Comment Sickness: Note To Potential Commenters

I’m dreading checking my comments, because, as I mentioned, they seem to get sicker by the day. I’m going to try to cut back on some of the worst offenders, by outright banning words that I imagine will be far more common in the urschleim than in real people’s comments. Comments with these words in them (even as partial words) will drop straight into the primal ooze, instantly deleted without even being queued for moderation. I think probably banning the f-word will get rid of most of them. Going to give that a try. Apologies to friends leaving posts with casual profanity who get them deep sixed for that reason. Try to clean up that pottymouth.

I had several other words that seemed obvious candidates for banning but many words are really nasty in one context but perfectly normal in another. Or they may occur as parts of innocent words or phrases. A friend named kept getting her emails returned by a corporate email filter and experimentation eventually proved it was objecting to her last name, Van Dyke. That kind of thing. If I ban the most common slang term for micturation, as I was tempted to by a particularly vile comment spam, I will never hear of anyone “pissing and moaning” in my comments, which seems like overkill.

I think I’m probably safe putting the kibosh on “shemale” though. Let me know if that inconveniences anyone, kay?

UPDATE

I think I’m going to give some plugins a chance before I try to come up with words to block myself.  Starting with Akismet and  thinking about Bad Behavior.  So if you want to use naughty words in comments you should be cool if you’re not an evil spambot.

Call For (Mac) Clues

Crap. Second mac laptop to take a dive in six months.

This one, a 14″ G3 ibook (800mhz).

Specifically, the video died on this one. You can start it up and hear it do its thing, but the screen stays blank. Also the little power-on light doesn’t come on when it’s on, nor does it pulse when it’s sleeping.

Just plain dead video.

It happened pretty suddenly.

Is this thing hosed? Any suggestions on what I could try to fix it?

This is one of the worst times for this to happen, financially. :\

Any readers I haven’t managed to alienate thoroughly yet, got any ideas?

THINGS TRIED

  • Zap the Pram (hold down command option P R while booting) — no effect

STILL TO TRY

  • See if the ibook is covered by the logic board failure dealy — take it to the apple store tomorrow.

ACLU Releases First Concrete Evidence of FBI Spying Based Solely on Groups’ Anti-War Views

American Civil Liberties Union : ACLU Releases First Concrete Evidence of FBI Spying Based Solely on Groups’ Anti-War Views

Two documents released today reveal that the FBI investigated gatherings of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice just because the organization opposed the war in Iraq. Although previously disclosed documents show that the FBI is retaining files on anti-war groups, these documents are the first to show conclusively that the rationale for FBI targeting is the group’s opposition to the war.“It makes no sense that the FBI would be spying on peace activists handing out flyers,” said Jim Kleissler, Executive Director of the Thomas Merton Center for Peace & Justice. “Our members were simply offering leaflets to passersby, legally and peacefully, and now they’re being investigated by a counter–terrorism unit. Something is seriously wrong in how our government determines who and what constitutes terrorism when peace activists find themselves targeted.”

And the departed shade of J. Edgar Hoover smiles.

Bring, Brang, Brung

I haven’t put up any strips for bring it in a while. Just one in all of February, and nothing this month so far.  Early on I was on nearly a daily schedule.  Right now, nothing.  It’s weird, when I was doing it before, ideas would pop into my head all the time, say, when I was showering.  Oh man, that’s it!  I haven’t showered in a couple months! Dang!

No, seriously, I can’t think of a damn thing to do a comic about anymore.  I guess I’m getting a little tired of the two main characters being a kind of Dilbert/Dogbert, Jon/Garfield clueless-straight-man and smartass duo.  I might be able to come up with some more comedy along those lines, but I don’t like it very much.

Ah well.  Thanks to people who’ve encouraged me on it.  I do appreciate it.  I just don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere from here.