Here’s something I didn’t see coming when I started blogging: How much time I would spend deleting spam comments.
For those of you not familiar with spam comments, let me briefly explain the phenomenon: Every night, when bloggers go to bed, spam fairies (see: hideous robots) troll the Internet sprinkling the comment sections of blogs with nonsense.
Here is a questionable rendering of what that looks like:
Yes. The Internet is a magical place.
I typically dispose of spam without much thought, but earlier this week, I received something that demanded to be acknowledged.
It wasn’t the garbled words that caught my attention or the fact that I felt like I was trying to read a romance novel ghostwritten through a collaboration between a cat running across a keyboard and auto-correct.
What stopped me from immediately deleting the spam comment was…
“Lonely elske musical singles dating.” A musical dating service, I thought. I want to see that! Naturally, the link sent me directly to porn. (Fooled me again, spam!)
But after I closed the browsers leading me to the red-light district, I was still dying to see what a musical dating service would look like.
Sure, I’m married, but given our American-Idol-Glee-Karaoke-happy country, a musical dating service might be the best idea spam has ever had. And since you aren’t capitalizing on the idea, spam, I would like to formally announce my plans to open a musical dating service.
Here’s how I propose it will work: First, I will dump the “lonely elske” part, because it depresses the shit out of me. My service will just be known as “Musical Singles Dating”.
And rather than taking a quiz or uploading a profile to a website–where you await winks and jabs and pokes, or however that works–all you have to do is send me a video of yourself singing your favorite song into a hairbrush*.
And weighing factors–like your ability to hear and mimic tone, and your use of jazz hands–I will match you with your musical equivalent.
You guys! I’m going to be rich! Who’s getting the last laugh now, spam?!
*Unfortunately, I am unable to accept applications from people whose favorite song is “Step-By-Step”, by New Kids on the Block. Research has shown that if this is your favorite song–regardless of who you are matched with–before your second date, you will be crouched in the bushes of your match’s home, using binoculars made out of old toilet paper rolls to spy on her.
Remember how American Indian tribes believed that the camera would steal your soul? And everyone thought that was weird? Well, it turns out they were actually geniuses who were merely ahead of their time.
At present, I can think of several occasions when I have died a little inside at the unrelenting hand of a camera.
For example, consider the family vacation. Or rather consider the moment when you think you’re finally finished with a weekend-long family gathering.
You’re tired; you need a nap and four showers (one to clean yourself and then three more to rid yourself of the shame of watching your uncle try to find the bathroom in his underwear at 2 a.m.) And then this happens…
And suddenly, you’re a hostage again.
A crowd of people bumping into each other, posing awkwardly, complaining, crying, and shouting “now use my camera” stands between you and your freedom.
Not convinced that cameras are the soul-thieves tribes believed them to be?
How about the drastic difference between what you think you look like when someone takes a snapshot of you and a friend dancing together at a wedding
And what you actually look like when you finally get a notice that the photo has been uploaded to Facebook for you and all of your mutual friends to see.
Did I mention that thanks to the magic of Facebook that image will probably enjoy a longer lifespan than you?
If you still don’t believe that cameras are stealing your soul, then I encourage you to attempt to Skype with your parents. Just once. (Warning: This experience may turn you into an atheist.)
Webcams seem to have been designed specifically to drive a wedge between you and your technologically simple parents (and also maybe for porn.)
Cameras stealing people’s souls.
It doesn’t seem like such an antiquated school of thought anymore does it?
I didn’t think so.
In what I can only assume is God’s way of apologizing for that time my mom tricked me into letting her cut my hair into a “Rachel” and I ended up looking literally NOTHING like Jennifer Aniston and plenty like an awkward 13-year-old who had allowed her own mother to cut her hair in her family’s guest bathroom, something very exciting has happened: Today, I am a guest over at Kelley’s Break Room.
Before you go there (and you totally should, there are lots of bad drawings there), I need to tell you that Kelley’s absolute favorite thing is Pepto-Bismol. I also should mention that it is NEVER wise or 100 percent safe to try to light Pepto-Bismol on fire with a kitchen blowtorch (or any other kind of fire) and that Pepto-Bismol might not actually protect you from fire.
This will all make perfect sense once you get to Kelley’s place.
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