I was browsing through the referral URLs in my site statistics the other day when something caught my eye. I can pick out the spam links most of the time, but there was one page — just referencing an image on my site rather than directing real traffic to any page of mine — that I thought might be real. I clicked the link, and though the site proved to be spam for a media player, its seemingly random use of one particular image proved to be highly amusing.

Yes indeed, the fourth picture in that eclectic group of “brief encounter pictures” is a picture of legendary Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler signing my helmet, a picture I linked in my meager eulogy for Bo. And if you read that post, you may notice the reason the spambot grabbed that image: shortly before and shortly after the link to that picture, I describe the occasion as a brief encounter. So really, the strange part of this wasn’t the selection of the image, but instead was the ultimate use of the image.

What’s the lesson in all this? I have no idea. But since I’m usually annoyed by spam, it was nice to be amused by it for once.