What's in a Spame?

Three months ago, throughout the night, I began to receive spam from Asia every twelve to 18 minutes. Like most things from Asia, it’s kind of quirkier and more awesome than what we get in the states. The spam itself is completely unintelligible, but they addresses are all from addresses with first and last names. Delightful first and last names that give me no end of pleasure. Seriously. I can’t empty my spam box usually until I’ve checked if there are any lovely names waiting for me.

Usually spam comes from someone like nbx2att4pn6wrlm-ny@booksable.com or b4enaifsno2a8h-8be@pagejewel.com. But these came from real sounding, though ethnically confused, names. Names that seem like real people. I love the attention to detail it provides. People like Frederic Dutton, Pansy Herrington, Nadia Downing, Hilary Prescott, Ollie Cormier, Julia Guevara, Rosa Dowdy, Ivan Velez, and Nora Hogue. Names of people that I might want to use in a novel I might someday write. Not a novel about a group of lovable but slightly detestable spammers going through life, love, and mid-20s-angst, but some international psychological thriller with Nadia as my heroine. Or perhaps Nora. Nora Hogue, international secretary for a WHO exec who gets murdered just as an odd but attractive man shows up in her life at a gala.

And there are more. The evocative but inscrutable Penelope Lanier for instance. Her lovable but meddlesome neighbor, Frankie Lambert. And Sebastian Washington is just waiting for a Dickensian novel to come give him his rags to riches story. Maura Simms, neglected child of avid online second lifers. Latisha Denny, daughter of immigrants or mixed parentage or just a small town girl who craved an exotic name change when she came of age? Herschel Knight, Jewish? Chivalrous? Lovable but prudish, Teddy Pritchett. Everyone’s pal, Bobbie Guy. Or the round-faced man of mystery, Owen Napier. The erudite trucker, Liechtenstein Fenton. And, finally, the fabled, many-faced Lazaro Potter who stars in daytime soaps opposite Tisha Williams.