aren't out of the woods yet … Why Yale decided to study duck penises in the first place I will never know.The embedded url address links you to an online pharmacy that trades in generic versions of Viagra™, Cialis™, and Levitra™, among other prescription medications. Online pharmacies are illegal in the United States for good reasons.
Generic drugs manufactured offshore violate patents and trademarks, and consumers should be especially wary when purchasing drugs of dubious origin and quality. Furthermore, consumers should never self-administer any prescription drug, especially antibiotics and cardio-vascular drugs, without medical supervision.
Curiously, GeoTrust and McAfee have certified this obviously illegal enterprise as a secure e-commerce site. Furthermore, the horny duck accepts payment from American Express, Diners Club, Visa, MasterCard, and Western Union. American corporations, it seems, employ a double standard. They will litigate any infringements of their own rights yet sell anything to anyone for any purpose with impunity. These days, to make a buck is the most sublime of all virtues ... trumping laws, ethics, even hypocrisy. (O)CT(O)PUS intends to name them and shame them until they clean up their act.
