Spam. Spam. Spam. Spam.

Lovely Spam! Wonderful Spam!

Despite the fact that I turned on the dreadfully annoying Weird Random Clump of Letters Verification, which is horribly inconvenient for someone like me whose eyes are aging so rapidly that all my peers are starting to look wonderful again, kind of like how aging actresses in old movies used to look, blurry and unwrinkled, when they were filmed with cheesecloth in front of the camera lens, despite the fact that I have to squint at the screen and type in peculiar random letter combinations to leave a comment on my own blog, I still sometimes get spam. I am talking, of course, not about the pink food made mostly of pig parts and sodium nitrite that is so loved by Vikings with horned helmets who frequent cafes, but those annoying comments that sound like sincere compliments but mostly just promote some kind of website where peculiar things are sold.

I am getting better at telling at a glance when the comment is spam. Often the spam is attached to something I posted months ago. You would think that having spam buried deep in my archives somewhere would not bother me, but it does. Every time, I feel this urgent need to root it out and delete it. I used to waste valuable minutes of my life looking for spam until Scrivener told me that when I get my comments emailed to me, the link on the email will take me to the very post that the comment is on. So now I can delete every single piece of spam within seconds. I love checking the box that says Remove forever. It's very satisfying.

Often the weird thing being sold is connected to my post in only the vaguest way. Like I mention that I live near a train track, and suddenly I get a comment pointing me to a website where I can get DVDs of people having sex on trains. Actually, any time I click on a link and see big naked breasts, that’s a clue that I’ve got spam. I used to think maybe someone was linking me to La Leche League, since I am an avid supporter of breastfeeding, but hey, I've learned a lot since I first began my blog. (Is it telling that when I do click on a link like that, I look at the breasts and think – oh, there’s a breastfeeding Mom who is engorged, hope she doesn't get mastitis? And damn, I ought to email her and tell her about Wacoal bras, because she is just popping out of that lame piece of lingerie.)

Today I got a comment that looked like spam, and I clicked the link to find the post, which turned out to be a photo of me belly dancing. Out of curiosity, I checked the link, wondering if perhaps it would take me to a place that sold hip scarves or zills. Instead, the site told me where I could go to get a tummy tuck. How rude.

The spam is getting personal.