Category Archives: Blogging

SpamSpamSpam II: Enlarging My Editorial Package

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Recently, I mentioned one of the downsides you almost immediately learn when you start a blog: Dweebs, almost certainly using automated spam programs, sending identical and utterly irrelevant comments to stories, apparently in hopes of hitching a ride on your site for their commercial URLs.

Subsequently, I have learned another, though related, hitch. After hardly getting any spam at all on my Gmail since I started using it as my primary account a few months ago, I’ve started to get a lot.

And if you’ve ever gotten a lot of spam, you won’t be surprised that most of it is aimed at persuading me that I, too, can become a Sexual Superman.

Most of the heavy-breathing spam falls into one of three categories: cheap Viagra, cheap Cialis, or products promising “a genuine way to permanently enlarge” your male genitalia “at home.”

On the latter, first, I’ve got a question. Why do they feel the need to specify “at home?” Is that something that many guys work on at the office? The beach?

And no, I don’t use that “male genitalia” euphemism to be coy or because I’m a prude. I’m just getting enough spam already, and I think that wantonly throwing the “p” word around where these spiders can find it would probably be a mistake.

So along with the Cooler on the Lake Shore Chicago v. D.C. Weather Smackdown, I am going to keep score of the spam that I get. The results so far today:

Cialis: 3….Viagra 3… Male enhancement 3…. Quality replica watches 1.

Let the betting begin!

By the way, I don’t want to forget a hat tip to the best computer-generated comment of the day. It reads: “You really make it seem so easy together with your presentation however I find this topic to be actually something which I think I might never understand. It kind of feels too complicated and very huge for me. I’m taking a look ahead in your next publish, I will try to get the hold of it!”

The story that feels too complicated and very huge to this commenter was about my trip to a Chicago White Sox baseball game and why it failed to sway me from my inclination to be a Chicago Cubs fan.

Not that there aren’t some people who will never understand why the heck I’m rooting for the Cubs…

 

Spam, Spam, Spam, Spam

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One of the things I’ve learned quickly since starting the Cooler on the Lake Shore blog is that it doesn’t take long for the spam artists out there to find you.

Most seem to be fairly innocuous attempts to get you to post a comment that also contains a link to something the commenter is promoting or selling. And at least they tend to use flattery, rather than calling you an idiot and saying your site sucks and daring you to post the comment. (I got enough of that from people who disagreed with our election predictions when I edited the CQPolitics.com site.)

Take the one I received this morning. “I’m impressed, I need to say,” the comment started. “Actually not often do I encounter a blog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me tell you, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Your concept is excellent.”

Well, I’m as ego-equipped as any writer, so this comment (almost certainly computer-generated) might have had me at “I’m impressed.” But then came the laying-it-on-too-thick part. “The issue is one thing that not enough individuals are talking intelligently about. I’m very glad that I stumbled throughout this in my search for one thing regarding this,” the comment concluded.

The problem is that this comment was submitted to a blog post, dated August 4 and titled “Random Photo of Gracie, Our Adorable Cat.” While I would be honored to know that this is an issue that not enough individuals are talking intelligently about, I kind of doubt it.

Then again, if this character really has been searching the Web for the one site providing intelligent discussion of Gracie the Cat, he certainly has come to the right place.