Spamusement documents Python Tourettes

Via Lynn‘s twittering last night, I came across Spamusement, a site with cartoons drawn to correspond to actual spam email subject lines. This reminds me of the old Surrealist parlor games like Exquisite Corpse. By God, we should be doing more to amuse ourselves with the discovered poetry of spam. It’s the moral equivalent of cooking with kudzu or rendering roadkill into biodiesel. We’ll never eliminate our dependency on foreign oil unless we tap our vast spam reserves.

I was especially happy to see that one of the cartoons (not appreciated for what you know) addresses the plight of those suffering from Python Tourette syndrome. Here’s another good one. If you had to draw the cartoon for “get rid of premature ejactulation and last longer”, I bet you wouldn’t do better than this. Bad drawing, but darn good writing.

I was talking about Alan’s favorite graphic novels last week, so it only seems fitting this week to point you to a few good web comics while we’re on this topic. MakeUseOf.com has a list of 5 Great WebComics You Should Read. Garfield minus Garfield is right up there with the Nietzsche Family Circus in terms of madcap nihilism.

Comment spam be gone

I’m trying out some new anti-spam software called MT-Keystrokes. It’s got some JavaScript magic to determine whether or not you’re a bot when you create your feedback. Dealing with comment spam has gotten to be a real chore lately. It’s truly amazing how much of it there is. It all gets moderated automatically by MT-Blacklist, which is a great step forward by itself, but I still have to go scoop all the paste out of the rotors every now and again, and that’s a pain.

Incidentally, you might think that pornography is the number one spam item, but actually, far and away the biggest single topic is poker. After that it’s prescription drugs, and only then do you start getting into the incest, bondage, and whatnot. The quantity has increased a lot lately (over and above quantities that boggled my mind heretofore). So I’m trying this new technique, since it’s got the Jay Allen (of MT-Blacklist fame) seal of approval.

So let me know if you have any comment problems. Just don’t post comments about… you know… whatnot.