Paul's Comments

I don't know why I bother censoring this, probably less than 100 people read it, except, I guess, I like to maintain a bit of a "professional" image, so that means keeping profanity out unless necessary.

The hell with it!

For once I'm actually going to post a blog entry uncensored. Nobody reads this but me and maybe a few dozen people (other than spammers looking for a place to spew; and they don't count as they aren't human :)). So I'm going to make a wide-open, unexpurgated comment.

I talk in the sidebar of this blog about why I don't allow comments any more after I decided to lock down my blog after the 300th piece of spam. I was wrong. I thought I'd gotten rid of it all but I hadn't. The admin system there kept showing me old draft comments - ones not yet approved for publication - from 2008, approximately when I locked the place down. It kept showing them, and showing them, and all you could do was delete them one at a time, and the system required me to confirm each item I wanted to delete, whereupon yet another new piece of crap replaced the one I had just removed. It was like busting open pest insect hives in a badly infested building or something, the more insects you found, the more you kept finding.

So I had a better idea. I used PHPMyAdmin - a high-powered database management tool - to go through the comments. And what I saw over and over were draft, unapproved comments for things I wouldn't approve on this blog. Adult dating ("meet someone new and fuck them tonight!"), hardcore sex sites ("meet someone new and fuck them in the ass tonight!"), porn sites ("watch people fuck and suck each other or get fucked and sucked in every possible position and opening with things you wouldn't believe!"), drugs ("get the drugs you need to be able to fuck all night, dozens of times!"), all the stuff no legitimate business could actually afford to pay to advertise because there's no percentage in it, if the true cost of running a business were included they'd be out of business.

Note that the way a lot of this is phrased I suspect it's targeted mostly at men. Women generally can get sex any time they want it, while men usually have to search and find someone if they're not already in a relationship. Yes, yes, I know sexual politics are a little more complicated than that but it's generally the rule.

I actually wouldn't mind giving space for legitimate outlets. I mean, I used Phen-Fen before it was banned; I dropped about 100 pounds in that many days. I've met every woman I've had sex with via ads on the internet (uh, no, I didn't pay them, I'm not that kind, i.e. they have to be interested in it for free), and my best friend who I've known for over eight years - haven't been able to meet in person yet, but there's still time - discovered me because she saw my ad.

I once figured if I could catch a bunch of spammers and make them come up with $1 for each item I've had to delete, remove or expunge, I could probably make a pretty good living. If spammers had to pay the true cost of what they send out - the way people who use the Post Office do - spam would die, and fast.

I suspect the stuff they're spamming probably isn't even good porn, or they wouldn't have to spamvertise. Larry Flynt - the sick fuck who runs Hustler Magazine - correctly poked fun at the ridiculous Wall Street Bailouts by publicly announcing how the porn industry was hurting too, it employs a lot of people and contributes to the economy, it deserves a bailout too!

Correctly working businesses don't need bailouts, as has been pointed out, the porn industry does do quite well selling its wares.

So I used PHPMyAdmin to do a cursory look over, 300 at a time, and was able to delete that many all at once. Then after a few of these, I got more confident and did about 1000 at a time, twice.

So, with the ones I deleted manually and the ones I bulk-deleted I dropped at least 2,500, probably more than 3,000 bogus comments.

I have exactly what I think is about right. 4 comments - the only ones marked as published - that had any validity out of perhaps 5,000 or more pieces of shit that were posted here over the years.