Jen Widrig, my friend from college (and fellow teacher, and a writer, and a parent) has just posted a good piece about telling kids the truth on her blog here. I thought I'd share a similar (but less fraught) incidence of some truth-telling tonight.
Tonight, while we re-watched an episode of Avatar: The Last Airbender (great show, by the way), Noah asked why the camera cut away from a fight scene right in the middle just because the protagonist flew away.
"Well," I said, "because this is third person limited narration."
Paige burst out laughing. "Noah, your dad is such an English teacher."
"What I mean," I explained, "is that this episode is Appa's story, so when Appa leaves we follow him."
"Oh."
"Can you say 'Third person limited narration'?" I asked.
"'Third person limited narration'," he said.
"There. Now you know something that I teach to 9th graders, and you're only five. Not bad, eh?"
He nodded. "Not bad."
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Weird. This particular post has received eight spam comments. At most, other get one or two. What is it about this post that makes people want to use it to sell penis enlargement and cheap airfare (separately). Now I wish I hadn't deleted them all, to see if some unified theory of spam could be generated here. In the future I'll delete them but record a list of what they were selling, and we'll see what we can make of it. Are spammers just attracted to the concept of third person limited narration?
Another spam message advertising a "coleman roadtrip grill", with two links that look like they'd go to amazon.com, but would really take you somewhere else. To a virus? To a mob site selling camping equipment that "fell off the back of a truck"? I'm not going to find out.
Another spam message, this one with a whole lot of links. Most seem to be for gambling websites, but right in the middle is one where you can buy cheap computers.
New spam message includes this great line:
"I am a really big fan of escorts."
Then, after providing a link to a service, the message asks "guys" to "help me with another site like it."
Um, I'm not a fan, so I don't have any recommendations for you. But I wish you luck, buddy!
Newest spam post tells me to click their link if I want to view the best erotic webcams. I don't.
More spam. This one with links to news and gossip about Bollywood. The pattern continues to elude me.
Next spam email is again about Bollywood, this time advertising screen-shots from a scene showing two stars kissing. I'm guessing they're both women, and that's what's supposed to make it such a big deal. Not gonna' check though. Probably a virus.
This last one was particularly lame. After a link, the text just said "Buy reductil online" There was no punctuation, and the name of their product apparently isn't worthy of capitalization. I don't know what the product is, and I'm unwilling to click the link to find out, but I'm going to guess it's something that causes a reduction of some kind. Penis size reducer? Libido reducer? Intelligence reducer?
The newest one seems to be an ad for a German porn casino gambling site, but it's written in such broken English it's hard to understand.
"conspire is www.---.com , in gain german gamblers, descend upon during unrestrained online casino bonus."
Sounds more frightening than fun.
Quite a long and elaborate post about horse betting. Apparently Barbaro will be the odds on favorite for the Preakness. So, good luck with that.
I assume this one was spam. It had a link to what it claims was a video "with a social message" by an Indian comedian named Ghuggi. Of course, who knows what the link might really have taken you to?
A very odd post about the history of Manchester United. It has one link I'm not willing to click, but the text reads as though the writer is commenting on something in the piece, despite the fact that neither Jen nor I ever mentioned Manchester United, the English Premier Football League, forward Stan Pearson, manager Sir Alex Ferguson, or anything about soccer. One does wonder what the link would have connected to, and what the posters hoped to sell.
Today's spam message: Instructions on how to succeed at online bingo! It seems like someone cut and pasted from something longer, as they began with instruction #4. "At the same time, do not become very greedy and play with only as many cards as you can play with. You need to watch and mark the winning numbers in each card and there is a time gap of only ten seconds between card draws. Hence, if you are unable to manage many cards, it is a waste. You have to complete winning combination and call 'bingo' before other players to claim your prize." Good advice. Better advice: Don't click on links in the comments section of a blog.
Another ad for a Ghuggi video with a "social message".
The next one, a poor computer translation, begins, "Predilection casinos? Scrutinize this environmental" followed by a url. I kinda love the bad tanslation, but not enough to scrutinize their environmentals.
This most recent was a post for a Starcraft II page. Written in such genial tone, I almost wondered if it could be a friends, except that it was not only anonymous but posted to a completely unrelated piece.
A new casino gambling post. It starts in an interesting way: "Yo brothers" Stays informal, but artificially so. Ends with "California, Yosemite Lakes" Do they not know the order of city, state? Or is this spammer claiming to be named California?
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