Beginning immediately, anyone who leaves a comment on this blog will be required to complete a word verification step, which is supposed to help reduce comment spam. Not that I have been receiving comment spam, but you can’t be too careful in today’s world.
But something weird did happen Thursday night, not comment spam exactly, but very puzzling, to say the least. I am going to describe it to you as best I can, because I hope someone out there can explain to me what happened, or at least shed some light on some very strange goings-on in my little corner of the blogosphere.
Whenever anyone leaves a comment on rhymeswithplague, I receive an e-mail. Mrs. Rhymeswithplague opened our e-mail’s inbox and saw six new comments on various rhymeswithplague posts from readers supposedly named “superior,” “military,” “intelligence,” “superior,” “military,” and “intelligence.” When we opened the e-mails, the message in each case consisted of several lines of strange-sounding links. We didn’t click on any of them, though. We weren’t born yesterday. Day before yesterday, maybe, but definitely not yesterday.
Next, before checking rhymeswithplague itself, we deleted the six emails from our inbox and then deleted them again from our trash. At this point, I went to rhymeswithplague, expecting to find the new comments with their suspicious links.
Nothing. Nada. Zilch. Zippo. I found nothing. The comments that appeared in my e-mail’s inbox were nowhere to be found. I delete e-mail messages all the time and the comments themselves are still on rhymeswithplague. As Arte Johnson on Laugh-in used to say, “Ver-r-ry inter-r-resting!”
I have no idea where the comments went or why they didn’t appear on my blog. But I did notice two other unusual things. In the Feedjit Live Traffic Feed thingy in the sidebar, there were a couple of entries that did not show a flag. Instead, the letters “A-P” appeared in green where the little flag usually appears, followed by the words “Asia/Pacific Region arrived on rhymeswithplague.” And in the flagcounter thingy’s expanded list, an entry appeared that said, “Unknown - Asia/Pacific Region” with a little gray rectangle where the flag was supposed to be.
Have the aliens finally arrived in Honolulu? Have Islamo-fascist-extremists co-opted my blog for nefarious purposes? Is Uncle Sam conducting super-secret maneuvers and experiments somewhere in the Asia/Pacific Region? Was Publishers Clearing House trying to reach us at long last?
If anyone can shed some light on what was going on, Mrs. Rhymes- withplague and I will be forever grateful. We are totally in the dark.
Please answer soon with your various theories and explanations. While we wait for your response, Jethro is practicing his growling and Mrs. Rhymeswithplague and I are hunkered down behind drawn curtains and closed shutters, with baseball bats at the ready.
As I started to say in the title, what the dickens is going on?
I wish to be the first to have to type in a password! :) For me, it "messe." What a messe you might have had there.
ReplyDeletePat - From rhymeswithplague to Ye Olde Messe quicker than you could say "Jack Robinson." I'm still holding my breath and keeping a watchful eye out. You can never tell when aliens or the Publishers Clearing House may return....
ReplyDeleteHm-m....intriguing mystery....you may need to call in Sherlock Holmes. What you described has not yet happened to me. Sounds like you're taking the corret measures.
ReplyDeleteMy word verification is: dipasedi
Very strange. I have had spam but never anything you describe. There are some pretty strange folks out there that for some reason get kicks out of messing with peoples computers (i.e. trying to destroy things). Perhaps all you can do is delete as you did but any spam I get in my email in box I also send to the spam box because I think that is the only way to report it and help to keep it down. At least in Yahoo.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, puzzling! Too blond(e) to have an intelligent remark to make on this subject. Sorry. My best guess would be aliens. Or hackers. Scary thought.
ReplyDeleteGood luck with this.
WV = dywerc (seems pretty harmless)