[CUE: Country harmonica flourish]

[Old country-cowboy voice]

I've always said, there's no hygiene issue I cain't solve with a roll of paper towels and a gallon of bleach. But I believe I've met my match...with comment-spam.

[CUE: Bass-heavy, twangy Texas prairie tune, in a slow, loping, 4/4, two-step beat; continue throughout narrative, raise volume during pauses]

Y'see, our story begins a long time ago, round about the third week of November, in the year of two aught-aught four. It was a mild November in these parts, and I was goin' about my business, as was my custom at the time.

[CUE: Stagecoach rumbling past]

One day I had cause to click on a link which took me directly to an older post on this here Alpaca Burger blog. Much to my surprise, I found COMMENTS there, which startled me, on account of this here blog bein' about as invisible as a deer tick's shadow on a coonskin cap. And not just a few comments, but NINE.

'Well, glory be,' I said, 'I wonder what I done wrote that some fellas saw fit to talk to me about!'

So I scrolled on down to read this discussion, and lordy lordy it made less sense than a drunken Frenchman tryin' to auction a steer.

[CUE: Pipe organ - ominous]

'Who the HELL is this phenteramine fellow and why the hell is he sayin' the same shit over and over?' was my first reaction.

'And what does online poker have to do with it all anyway!' was the second.

[CUE: Coyote howl]

Let me tell you, I was TEED off. Just a bunch of silly shits, is what they was, in my estimation, makin' no sense a-tall and usin' the Alpaca Burger homestead to play their druggy little games.

Now I was willin' to let bygone be bygones, and just return to the shed to finish poundin' out a barrel full a' chicken foot for the Sunday stew. But I got to wonderin' about these greasy little stutterin' freak jobs, so I looked at a few more posts and before you know it I'm jumpin' up and down with my hatchet smashin' everythin' in sight includin' my grandpappy's porcelain squirrel - and the refrigerator door!

[Bass guitar run, high to low]

When I finally came to, I climbed back up on the chair and started searchin' in the google. I typed in words from some of these ridiculous conversations that now inhabited almost four hundred of my posts and what I found is:

I done been spammed.

[CUE: Boot stomping twice on the ground]

COMMENT spammed.

[CUE: Long, lonely dog howl]

Now, on account of the time of year it was, and a fresh load of hootch just in from my cousin Jebby's still, I was able to let this abomination lie where it lay, so to speak, for a spell. Like my Daddy said, 'Drinkin' solves a world a' problems, and the ones it don't maybe ain't worth the bother.'

But over time my ideas began to stir. We undertook this Movable Type and had to address the old, old pages a visitor may find himself upon stumblin' into our Forum. Well, do we keep those pages? And what about all the jibberin' comment butt-talk like you'd get standin' in the bottom of the outhouse pit lookin' up?

I was half inclined to let the butt-talk stay, on account of it bein' a ROYAL pain in the ass to go back and delete it. But then recently I read this, which was QUITE enlightenin':

"It was around December 2003: Google did what was called the 'Florida update'. It changed the algorithm that measured how high a site should be ranked to spot 'nepotistic' links and devalue them. So if you had a link farm of sites with different names which linked heavily to each other, they were pushed down," explains Sam.

So the link spammers - who prefer to call themselves "search engine optimisers", but get upset when search engines do optimise themselves - turned to other free outlets which Google already regarded highly, because their content changes so often: blogs. And especially blogs' comments, where trusting bloggers expected people to put nice agreeable remarks about what they'd written, rather than links to PPC sites. Ah well. Nothing personal....

Sam's code gets hundreds of open proxies to obediently spam blogs and other sites with the messages he wants posted. They usually target comments to old posts, so they won't show up to people reading the latest ones, though search engine spiders will spot them and index them. And here's the surprising thing: link spamming is not outsourced. These people do it on their own behalf. (Does this mean it's an immature business? Reg readers please advise.)

Here's why. When Sam spams tons of blogs and sites with links to his sites - which are affiliates of bigger PPC sites - people see the links and, seeking some porn, pills or casino action, click through to his site, and from there to the parent site, which pays Sam for each person landing there. The PPC sites can see revenues of £100,000 to £200,000 per month, says Sam. He gets a slice of that - and he wants it to stay that way.

[CUE: Military drum beat]

Well, podner, this was just too much for me. I'll be damned if such target-practice snot-weasels are making money from the thousands of verbal turds they left festering on this server which I pay for.

[CUE: Military drum beat]

[CUE: Viking war horn]

Long story short, I have to go back and hand-code the changes to the hundreds of pages these sphincter-throats did their doody on. Greymatter had to be turned off to get MT to run, so there is no way to automate the process. As of the present moment we are caught up to the first 100 posts.

It's not so bad once you've settled in with a bit of Jebby's juice, but it's tedious no matter what.

[CUE: Bela Legosi: "Gooood Eeevening!"]

[CUE: Creaking door opening]

[CUE: Calliope organ music]

Sorry - ah thinks our SOUND effects got a bit confused just then...

[CUE: Wicked witch: "HA HA HA ha haha HA HA HA ha!"]

[CUE: Chorus from Wings: 'Band on the run, band on the run, band on the run, band on the run....']

Anyway, it's been most hospitable for you to drop on by. I'd like to acknowledge, we have not been so 'up to par' with the issues of the day because of all the maintenance problems.

But we are not totally out of the circle of relevance, either.

[CUE: Sound of gavel striking, courtroom murmering]

[CUE: Police whistle]

This just in, we have SLUGS crawling up the side of the house. And we don't know WHAT they are doing here:

[CUE: Eric Clapton guitar solo, bridge, from 'Layla']

Ah, the passage of time. I hope this information has been useful. And I hope all you little cowpokes out there will survey YOUR blogs for comment spam. And if you have a wheel gun, I hope you will take a few shots, just like I have. Boom boom boom boom boom boom. Erase 'em; erase their parasitic asses. Reload. Then erase some more.