Sorry to swear, but it's really annoying. I've been writing and scanning and posting and whathaveyou for five and a half years here, and for most of that time, this blog has been relatively unmolested by those faceless lowlifes with their baffling snytax, often-unpronounceable screen names, and highly dubious hyperlinks. (Except for this Rick Helling post...for some reason, it draws spammers like flies to a bug zapper. Is it because I used "dirtier" and "suck" in the same paragraph?) But more and more blatant spam comments are cropping up on my recent entries. I'd already added that super-irritating word verification, which doesn't seem to slow them down. Now I've gone and switched comment permission from "anyone" to "registered users". I hope it doesn't keep any of you from commenting, but a little extra security goes a long way. Still, I know that even this isn't foolproof. My 1993 Topps blog is already registered-user-comments only, and there are still barnacles that manage to open a Blogger or Google account and leave their slime trail on the bottom of my posts. Why even bother? Orioles Card O' the Day tops out at 300 page views a day. 1993 Topps hasn't cracked 70 in a single day. Is there such a hunger for low-hanging fruit?
All I know is that if these spammers don't leave me be, I'm gonna turn Albert Belle loose on them. Nobody wants that.
