Mercury Retro and The Languaging

I received the following text in an e-mail today:

Hello, at me was the holiday. Today has returned. You spoke, that looked for work. Not a problem. I work in the large company. The company looks for new employees. Freely about 1600 vacancies. You can be in time. I work with this company three months. I earn much. For three months has bought to itself the new car.
The company sells electronics. Now it is a lot of orders. Therefore the company has not time to send the goods to buyers.
I wait for the house. I receive the goods and I send its buyers.
I earn 40-60 dollars for each package.

Write more rapidly on e-mail [e-address] and the manager will register you. If you have friends they too can work here.

In a week you will receive the first package.
Registration will be till November, 10th.

I used to study and enjoy linguistics, and as someone like that, I love looking at the language in junk mail, the few times every few months that I read them.* This fits no convention I’m familiar with, it actually looks like a translation of some automated dictionary, and, you know, whatever, but then I caught these two lines:

1. For three months has bought to itself the new car.

2. I wait for the house.

And I knew right away that I was not going to be able to sleep tonight until I shared it with someone.

Good night!

*I admit to answering the so-called Nigerian scams with personal e-notes built around outrageous claims and demands. For instance, if the note offers to pay me $400,000 for transfering five million, I write back telling them I’m insulted and will accept no less than $900,000. If they offer 40% of the total, I write and demand 85% - etc. Also, I let them know in the interests of honesty that I’ve been convicted of a laundry list of crimes related to what they’re doing and just about everyone I know knows they can’t trust me, but I insist that I’m totally running a clean show now and have none of my compulsive lying and stealing urges active on the surface, but that they’re all stuffed down so deep in a tiny little box deep inside me that I doubt anyone will ever be able to find them if they tried.

Tom is available for consultations and lessons. See http://tdjacobs.com for more information and to book a consultation.

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October 23, 2007 By Tom Jacobs