Diary of a Low Budget Superhero

The latest barrel of hot viscous suck-juice to get dumped on the Internet is this thing called automatic comment generator, or blog comment widget. I'd like to track down the person who thought this kind of marketing would contribute to society and ask them a question or two, the first being simply: "What the fuck?"

But let me tell you why.

Some of you guys remember this, my online diary, from way back when it was called Jungle Sweet Jungle, so named for the inspiration provided by Geoffrey Holtz' book, Welcome to the Jungle: The Why Behind "Generation X" and the slant of my own writings, which was, is, and I guess will always be me searching for a foothold in history. Home, sweet Home. I don't crochet doilies, so I made a diary. Okay, blog, if you must. My first-ever post was about my erstwhile ebay addiction, where I spent my 1990s-boom era fat salary...a moment of silence for the dot-coms...on dust-collecting trifles like Brady Bunch lunchboxes. That last sentence ought to be in the dictionary under "Gen X."

So yeah, I'm in my ninth year here. Changed the name five years ago, changed the tools I use to do it, changed the style around a bunch. But I'm old school. I still only link to other diarists (okay, bloggers) that I actually read and enjoy. I still don't sell ad space (like, who would buy it). And I still view Low Budget Superhero as basically an adult version of the forts I used to make out of my Wonder Woman blankie and a couple of dining room chairs. You can come in if you want to, but you have to wear this Burger King crown and sing "Sesame Street" with me.

APPARENTLY, now that there's like eleventy-jillion blogs, and blog is a word now, and many of them have grown into quite the respectable (or at least oft-quoted) online news magazines, and everybody and your dog has one, and some have been made into books and movies, there's a great focus on making money from it. And part of that money-making hunger is getting more clicks. Clicks, clicks, clicks, it's all about the clicks, at the expense of basic Netiquette. Me, I hold no truck with this predatory practice of "generating more traffic" to one's blog by installing a fake comment widget.

Oh, you didn't know about the fake comment widget? Then your blog must have a WAY better defense against spambots than I do here at Low Budget Superhero. I've been battling these things with increasing fervor for years. I've tried everything on my utility belt except the shark repellent. Sometimes my arsenal of blockers wins, sometimes the hackers that write these spam codes win. I shake my fist at you, evil geniuses! I shall smite you with my strong words!

The idea is, these money-hungry dingleberries want more clicks, so they employ one of the comment spambot tools, and configure it for certain key words. Then it'll automatically go all around the web and leave comments in other blogs. With a link back to theirs. I don't know how they get past some of the things they get past! But they do. They'll leave you a comment right now, see if they don't. By leaving a fake comment with their link, they think this is going to get you to click on their link, because you think you got a comment. If it looks real enough, you'll leave it sitting there in your comments section and maybe some of your readers will click, too, and then...somebody...somehow makes money off that. I don't know quite how, I'm not good at that kind of thing. I still haven't worked out precisely what went on there at the end of Trading Places with the crop report and the whole "turn those machines back on." I've only been pretending to understand it for 26 years.

I get these automatic comments every damn day. My site here is set up so I get email saying there's a comment on one of my posts, and I have to log in to approve it first. Now, sometimes it's really you guys, which I adore and encourage, even if you don't agree with me -- but most of the time it's some horrendous auto-generated nonsense message that I just delete. I tell you, I must delete ten of these a week. They're insidious. I get auto comments with tracks back to websites as far reaching as shoe stores, phone companies, printing houses and dating sites. The worst offenders are online gambling sites and, of course, that mack daddy of the Internet, porn. What do they say? Occasionally the comments are somewhat normal, though just a little bit off...like, it could almost make sense when viewed in a certain way. For example, on my post called Oblique Strategies for Life, "Janice" posted this:

Well, yeah, true. But does it really pertain to the topic? Kinda not. I do know a Janice, too, so that one took me a few minutes to inspect. I may have even mentioned her in an entry, which may even have been the trigger for the auto-commentor. I knew it wasn't my Janice because the trackback url didn't make sense. Some handbag clearance website. That one pissed me off because they got me --I clicked it. I clicked it just to make sure it wasn't my Janice merely being loopy in her comment choice. She can be loopy now and then. She recently broke her ankle just walking. That takes a certain loopitude. But no, it wasn't her, it was some damn bot.

Other auto-commenter aren't so clever. Sometimes it's a bunch of random character gobbledy-gook that fools no one. Some are English words, but strung together into nonsense, like this one that repeated for about a week straight on a single post of mine. It read simply:

Then there was "Mort from Tonga," whose engine thought an appropriate reply to "I Don't Have The Guts For Health Care Reform" was this ramble:

Hey Mort, how about I "learn YOU into a rack with assets and companies." And what's with the sad emoticon? Christ, he's rude, crazy AND a downer. This is just terrible, terrible stuff.

I Googled for the widget applications so I could see how these marketing geniuses justify such spamming. Here's what one of them says:

You see that? This is only the beginning.

We have their word.

I just found this in my Facebook "Notes." It's from January. I forgot all about it, but parts of it made me chuckle. We're such changeable creatures, we humans, that even 7 months later I'd have some different answers. Well, not "answers," as there was no question for this one, it just said to write 25 random things about yourself. Here's what I wrote:

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Link: http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2009/07/30/mass_man_charged_in_neighbors_killing/

Last night, Christine (some of you know her as Hunzi) posted on Facebook that "Jeffrey is missing." Her friend hadn't been seen or heard since Friday. This morning I saw a foreboding update. Jeffrey was found. This poor young man was murdered with an ax in his own home, driven to the state line and dumped. Horrifying, absolutely horrifying. Please take a moment to think positive thoughts for my friend, her friends, and Jeff's family. Christine, Andy, everyone, I'm so sorry for your loss.

Let me preface this by saying something about Brian Eno: Before summer of 2002, I didn't know a whole lot about Brian Eno. I never bought a lick of Brian Eno music. I never subscribed to the school of ambient music at all, in fact. So how did Brian Eno change the course of my life?

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I'm here, I'm here! I have just been a lame-ass about writing in Low Budget Superhero.

A funny thing - since I began this diary on April 1, 2000 I'd intended it to be a place where I sort of do prose gymnastics, trying out ideas, telling stories, seeing what I can do about finding a voice. The theory was that I would then develop some real (ie, non-online?) prose and finish some short stories. Maybe a book. But only recently has that happened! I've been doing a lot of writing...offline. And not music reviews, yo.

Randomly reading back into the old entries, I'm gonna say I like my first three years of entries the best. You have to go back to Diaryland for those archives. It's funny. I mean, I was funny. I lost that voice at some point. Back then I was still with Hub and still talking to my family. I guess they were comic fodder. I also had more disposable income and "did" more stuff. More to write about.

I was also a lot stupider.

Happy anniversary to me!

Heh. All day today I have felt like being home instead of at work. Home with Joe, keeping warm and playing Wii games and cuddling. But I didn't get home until 8.

Right now it's 10:30, we have dined on Pear and Gorgonzola salads, and we're watching Andrew Zimmern's Bizarre Foods. Well, I am watching it, Joe is drifting in and out of snoozeville. How do you fall asleep when the Zimmern just ate some Pit Viper Ice Cream and said he's gonna be coming back from commercial to eat Pig Windpipe and giant fish eyeballs? Wake up, Joey! This couch may be just a bit TOO comfortable -- I'd never known him to fall asleep on the couch before. And he LOVES Andrew Zimmern.

Last time he fell asleep too, and Andrew Zimmern was eating in Ethiopia. Joe loves Ethiopian food! He once dated a lovely Nubian princess who taught him to make a few signature dishes. I never met her but I have a good sense for people, and I can tell this one is as true and good as she is beautiful, and the fact that Joe can still cook the dishes means she did a good job showing him. Too bad Joe slept through Zimmern trying Tibs and injera and fit fit! Mmmm, Tibs and injera. Tibs is a tomatoey kind of beef stew. Injera is this kind of flat bread, and like naan in Indian cuisine, you eat the main course WITH the bread. Scoop it up with your fingers, I mean, sans fork. Injera is so filling, we always order too much, forgetting how dense it is. Last time, putting some into my mouth with his fingers, Joe told me it's a sign of respect to feed someone by hand. That's what Andrew Zimmern reported too, whadda ya know.

I wonder how much the Italians influenced the Ethiopian cooking? Because it seems fairly Italian-esque to me. Delicious, tomatoey, saucy. There's been a lot of bad strife between Ethiopia and Italy, but isn't it hard, even when you're being invaded by another country, to NOT get influenced by that culture? Eritrea was once all Italian. Eritrea...those guys are kinda like...troublemakers, dude.

I should look it up. I'll do that.

I could see traveling around the horn of Africa for awhile. See some wild elephants and stuff. It looks breathtakingly beautiful on TV.

Speaking of TV shows, there's a new entry up in the "TV" category.

Do I just walk around like I own the place? Everywhere I go? I ask because it seems like no matter what restaurant, retail store or taco stand I'm granting my patronage there are people who walk up and start talking to me as if I own the place. Alright, I'm lying about the taco stands. We don't have any taco stands in Allston. But the other parts are true.

Next time it happens I should just try helping the person and see what they want. "You work here, right? Do you have any more of these in size 10?"

"Sure, let me just go check. Don't move."

Then leave, and imagine the customer trying to complain to a manager about the chubby bespectacled clerk who went to look for size 10s a half hour ago.

If only I were mean, I'd have so much more fun.

Well! I was going to start putting hints in my seven-year-old online diary (lexikahn.diaryland.com) about this. I was even considering writing "Thirty Days Left" and "Twenty-nine Days Left" all through December, and have a big email/Facebook/Myspace "online launch" on New Year's Day. I figured I'd work on it all through the month so that every section had a lot of interesting content, all the bugs would be worked out, and final design, well, finalized!

But you know, this is looking pretty good already. Let's call it...the BETA LAUNCH of the NEW LOW BUDGET SUPERHERO!

Feel free to tell me what you think.

Link: http://lexikahn.diaryland.com/

Here it is, guys. The only link back to the original diary, started as Jungle Sweet Jungle in 2000 and changed to Diary of a Low Budget Superhero in 2005. I'm pretty thrilled with my new home on the web, so I think this is it. I don't see going back to Diaryland except for the archives. Hope you come with me and read here!