Spam, Coupland, and Memoirs
Some interesting things I saw this weekend:
Spam: The Documentary aired on the Ceeb’s “The Lens”, a program that features Canadian independent filmmakers’ documentaries. I missed the first few minutes of the film, but what I saw opened my eyes. I mean, obviously, spam is a problem: they’re always on about enacting laws to combat it, so it’s got to be a bigger deal than just how annoyed I get by it magically multiplying inside the fertile breeding ground of my Gmail spam folder. (Although you’ve got to love the spam recipes that appear as sponsored links - who could resist savory spam crescents or vineyard spam salad?)
I learned about Spamhaus, an international non-profit team of spamfighters. They track down spammers and publish information on them, and maintain a list of spam rings that have been terminated by at least three ISPs (Register of Known Spam Operations). This information, along with their database of spam IP addresses, helps ISPs to identify and get rid of spammers who are already on their networks and keep more from getting on. According to the Spamhaus website, 80% of spam comes from 200 known operations. Yuck.
Investigatory journalism high jinks ensue as the documentarian tries out products he’s bought from spam, and buys a “Father of Spam” trophy for Gary Thurek. The documentary was both entertaining and informative - watch it if you get the chance!
Douglas Coupland’s Blackberry Pearl ad
I noticed it in Maclean’s - the issue with the cover story that proclaims “THE INTERNET SUCKS”. A quick visit to the Blackberry Pearl website (www.blackberrypearl.com>Life>Douglas Coupland) reveals more on Doug’s use of the smartphone. At first, I was disgusted. And then I thought to myself that it’s actually perfect. Reviewers love to say that Coupland “has his finger on the pulse of a generation” and to some extent, they’re right, so the fact that he’s hawking one of the hottest toys around is completely fitting. Good on him.
Vancouver International Writers & Readers Festival
Aaron surprised me with tickets to Memory Lane, a program that featured readings and discussion with four authors who’ve recently published memoirs. All the authors were great, but I especially enjoyed Ryan Knighton’s reading, which was actually a memorization. Knighton is blind, teaches writing at Cap College, and is really funny. His new memoir, Cockeyed, is about going blind. His other books look pretty good too, and the pulp page has props from Don McKellar and Christian Bok. Sweet.
October 22nd, 2006 at 9:42 pm
A. and I watched the spam documentary last weekend and, like you, found it entertaining and enlightening. Particularly interesting that a lot of spam comes from Canada since we don’t have any anti-spam laws.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:16 am
That *was* an entertaining episode, and educational too. I like how they totally got side-tracked by tracing the term back to the and then interviewing one of the Python (was it Terry Jones? can’t remember). Also, they did an extensive interview with the people who make SPAM and talked about the differences between spam (the scourge of email) and SPAM (the food).
spam spam spam
October 24th, 2006 at 10:12 pm
I missed the whole part where they talked about spam the “luncheon meat” - sounds like it was funny! Maybe they’ll play it again one of these days :)