A wonderful comment on comment spam

Users of Movable Type, a common blogging software package, have been subject to a number of waves of comment spam--spam left in their web-based comment threads.

To prove that there's nothing so awful that it doesn't have something good come out of it, I give you this remark from tnh:

During the last wave, I got a look at a sort-of-weblog, some kind of corporate site, that had left its comment threads open but hadn't been cleaning out the spam. They had spam messages piled six or seven deep. It read like the late-night conversations of a window full of department store mannequins.

That LJ-Friends meme thing

From all over. I usually skip the memes for various reasons, but some of my answers interested me enough that I wanted to get them down. This might be worth returning to in a few months if I've had a lot of turnover in my Friends.

( Snippety do dah )

Mole People

When sarah_ovenall was in New York last week, she asked if I'd ever read The Mole People (by Jennifer Toth, 1993) and if I knew whether it was fact or fiction. I told her that a friend of mine had read it when it came out and said that huge portions of its detail about New York, above or below ground, was wrong, and as such I'd never had a strong incentive to read it.

Neil Gaiman's journal had a recent pointer to this page of debunkery, archived at The Web Archive. For those who care.

... speak right down to Earth in a language that everyone here can easily understand

Today's Boondocks. Right to the point about not getting right to the point.

( Punchline ahoy! )

Shorter Pete Rose

"I'm sorry that you forced me to apologize."