Each month I check my HTTP referral logs, and find that nearly all of the “referring” pages that I haven’t seen before are spam. Usually there are also a few sites showing one of my images as examples of some theme or other. Now here’s one of both classes: a page of auto-generated SEO drivel containing one of my pix, apparently because the description contains the word “binary”.

A recent comment on this blog from someone named ‘air jordan 1 ebay’:

Hello, i read your blog occasionally and i own a similar one and i was just wondering if you get a lot of spam responses? […]

Yes. Yes, I do.

A recent fad in spam is Star Trek filler:

Sisko swiveled toward his chief engineer. “What do you think? Is there anybody still aboard the cargo shuttle?”
The commander nodded grudgingly. “Yes, I know. But you thought they might steal a couple of pods off the station. This is bigger than that. What did those Klingon renegades get out of it? Not the antimatter. So we have to assume that they were paid for their participation.”
Epilogue
“No!” she shouted.
The planet was a bit closer now, a bit more fiery at the edges, but it remained dark and essentially featureless. Picard peered at it as if he could have spotted the Mendel just by looking hard enough- as if he could have outdone the Enterprise’s vast array of instruments, not to mention Troi’s considerable abilities, by determination alone.

I wonder what’s the source.

I’ve been getting comments like this: ( . . more . . )

Funny spam comment:

{The Secret|The Main Element {To|In order to|For you to|To help you|If you would like|If you want to totally|On the way to|When you need to}} master the moncler-market Is Rather Straight foward!

When I answer the ’phone, I generally say either “Yes?” or “Good day/evening, Sherwoods” rather than “Hello.” With cold-callers I often don’t get a response to that; I pause and try a variation or two of “Is someone there?” before the caller speaks up with a bewildered “Hello?”.

Does their robo-dialer wait for a “Hello” before prompting the human that it has found a live line?

I’ve been getting Russian spams in which some of the Cyrillic letters “Аа В Ее К М Н Оо Рр Сс Т у Хх” are replaced by the similar Latin letters “Aa B Ee K M H Oo Pp Cc T y Xx”, defeating Google Translate.