Attack of the hair loss bozo

I am always interested to read the comments people leave about my posts, and a link to the comment system can be found in light blue at the bottom of each post. Since I want to enable the most people to comment with the least amount of hassle, I have enabled the software to allow anyone to comment, not just those who have signed up with Blogger.

These comments often add an extra dimension to the post, and I am grateful that they seem to be quite positive. I don’t mind ones that take issue with a point, or a post, though. I am a civil libertarian when it comes to the free flow of ideas.

What I am not a libertarian about is spam. So far I have found a total of three “comments” left by some guy who claims his name is Mike, and who always includes a link to a website promising a hair loss “cure.” These comments are of the generic “great blog!” variety and obviously the person hasn’t bothered reading the blog, other than seeing the word “leukemia” and thinking “chemotherapy” and then thinking “hair loss.”

And then, like some ravenous Ferengi, thinking “profit.”

This little slice of internet life is as amusing as it is annoying, and what amazes me most is this: How much of a bottom feeder do you have to be to search out cancer blogs, then insert comments after posts linking to your website? If this is your method of drumming up business -- or of gaining traction in the Google search results ladder -- then I would highly recommend not quitting your day job as a “sandwich artist” at Subway, should you be so lucky as to find employment outside the prison system.

I knew something was fishy when I saw one comment that said “fun blog!” This blog may be somewhat entertaining at times but CLL is not fun, and neither is coping with it. So I deleted that and in its place Blogger inserted a note that reads: “This post has been removed by the blog administrator.”

I wish the Blogger software would allow me to explain why comments are deleted; since it doesn’t, I feel compelled to explain it here. I am not deleting comments that disagree with something I have said. I am deleting spam posts that are intended to promote someone’s website. So if you see that “removed by the blog administrator” line, it means there is one less opportunity for you to learn about some bozo’s miracle hair loss cure.

By the way, I have had a receding hairline since the age of 13 –- yes, 13, and I had a bald spot at 16 -– so I know all about the incurability of hair loss. I even once went to some guy in Manhattan, Dr. Philip Kingsley, who billed himself as “the world’s foremost trichologist.” (After all, one wouldn’t want to see the world’s second-best trichologist, would one?) Despite being sent home with several bottles of shampoo and salve with magical names promising a verdant world of hair, nothing stopped the inexorable progress of baldness except for age.

It’s now slowed to a trickle, or would that be a trichol?