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  • “You See Spam, I See нынешней ситуации большинство тем”

    March 16th, 2009 § 7

    I’ve guest-blogged for the uber-cool site “Inspired to Action” and will letcha know when it’s up.  I’m pretty sure my piece will be posted on Wed.  Meanwhile, I’d like to give you a small look at some of the more thoughtful (read: automatically generated) comments I’ve received at the blog since I first started blogging a few months ago.  You see, one of the reasons I moved my blog activity from MySpace was to grant more ready access to readers who were not regular MySpace users, not realizing at the time that the term “regular” would grow further and further apart from the term “MySpace user” in just about all ways.  Many of my new readers (read: spam-bots) have gifted me with hours of reflection (read: hours of searching for an effective filter) and joy (read: perplexed rage).  I’d like to share some highlights with you.

    It began a while back with a comment on a bit I wrote entitled “Art In The Desert.”  There was an enjoyable exchange of comments between a few readers, when out of the blue I received notification of a comment that began

    Fortitude is the marshal of thought, the armor of the will, and the fort of reason.

    Wow.  I hadn’t the first inkling of what on earth that meant yet I found myself inspired and hoping he (read: the bot) would elaborate on this nearly Confucius-like tidbit of wisdom; and elaborate he did..

    gutmann explorer boot knife sting clone nwuob.

    .. which took his previous statement to a level of depth I had never explored.

    Shortly thereafter, I received a comment on a post stating that

    Romance comes into your life this year in a very unusual way.

    This was an interesting, albeit misplaced, prediction of my relational future.  In what unusual way would this romance come into my life?

    ..nice german combat helmet m16 icdgn// war hats svejs[/link][url=http://amygorsw1983/pumpkin-roll/]war hats svejs[/url]

    You’re right, that’d be quite unusual. What was not unusual was for these posts to begin with flattery. For instance:

    When you speak honestly and openly, others truly listen to you.

    Why, that’s an awfully nice thing to say!  I’ve always valued honesty and strived to allow my transparency as a communicator to draw people in.  The commenter then added

    Chihuahua puppies.

    Those, too, I suppose. I’ve always valued chihuahua puppies.
    Every now and again I’d receive a very forward comment suggesting I take pills to enhance my sex life, which is a common spam theme and yet just about always funny.  But the philosophical theme still tended to dominate.

    The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next.

    ..one comment read; going on to extrapolate on the idea of common sense, writing..

    housewares ssmyudansk fjord 6 piece steak knife set mint box paxygsuper rare.

    Interesting… I wonder which century that was?

    There have been many more.  MANY.  But I will leave you with my favorite, most enlightening and challenging comment from the past few months.   It comes to us from a reader in Russia,.. or more likely in his parents basement in Kansas, where he uses google_translate.  In response to a piece on CA Proposition 8 and my reflections on gay marriage, this reader commented

    В нынешней ситуации, большинство из тех, отходят на второй план. Мне непонятно, как мы будем жить, если собака бои системная ошибка ощутимости шлема 5?

    Which, when translated into english reads.. “In the current situation, most of those moving away to second place. I wonder how we will live, if dog fights system error tangibility helmet 5?”

    I very often wonder the same thing.  Let’s just hope it never comes down to that.

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    7 Responses to ““You See Spam, I See нынешней ситуации большинство тем””

    • Sarah says:

      I hate Myspace quite intensely, due to its tendency to NOT WORK, so I am super glad you moved them over here, plus I can be even more lazy and just RSS feed them into my mailbox, and never actually have to open a webpage again, hurrah!

      I actually am set to inherit oh, probably about $60 million now, from various dead people in Kuwait, North Africa, and Uzbekistan, who have all died of the same mysterious illness, all worked as some kind of government officials and whose wives want to donate the money to religiously affiliated people. When I get my millions, maybe I will be able to share it and you can buy some effective spam blocker. Because it’s totally legit. I mean, Sister Ruth Ann in Kuwait said so.

    • ally says:

      this blog literally made me laugh out loud on several occasions.

      i didn’t even know this phenom existed. my blog doesn’t get enough play i guess.

    • [...] Justin McRoberts has posted something deep, profound and beautiful. While you are checking it out, take a gander at his other posts. [...]

    • Ryan says:

      Why is the word “helmet” so prominently involved in the bot posts?

    • Justin says:

      Ryan: LOL. Great observation. I would agree that there seems to be something of a helmet obsession with the bots. Revealing, yes.. but of what?

    • Amy Kate says:

      Bwaa haa haa. Nicely done.

    • Ricky from Antioch says:

      Justin, I’ve listened to you and your music since I first heard you play at a developing church about say 7 years ago. Your music is amazing, but not only that, I go see you at the annual McBenefit concert and your humor just makes you that much more entertaining. This was really funny. Wow. that was a good laugh. Well take care, and I’m going to now favorite this.

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