typically when i go to comment on a blog, it annoys me a great deal to have to type in the jumbled set of letters. supposedly by typing these letters in i can prove to the interwebz that i am, in fact, a real-life human being and not a robot apparatus. it's truly amazing that this is enough to convince the "www" that the comment is not fake - and it's even more amazing that no one has figured out how to create a computer that can stump word verification.
the most obnoxious scenario is when you can't even read the letters - they're all distorted and overlapping and you're can't be sure if it's a lowercase "L", a capital "i" or the number "1". so you get it wrong, the page refreshes with a big red box saying "you failed to successfully reproduce the letters! go back to 1st grade!" and sometimes you even get to retype your whole comment cause it was lost in the refreshing. what a joy.
however, blogger does an exceptional job with this - their letters are legible, non-worbled, and if you get them wrong it doesn't delete your entire comment in the refreshing process. but my favorite thing about blogger's word verification, is that it creates a jumbling of letters that actually appear to be real words: drego, ligro, idesto, croida - but they're not real words. they just happen to contain some standard proto-indo-european letter clusterings and look like real words.
so what do i do? i play balderdash. i make up the definition of the "word" i see. examples...
drego - noun - an east-asian plant known for its uncharacteristically high levels of vitamin B.
phsta - noun - a deceptive, albeit illegal, maneuver in the game of chess where one is able to dupe their opponent by moving the knight only 2 spaces rather than the correctly moved 3 spaces.
ligro - noun - a baseball term developed in the 1930s as an insult to non-black individuals playing in the negro leagues.
croida - noun - any organism with a brightly colored exterior skeleton (e.g. ladybugs, scallops).
apparently i can only come up with nouns.
now it's your turn! i have turned on "word verification" on my blog. comment, and make up a definition for the displayed word! what a genius idea. maybe i'll even make it a competition and pick a winner!
hizzah! happy balderdashing!
-apc.
5 comments:
WHAT. the word i got was "latte". that's a real thing. if you get a real word, refresh and do a different one.
Ficep: A small container used for storing small organisms in a science lab.
fladdis: noun, a short hand term commonly used among plastic surgeons referring the extra skin that is scalped in botox surgery, "I missed the hazardous waste bin Leonard, don't slip on her neck fladdis."
ovetro - adverb?, being upside down while throwing frisbee. 'I was ovetro in the front yard today with Spot. We had a great time, until I got a headache from all the blood rushing to my noggin.'
yalishi - object of a preposition, southern slang for really really disgusting. Must be spoken with a southern drawl. "I really tried to enjoy that deep-fried okra, but it was on the verge of yalishi."
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