To Gingst or not to Gingst
Word verifications is a topic that has been screaming at me to address. It all began when I first started visiting Ess Stauss’s site, where she asks to be kept appraised of the more unique verification words (which shall be heretofore referred to as vw’s) we encounter. I bet she has a nice cache of collectible vw’s. Personally, I am still pondering the eternal question of why this process is necessary.
Bear with me, if I am the only person who does not understand how “spam,” which I thought meant unwelcome e-mails, has anything to do with blogs. Why would a company want to thrust its message into people’s private space, when such an intrusion would be met with understandable resistance? More pertinently, why do the vw’s have to be so doggone challenging?
I almost never penetrate the wall the first time through. I can not differentiate between lower case l’s and capital I’s. See, I bet that was confusing; maybe I should have typed (word-processed?) the difference between lower case L’s and Upper Case i’s. Frequently, I have to try three times to leave a comment. But I persevere, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.
Often it is not the word itself, but the timing. My best, hands down, but one I was understandably hesitant to share, came after posting a comment on a heart-wrenching piece of writing about the complexities of alcohol addiction. My vw? “stoli.” I can’t make this stuff up; I’m not that creative.
After reading about a piece in which there was great bustling and industry described, my vw was buslbisy. I would have settled for busl or bisy, and I got them both. Another thing I like to do, is either pose or answer rhetorical questions that I have formed from hyphenating two words. “I got the word togingst.” I immediately thought, “To gingst, or not to gingst, that is the question. The beauty lies in attaching any definition to “gingst” that I want. Today “gingst” happens to be, “aimlessly pursue any course of action that I choose, so long as I do not leave my folding chair by the kitchen fire.” So I have been gingsting for the past three hours, thank you very much.
When I encountered “scrubbl,” I immediately pictured a team of medical personnel, sitting around in their scrubs, playing Scrabble.
It is an entertaining game for a guy who is fascinated with words, because I am not bound by dictionary or thesaurus. I enjoy my encounters with this new form of entertainment and look forward to future revelations by Ess Stauss, something along the lines of “greatest hits,” or even different categories, from most original, to most timely.
Maybe we should organize a vw olympics, where we compete for “best of” categories. “Please submit your entry by no later than...in order to qualify for this years’s cherished vw awards.”
Winners to be announced April First.
Since I mentioned the dictionary [again] in this piece, it reminds me that I may have imparted a false impression recently, when I said that I would bring a dictionary with me, anywhere, if I had to choose only one book. I never meant to imply that I would sit around and read it; I want to write! I would use the dictionary the way I have always used it, as a reference.
ReplyDeleteI play the Yahoo word game Literati...a lot. Before you can actually get into a game room you have to do a WV.
ReplyDeleteHere is their reason for forcing a player to do this:
"At Yahoo! we are always striving to provide you with the best gaming experience available. We take SPAM and abuse very seriously and are asking you to verify that you are not using an automated program to access this site. This step helps prevent unfair use and ensures we can provide an environment you and your friends can enjoy."
This is fine with me, but the words are getting longer and longer and the letters are getting more and more smooched together.
I have to say, though, that I have noticed a difference. There doesn't seem to be as many SexySusi's asking us to visit their sites.
What I was missing was the fact that these are advertisements. Duh. As strange as it seems, I have never had anything come into my email, except for things that I signed up for, like Mendo Mill, and San Francisco Giants baseball. No SexySusi's asking me to visit any sites. And the word "smooched" works perfectly to describe those pesky letters. I think it's a young person's game, but would never admit it. [Did I just say that out loud?]
ReplyDeleteFor a long time, I didn't have word verification set up in my comments and nothing terrible happened. When it did finally start happening, it was sometimes fifteen to twenty nonsense "comments" per day that were basically advertisements to horrible sites, etc etc. It's a necessity, though I agree that the individual letters could be easier to discern. The ones on Blogger aren't too bad for me yet, but there are other sites that not only smooch the letters together but use a wavy font on a graph-paper background. Those are the ones it takes me three or more tries to succeed with.
ReplyDeleteAll that said, since they are an inevitable part of the blogging life, we might as well make the most of them, right?
I agree and intend to continue collecting interesting vw's, because we create our own entertainment. I'm always about making the lemonade out of sour grapes.
ReplyDeleteDoes my blog have vw's? Hmmm.
ReplyDeleteEveryone here already knows the answer to that one, Judy; I just hope the ones at my site are not miserable. Those wavy ones with the graph paper background are pure guess-and-by-golly material.
ReplyDeleteHi! I guess I don't have too much bad luck with the vw's -- my VW has a name - his name is Oskar. He was born in 2002 - but, and this is the height of consumerism, I am thinking that if I were RICH (which I am not) I would trade him in for the new model VW Beetle - a sexy little sports car turbo model....
ReplyDeleteback to reality - no, really, I seem to do okay with the vw's on blogger but Markie tells me mine are killers...... sorry, guys.
I would say I was vw challenged, but I can take a bug or bus engine apart with my eyes closed, and reassemble it. Let's face it, you had to be able to do it, if you were going to drive one around. Either that, or you had to pay someone to do it for you. All those years I drove Old Paint, my bus around. I am always patient with people driving old buses, because they can only go so fast, before the rubber band breaks.
ReplyDelete