Every once in awhile I get an e-mail in my inbox reminding me that I’m a blogger here. The e-mails aren’t anything to do with Portland, or Oregon, or my life, or most anyone I associate with’s lives either.

They’re from the “Metroblog-Brand Super Spam Eater”, which lets us authors know if there are new and troublesome comments to our posts. The M-BSSE shoots us an e-mail with the fact that we’ve received an “unapproved comment” (jargon for “something truly vile”) and the contents of the comment, for our personal reading pleasure. We’re then offered the chance to approve it.

Months ago, I wrote a post on the best or worst Mexican food in Portland. Lots of good ideas bounced around. Then, just for that one post, I started receiving tons of identical spam comments. All with some truly unsavory, and decidedly un-Mexican food related, terms. Things like “Son dad twink gals of lesbians and uncle aunt incest episodes” and “Incest mom son comment” and “649 sweetest free sist incest torture”. All with various links to some nefarious material.

Anyway, I write this to tell you not to be discouraged if you post a comment and it doesn’t pop up right away. Due to the absurd forms of spam that we get here (and not all of it is quite so obvious as the stuff I’m getting), we’ve been trying to up the power of our M-BSSE in a way that keeps out the bad while letting in the good. Of course, some of the good gets caught, but never fear; the author of the post gets an e-mail allowing them to authorize your comment–it just might take a day or two.

Comments to all posts are welcome and encouraged. None of us (as far as I know) blocks out comments on the basis of differing opinions or what-not. I believe we got evidence of that earlier this week when Betsy was looking for a good place to take friends for dinner. However, if all you’re doing is trying to advertise a website or tell us all about your son-dad-uncle-incest episodes, please don’t waste our time.