Hacking for Christ: Amusing Spam

September 16, 2004

Amusing Spam

A couple of gems which have crossed my inbox and caught my eye this week:

Title: FW: Ministry TRAINING
To: gerv@gerv.net

You can become a legally ordained minister within 48 hours

As a minister, you will be authorized to perform the rites and ceremonies of the church!

Perform Weddings, Funerals, Perform Baptisms, Forgiveness of Sins
Visit Correctional Facilities

Want to start your own church?

Press here to find out how

Three things struck me.

The title is "Ministry Training", but then you can become a minister in 48 hours. Some might argue that slightly more qualifications are required than that.
It implies that the job of a minister is to perform rites and ceremonies. I suggest the emphasis is better placed elsewhere.
And of course, there's the amusing assertion that this "course" somehow makes you qualified to Perform the Forgiveness of Sins. But who can forgive sins but God alone?

The second piece of semi-spam was actually a webmail footer. I'm sure you've all seen the ones for MSN or Yahoo personals which basically say "click here to get a date". In India, they do things somewhat differently:

Yahoo! India Matrimony: Find your life partner online.

Posted by gerv at September 16, 2004 3:42 PM

Comments

As an Indian, I do find this lamentably true...

Posted by: aaditya sood at September 16, 2004 6:39 PM

And I keep wondering: Why read spam?

Posted by: Bram van Leur at September 16, 2004 7:03 PM

Bram: I don't, normally. It all gets filed into a "spamcheck" folder. But I do go through that every few days scanning the titles and senders looking for any obvious false positives. Also, some spam does arrive in my inbox. And I must confess I looked at the ministry one because I thought it would be amusing.

Posted by: Gerv at September 16, 2004 9:46 PM

India Matrimony doesn't have to amuse you. There are various ways people find their spouses. Indian way is much better. They get the parents involved to thoroughly check each other out. We say, that we marry first and then fall in love, while it is the other way round in a lot of places.

Posted by: Hem Ramachandran at September 17, 2004 2:05 AM

Hem: sure. The amusement was in the contrast between the Western and Eastern approaches, reflected in something as mundane as an email footer. As long as no-one is forced into anything against their will, I see no problem with the Indian way.

Posted by: Gerv at September 17, 2004 10:11 AM

I wonder which church the sender was referring to... the Church of Vegas?

Posted by: Alex Vincent at September 17, 2004 11:59 PM