The magician sits at her terminal. She is quiet. She is patient. She is calm.
She clicks open her mailbox. She regards the first spam.
Then she deletes it, carefully, and clicks again. She stares for a time at the words emblazoned on her screen.
She stands, and takes her coat, and goes to the door.
"Make money fast," she says, and shrugs.
She goes outside. She stretches. She leaves the door open behind her. After a moment, Discount Jesus comes out into the light. He's not the real Jesus, or even a real savior, but he was available online and he's got a convenient moral doctrine. "Going somewhere?" he asks.
Discount Jesus nods; so she gets on her motorcycle, and he gets in the sidecar, and she revs up the engine.
"We're going to visit the spammer," she says.
She drives. There's a wind in their hair.
He makes a vaguely hurt face at her. "I'm a spiritual breakthrough developed by a team of fourteen accredited theologians," he says.
The road is bumpy now, and there's a building complex ahead. Sprawling above it is a majestic sign reading SPAM.
"… huh. No pr0n or ads on it," she says.
"Or try to find some kind of anonymous browsing service," he adds.
Her motorcycle pulls up in front of the building. She hops down. She takes her helmet off and tucks it under her arm. DJ climbs out of the sidecar.
Boldly, Celia strides up to the front door. She knocks. The door slides open. Inside, there is a great and empty space; and at its center, a machine; and connected to the machine, the spammer.
"I'm here!" she says, and the spammer turns. It looks at her. Its eyes are wide and blank.
"Irene magnumangels honda1 don laddie ruth mazda1 rock romanasdfghjk," it says. There's a horrid glottal stop at the end of that last word. It sounds like copperware dying.
She looks at Discount Jesus. "It's not a god," she says.
"It's not people," he points out.
Its hand reaches for her. It's a shriveled little paw, both cute and sickening. It scrabbles at the air.
I've seen it discussed before, but googlemancy seems to be taking off much faster. Probably because you don't have to worry about whether half your reading is being filtered by your service provider.
Hitherby, I worship you. It's that simple. Your existence brightens the world immeasurably.
I was put in the frame of mind to go searching for RSB-related stuff because I was dusting off my copy of hognob to see if I could work up something for my birthday party. And I found this…yay! This is quite cool. I've added the livejournal feed and fully intend to work through the archives.
Hm. So for suits, we've got drugs and pr0n — looks like viruses are the major arcana. What could the other suits be — money-making scams for one, I'd say, but then what sort of spam is sufficiently prevalent to be the fourth suit?
Software? I get a lot of unwanted ads for cheap software.
There's search engine result and related website design/promotion spam including selling mailing lists or spam software, though the latter might fall under money-making scams. The suit of MMF is probably a good place for the latter, yes.