Spam subject lines are sometimes very straightforward. You want sex and money, don't you? Free cash, free sex. Oh, and you can be thinner. Sometimes I see a Lose four inches in one week! right next to an Add four inches naturally!.

But they branch off as the spammer tries to outmaneuver you. The Spammer, a collective entity, tries your every defense in hundreds of simultaneous games of chess. Do you think that you don't need a larger penis, since your current one satisfies your lover? She Says It's Fine But She Is Lying! or Don't Wait Till She Leaves You! These subject lines are non sequiturs, except that obviously, since they are in my SpamAssassin folder, they are about penis size.

One colleague was puzzled at Your Neighbors Will Be Amazed!, a subject line in this tradition. I also hope that my neighbors would not be amazed at the promised development.

Those that falsely call for my pity and compassion irk me. As a customer support rep, I have to open HELP and ASSISTANCE URGENTLY NEEDED even though they are all from Miriam Abacha or Charles Taylor's daughter. On the up side, I know far more about current African politics than I did before I had e-mail.

Some are nonsensical or funny. A Wotch.com subject line is always a treat (though I never read the body). Crouching Bunny, Hidden Rabbit! The Poop-Shoop-Moop-a-Loop.

Some try to fake you out. You left your umbrella, or the server is down. I am tempted to open the ones that pretend to have very highminded purposes. Post-Communist Eastern Europe. Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlet Letter". But SpamAssassin knows better than I, and into the trash they go.

Every once in a while a subscriber writes in from [some number]@hotmail.com, in all caps and in HTML, cussing over his problem. I fish this message from the spam swamp. But how long till spammers extend their efforts enough to make up subject lines that sound more reasonable than real ones do? And, alongside that, how long until spam is completely indiscernible from legitimate email? The AI sends you a believable email asking you for some information, responds to your response plausibly, and only after two or three cycles of replies makes the pitch. Next step -- replicants who blend in among us solely to influence our purchasing habits!

Didn't mean to get this involved. Here's a silly subject line for your trouble: I didnt say it would be easy. I only said.. twlrazpjcocztls

Oh, and challenge-response solutions (e.g. SpamArrest) don't make sense in the long run.