Category: metablogging

spam spam wonderful spam

Here’s a post about spam to follow up on all of last week’s cheese.

WordPress has a pretty decent comment spam filter, and not too many spam comments see the light of day. (According to my stats page, over 2500 spam comments have been caught by the spam filter in the 6 months I’ve had this blog.) I do still sift through my caught spam periodically, just in case something legit has gotten trapped. Often, I’ll see boring lists of links for hotels or celebrity photos, or prescription drugs, or drug scandals about celebrities who share names with major hotels. Sometimes I see links for porn sites that I really, really didn’t want to know existed. (I’m greatly disturbed by the non-consensual ones…) Anyhow, spam, when it’s not disturbingly offensive, can be downright dull. But lately, I’ve been seeing a trend that makes the task of sifting through the spam box a bit more entertaining: some spam that makes me laugh. I thought I’d share a few with you, though without the links to whatever it was they were trying to sell, and a few of my thoughts in response. (Mind you, these are supposedly left as “comments” on posts. Generally the “comment” has nothing whatsoever to do with the post it’s left on.)

Some spam comments that made me laugh

hot old babes

Hey, I’m not that old. Am I? But thanks for calling me hot.

bangers booty fat intro article

Yes, I’m starting some research on bangers booty fat, and I feel I need a good overview on the topic.

Books about spy cam upskirt.

Ah, yes, those would be in the spy cam upskirt section, which is between the section on booty fat and the books on hot old babes.

wholesale interior door intro

It’s definitely the way in. All the way in.

Fresh news on bag laundry.

Wow! I can hardly contain my excitement!

News about skinny big boob.

Not just big, but skinny big. I can just see the headlights headlines.

Good information source for tushy massage movie.

Wait, are we talking about a feature-length movie of butt-rubbing? Or just a short? I guess that’s why we need a good information source.

Variants of sweet ass.

I’m writing a poem for my true love, and I don’t want to overuse the expression “sweet ass.”

Fresh information about naruto hentai wallpaper.

All the information I can find on naruto hentai wallpaper is so damn stale, and I want to redecorate my dining room with an anime porn theme.

big gay bear introduction

I always suspected that there was more going on between Yogi Bear and Booboo than just stealing pic-a-nic baskets.

Good information source for bowling party bag.

Thank god I finally know where to go for this!

Actual news on car rental toyota category.

Yes, this is the news the masses crave. Hasn’t FoxNews stepped up to the challenge?

Hhgghhg kdfgdg sdgfgt sd gdsgdgsdg gd sdgdgsdg

I found this one to be a bit…gdtfgdgd cryptic. You know what I gsgsf?

:) Hi everybody! Does anybody know what is propecia? What a shirt? I go crazy about this!
I found it here:

Can I just repeat, “What a shirt?” What the hell does that mean? I go crazy about this!

Hi
You are The Best!!!
Bye

As for this one, I was sorely tempted to let it pass through. Gosh, thanks!

——————-

And here, in case that wasn’t enough spam for you, have another helping of spam, spam, spam, python and spam:

extra cheese

You know what really cheeses me off? When I finish a list and realize I’ve forgotten something.

It’s like going to the grocery store to buy bread, eggs and milk, and then remembering I need cheese too as I’m driving on my way there, but I figure I’ll wait to add it to my list, since it would be hazardous to write while driving, even if it is only one word, and then when I get there, going into this trance as I wander the aisles with my shopping cart, and wondering what it means that supermarkets now play music that was actually popular when I was in high school, and feeling up the melons and squeezing the toilet paper, then browsing the cereal aisle and feeling nostalgic for the days of my youth when lucky charms were an exotic unattainable bowl of cereal at the end of the rainbow because my mother insisted on having us eat healthy cereals like wheat chex and when I finally tried them, they really weren’t that thrilling, and resisting the urge to buy cookies and redi-whip and donuts, and before you know it, I’ve filled up the cart and then I head home with my bags of groceries, and after I put away my bread and my milk and my pint of organic blackberry sorbet, which seemed like a healthier choice than the chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, but screw it, I bought that too, and bananas and maple syrup and zucchini and oatmeal and frozen peas, and then find a crumpled up paper in my pocket, and it’s my grocery list with its three measly items (bread, eggs and milk) scribbled on it, and realize that I’ve forgotten the eggs, and (crap!) I also forgot to get more cheese.

You know what I’m saying?

Anyhow, I realized that I left off some key pieces of cheese from yesterday’s cheeseful bounty. Such as:

  1. Richard Cheese, a musician who, along with his band Lounge Against the Machine, provides cheesy lounge music reinterpretations of so many your favorite contemporary songs. Also in the music category is the band The String Cheese Incident. Then there’s the apparently sadly now-defunct Cheese Patrol, a

    yearly homage to all the songs that people vociferously hate but secretly know all the words to. These are the songs we grew up with; overorchestrated. overwrought, oversynthed, over the top.

  2. Somehow I also managed to leave off the appearance of the cheese guy in the Buffy episode “Restless“, as well as a few other cheesy references. And in my research I came across this brilliant essay “An Analysis of Cheese as Metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer”. Apparently, the layers of cheese in the Buffy series run far deeper than I’d realized.
  3. For more on cheese philosophy, you can check out this essay “on the non-existence of cheese.” Is there proof of the existence of cheese in the universe? Perhaps not.
  4. Then there’s the Cheese Burglar. But I’m not really a big fan of the cult of which he is a member. So instead I offer this cartoon mouse classic, The Cheese Burglar (1946). (You can even see it on YouTube. Though I admit to not having watched anything close to the whole 7 minutes.)
  5. I actually like the animation of this (shorter) shortThe Cheese Trap better, which features a cg version of the board game Mouse Trap, one of my childhood favorites.
  6. Do you hanker for a hunka cheese? Do you remember this rather creepy cartoon psa from the 70s? You might also be interested in the hunk-hankerers guest appearance on the Family Guy.
  7. Yesterday’s cheese did not include much in the way of cheese activities for those of you with too much time and not enough cheese on your hands. Options include: a quiz to let you know what kind of cheese you are. (There’s also a similar-veined one-step cheese “comparator,” but the reviews are not stellar.)
  8. There’s even an experiment with cheese that you can perform at home on your own. (However, the author does recommend exercising caution if you are lactose tolerant.) (And no, my dear seester, this is not the same cheese experiment you tried with me that one time when we were little. I’ll write about that later.)
  9. Most thrillingly, you can actually watch cheese *live* online. That’s right, you can watch watch cheddar cheese aging. Not only is it just as exciting as it sounds, it is also apparently the cool thing to do. (If you don’t have the months to spare to see the change in progress, you can also check out this time-lapse video encapsulating 3 months of the cheese-aging process.)
  10. And even though I offered it up yesterday, no cheese list would be complete without The Cheese Shop sketch. This time, I serve it up in its youtubiful glory:

carnival fool

I’m running off to join the carnival. More than one carnival, actually.

First stop: The 3rd Carnival of Colors thought my blue people would make an attractive side show.

Second stop: Ms. Mismanners has been dragged off to the 73rd Carnival of Satire to demonstrate clause contortionism, comma-juggling, epithet-throwing and her latest note-writing tips.

Third stop: I was going to put together a fun and exciting carnival list, but instead I’ll share with you some tidbits of Carnival Jargon that I snagged from the Wikipedia Carny page.

  • Mark

    A target for swindling, especially one whose gullibility has been demonstrated. Derived from the covert use of chalk to mark the backs of especially ripe targets. The term has entered the popular lexicon, usually as “easy mark.”

    So that’s why I kept getting chalk on my shirt. (Don’t worry, though. A nice young man said he’d go buy me a new shirt. I’m sure he’ll be back any minute now with my new shirt and the change from that large bill.)

  • Sharpie

    The opposite of a mark: an experienced player who is wise to traditional carny scams and is skilled at the games themselves.

    Is that what the marker folks had in mind?

  • Some money terms:

    Scratch – the revenue from a concession.

    Oats – stolen money from a concession.

    “The Nut” – The sum total (in cash) of a performance, or group of performances

    “The Kitty” – Budgeted amount of finance, regulated by the management of a carnival for purchasing food and supplies for its workers. (“We wanted a new tent, but there’s no more scratch in the kitty”)

    I had no idea kitty was a carny term…Though I’ve found possible other origins. (Wait, you mean Wikipedia might have inaccurate information? But it must be true. I read it on the internet.)

  • Then there’s “Sugar Shack”:

    a concession or food-stand that doubles as a front for drug commerce & trafficking.

    Wow. This makes me really suspicious of all those places that claim to sell things like maple syrup, candles and most suspiciously “quilt kits.” (Oh, fine, so the term has a legitimate maple-syrupy meaning, too. Or at least that’s what they want us to think. I bet their fingers are just sticky with illicit activities.)

  • Burn the lot

    To cheat players with little or no attempt to conceal the subterfuge, in the carny’s expectation that the same town will not be visited again.

    I try to take this attitude when visiting relatives. I mean, really, do I want to be invited back?

  • And ooooh. An infix:

    -iz- – inserted between the syllables of words to serve as a cipher or cryptolect.

    (This -iz- may or may not have a relationshizip to the –izz– infix.)

  • Here are some more assorted bits:

    Bally – A free performance intended to attract both tips and visitors to the nearby sideshow.

    Slough – Tear down your “joint”. Get it ready for the road.

    Spring – Open the carnival.

    “Rousty” or “Roustabout” – A temporary or full-time laborer who helps pitch concessions and assemble rides. In the 1930s, American Rousty’s would work for a meal and perhaps a tent to share with other workers.

    “Donniker” – Bathroom

    “Alibi” – A technique used where the player has apparently won the game, but is denied a prize when the jointee invents a further, unforeseeable, condition of the game. For example, a player may be disqualified on the grounds of having leaned over a previously undisclosed “foul line.”

    • Okay. There will be a quiz later. For your homework, please use one or more of these words in a sentence.

    Choose an identity

    “Choose an identity”choose_identity.jpg

    Those are the words you get when you’re going to leave a comment on a Blogger blog. And for some reason they struck me tonight. So much of what we do is about choosing an identity, defining an identity, constructing an identity…

    If only it were always as easy as checking a box, clicking a button.

    I keep meaning to write my “about” page. But I keep hesitating. It’s so hard to choose just a few terms to define myself. What parts of me do I want to present? What roles? What truths? What culturally-defined fictions? What list of quirks? And what pants will I be wearing?

    Who the hell do I think I am?

    Who the hell do I want you to think I am?

    Maybe I’ll just reuse this identity. At least she sees a lot of action.

    5 things

    The guy over at //engtech is having another group writing contest. Last month, he had his first contest, and I participated with my “getting over V.D.” post. And while I didn’t win the prize, which was awarded by a random drawing, I did get selected on the favorites list, which is actually cooler.

    This time around, the contest involves writing a list of 5 things. Seeing as I love to write lists, I’m all over this one. You can even enter more than once, so I’ll probably write more than one post. So here’s my first list of 5 things.

    5 things

    1. thingamajig: a placeholder name
    2. whosiwhatsit: a filler word
    3. whoodger-doodger: a dummy noun phrase
    4. doohickymajig: you know, a thingummy or whatsit you say when you can’t remember the diddlethingy of the gizmo, doodad, dingle-dongle or dealybob
    5. whatchamacallit: a candy bar

    back to the rat race

    We got back home late, late Wednesday night (or early, early Thursday morning). I had an amazingly wonderful time on my trip, and felt totally decompressed.

    Of course, the problem with decompression is the shock of re-entry.

    I’m compressed again.

    Compression happened pretty quickly. I was hit, knocked down, and run over several times by the realization that I’d gotten no work done at all for over a week. (I managed to read 2 pages of a book I need to read. Does that count?)

    rats_left.jpg

    Once again, I’m faced with loads of deadlines. Reading for my program requirements. Reading for class. An assignment for class. Stuff for my job. And not a whole lot of time. Rats.

    rats_right.jpg

    By the way, today marks fourth months of this here blog. And I have a whole bunch of things I meant to write about that I haven’t gotten around to. For example, I have yet to write an “about” page. About me, about this blog, about the term tokens, about about. Maybe I’ll get around to this in the next month or so.
    rat_frenzy.jpg

    This post also marks my 100th post. Of course, I only wrote 99 of them. The first one was the auto-generated one I got when I signed up for a WordPress blog. And it got so many insightful comments, from a variety of fascinating personages, that I decided to keep it.

    another late night when I should be sleeping

    Ah, the same old story. It’s past midnight, and I should be sleeping. (My laptop says it’s past 3 a.m., since it’s still on east coast time, while I’m still out in California.) But I feel compelled to write. Once again, I have no time to write. But this time, I’m not feeling cranky. I’m feeling many things. For one, I am feeling both humbled and inspired by some posts I’ve been reading. KC at Where’s My Cape has written a brave, beautiful and gut-wrenching series of posts about dealing with eating disorders. Jen at One Plus Two has been writing soulfully about the value of treating others with kindness, especially when those others have fallen on the hardest of times:

    Kindness matters. Taking a moment to look the person in the eye, to offer that inconsequential bit of spare change, to exchange a few words. It matters. It makes one feel human.

    Imagine if everyone avoided you, all day every day. Imagine if you felt invisible. Alone. And on top of that, you slept in a doorway.

    Which reminds me that I should share that I am thrilled to be a part of the February Just Posts, a collection of writings that speak to issues of social justice, with my post on language discrimination.

    justpostfeb2007

    Anyhow, I’m having a wonderful visit with my family. I am charmed by my beautiful new nephew Diego, and so happy to have time here with my sister, brother-in-law and mother. I’m so glad that John and Phoebe are also here with me, and it was worth the trials and tribulations of the journey. I feel warm and complete to be here with my family. (Yes, I am really a sap deep-down.)

    watching my language

    another_banana.jpgIt’s a strange expression for me to use, “watching my language.” Especially since I am a linguist, and study language professionally. And actually spend time looking at visual representations of speech. But that’s not what I’m talking about.

    (Warning: this post contains “language.” And by that, I mean l*ng*ag*. You know, %$*#! words. So if you are my mother-in-law, or someone else offended by such words, please read no further. Actually, if you are my mother-in-law, it’s not really me at all who’s writing this. I have no idea how this post got here. In fact, this whole blog must have been written by someone else who coincidentally has my name.)

    I was reading a message board message a little while back, and came across a message where someone had written “cr*p”. Yes, c-r-*-p. And all I could think in response was “holy fucking shit, crap is a bad word??”

    Crap is a word I use fairly often. As in Oh, crap, I forgot something. Or I have a lot of crap to deal with. I mean, I realize that it more-or-less means shit. But I thought it was way less of a swear-word. Stronger than doodoo, certainly, but really quite mild. I may even have said crap in front of my mother-in-law. And my mother-in-law feels quite strongly about swearing. As in it upsets her. She didn’t like the movie “Titanic” because someone uttered the word shit in it. (There are plenty of reasons not to like that movie, but quite honestly, shit wasn’t even on the radar for me.) And I really don’t want her to find out about this blog of mine, as I’m sure it would upset her. Mostly because of my language. I mean, hell, I write the word ass often enough.

    And while, as my sister put it, I am unlikely to be considered the Kevin Smith of the blogosphere, I do want to reserve the right to swear on my blog. Sometimes I just feel the need. I’m not trying to offend (I spend my whole life trying not to offend), but I find it liberating to have this uncensored aspect of writing.

    But then there’s this whole parenting business. I caught myself saying to Phoebe, “you are so damn cute!” (She is really damn cute, you know.) And I ask myself, is this appropriate child-directed speech?

    Anyhow, at some point, like so many before us, we’re going to have to face this issue. It’s obvious that Phoebe now understands many words, and can even produce a few. And it’s only a matter of time before Phoebe starts demanding her damn lunch when she’s at daycare, exclaiming “crap, my blocks fell over,” or telling another small child to hand over the fucking dolly.

    It’s not that we swear a whole lot. I mean, it’s not like every other word that comes out of our mouths would need to be bleeped on prime-time TV. But, well, swearing happens. Shit happens. And other terms. In our speech, and in the movies we watch, and the music we listen to. For example, I may want to reconsider singing along to “Don’t fuck me up (with peace and love)” by Cracker lest Phoebe picks up on the words…

    One option we have considered is to go the Battlestar Galactica route. They have cleverly and subtly substituted frak for another term. As in Frak off, frak me, frak you, go frak yourself. No frakking way.

    So, please excuse me. It’s time for me to prepare Phoebe’s frakking breakfast.

    midterm mayhem

    I have a midterm tomorrow. Which just feels so incredibly wrong.

    But aside from that, it means I absolutely should be spending my day (or whatever available moments I have during the day) studying, reviewing my notes, and pondering the meanings of various tidbits of sociolinguistics terminology. And it means I absolutely should not be sitting here at my laptop goofing off. Because that would be wrong.

    Here are some things I absolutely should not be writing today:

  • a school-related list of movies
  • my personal adventures yesterday, and our first post-Phoebe “party”
  • a description of the state of our home post-party (is there such a thing as post-party depression?)
  • a discussion of the unexpected spike in my blog hits during a couple of hours yesterday
  • a treatise on the comparative merits of ducks in various types of dishwashers
  • an in-depth corpus-based analyis of squid discourse
  • an advice column about the etiquette of exchanging bananas
  • anything to do with pants
  • a list of things that I should not be writing about

    • Here’s some of what I should be writing about:

  • the nitty gritty of calling a language variety a dialect or language (you say it’s a language, I say it’s a dialect, let’s call the whole thing off)
  • the distinctions among a pidgin, a creole, a koiné, and contact jargons (and not the distinctions among pigeons, crayolas, coins and contact lenses)
  • Acrolects, Mesolects and Basolects (oh, my!)
  • the monogenesis theory, the polygenesis theory and the bioprogram hypothesis (which sound straight out of scifi, but really aren’t)
  • dialect continua, diglossia, decreolization and relexification (which sound almost sexy, but probably aren’t)
  • killer languages