"
. With In Consumed: Recycled Phrases
secret-weapon
Originally uploaded by Linzie Hunter
Spam One-Liners: Extracting pleasure from (digital) junk-culture detritus.
Like everybody else with an e-mail account, Linzie Hunter gets a lot of spam. It might be a little more unusual that she sometimes finds the subject headings so amusingly absurd — “No More Lonely Nights for Linzie,” for instance — that she forwards them to friends. (Recipients tend to be nonplused. “Maybe it’s just my sense of humor,” says Hunter, who lives in North London.) More recently, when Hunter, who is an illustrator, was experimenting with hand lettering, she did something extremely unusual. She found a way to convert commercial entreaty and flimflammery into something pleasing. That is, she made spam into art.
Continue reading at the NYT Magazine site.
The Spam One-Liners Flickr set is here.
Late-breaking development: After the column went to press, Linzie Hunter began making prints available by way of Thumbtack Press. It would have been good to have this in the column, but … better late than never.
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
As an devoted spam chuckler, a number of years ago I was particularly moved by the folks in far-off Nigeria and other exotic lands who contacted me, a perfect stranger, with offers to make considerable fortunes by forming a short-term partnership with them. Inspired as a result, I, in partnership with a number of Martians, set up http://MessageFromMars.com, where out-of-this-world opportunities are offered to one and all.
Unfortunately, humans have not beaten a path to our door, even though we DO (at http://www.cafepress.com/goodlight) have some classy merchandise to offer those wishing to celebrate interplanetary deal-making – if not avail themselves of actual opportunities such as that offered by the untimely death of Provincial Secretary of the Treasury BeRugnezz. All you have to do is contact his widow and help her process some cash.