Regular readers of El Perro will know that I encourage comments, and enjoy reading them. What you won’t see is the number of odd, irrelevant and sometimes offensive comments that appear in my inbox every day.
As I was trawling through the three hundred and fifty comments that had arrived in the last two days, I found some comments of such star quality that I would love them to have been from real people. I toyed with the possibility of making an occasional feature of Spam on Sunday. However, having read enough adverts for headphones and Yuck boots to last me a lifetime, I decided that I would have to do something about the tide of spam that was threatening to overwhelm me.
I cannot be doing with these!
After a brief search, and thanks to the wonders of Google and WordPress, I installed what I think is a rather fab and nicely neat little gizmo – a Captcha. It is designed to stop non-humans posting comments. Because my eyes turn inside out, rendering me completely unable to work out what they say, these things often defeat me. I choose to believe that this is a design flaw in the Captcha, and not proof that I am non-human. I decided not to subject anyone else to the frustrations I suffer, and have asked my latest addition simply to ask you a simple arithmetic question. Admittedly, my calculator is not noticeably human and yet carries out such tasks effortlessly, so the efficacy of the new regime remains to be seen.
If I do continue to receive literary masterpieces, I might produce a digest of the best ones from time to time. For now, I give you a few of my favourites:
I nearly believed someone could be this enthusiastic about my sitting room, until I checked my ceiling for curves. My cushions aren’t all that fabulous either, if I am brutally honest with myself.
I could not, in all conscience, curb the dissemination of such life-enhancing counsel.
I want a pucrite too, but only if it has absolutely NO cross stitches
They are not THAT difficult to master. Less watching the prerogss and more concentrating on the job in hand would help, I’m sure.
If you have a fantastic piece of spam that you would like to share before you press the destruct button, I would love to hear about it. Just copy and paste the text, cut out any links to thwart the spammers and don’t forget to fill in the blank in the sum that you see at the bottom of the comment box.