Warning: Frivolous, irrelevant post ahead

You know the word verification that many blogs ask for as a final step before your comment appears, those random strings of characters meant to discourage spambots?

Do those strings ever seem not so random after all? Recently I completed a comment about a fellow blogger’s vacation in France, and Blogger asked me to verify the comment by typing “leguf,” which sounds like a portmanteau of the French words for vegetable (légume) and beef (boeuf). Maybe it’s French for veggie burger.

More recently, with the weather turning raw and cold here in the mid-Atlantic states, I was asked to verify a comment by typing “wyntr.” Two days ago, I got an atheist’s declaration of faith: “byegod.”

Naturally I’ve been asked to type strings of characters that I hesitate to repeat in mixed company. The mildest of these have been “fuuke” and what sounds like an Irish variant directed at a specific person, perhaps Strasberg, Grant, Majors or, if you like Chinese poets of the T’ang Dynasty, Po or Shangyin. Unless you're in Galway, you'll probably be safe saying it out loud: “fooknlee.”

And now, readers, take a moment from your busy day to tell me about random character-verification strings you've seen that seemed to carry a message.

© Peter Rozovsky 2007