"You made blogging glance easy" and other unsolicited testimonials

In recent months my blog has attracted the attention of spammers - though as comments are screened before publication it's all a bit of a wasted effort on their part, I'm afraid. But I thought I would share some of their contributions anyway, what with it being a slow day and all.

A post about the Four Tops, for example, attracted this enthusiastic response:

It's a shame you don't have a donate button! I'd definitely donate to this excellent blog! I suppose for now i'll settle for bookmarking and adding your RSS feed to my Google account. I look forward to brand new updates and will share this blog with my Facebook group. Talk soon!

Alas, despite the warmth displayed above, there has been no further communication has been forthcoming from any quarter - and I haven't got round to adding a donate button so my critic's enthusiasm cannot be displayed non-verbally. My loss, I suppose.


After a post about the doo wop documentary Street Corner Soul chiding the BBC I received the flattering response:

Thanks on your marvelous posting! I seriously enjoyed reading it, you could be a great author. I will make sure to bookmark your blog and definitely will come back down the road. I want to encourage yourself to continue your great job, have a nice morning!

Sorry, do you want me to encourage myself, or will you be doing that? I'm confused. Talk soon, eh? Talk very soon. Please. Moving on,  a still unfinished post about Peter Skellern fired the imagination of one reader in quite an unexpected way:

I'd personally also like to mention that most individuals who find themselves without health insurance are generally students, self-employed and people who are unemployed. Thanks for the suggestions you discuss through this website.

I wasn't aware that I ... but okay, thank you, thank you. The nicest compliment, however, came from a response to a post about Paul Simon. I suspect babelfish may have been involved, but if soon this occasion the remarks undoubtedly gained something in translation:

Wow, awesomе weblog foгmat!
Hоw lengthy have уou eveг bееn blοggіng for?
You madе blogging glаnсe easy.

The full glance οf your site iѕ fantaѕtiс,
Aѕ neatly as the сontent
In the translation.

Alright, I poeticised up the layout a little, but the words are genuine. And however it was generated I rather like that phrase "blogging glance", which seems to capture the impatient skim-reading which I suspect is all that most blogs get. If they're lucky.

And if I have indeed made that easier for the busy reader with a world of competing attractions - even if all that means is that you can tell in doublequick time that my particular brand of wordspinning is not for you - then I am grateful.

It reminds me of a stupid phrase, a translation on the packaging of a Japanese or Chinese toy owned by the daughter of a friend. I can't remember now what the toy was, but for some reason the slogan is burnt into my mind forever.

You ready? It ran, in its entirety:

Daring - Don't Fear of My Eyes!

Why I should remember that I don't know - except that it was near the end of a happy day and all of us, adults and child, delighted equally in the stupidity and ill-assortedness of this particular botched striving for meaning, which occasionally returned to remind us of that day when we were united again. It became a catchphrase, of sorts, a memento of that day, along with the phrases "MMMMbankment" and "Naughty Puppy Cake" - neither of which, trust me, would gain all that much from further explanation here. But all three sayings still have a kind of magical force, at least for me: as my spamming friends might put it, they make backward glance easy.