11 Comments Caught by the MJ4MF Spam Filter

In Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris put into words the feeling we’ve all had when trying to speak a foreign language. He wrote:

My fellow students and I engaged in the sort of conversation commonly overhead in refugee camps.

“Sometimes me cry alone at night.”

“That be common for I, also, but be more strong, you. Much work and someday you talk pretty.”

Spam messages with similar grammatical constructs flood the comments section of this blog. Initially, they annoyed me like an ant crawling on my skin — small and insignificant, but causing just enough discomfort that I had to deal with them. Now, however, they’re a source of joy. I read them, chuckle, and then “Delete Permanently,” knowing that my blog enjoys a large enough readership that spammers deem it worthy of their aggravation.

And sometimes, I chuckle loudly.

A number of spam messages have sung my praises:

…thanks on your sweat!

That man can tell what is actually he has been talking about.

Amazing post upon every with the essentials.

Wonderful issues altogether, you simply won a emblem new reader.

This blog was excellent, to say the least. Great piece of literature.

Wow! Great piece of literature? When you think of the greatest literary works of all time — War and Peace, Lolita, Hamlet, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn — I’m not sure that Math Jokes 4 Mathy Folks would be among them. But, whatever. Ego stroking like that is not only welcomed, but encouraged!

I suspect that spammers think a message of commendation is less likely to be deleted. Perhaps, unless it butchers the English language worse than Balki Bartokomous or includes a link to www.eatbugsfordinner.com.

One of the recent spam messages was just a little too aggressive for my liking:

Thank you so much, and I am taking a look forward to touch you.

Some are funny because of their poor product placement, like this one:

generic viagra… million a thanks…

I think the spammer was attempting to thank little ol’ me… but it sure looks like he’s thanking a little blue pill, doesn’t it?

And while I don’t know what it means to “bring as much as date” or what the “quite great function” is, I rather appreciated these gems:

I’ll be once more because you bring as much as date.

Fantastic article, gentleman, sustain inside the quite great function.

I’ll anticipate reading by means of much more of your difficult operate.

Finally, the spam filter caught this message, which is grammatically correct:

We are concerned that publication of sacral lecture jokes may endanger the respect to math teachers in freshmen classes.

But I’m confused by the word sacral. It can mean relating to the sacrum, a triangular bone at the base of the spine, or it can mean relating to sacred rites or symbols. I suspect the latter definition was intended here, though I’m unclear of the rite or symbol to which my jokes relate.

For the author of that comment, I have this to say: Chill out, dude.

This is a humor blog, and everything — and I do mean everything — is fair game. I’ve shared jokes about cannibals, gynecologists, inmates, cow tipping, genitalia, and fecal matter, and I’ve made fun of every math profession from statisticians and engineers to physicists and professors. If you can’t see the humor in a joke about a math lecture, then I recommend you find other sites to peruse. You can start with www.eatbugsfordinner.com.