[Edit - I have closed comments on this thread as I am sick of cleaning it up as it seems to be a bit of a target to the Comment Spammers. ]

This is continued from Comment Spammers = Parasites

Probably the last installment of this storm in a teacup for a while as I am kinda getting bored but also I am too busy to really give this the attention it needs.  I would dearly love to show those I feel are misguided the error of their ways, but then I have a life that I selfishly want to live in this happy holiday season. 

So May sent me a very long reply email. She has been taking care to check my blog and also look at other sites where I may have posted.  *insert creeped out shudder here*

Click below the fold for the follow-up. 

Great Gatsay christmas party at Tableaux.

Australian chardonnay semillon in a can the same size as a red bull can. But the best bit is the description on the side of the can,  “A classy chardonnay blend.”

[ Edit - comments closed due to Spam attack ]

Care package from good friends in Australia.  Thanks Robbie, Sean and Alyce!

[Edit - comments closed due to spam attacks on this post.  Just goes to show you how these idiots work]

I have been brewing on this rant for a while now - so it is kinda a long one.  Get a coffee and have a read. 

Let me say this from the outset - COMMENT SPAMMERS ARE POND SCUM.

Now what is a comment spammer I might hear you ask?  Comment spammers are those very sad and misguided people who float around the internet messing up the place.  They leave comments on usually very old blog posts (hoping that the blog owner doesn’t notice I guess) and then leave a link to a commercial site. Perhaps this in the misguided notion that they are helping search engine rankings bring more people to their site and thus making money from page impressions and adwords or other such nonsense.  This is all under the broad heading of Search Engine Optimisation or SEO. 

SEO used to mean a good thing - all those good things like meta-tags, linking to other sites that were relevant and useful and informative and the free flow of ideas.  Now it has come to mean a whole underclass of bottom feeding internet parasites hoping to make money off bone-fide websites, blogs and the like.  Modern snake-oil scammers.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE comments as does everybody who has a blog - why else do we have a comments box?  But real comments from real people who have found the post informative, interesting or compelling enough to take time out of their day to send a message.  I love it and I am more than happy for you to list your own site that I might find informative, interesting or compelling. This is communication with the outside world and the free flow of information that make the internet such a wonderful place.  But comment spammers are not wanting to reach out to me, they are trying to earn money for themselves and sell their wares without offering me anything in return. 

I have been running a kinda one-goddess campaign against these deluded and recalcitrant individuals. Yes I know, comments “tilting at windmills” and “pissing into the wind” come to mind but a girl needs a hobby I guess. 

I do have Akismet and other tools to keep the vile spammers and bots away but occasionally some get through and it makes my blood boil.  Especially with stupid comments like: “Hey great site.” or other totally unrelated comments obviously just written by the human equivalent of a robot - probably some poor, underpaid person in a third world country who answered an ad like “Make real $$$ from home!!”, but then that is not my problem. 

My blog has no adwords, is paid for out of my own pocket and in no way generates me any money so I have a right to decide what content is appropriate or not.  So there - ner!!

Every time I have a human comment spammer post a comment on my blog I send a strongly worded mail to the original poster and as well to the contact for the commercial site they link.  I say things like “Whomever you are using for SEO is using unethical practices and are spamming.” 

I do feel that most people who hire SEO contractors know very little about the internet and are fooled into doing whatever the agent suggests.  Most don’t reply to my form email.  But then from time to time I get a nice reply apologising and saying that it won’t happen again, or site owners who claim to be clueless as to the ethics issues surrounding comment spamming.  So I enlighten them as to the scourge on the internet that I believe these comment spammers to be. 

But over the last week I have had a very interesting email exchange with a real live comment spammer.

Click below the fold for more - read how she drops herself really into the pit of the morally corrupt…

Cherry Typhoon in drag and drag queen in diamontes and feathers.

British embassy choir performance at Meguro Catholic Church.
I feel quite virtuous. But after this am off to a burlesque show in a club so balancing it all out.

Tokyo is covered in a blanket of gold today with the fallen ginko leaves.
I was going to call this post golden showers but that would really cause havoc with my google rankings. eek!

Shiny 15inch MacBook.  I am very excited.

“Woodcutters tree-stump” - chocolate covered cookies shaped like, well, tree-stumps.
Fabulously weird! 
Bought from a vending machine in Odaiba.