Spam: it’s an old complaint that comes up now again. And since I don’t trust any of the semi-autonomous programs charged with keeping my stuff up on this castle of sand I’ve taken to perusing the long, long, long list of fake messages I get every day from Akismet. In the course of deleting the damn things, the old riff  bug bit down hard, and since blogging is really little more than one big scramble for that evil, corporate euphemism for writing, “content,” I thought I’d share my favorite fake comments with you, the people.

In an attempt to be systematic, I’ve separated the missives into three pretty much arbitrary categories. First, the obvious ones:

“Hello, I love your website. This is a nice site and I wanted to post a little note to let you know, great job! Thanks Jessica

[url=http://www.whocares.com]Louis Vuitton[/url]”

Hello. I hate Louis Vuitton. I hate handbags in general, and but I especially hate shameless attempts to flog them off on people who couldn’t afford them even if they wanted them in the first place. Like me.

“Hi Webmaster, If you’re interested in making money from your blog and driving thousands of free visitors to your website then i will show you a secret way to build a Blog Empire that earned over $1,107,693!”

Hi, Spambot. That’s a very exact figure you’ve got there. Is that gross or net? Some nagging little voice in my head tells me the only people who make that much money off their blog are either (a) already rich (b) an established wing of a political party or (c) hawking videos of themselves blowing their husbands.

“Wonderful perform,webmaster,good design and style!”

Horrible comment, Spambot. Poor comma splices and spacing. That, and an IP address from Seoul, gets you an instant Delete Permanently. At the very least, you could learn a thing or three from your cohorts in the next category, the Flagrant Attempts at Sneakiness:

“Exceedingly well written piece you have here. As a blogger to another one, I recognize how difficult and how much time it takes to conjure up something substantial. You have my respect.”

Oh, puh-leese. No I don’t. I don’t even have my own respect. I’m a lazy sycophant, sitting in the back of this great classroom of Life, fantasizing about the spit balls I would oh-so-love to lob at the more popular kids in the class…not that I’d ever openly condone such revolutionary violence. Though maybe I should just surrender to my inner Christian Bale and set up some form of Resistance movement…against “people” like you.

“Well I’m going to have to do some more research but this is a pretty good place to start.”

This just makes me laugh. My site is the last place on Earth to begin any kind of serious research project. I’m overly-opinionated, unsystematic, prone to rambling, and have no qualms about sticking the odd bit of fiction next to any old bit of real fact. The fact that the above came (purportedly) from Barbara Boxer, apart from making me reject it just that much faster, just goes to show that in this I am not alone.

“I really like your twist on this subject matter! I found a web site that…”

Stop right there. Spammers, take heed: if you can’t think up a better transitional phrase than “I found a web site that…” then hang up the web trawlers and get a real job. The one you have now? You’re doing it wrong.

“Keep up the good work, bookmarked and referred a couple of friends.”

No you haven’t. And I have statistics to prove it.

“Very few posts peak my interest or my comments, but this one was great!”

This I find attached to my review of The Shadow, which was anything but. Should the fact that I peaked a spammer’s interest boost my self-esteem, or plunge it further into that ever-gazing Abyss ol’ Freddy spoke of eloquently? Philosophical food for thought.

“Great post! I started following your blog about a month ago and I like your honesty. Good example to emulate.”

No. Nathan Shumate, Chad Denton, Dr. Freex, the Stomp Tokyo boys…hell, all the B-masters are “good example[s] to emulate.” I’m a pale imitation at best, an indecisive pilot fish flitting between great white sharks in a desperate attempt to avoid being eaten. But since you like my honesty so much, allow me to say to you, honestly, “Fuck off and die.”

Then we have the not-so-flagrant attempts at sneakiness that might fool a stoned, half-asleep, and/or sixteen year old idiot. Luckily, I’m none of those things (at least, not at the moment).

“Hey…thanks for that. Neat post. I’ll be checking back soon for more updates. Great!”

I’m sure you will, Mr. Work at Home Jobs Scam artist. My friend Akismet will be waiting.

“I have come to my decision that your post head “fantastic four (2005) and you thought it was?…” looks to be real but make certain your blog is also configered for all phone browser.”

Let’s see…you’ve come to your decision, have you? Well, that’s good. Hate to have you just show up to one of mine unannounced. The Hounds might accidentally separate you from some vital bit anatomy, and then there’d be lawsuits and all sorts of headache all around.  As far as the phone browsers, go…could someone please explain to me why in God’s name would anyone want to read a websites in tiny, eye-strain-o-vision, to say nothing of this one?

“I must go along together with you, excellent points you have made in your case.”

The fuck do I look like? Perry Mason? “Points I made in my case,” indeed. “This is Tokyo…once a city of six million people…it lies, now, a silent monument to the devastation wrought by Michael Bay’s films. The monstrous force that brought such devastation to this city now stalks abroad, threatening every city in the world…”

“Fascinating! But you should check your comments more carefully. You seem to be getting hit some dodgy comments. I had a similar problem myself. So nowadays I look at everything with extra care.”

No shinola, Sherlock. I’ve gotten a lot of crap messages over the years, but this is the first bit of meta-spam I can recall receiving. I’m sure its very existence annihilated several wacky, parallel universes, somewhere. Hopefully, one of them contained the author of this little missive.

“I completely agree. That is precisely how I view it. Cheers!”

No you don’t. You’re a random computer program. You can’t “view” anything other than what you’re programed to view, and you certainly can’t “agree” with me anymore than the average Terminator.

“Nice post!”

Yeah, nice blank profile page on an anonymous, Spanish-language message board, ass. Sign of the true spam bot. You’d think some programmer, somewhere, would’ve figured out how to make their spambots crap out at least one post fake enough to beat the comment moderators. Though recently I’ve noticed some aren’t even trying, filling the URL field with Google’s home page of all things.

“I didn’t quite follow this when I first read it. But when I checked it out a second time, it all started to make sense. Thanks for the insight. Certainly something to think about.”

Remember: sound out any word with more than three letters. Read it slowly and carefully. Meaning will set in, even if only at a glacier’s pace. If that doesn’t work, smash your head into the keyboard until “QWERTY” is permanently imprinted into your skin. Think of it as a digital-age equivalent of the Scarlet Letter.

“Exceedingly well written piece you have here. As a blogger to another one, I recognize how difficult and how much time it takes to conjure up something substantial. You have my respect.”

Wish I could say the same for you, Spammy. But how can I respect anyone who posts under the heading, “Attracting Women Tips?” What kind of handle is that? Even a Shia LaBeouf character would would turn his nose up at something so obvious.

“Hey man, was just browsing through the internet looking for some information and came across your blog. I am impressed by the information that you have on this blog. It shows how well you understand this subject. Bookmarked this page, will come back for more. You, my friend, ROCK!!!”

Now, this is an interesting case, because I do, indeed, ROCK!!…though, as you can see, I’ve had to cut myself down to a maximum of two exclamation points per incident of ROCKING!! None of us are eighteen anymore and exclamation point hangovers suck.

“All certainly true, but I don’t take that view myself. I will stick the more regular view. But I definitely support your right to say it. Fascinating anyway.”

See? Even spam bots acknowledge Chomsky was right: “If you’re in favor of freedom speech, you’re in favor of speech that you don’t like. Otherwise, you’re not in favor of freedom of speech. I mean, Joseph Goebbles was in favor of free speech that he liked, but…”

Thankfully, the Professor never said anything about “freedom of Advertising.”

“Brilliant blog posting. I found your post very interesting, I think you are a brilliant writer. I added your blog to my bookmarks and will return in the future.”

I’m sure. See my comment to Mr. Work at Home Jobs, above.

“Very post you have here. As 1 blogger to another one, I recognize how tough and how much time it requires to write up something substantial. You have my respect.”

Whoa. Deja-vu. Very substantial comment-generating software you have there. As one annoyed internet-junkie to another: learn to proofread, asshole. I did. And all it took was someone I respected telling me to learn to proofread. (He’s just too nice to call me an asshole, despite the fact that I am…but they don’t call ’em Saints for nothing.) You have my utter and eternal contempt, along with a curse upon you, to the seventh generation.

“I must say I’ve been following your blog and I couldn’t agree more with you. Please keep up the good work, looking forward to your future posts.”

And I have to say…this is yet another missive from Attracting Women Tips, surely the worst handle in the history of the interwebs. I won’t even bother asking if losers on the internet are dumb enough to fall for pheromone sprays and Axe body-lube…but How To Guides? Seriously? If you need one, there are a galaxy of “How TO Get Him/Her” titles available in any bookstore. I’m thinking of writing my own, in fact. The working title: If You’re Reading This, Give Up Now. Subtitle: You Will Die Alone and Poor.

But enough of that. Time for the all-time champions:

“Great site here. Lots of websites like this cover subjects that can’t be found in print. I don’t know how we got on 15 years ago with just print media.”

It was called “having lives unconnected to our buzzing, quasi-deified machines,” if I remember correctly.

“I saw Avatar in 3D at the theater when it first came out and iv been suggesting it to people ever since. Its a very long movie but its worth watching.”

No, it isn’t. Not unless you accidentally found yourself trapped in a cryogenic chamber sometime before the release of Disney’s Pocahontas. Ever since I saw Avatar on a 17′ home screen I’ve been warning people away from that two-plus-hour waste of their lives, which is something you would know if you were an actual human being who actually bothered to read. But since you’re a program, and were obviously dropped on your head as a subroutine, I’ll let you slide in favor of attacking your sibling, below, who has no excuses whatsoever.

“I was never a Transformers fan until I saw this flick.At first when I saw the trailer I thought it looked boring but when I hired it out and watched it,I really loved it.Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox are great together.I just totally love this movie!”

You had to do it, didn’t you? Wasn’t enough to clog my Inbox with your links to “natural” male enhancement pills or supposedly “free” movies. No, you had to go and praise my Ancient Enemy, Michael Bay, and his Transformers, a boring, pointless, insulting sodomization of my beloved childhood stories, flagrantly pre-approved by my other Ancient Enemy, the U.S. Department of Defense. Shia LaDouche is a terrible actor, a refugee from the Pretty White Kids With Problems programing block on what used to be called “The WB”…where he should’ve stayed. And if actresses were crackers Megan Fox would be the Original Saltine of modern Hollywood starlets. But since you’re a machine, much like the one that produced those two horrible flicks (and is now producing a third), I guess its only natural you would “totally love” that movie.

That does it: Sarah Conner was right. The machines have already taken over. Nothing to do now but take the Kurt Cobain Memorial Exit off of Life’s great road. After all, without the matrix there is no hope…though I suppose I could use the Conner family as my example and start up some form of Resistance Movement.

Yeah…hell, it could work. Stranger things have happened. Hell, I just got a comment in praise of Michael Bay’s Transformers. Anything is possible. With that in mind…this is David DeMoss…if you’re reading this…you are the Resistance.