Sama Zama

Whoa. The anime internets has exploded and my blog is brimming with “gay speedo horse sex with girl” (which seems like an oxymoron, assuming the horse is male). And, after a year of an unannounced hiatus, there are still people who link to me. Even a few new bloggers just starting up, linking to me. Thanks, guys. :D Now that is love.

So, I guess college life doesn’t lend itself to anime reviewing. Someone should have warned me. Thus, I have literally been anime-free for about…a year. I have not touched or even glimpsed at anything anime-related. No blogs, no sites, no nothing. I got a job at an EB Games across from campus and focused my mania entirely on video games, and forsook my poor animated hobby.

But that is going to change. Yes, I’m dusting off this poor old thing, combing the thousands of spam for genuine comments, and beginning to write again. I was perusing through the Summer 2007 list and deciding which titles I would like to follow. In order to keep myself going, I will probably restrict myself to only weekly updates, and I will not be the first blogger rushing to the scene to hastily scribble something. I will probably be (gasp) delayed in my review of an episode coming out that week. But I am determined! I WILL write reviews and they WILL be meaningful and I WILL make time to watch some anime, damn it!

So, assuming someone will somehow stumble back onto my dusty ol’ blog and even read this, please let me know what is worth watching and coming out soon. And what the hell happened. To everything.

So, I believe a site update is in order!

Thank you to everyone who suggested webhost providers. A short while after my last post was up, Maestro, AnimeBlogger.net’s admin (and the sweetest guy ever), emailed me with the best offer I could ever imagine. In fact, I probably should have turned to my original providers for input rather than a random post…¬_¬

So this past week, Maestro has been setting up the hosting for me under my new domain Stephimono.com. Thus, lately, my 3 readers might have noticed the site down, but that was merely maintenance. There is still work to do, mostly on Maestro’s behalf, since I just sit there with a goofy smile and starry eyes while he explains things. Everything should be up and running shortly under a subdomain of my newly purchased domain. I am also thinking of purchasing http://www.samazama.net for this anime blog.

Anyone who has me on their blogroll need not update, though, as http://samazama.animeblogger.net still directs to my blog. :)

I should be updating soon with a drive-by review of the many anime I have been watching in my absence.

So the conclusion is, I’m alive and I am not just a lazy bum and I have at least half an excuse for Sama Zama being in limbo right now, right? …Right?

This isn’t a particular interesting post, I just wanted to let people know what has been up with Saria. Well, while I don’t like revealing much of my personal life, especially my age… I need it in order to excuse myself for not blogging quite avidly towards the end of the school year.

So let’s just come out with it. I am a little girl. Eighteen, about to graduate from high school. Graduate from high school. Graduate from high school. An all-girls, Catholic seifuku school. This Thursday. A little busy, am I. There’s college stuff to attend to (I will be a Berkeley Cal Bear!), Senior stuff to attend to (Disneyland Grad Nite!), and did I mention graduation?

The good news? Blogging should occur more regularly by the end of June 15th.

The bad news? I will be gone from late June to mid-August on a trip to Suzhou, China. I will be a teacher assistant at a bilingual academy’s summer English program, meaning teach Chinese kids how to speak the English. A six week-long hiatus will occur during this time, though I do plan on creating a blog specifically for my daily accounts in China. But it still means no anime. :(

More good news? I only plan to have a half-life at Cal, so there should be a lot of blogging once the year starts.

Some more bad news (?), episode-crunching has gotten real stressful for me as it requires actual deadlines, so I plan to focus more on opinion/discussion pieces in the future, as well as perhaps rapid-updates per episode (less screenshots, condensed posts). The purpose and what I want for this blog is still in limbo, so anyone with suggestions, complaints, or love…I’m all ears. Or eyes. Or something.

I’m also looking for an adequate host/domain setup for my own anime and personal blogs. I am poor and I want to continue sticking with Wordpress. If anyone knows of any good hosts or packages (especially those of you who already host your own blog), please let me know here or at SariatheCat [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

• And for anyone and everyone who ever reads my blog, I want to thank you so much for being patient with my sluggish updating and supporting me! I hope you enjoy what you read here at Sama Zama and continue to visit. （*＾＾）＾*） ☆Chu！！

There has been a little poking around in the blog好き forums about comment and trackback spam, but nothing terribly in-depth about the personality of their spam. Most discussions about spam begin with, “Hey my site is totally spammed, what do I do?” and end with, “Askimet. Now.”

The majority of bloggers are aware that Askimet is one of the best antispam plugins or doohickies out there. (If this is your first hearing of it, I suggest an install). But even Askimet makes mistakes, and so I review all the comments “caught” as spam before actually deleting them. If I see anything other than a bolded phrase that usually makes no sense, I double-check the comment. While perusing the other day, I found some interesting attempts by the bot of a Russian air conditioner distributor. His name is Tom.

“Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend.” The URL was questionable, but for a moment, I thought that perhaps this was an abstract post expressing some opinion about either the writing or the blog itself. Then I visited the Russian site demanding in angry, forceful tones that I purchase their expensive cooling equipment.

In the past few days, I have come upon other bizarre spam comments that have nothing to do with blogging or air conditioners. The majority of the disguised spam, however, involves a lot of flattery. That is, bots telling me how awesome my site is. “Perfect site! Anything superfluous, all is laconic and beautiful. Thanks!” Now, I like my ass kissed as much as the next person, but having a robot do it kind of creeps me out. And it lowers my self-esteem. I read the comments before I realized they were spam, raising my hopes that someone had decided to compliment my mad blogging skrillz, my smile beaming and my cursor anticipating a “Not Spam” check. Alas, it was just Panasonic and the viagra dealer.

Though I shouldn’t complain too much. Brown-nosing spammers are a lot more pleasant than the 500 or so short-phrased advertisements followed by an ellipsis. See: creampie cuckold… and laser quit smoking…. Not only do their daily 20 comments become annoying, but creampie cuckold sounds like possibly the most vile dessert one could fathom, and quitting smoking using lasers sounds more harmful than lung cancer.

• Discussion Time!

Most of the spam sounds like completely made up advertisements, so what are the logistics behind those kind of bots? Does anyone know how spam comments function other than the obvious putting out URLs? What about those fake blogs that contain condensed, incomprehensible information about one subject? How do people make money like that? And who writes these bots, anyway? Any interesting spam of your own to share?

• And the Prestigious Bizzaro Award goes to…

“Hey, this is a great episode. Really great music and the talk is funny and helped me get through a really boring hour in the airport. Keep up the great work and try to have some more shows with Jasper, they are really rockin’ and very funny.”

This bot may have something going for it. If only I knew anything about Jasper…

When I heard the number of shows I’d have on my watch list this Spring, I nearly fainted. And every day, I discover more. I keep downloading the files, but I have only watched a few episodes. Where does this lead me? To a tentative blogging list for the new season.

Keeping up with the new season might seem nearly feasible if it weren’t for the fact that the Winter sseason never ended. Fate/Stay Night still stumbles on, as well as Karin. A few have ended and been left behind, but the load does not seem any lighter.

These are all the series I mean to watch, and hopefully blog. 新しいポストを楽しみにしててくださいね！（＾▽＾）V

• Spring 2006 Watch List
• ああっ女神さまっ
• Air Gear
• Disgaea
• Melancholy of Harui Suzumiya
• NANA
• Ouran High School Host Club
• School Rumble 二学期
• Simoun
• Strawberry Panic!
• Utawarerumono
• xxxHOLiC
• Higurashi no Naku Koro ni

Holy shit batman, that’s 11 freaking shows and I’m already behind like 3 episodes each. Hopefully some will be crossed out due to suckage to relieve me a little. Anymore you’d like to recommend?

[EDIT:] Based on popular comments, Air Gear and Disgaea have been eliminated from my even “peek at” list, and I have added Melancholy of Harui Suzumiya and Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, which leads me to question whether I am making any progress here at all. Haha.

[EDIT:] Wait, I have made progress because I already had Suzumiya up there. Thanks, whisper. Hooray for brains.