Spam comment of the month

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Here's one that Akismet missed, so I got to read it before deleting it by hand:

What a data of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge on the topic of unexpected emotions.

What indeed. I conjecture that this was written by one of Iain Banks's more gnomic aliens — an Oct, say.

Update 3/4/2013 — today's harvest includes

grammer is difficult for some prople, they need to do is to speak much more with many people, that will help them more better, when they are grower, learn will be easy

which is not as morphologically creative, but has a certain raffish charm.



11 Comments

  1. Brett said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 1:14 pm

    As of this writing, the following spam comment is still sitting at the bottom of the comment thread for the "Technology marches on" post:

    To splash with mud the famous scientist especially Jewish, who can do it so proudly that signs the libel? The Jew,of course.ST.Oppenheimer will not notice some Sossure and his Jewish accomplice.Mr Liberman simply confirms my watch.

    I find the first sentence quite odd and creepy, with the mention of Jews and "the libel."

  2. Twirlip of the Mists said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 2:16 pm

    Hexapodia is the key insight?

  3. Rubrick said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 4:18 pm

    A murder of crows, an exultation of larks, a data of un-ambiguity… I like it.

  4. Deirdre said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 5:39 pm

    Well, did you ever? What a data of un-ambiguity this is.

  5. Rebecca said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 7:42 pm

    Thinking that the phrase "what a data of un-ambiguity" might generate some good google poetry, I googled the phrase. But i got distracted by the fact that this spam comment appears almost word for word in a number of blog comment threads. Some had "know-how" instead "knowledge" and/or "valuable" instead of "precious", but otherwise the same. Speaking with the full freedom of ignorance, I would have expected this type of automated comment to be either unique (derived from the post they are attacking) or identical (true spam). But that's obviously wrong. Are they just some clueless pastiche of stock phrases or what?

  6. Dan Lufkin said,

    April 2, 2013 @ 8:18 pm

    Mark V. Shaney, call your office.

  7. Narmitaj said,

    April 3, 2013 @ 6:05 am

    Unfortunately, Iain Banks has just announced he probably has less than a year to live: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-22015175

  8. Eorr said,

    April 3, 2013 @ 11:03 am

    Definitely Iain Banks like, almost has the tone of a Culture ship name. I am devastated that we are losing him. His sense of whimsy lightened all the philosophic pondering stimulated by his books.

    PS. Favorite Culture ship name: Refreshingly Unconcerned With the Vulgar Exigencies of Veracity

    See a complete list here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spacecraft_in_the_Culture_series

  9. Narmitaj said,

    April 3, 2013 @ 1:56 pm

    From Banks's personal statement about his situation comes the line "I've asked my partner Adele if she will do me the honour of becoming my widow (sorry – but we find ghoulish humour helps)", and someone on another blog suggested Sorry, But We Find Ghoulish Humour Helps as a suitable Culture ship.

  10. “Some superb entropy” in the language of spam | Sentence first said,

    April 6, 2013 @ 7:51 am

    […] recent post by Mark Liberman at Language Log showcased the following fine spam comment: 1. What a data of un-ambiguity and […]

  11. Stan said,

    April 8, 2013 @ 5:35 am

    Comparing Mark's spam comment:

    What a data of un-ambiguity and preserveness of precious knowledge on the topic of unexpected emotions.

    with one of mine (I have a collection):

    What a stuff of un-ambiguity and preserveness of valuable experience regarding unpredicted emotions.

    shows obvious auto-replace parallels. I'm told this is called "spinning", and I've assembled a few such pairs and other spam fun here, FWIW.

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