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..

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.. 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?

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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..

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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.