Walt at Random

A two-parter:

ALA

I’m still very much looking for (a) sponsorship of Cites & Insights, (b) some other part-time/telecommuting situation that would yield some revenue (and give me a solid reason to keep going to ALA), (c) both.

One good time to discuss this would be during ALA Annual in Washington, D.C.

My current schedule is such that I could meet with people pretty much any time Friday from, say, noon on; any time Saturday, period (at this point); or Sunday between 2 and 5:30 or 6:00 (or possibly Sunday over dinner).

As usual, I’ll be traveling mostly without technology (except for a cell phone), so ideally, any meeting should be arranged beforehand–my email address is waltcrawford at gmail dot com.

Link Love

That’s what comment spammers are trying to get, and here’s a few of today’s highlights:

• Apparently, my site is “on the air in the radio” with posts “truly great and bookmarked.” People still bookmark individual blogs? (As for “on the air in the radio,” one can only surmise…)
• It’s reassuring that “Coming here to this site wasn’t such a bad idea after all” (responding to my post about a possible C&I Executive Edition–the only response I’ve received to what was apparently a pointless idea)
• Also good to know that my blog “keeps getting better and better” with “a lot more ideas and originality” than my old posts–of a couple of weeks ago–that “don’t offer as much insight.” That’s the oddly complimentary-while-insulting start to a long comment about getting ad revenue…
• Several instances of Ye Olde Standard Spam Compliment, e.g. “Great blog post. Really looking forward to read more.” At least the four most recent occurrences were to posts that discussed something other than C&I issues and the business of the blog! There’s also “Your blog is so informative ; keep up the good work!!!!”–attached to a note on free shipping for C&I books. Well, that is pretty informative!!!! isn’t it?
• Fortune cookie comments are always amusing, e.g., “Just write like you’re talking to your friends. And soon, they will be.” (Attached to one of the more controversial posts lately…)
• Then there are the truly mysterious cases, e.g. “Hello, The Burden of your blog is very good to me, I hope more alternate with you this Motive.”
• And the argumentative ones–such as one moderately long one that begins “Good luck getting people behind this one. Though you make some VERY fascinating points, youre going to have to do more than bring up a few things that may be different than what weve already heard…” and continues in that apostrophe-free manner. Oddly enough, that one–while not being a slam-dunk for spam points–has a name attached that makes it abundantly clear that it’s spam.
• I’m delighted that “Nicholas Sparks is my favorite author!”–I guess (haven’t really read Sparks)–but it’s totally irrelevant to the post it was attached to.
• A lot of spam attached to my post about spam, perhaps not surprisingly…one or two already noted, plus “I still prefer the novel instead the film, it just not able to put everything in the 2 hours show.” and “Sorry that I found too late … :(” and “For me, as a poet, it was very interesting!”…and more, several more.

Spam. You gotta love it. It’s amazing how much of this stuff shows up on other blogs…although I suppose it’s great for comment counts.

This work by Walt Crawford is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International

This entry was posted on Monday, June 14th, 2010 at 7:33 am and is filed under ALA, Writing and blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.