Wednesday, April 27, 2005

Poppies and paddy fields

Yippee, it's another Ikea day.

This means a 6 hour (3 hours driving, 3 hours shopping) round trip to Marseille. When they open the new one in Montpellier, that will reduce the trip to about 3 hours, but surely by then we will have bought everything that we need? Please!


The journey is not the most interesting, because you cross the Rhone delta, which is mostly flat and dull. However, I noted two things this time that softened the pain somewhat and cheered the soul. The first was the paddy fields. It may not be too well known, but there is quite a lot of rice grown in this area, so you occasionally see fields flooded with water and strange tractors working up to their axles. Coolies would have added an authentic touch, but they were nowhere to be seen. And secondly, poppies, making beautiful red carpets at the side of the road and, even more profusely, along the central reservation.

As usual we buy far more than we set out to purchase, but as I've said before, Mr Ikea isn't the wealthiest man in Europe for no reason.

Spam fascinates me. Take one from today.

The subject line states: New impressive rawlex repliccas now campground

The first part of the message says:
Now presenting:You know you've allways wanted it - watchees: elegent, fancy, impressive repliccas! You can impress you're lady/man with roleex, carttier, braitling, bulgari and much more...The bast brand s in the world! Just naame it - We got it :)


Selected other bits (with links):
i want rawlex now
i lust for carttier
braitling please


Now we all know that they misspell brand names in order to fool spam filters, but have any of these dimwits ever stopped to consider that there aren't many people stupid enough to buy a watch from someone who can't even spell it correctly. Or are there??

I can just see the spam of the future going something like this:

Subject line: ;wo4it aslciew7 nbgyl NDIWOQP
Message: vbjssyehn lllonmndhghsj nbsgteyeuj, buy won todaaay%

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