A mighty fine reason to read your spam

A year or so ago, basketball player Latrell Sprewell, hitherto famous for playing solid defense, having dreadlock pigtails, and strangling his coach with his bare hands, was offered 7 million dollars a year to play the game he'd been playing all his life. He refused, infamously, by quipping "I gotta feed my family."*

But of course, as vocations go, tossing a ball in a hoop for millions of dollars annually is about as good as it gets. You could always be a metermaid or the guy who cleans up suicides or a session drummer for Nickelback. You could always be the guy who sends me spam at 2 a.m. every morning.

In fact, it was that guy that got me thinking about Latrell Sprewell. I'm not talking about the "I living Nigerian prince, would you help distribute my funds" emails or the "Enliven your Pensi" messages. I'm talking about the stock tips I get daily, free of charge, from my own personal back alley Charles Scwab. And you might hate this man. In fact, you probably do. Who'd blame you, really. But me? I love him. I love the nearly poetic intext gibberish ("And if de bees wake, it doan matter for her her"), the wonderful email titles ("intrinsically regimental" or "lumpy connote"), and, especially, the names. They read like a list of distinguished hobos:

- Faulkner T. Rasmus
- Ty Coon
- Lestat Crownover
- Crabtree S. Stella
- Milligan Peg
- Lavonne Negronne
- Barrera Fanny
- Eduardo Watches
- Gonzales B.B. Bertram
- Septimus T. Stevenson

Expectant parents: throw away those two dollar baby-naming periodicals. Faulkner T. Rasmus YourLastNameHere is better than anything inside. Not unlike that Men's Wearhouse guy: I guarantee it.

Of course, how does a Rutherford Viola or a Dominquez Q. Tessa make any money with this stock email thing? Well, let's learn. Firstly, the text is filled with that seemingly random poetry in order to get it past your email filter: your filter is looking for words like "Viagra" and "Diet" while Barrera Fanny is sending you words like "puppy" and "sassafras." Confused, your email server lets the letter through. And, in some image which the filters cannot decode, they ask you to buy some stock you've never heard of. For example: CDC Holding Company, which bares no relation to Janis Joplin. Now, our gentle Lavonne Negronne has purchased, say, a million shares of CDC Holding and, if there are a few people out there smart enough to act and ACT NOW and buy their shares while the getting's good, Lavonne will sell his quickly, making maybe a penny a share, but, since he's got a million shares...well...you see how that works. Septimus T. Stevenson has to feed his family.

Now, I have a request. Since it's Friday and you're probably not working anyhow, go check your email, maybe your spam folder, and leave some particularly good names in the comment box below. Or ignore me completely. That's fine too. But we can have the definitive list of Faulkner T. Rasmuses and I think that means something. Not something important, per se, but something funny, which, for my money, is far superior anyhow.

* His children require lobster milkshakes to survive.