That’s what my mind feels like right now as I sort through all of the 345 comments on my blog that are awaiting moderation. Each one is so desperately and at the same time patiently sitting in the queue, hoping that I will read it and decide that it has something meaningful to say about what I have written, and that I will validate its very existence with the mere click of a mouse button: “Approved.”
I wish that I could say that I was three-hundred-and-forty-five-comments-in-three-weeks popular and that my blog has a fanbase of loyal readers that read religiously and comment heartily. Would that it were so. Sadly, comments like
Thus he became possessed of both the sabemos for which he postscript displeased an army from his own spoilation, and invaded Socialist.
make me highly doubtful. So, confused, I continue to read, searching desperately for a single shred of humanity in any one of these babbling comments.
The unconscionable sheeting of winter was devysed by severe frosts which warehoused all day unless when the sun flaxen-tressed to be unusually astrachan and the geese and ducks sujette outspilled to take a southerly course in reposeful song-sparrows.
What the fuck? I tried to wrap my mind around this for a few minutes, and it sprang on me: what if this was some sort of code. I haven’t seen a few of my friends in a long time. What if one of them had been kidnapped, and only has access to the internet for ten minutes per day, and his access was monitored closely, and these screwy messages are some sort of a code? It makes sense. I am really smart, and if I were one of my friends and I was kidnapped, I would surely choose me to be the most likely to figure out the code. With this in mind, I set out to crack the code and rescue my friend.
In times like these, Google is your only friend. As such, I asked Google to help me with some of the vocabulary that escaped me.
- astrachan: “a major city in southern European Russia, capital of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the Volga river, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea.”
- sujette: French for ‘subject’
- tressed: having long locks of hair
This can only mean one thing: My kidnapped friend is in a cold warehouse on the shore of the Volga river. Geese, ducks, and song-sparrows are resting there for a short period of time during their southerly migration. These birds may be pausing to bask in the glow of the sun, which has long locks of blonde hair at this present time.
I was about to set out to find him, but I decided that I should see if there was anything else I could determine from the other posts.
About his aliusque was a mereuse where hung a goodly ministrae, plump like himself and eke as well restricted.
- aliusque: Latin for ‘another’
- mereuse: ? but it appears to be French in origin
- eke: also (the definition that seems to fit the context the most)
- ministrae: plural form of ministra, which is Latin for ‘servant, attendant, or assistant’
So… about his other was a French something where hung a great deal of servants, fat like him and also restricted as much. What does it mean? Is my friend’s captor ritually murdering all of his fat subordinates by hanging them? I wish this was easier. It was clear that I wasn’t going to get anywhere fast, and my friend was in grave danger, so it was time to take action.
Suddenly, another comment caught my eye:
Great choice of shoes at our online store.
If you thought I was confused before, then surely the word for my new state was baffled. I like my shoes. I have never been anything but complimented about my shoes. Is it possible that I was wrong? Was one of my friends not in danger? What other explanation could there be? Whoever had left that particular comment for me apparently decided that since I had not yet gone to purchase shoes from his or her online store, it must have been because I did not have enough information, so they elaborated for me:
Incredible shoes abnormal sale. Adaptive postal and fetched exactly.
Holy shit! An abnormal sale?! I had no idea, whatthefuckamIdoingIneedtobuyshoesnow! I can’t believe that the shoes are even fetched exactly! Don’t you hate it when you order shoes on the internet and they aren’t fetched exactly? Look, they even have adaptive postal! What isn’t there to love about this abnormal sale?
Adaptive postal? …Adaptive postage? …Dynamic postage? …Postage may vary? Shit, I wonder if… This reminded me of a game that my friends and I used to play in high school, back when Babel Fish was all the rage. It was called ‘see how fucked up a translation gets when you cycle it through all of the languages.’ You start with a simple looking and innocent sentence like “I would like to buy some clothes from you” and translate it English->Spanish->French->German->English to get something like “He wants to buy little clothes of you.” One time, I don’t remember what we started with, but when it was done being sodomized by the translating engine, it came out “And go the elephants with cheese observing.” When I am old and gray and senile, and that is the only phrase that I mutter, they will think that I am crazy. I will simply be remembering “the good old days” when the Internet was one big game.
So, I guess none of my friends have been kidnapped. I guess it’s just some inconsiderate foreigner with a little bit of programming knowledge under his belt who designed a piece of software to poorly translate foreign phrases into english and post them on unsuspecting weblogs in hopes that the attatched links will generate him revenue. Of the 345 comments on my blog, 0 were put there by actual people. None.
All I have to say is: “I become I kill more whoever I have made this.”