As much as everyone whines about how much they hate spam, I've come to notice that there's a certain amount of brilliance involved in it. I'm not saying that there's a lot (of brilliance, that is; I probably get enough spam to outnumber the total number of utters on cows in the whole world, and I'm only one person), I'm just saying that I have lately become rather fascinated by it.

In order to make this simpler, I'll break it down by style. For the sake of convenience, each type I discuss will also have a title. It's just easier that way.

• Give Me All Your Money Spam

  Perhaps the most annoying, these spam messages tend to show up from people like Haakimiabu Budjuki, Yoshigoma Turkenipu, or occasionally Larry Mitchell (just to keep you guessing). Some sort of crisis is involved, say the slaughter of a family's cattle, the ill-fated marriage of a half-sister, or even a plea to free one from the shackles of prison (conveniently enough, prison with internet access). Whatever the situation, exorbitant amounts of money are involved, somehow. And it's always some figure at, or nearly at, the billion dollar mark.

• Illiterate Porn Spam

  Aptly named, this is the spam directed at normal people, probably simply for shock factor. Of course, these spam were not originally illiterate, per se. So what happened? Well, spam filters got clever and caught on to repeated words (all of which you already know, so I'll refrain from listing them). Thus the spammers had to get creative. The result was a lot of poorly spelled words. When in doubt, add a few letters to those words, and you'll have something that's humorous, if anything. For instance, a certain spam message I receive on a semi-regular basis begins with the line: "Hi, Not very good erecxction? You are welcome..." Damn, that's clever.

• Random Story-Telling Spam

  Just as it sounds, this spam takes as many random words as possible and throws them into a jumble of sentences. They're actually pretty interesting, too. Take this one, titled "Mincemeat", which I got the other day: "Binch, said Elmer, how do you count your converts? Want to go out and spank a bald man on the head." Like I said, fascinating. A part of me thinks these particular spam messages were inspired by Noam Chomsky, ever famous for his totally grammatical nonsense sentence, "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."

• Obscure Words Spam

  This is the final form of spam that is in any way amusing. For example, I got a message titled "petrificate your manhood." While at first I figured petrificate was simply a made-up word (I still have my suspicions), it is apparently, according to some sources, a real word: it means "to petrify." Which makes sense, I guess. But if that's the case, then I suppose I definitely don't want to. That's gross.

Now that all is said, I will conclude only by saying that you should not do as I have just done unless you are a trained professional. Reading spam can be very dangerous indeed, and if you're not careful, you might be drawn into these spam messages like a moth to flame. And you can't say I didn't warn you.