So far this morning I have received four spam* for Viagra. I’m not sure who’s spreading the rumour that I’m having problems keeping it up, but I’d like to go on record as saying that it’s as up as it ever was, given that I don’t have an it.
Which means, by the way, that my it doesn’t need to be any longer or wider.
Two of these spam, interestingly, employ what I assume is a filter-busting method: a long string of unrelated words in the subject line. To whit:
“elizabethan valois thermistor weiss aplomb crisis aileen clash eden quickie tallyho mcleod ogre onion ace proteolysis hollandaise”
Aplomb?
As in ‘he swallowed his Viagra with aplomb’?
And I don’t even want to think about ‘hollandaise’ in that context…
*Is this the correct plural form? There are enough technical writers and their ilk reading this – is it spam? spams? spumati?
SPAM is like RUBBISH or GARBAGE – it is already plural? I think you can get lots of spam, but not many spam, ie it can’t be quantified numerically.
mm
Okay, so it’s a non-count noun, like furniture… I guess I’d have to say that “I received four spam e-mails.”
Good thing I’m the English teacher and you’re the physicist 😉
You could do the Python thing. i.e. Spam, spam ,spam, spam for four of them.
Hey! Physicists can know what non-count noun is! It’s not mutually exclusive. Unlikely but not to be discounted. (ba da bing!)
I still giggle when I get emails with subjects like: “Lisa MacDonald! Enlarge your penis today!”
I mean, I know it’s been a while since I’ve shaved my legs, but *really*. Tsk.
There is an antithesis – when my son, whose name is Robert, was born, he received a Medicare card which identified him as a girl.
Robert – in either language, boy, no?
Spam is like beer in terms of pluralization. You can get a lot of spam, which might make you want to drink a lot of beer. But if you are referring to multiple specific spam messages, you can call them spams. While you’re think about this, why don’t you get a couple of beers out of the fridge?
In other words, all of the following are legit:
– I got a lot of spam today.
– I got 37 spams today.
– I’ll get some beer from the fridge.
– I’ll get a couple of beers from the fridge.
Mmmmmm. Beer.
I just got a spam for a website http://www.getsoftnow.biz – which is the opposite of what the spam is usually about, no?
Maybe the next one will be for psychiatric cybercare – shrinksrus.com?