comment purgatory

This is an FYI.

We’ve got spam, yes we do! We’ve got spam how ’bout YOU?

 

Recently, I’ve been getting dozens, sometimes hundreds of nasty spam comments per day. Considering I only get about 30-75 direct hits on a daily basis, this is surprising and frustrating: I get approximately 5-6 spamments per visitor.

Aksimet, the automatic WordPress sapminator, catches most of them, though you may have noticed that some slipped through its greedy grasp just two days ago. There was some pretty graphic language in some of those comments, and I apologize for not being here to trash them. I was delivering mail and doing interviews for my next round of articles.

The second and equally frustrating consequence of this spamvasion is that some legitimate comments are caught in the Akismet catcher’s mitt. These go to a place we’ll call comment purgatory, where all sorts of comments are sent to wait for the bitterest of purgations. The dark night of the commenter’s soul.

 

I remained, lost in oblivion; 

My face I reclined on the Beloved.

All ceased and I abandoned myself, 

Leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

 

To those whose comments have been imprisoned, I offer my sympathies.

Carry on.

but do we have the text of his speech?

A Lawn Guy Land teenager decided to drive his car through a mall. Hey, that’s my kind of shopping, you know? Get in, get out. No one was hurt but some guy managed to cut his feet on some broken glass (???). “Oh hey, some broken glass. Let me take my shoes off and walk on it.”

I’ve never liked malls.

Anyway, after Mario drove through some glass doors, he…

 

exited the car and started giving a speech before being restrained by a passer-by until police got there, Officer Thomas Brussell said.

 

Am I the only one here who wants to know what he said?

and now that we’ve been face to face…

…if I’m there and I gotta put you away…

 

I assure you it wasn’t as heated as that, but today I met a blogger in non-virtual space. [pause for dramatic effect…]

And I didn’t drive halfway across the country to do it! I’ll call him only JW, his nom de plume, but I will say that I enjoyed the meeting, and I appreciate what he’s trying to do online.

 

There are very few web sites about downtowns written by residents of the town, at least not around here. I’m sure that will change over time and I’m sure as well that there are some notable exceptions out there (feel free to list any that you know of in the comments). JW’s blog, Bridge and Main, is about Phoenixville. 

He started blogging because he could not find any resources about downtown life beyond simple listings of times and places or administrivia. JW combines those factual kind of things with some of his own thoughts, as well as links to news items affecting the town. It’s always interesting (if you are local to Phoenixville) and informative. Though only a couple of people have taken advantage of JW’s efforts, he’s more than willing to post about events that business owners and others want to promote. I know I’ve learned a lot from my visits to his place.

So if you’re local or just interested in a great downtown redevelopment success story, check Bridge and Main out.

Now all you need is pictures, JW!

 

*You may think from this post that blogging is all we talked about. Au contraire, mon frere! The rest of our conversation is classified, so I can’t reveal it but neither of us is so narrow that we had nothing else to talk about. Well, JW isn’t.

call me a trendsetter

I guess this weekend would not be a good time to start watching The Sopranos?

 

The bad news about my delinquency is I’ve missed that theme music. Ah, well.