Want to find out what happens when you abandon your blog for 3 months? Probably not (or you just don't care), but I just logged in to find a mind-boggling 569 "awaiting moderation" comments in my Wordpress dashboard. "Awaiting moderation" is a fancy term for "These comments were left by some spam-bot, but we're going to put them in a holding cell in case one of them might be legit."

Anyway, I deleted them, but not without catching some of the names they left:

"Wellbutrin in Vietnam"
"Cialis, get it now"
"Vicodin without a prescription"
"Breastfeeding while on Viagra" (?!)
etc., etc.

Apparently spammers have abandoned the traditional method of inserting xxxes into every other word and gone for the more profitable market of pushing prescription drugs… painkillers, anti-depressants, and impotency seem to rule the blog world nowadays. Sort of makes sense in some twisted way if you consider the stereotype of a blogger.

And speaking of spam, it's finally hit Google. Really! I'm not talking about the "targeted ads" they have on the sides (you know, the ubiquitous eBay ad that will include anything you type in… such as "Looking for Dead Babies? Find exactly what you need on eBay"), but spam shows up in the search results.

For example, I'm looking for a new farrier (blacksmith) for Cody. I found a directory online and googled (god, I hate that term, but it's become inevitable) a bunch of names. 90% of the results were other spamified search sites. The clips under the titles showed headers of newspaper articles, but the links were things like "1stopshop4.com" or "fish-farms.fish-and-seafood.info." Click on the links, and they're sketchy search sites. Makes sense based on the names of these supposed newspapers, don't you think?