One of the advantages of maintaining a blog is that I get to moderate a lot of comments that are obviously spam. The captcha (those squiggly words you have to type to prove you’re not a robot) filters out most of it — however, a successful captcha doesn’t necessarily prove you have a good command of the English language.

Here are some of my favorite spam comments:

“Hi,
The Great Gatsby is a good to start with. After reading your post I suggest you to have a library link here to help those who wants to read more. — topqualityessays.com”

Thanks for the tip. If there’s anything this blog is missing, it’s library links. o_O

“You blog simple very well. Here National Day will come, Where are you going? First wish you have a happy National Day. If you want to mountain climbing, You must have a good shoes, I am a NIKE shoes lover, It fell very well, You can have a try — cheapjordans.cc”

One of the most cherished traditions in my family is climbing to the top of the nearest mountain on National Day, wearing a pair of bootleg Air Jordans.

“You blogs are very well.I like reading very much.Thank you for you write a blog. After reading you blog Iwant to see you very very much. Now I will introduce myself. If you want to see me please come to FUJIAN province PUTIAN. — cheapjordans.cc”

This comment kind of creeped me out a bit. Very, very much? That’s got international stalker written all over it. But then I figured, what the heck — how often do I get to meet somebody from the Fujian province? So in the interest of world diplomacy, I’m on the next flight to whichever continent the Fujian province is on. I just hope Putian is waiting for me at the airport with my name on a cardboard sign. I’ll be the one wearing bootleg Air Jordans, Putian!

“Hello…You blog is so fun. I am very happy to read it, I want to know how ofter you post it, And I will on time to read it. Our company sell some NIKE shoes. — — cheapjordans.cc”

Thanks for the comment, cheapjordans! I update the posts every hour on the hour, around the clock, 365 days a year, except during sweeps week, when it’s every 15 minutes. And with every update, I put on a different pair of bootleg Nikes, so we obviously have a lot in common!

“it’s good to see this information in your post, i was looking the same but there was not any proper resource, thanx now i have the link which i was looking for my research. — mastersdissertation.co.uk”

This one made me sad. What kind of a world do we live in where a young scholar in the British Isles is forced to work on a Masters dissertation using a keyboard that obviously has no capital letters? Or perhaps it’s e e cummings, trying to communicate from beyond the grave.

There’s still plenty of room in my closet for more knock-off Nikes and top-quality essays at $20 a pop…so keep that spam coming!