New comment spam trap

Filed under:Adminlike — posted by squires on 5/30/2006 @ 12:29 pm

I installed a new WP plugin that catches comment spam, but there’s always a chance that it catches things that AREN’T spam and that YOUR comment could therefore be disappeared by it. (You can go check the comments and tell it if some aren’t spam, but when it catches like 2,000 comments in the first day you have it - who’s got time to see that they’re all spam?). What I’m saying is, if you try to post a comment and you don’t see it appear for a day or more, feel free to email me so I know to go and fish it out of the spam cesspool.

Also, in order to make this post at all entertaining, here are some current keyphrase searches leading people to this blog:

pronunciation of missouri
text messaging ruining english language
myspace ruined my relationship
world baddest swear words in english
senator who said if english was good enough for jesus
funny smarterchild conversations
kidnappings caused by myspace
msn conspiracy game
sign langwich
crazy acronym
americans only know english
translate smiley code teenager
friendster it s complicated
are cell phones bad for your memories
clever band names
non arbitrary nature of signs
little people gadgets
hiding the ball in presidential interviews
sex and gender in variationist research
a love vowel
curiosities about emoticons and acronyms
psychos cell phones
micheal jackson email addresses hotmail yahoo gmail aol address in 2006
homosexual reparative therapy dogs
stream i wish i was a punk rocker
string of symbols used to represent a swear word
words to use instead of cursing
devl kikd outa hevn coz jelus
is 26 old?

If you are responsible for “is 26 old?” I would like to meet you.

1-800-WEBSITE

Filed under:Media, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/29/2006 @ 3:18 pm

Yesterday I heard a radio plug for the National Guard. It was all touching and moving (thanks to our troops on this Memorial Day, btw!), and then at the end the guard member giving the testimonial said something like

To hear more about how the National Guard changed my life, go to one-eight-hundred go guard dot com.

WHOAH. You say “one eight-hundred” and I’m pretty sure you’re going to present me with a telephone number. Even when you start to say the words “go guard,” I’m not too confused because people represent numbers with the words they can form all the time. But then the “dot com,” and I realize it’s been a website this whole time. A website whose name is a phone number. The website is actually called 1-800-Go-Guard.com.

I assume that 1-800-GO-GUARD has been the available telephone number to call for information about the Guard, and when they needed a website they just decided to make it that. BAD MOVE. 1-800 is what identifies something as being a phone number. The .com identifies it as a website. You really don’t need both, unless the 1-800 is actually part of the company/brand name, like 1-800-CONTACTS. They should have 1-800-GO-GUARD and GoGuard.com. Maybe GoGuard.com is taken. I don’t care.

Also, when they introduce the website, they should just go ahead and say the www part. (As Geoff Pullum just pointed out, not all websites require “www,” [mine doesn't] but this one’s URL DOES show it.) This makes it clear that what you are about to give is a web address, not a telephone number. Particularly important when your web address INCLUDES a telephone number prefix. Though to my mind, “Go to WWW dot one-eight-hundred-go-guard dot com” still sounds like the military was a little confused by technology.

“Person”?

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/26/2006 @ 4:20 pm

A sign at the pool of a hotel I recently stayed at in Waikiki (Oahu, Hawaii):

Person must have REALLY long hair! Perhaps person is even a member of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists.

[On a serious note, I don't *think* this is typical of Pidgin, but I could be wrong.]

The “Z” instead of “S” thing is getting out of control.

Filed under:Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/22/2006 @ 11:42 am

Especially when the word doesn’t even end in [z], as in Air Canada Jetz (and, of course, my old favorite Sheetz).

There IS a place for puns…

Filed under:Outliers — posted by squires on 5/20/2006 @ 3:54 pm

…and it’s in Austin, TX at the annual O. Henry Pun-Off, happening today:

This annual irreverent assault on the English language annually lures both veteran verbivores and naive neophytes for verbal jousting…

The annual Pun-Off World Championships attract contestants from throughout the U.S. and are open to 32 “punslingers” in two different categories of competition. Up for grabs will be the title of “Punniest of Show” through a 90-second freestyle competition for punsters using prepared material. In the “High-Lies & Low-Puns” competition, punsters battle in wordplay on a given a topic with strict time limits. The last punster left standing at the end of the grueling competition is declared the winner.

The only things that could make this better would be if 1) I were there, and 2) there were a live puncast.

[Also, if anyone was wondering where I got "it," please note the following informal email exchange between me and my dad:

ME: a pun-off! what if contestants in the pun-off have to have a run-off? what if someone tries to claim that they are "number pun" instead of "number one"??? what if they call themselves "champuns" instead of "champions"???????????

DAD: All I can say is don't expund too much energy and punspiration on this punplexing problem.]

Acting like a blogger

Filed under:CMC, Media — posted by squires on 5/17/2006 @ 3:14 pm

I just found Margene’s Blog, a component of HBO’s Big Love online “community.” For those who haven’t seen the show, or have been living in a box and so have failed to see any reviews of the show, it’s about polygamists in Utah, and Margene (Ginnifer Godwin) is the youngest of three wives of Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton). She’s 23, an ex-punk rocker (or so we are led to believe in the scene where she puts away her old clothes, most of which are black t-shirts) and cigarette smoker, insecure, and unsure about this whole polygamy business.

The blog is weird. It’s written by a writer (I’m assuming it’s one of the writers on the show; who else would they entrust to take on the character’s persona?) posing as the character. This is interesting, because it’s like the writer all of a sudden becomes an actor, taking on the role through the way s/he writes - and I mean in terms of the written style, too, including punctuation, capitalization, emoticons, all that good stuff. The author is having to think about first of all, what bloggers sound like, and second of all, what Margene would sound like qua blogger, how she would convey herself to an online audience. It’s not unlike Harriet Miers’ Blog, only it’s way serious. For instance:

?? Ok, seriously, why is some meat light and some meat dark? And how come all of a cow is dark meat and a pig is all white meat… “the other white meat”, supposedly. But chicken has white AND dark meat so pork should really be the only white meat, technically.

:-) Frank got all lippy with me over the way I carved the turkey and Lois stood up for me, guys!!! It was awesome. Of course, I didn’t bring up the fact that Frank’s heifer-wives messed up the pre-sets on my car radio. Her huge pear-butt bucketed out my seat, too! Whether it’s a “shot in the arm” or not, if I was her, I might not eat as much ham, if you know what I mean.

?? MORE DREAMS: I had the craziest one two nights ago that our pool was over-flowing with black, bubbling oil. It just kept pouring over the sides and through the backyard all the way over to the fence. Bill and Ben were both waist deep in it, trying to figure out what was going on, but it just kept spilling over. I was sitting on one of the swings for some reason, just watching. Teenie was there, I think, but no one else was. She wanted to swim in it, for some reason, but Bill wouldn’t let her. It was weird.

The emoticons, the ellipses, the all-caps EMPHASIS, the punctuation-as-word (elsewhere, she uses rows of standalone exclamation marks. !!!!! ), the stream-of-consciousness speech style.

For another thing, the audience interaction thing is totally weird. The blog allows comments (I suppose there wouldn’t be much point, if it didn’t), and from what I’ve looked at, about half the people commenting are playing into the play, posing their comments directly in response to Margene’s post or talking directly to Margene, the character. And about half of them are being metablog/metashow, asking who writes the blog or commenting on how real or unreal the blog seems, or being nasty toward the idea of the blog or the skill of the writer. For those who play into it, it’s a way to continue the experience of the show, like a fan forum only more intense, or it feels more direct perhaps. For those who don’t play into it, there’s the satisfaction of being somehow intellectually above the fantasy-world of fiction.

Also, in terms of believability, never on the show (not that I’ve noticed, anyway) have they shown Margene even remotely interested in the internet, or have they even shown a computer around any of the three houses (other than when the teenage daughter is doing homework on her laptop). I have missed a few episodes, so maybe this was in there somewhere. But still, if she’s that prolific of a blogger, you’d think she’d mention her blogging habit once or twice (it’s not a secret - she uses her real name). Then again, they’re not supposed to tell anyone they’re polygamists - it’s illegal after all - so the fact that the blog IS under her real name is kind of dumb, because if it were a real blog (as it’s presented as; there’s no sense that the blog is addressed to VIEWERS of a SHOW, simply as PEOPLE reading a blog of someone’s life - she explains everything that happened in an episode, then adds little daily tedium tidbits) it’d be pretty easy to figure out who she was, where, and that she was in an illegal situation. And, as we learn from the show, people in Utah are quick to turn in their polygamous neighbors.

As for style, I’m not sure Margene would capitalize, but that’s a personal opinion.

[Admin note: please do not use the words "betting" or "wagering" if you ever comment on this blog. I've blacklisted them. Spammers suck.]

May hiatus…

Filed under:Adminlike — posted by squires on 5/7/2006 @ 4:48 am

…You may hate us.

HA! Take that, pun ban!

Seriously, May’s going to be another slow month. Please don’t go away.

Whose space IS it???

Filed under:CMC, ICTs, Media — posted by squires on 5/4/2006 @ 9:01 pm

So I was on the local ABC station’s nightly news the other night being interviewed about MySpace.  The story is entitled “My Space… Or Is It?”  If you are AS intrigued by that question as I expect to be, you can watch the video here.  And, while we’re at it, here is a gratuitous screen shot:


Note that in this interview I am most definitely being a member of the site, not a researcher of All Things Internet (which I’m not, anyway, but I kind of wish there were a degree in ATI).  Even so, the reporter and I DID cover some “deeper” issues, like why people use Myspace over other SNSs, what people like about Myspace, how much people think about their privacy, what kinds of identity exploration people are doing online, etc, but those didn’t get any airplay.  Of course the story ended up focusing (as is status quo for media coverage of social networking sites) on risks associated with the site - underage people revealing too much info, but more interestingly, the issue of having your potential employer look at your page.  Text of this part of the story:

One recent study reported that 75% of job recruiters use the internet as part of applicant screening.

“Employers really do feel justified in doing this, because they want to know all sides of a candidate,” said Elly Tucker, a Career Specialist at UVA’s Career Services Center.

She often advises students on how to find jobs and to plan career tracks. But now when students visit the center, she has some advice.

“We warn them that anyone can access that information, so only put the things on there that you would put on a billboard,” said Tucker.

But for Lauren Squires, she says anything she posts is appropriate for any web surfer, and if a prospective employer doesn’t like what they see…

“I probably wouldn’t want them as an employer, so that’s the way I would like to think about it. I don’t know how it would shake out in real life,” said Squires.

Yesterday on Talk of the Nation there was a similar conversation with some legal experts and ex-Wonkette. What I never understand is how rarely these shows enlist guests who actually research online community and online identity management from the users’ perspective of self-presentation, self-image, and social life, rather than the logistical or “what can go wrong if your employer sees your page” perspectives (though of course those are interesting, too).  At any rate, what I really mean by the “if someone doesn’t like what they see, it’s their problem and I don’t want to work for them” comment is this: posting things about yourself online forces you to commit to those things, to take responsibility for what you (and, unfortunately sometimes, others) say about yourself.  If we are “being ourselves” online - which for the most part I think people are trying to be - we should be proud of our profiles, blogs, etc., and have nothing to hide.  If we’re scared of what people will see - well, that’s one way in which the weird confluence of private and public on the internet REALLY does affect our “real” lives and self-perceptions.

Finally, BIG FAVOR I ASK OF YOU, DEAREST READERS: Does anyone have software that captures streaming web stuff, that you would be willing to capture this video (of the report) for me and post it to my (or your) YouTube?  It would only take a few minutes, and I would REALLY appreciate it - I think this will only be online for a few more days through the station, and it’s un-downloadable (so far as I can figure out).  Email me if you would like to help me.

That paper isn’t punny anymore.

Filed under:Media, Words & Phrases — posted by squires on 5/3/2006 @ 5:14 pm

The San Antonio Express-News has banned puns in headlines, according to A Capital Idea.

I don’t have anything to say about this, because I’m still sort of stunned by the fact that a paper would flat-out prohibit any specific kind of wordplay. Do YOU have any thoughts?