Please don’t send me the “complete your collection!” email for something when you haven’t yet shipped out the first items in the set. In particular, when I’m waiting for you to ship volumes 1 and 2 of a series, don’t send email about volumes 10 through 15.

Thank you for (still) not learning to make the carpet match the drapes.

I was idly scrolling through my junkmail folder this evening (looking for more entertaining Japanese spam…) and came across the following:

Subject: Cute dogs massacred in Texas

Alex Rodriguez hot steamy adulterous pics with Madonna
http://www.testforum.(removed).de/main.html

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://(removed)

I understand trying to trick people into reading your message with a “newsworthy” subject line, but you really ought to try to make the body match, or you’ll lose that precious click-through (necessary to infect Windows boxes with your Russian botnet code).

By the way, thanks for sending out English-language spam encoded in KOI8-R; it’s a useful clue for anti-spam tools.

[Update: no, seriously, you’re killing me here. Subject: “Charred bodies found near White House”, Body: “Have a break, have a Kit Kat - free online chocolate bar giveaways”. Also, Subject: “Hilary Clinton vows revenge”, Body: “The best places to shag in the wild, all listed right here.” Do. Not. Want.

By the way, I see Charter Cable still isn’t blocking outgoing SMTP]

Please make the iPhone screen at least twice as large (4x6 good, 5x7.5 better), add a stylus, and come up with a name that doesn’t piss off Jobs by sounding too much like “tablet” or “Newton”. Maybe iSlab, iSurf, iCanHazTouchscreen, iFinallyhavethetechtomakethiswork; something like that.

Crank up the CPU a little, though, because I found Japanese text input rather sluggish on a friend’s original iPhone.

My Japanese spam is just more fun than my English spam. In this little missive, I’m promised that hot Japanese women are looking to pay men for sex!

Usually, it’s the other way around…

SEXをするだけでお金がもらえるって本当？
そんな上手い話なんてないよ・・・
 
な〜んて思ってるあなた！！
 
これが本当なんです！！
お金はあるけど仕事ばかりで出会いが無い女性が大幅に
増加している為にお金を払ってSEXを求める女性がたくさんいます♪♪
 
 
■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□
今すぐお金をもらってSEXを楽しむ
http://web.(removed).com/LoveWife/
 
■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□■□
 
実際に当サイトにて女性に援助してもらいSEXを楽しんでる方、
素敵な男性と出会い気持ちの良いSEXができたと言う方から
たくさんのご意見をいただいております！！
 
●参考までにいくつか紹介させていただきます。
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┏━┓愛さん(22歳)⇒1回5万円で3人の方と楽しませてもらいました♪
┃♀┃みくさん(26歳)⇒6年ぶりに男性と関係を持てました。感謝してます。
┗━┛聡美さん(24歳)⇒童貞君を10万円で食べさせてもらっちゃいました！
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
┏━┓太一さん(38歳)⇒この年になってお金をもらってSEX出来るとは・・・
┃♂┃幸太郎さん(21歳)⇒ここでSEXしてれば仕事しないで良いから最高！！
┗━┛徹さん(35歳)⇒年上好みの女性がたくさんいて楽しめるね〜
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
 
SEXしてお金をもらいに行く
↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓↓
 
http://web.(removed).com/LoveWife/
 
↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑
SEXしてお金をもらいに行く

• No sign of the emotionless killer loli. She must still be off arranging heads in her trophy room.
• No Anekomimi backup story this time.
• EcchiHentai rival phantom is in the first five chapters. He drugs schoolgirls, almost gets MH to trade herself to free them, publicly humiliates Toichi in a fight (not understanding why his opponent stayed in human form), lures MH out for another duel, then easily evades her attacks in her topless power-up form until Toichi shows up and she asks him for some hands-on assistance, the resulting emotions transforming her "divine wrath club" into its max-power (and NSFW) form.
• Then, one of Volken's minions gets his own two-chapter adventure, as the eyepatch-wearing nazi chickdominatrix returns. It's a slightly skewed boyminion meets girldom story, with a happy ending.
• Next, it's Karol versus Mighty Heart in a fierce cooking battle, with Volken and his minions as judges. MH takes the lead with the first course, but Karol wins the rest, until the final course, the main dish: Karol's Passion Banquet (juicy tropical fruits on a bed of fresh Karol) versus Mighty Heart's Snowy Suspension Bridge (one large udon noodle stretched between her mountains, with a cup of dipping sauce in the valley below). MH is the winner by a nosebleed, leading a pissed-off Karol to yank away the noodle, triggering a Mighty Beam explosion.
• Moving right along, Toichi and Kokoro accidentally ingest matching "Love Portion" candies, leading them to come this close to a real kiss, before a classmate breaks in and reveals the candy's powers were just false advertising.
• In a rare service-free chapter, Toichi/Volken uses his great power and the fearsome reputation of the Phantom Legion to save a playground from destruction.
• Finally, the boss orders Volken to investigate Kokoro in order to learn Mighty Heart's weaknesses. He follows her to her rather unusual home, sneaks in when she steps out, and naturally ends up trapped in her closet while she undresses. G-cup.

I’m skimming the story, and only translating dialogue occasionally, but it’s actually turning out to be pretty good, enough that I’m going to go back and read it properly. It doesn’t seem to have much of a fanbase, so I’ll have to pull out my scanner to get a few nice character pictures.

I’m also going to spend some time reading the wiki page and the author’s blog, because this really doesn’t look like someone’s first work. I’m suspecting a history of porn comics under another name or as part of a doujin circle.

Commenting on the common fantasy that America is a repressive police state, Steven says:

It's almost like LARPing for them, with the added benefit that they can feel "besieged and persecuted", and feel like they're part of a revolutionary movement, without actually risking anything important. Because what they're doing is about as dangerous as going to a slasher movie.

Indeed. Leftist Activist Repression and Persecution: a new game from the makers of Emo: The Whimpering.

John McCain comes out:

"Dare I say Abba?" he replied. "Everybody says, 'Ugh. Abba.' Why is that? Abba was the largest-selling record act ever. Nobody likes them, but they sold more records than anybody in the history of the world, including the Beatles. But everybody hates them. You're a no-class guy if you like Abba. Why does everybody go see Mamma Mia!? Hypocrisy! Rank hypocrisy! I'm not embarrassed to say I like Abba."

The quality of contributions to the group blog Japundit has been sliding for a while now, largely due to some marginal contributors, but now they’ve done something that puts me off my lunch: Boye Lafayette De Mente has joined the party.

As with his books, his turgid, self-important prose and “unique” view of Japan is enough to make me stop reading completely. Blech.