I sometimes give Conman a hard time because his journal, The Boston Diaries, has no discussion or commenting system. On the other hand I can’t really give him too much shit–Conman did write his journal software himself (he calls it Mod_Blog), and I ganked my journal’s software from WordPress, mostly because I’m not talented enough to write my own like Conman did.

One thing that Conman doesn’t ever have to worry about, because he doesn’t have any kind of commenting system, is Blog Spam. If you allow comments to be added to your journal, then robots can come along and post advertisements in your comments section. I’m not sure anybody ever buys anything after seeing a Blog Spam post, but they sure are obnoxious–especially when you have to go in and delete them.

I haven’t got enough regular readers to make all of them sign up for an account just so they can comment (although I could, if I wanted to). But then the bots would just sign up for accounts and then Spam anyway.

So I came up with a happy compromise.

WordPress has a plug-in for a pretty effective bot-deterrent called reCAPTCHA (CAPTCHA stands for “Completely Automated Public Touring test to tell Computers and Humans Apart”), which lets me add a CAPTCHA challenge to the bottom of my comment form, like so:

So of you’re a human, feel free to comment to your heart’s content. If you’re a nasty Blog Spam bot, you can go pound sand, fucker.

EDIT: it should be noted that if you register for an account on The Corsair Journal, then you don’t have to answer a CAPTCHA challenge whenever you comment (but you do have to answer one to get an account. So there).

Plain ‘ol Republican? Or national villain?

It’s 3am. I just got back from my Thursday-night show, enjoying a bowl of Apple-Cinnamon Cheerios in front of the kitchen PC, sobering up more and more by the second (but waiting until I was sure I was sober enough before driving home, thank you very much!). And POTUS, the XM channel I listen to most these days, was all ablaze about Obama’s speech last night.

But not about his speech, per sé.

No, what has the media’s panties in a virtual wad is that Senator Joe Wilson shouted “You Lie!” during Obama’s schpiel about the health care issue facing our nation.

To be fair, I was hoping to watch C-SPAN’s replay of the speech on Friday, hiding in my office trying to recover from my inevitable hangover. But it seems that the kitty is out of the burlap: the most exciting part of the speech is scarcely a a quarter of a second long and is plastered all over the national (and perhaps international) media: I must’ve heard a dozen times, by now, Senator Joe Wilson shout “You Lie!” across the Senate floor at President Obama.

And here’s where I have the big problem.

If you’re a loyal reader of The Corsair Journal, then you know two things about me already: One, I’m a lifelong Democratic Liberal, as is most of my family. Second, I’m all for a national health care system that solves the huge injustices and denials of basic health care services that only American citizens (when seen from the perspective of industrialized nations) seem to suffer, at the hands of the large insurance companies.

What you might not know is the fact that I’m pretty selective as to where I get my news nowadays. I had, until recently, subscribed to only one news outlet–CNN–but decided, rather, that C-SPAN and POTUS on XM Satellite Radio were far more balanced places to obtain my news about this topic than the mainstream news media outlets.

But even POTUS and C-SPAN couldn’t help but over-cover Senator Joe Wilson’s microsceond, off-mic outburst.

You idiots.

To say I’m incredibly disappointed is an understatement. I wasn’t feeling well on Wednesday night and went to bed before Barack Obama’s address; I was hoping to hear all about his talking points on my lengthy commute into work on Thursday. But no: all I got to hear about is that blithering asshole Wilson and his disruption fo the President’s speech and his disrespect for the Presidential office. Even my good buddy Greenacres, himself a lifelong Republican, agrees with me, at least on this one point–and it is from him I learned, many years ago: “You may not respect them man, but you must respect the office.”

I sincerely hope that Wilson is completely ostracized by whatever political circles he once traveled in in Washington, suffering the political equivalent of discomendation from the Klingon Empire, afraid to even be photographed next to a building inside The Beltway lest it crumble to the ground from residual entropic resonance–and not because he is a Republican opposed to heathecare reform (and doubtless firmly in the pocket of some insurance provider), but, rather, with his one microsecond outburst, has managed to draw the national focus away–albeit temporarily (and hopefully briefly)–from what is perhaps the most important political issue of the fledgling century and certainly the defining issue of Obama’s young presidency.

I have yet to hear anything about what Obama had to say Wednesday night.

I still plan to watch Obama’s speech on C-SPAN Friday and struggle to stay awake through it whilst simultaneously trying to keep down my bowl of Apple-Cinnamon Cheerios.