Like most people, the spam count in my inbox has increased quite rapidly over the last couple of years, even to address for which I'm exceedingly careful about giving out. Still, I've noticed that there's a lot of really weird spam messages lately, and I'm not just talking about the products being "advertised." No, the actual content of the message is very unusual. For example:

SuperVikagra - Ciaolis
Take it once and it lasts all weekend.
Do not have sex timed to a pill. Choose the moments when you want to have intimacy.
Ciaglis acts quicker (about 20 minutes) and last much longer (about 2-3 days) with NO SIDE EFFf ECT.
The cheapest price!
Gert it now!

rem at http://www.foreveryourhost.com
magnanimous insular aye chutney could bayou buffoon bethought prototypic glimmer robotics heigh geodetic bagel cranston helen discriminate kinetic label chose algebra fiftieth gedanken frictional elaine curtsey fraternal kyle cocky horseshoe hardboard dane aforethought feud draftsperson anus accusation dressy mankind geometrician geigy contextual crosspoint heinz
atone exceed seasonal granary seoul jenny gases bag ecliptic predicate inexperience aitken jose boatman churchgo cockeye demean betide carla mystique afresh chromatography as horatio pediatrician bravery optoacoustic selectmen hate buck operable circumspect passageway ginger dyer cog elena manor comprehensive porcine
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footstep indoor astral cushman archer infantile hour gamma adrienne headwall pawtucket alway millie silicic conrail corroboree europe odessa briton cagey recalcitrant darius reject rumford

<snip>
First, I can't figure out why the spammer has essentially loaded up the end of the message with a dictionary of random words (there are many more words I've left out). It looks a lot like a <meta keyword> kind of thing you put into web pages, and certainly the random words would be designed to make this particular page show up in a lot of Google searches. Why, though, put them in an e-mail message? It can't be to thwart a junk mail filter, because people put in words they DON'T want to allow (in other words, the words chosen by people are used to filter out spam), and this message ended up happily in Mail.app's Junk folder anyway. In another twist to this idea, take a look at the "dictionary" used in the following message:

Hi. Do you know that you can get pre-appkroved 1.69% mordtgage rate
even with bad crexdit?
Simply follow the link below and we will appbrove your application in several hours. No need to worry!

Approve Me Now!


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ehhty kplga dbtmskdkp azhzbze poreutlbd hyeoqcob- urqnqe poyveqldb eunucin. bimornkut

<snip>

Now, this is just bizarre. It's the same scattershot dictionary thing, but instead of random words we have random letters organized into "words." I've suspected that the random words are actually real words in a language not displayable by my computer. Maybe it's a Unicode thing that my OS X machine doesn't know how to handle? While I can sort of see the point of trying to get people to read the advertising at the top of the message, I utterly fail to comprehend the point of the random words (in the first example) or the random letters (in the second example).

Finally, one other oddity with these so-called random spams is the odd font changes in the middle of words. For instance "even with bad crexdit?" What is that tiny little x doing in the middle of the word "credit"? Same thing with "SuperVikagra - Ciaolis" in the first example. Why is the tiny k and tiny o included?

As I said, this is weird. I'd love to hear any explanations though.