my soapbox on word verification

I want to talk about word verification. This little box always trips me up. It adds a little strife to my blog-reading. I want to comment on your latest post... but then, dun dun dun, I have to get through the word verification. It's like five to seven letters- how hard should this be? But somehow, nearly every time, I mess up. They squish the letters so close together and pick words that almost look like real words but are actually just jumbled nothingness. For instance, smwm- I immediately type in "swim" because my brain somehow figured that really "swim" is what it meant to say. Then the red-lettered message appears: "The characters you entered did not match the word verification. Please try again." And when they distort the letters and numbers as if you are looking in one of those fun-house mirrors, forget it! Do you know how many times I have been nervous about loosing concert tickets in my seven minute window due to these little "captcha's"? One too many my friends.

Look, I understand that we are trying to eliminate bots or machines from leaving terrible comments on blogs, or buying out all of the front row seats at the hippest rock show in town... but seriously, is it okay that this is a program administered by a machine to determine whether or not I am human? hmmm? Is my recognition of words like, sublaso, rapshe, skytedul, or dopotter, really a fair test?

Listen I know the intentions are probably good. And I can see the benefit. Really, (I think), I can. Whomever designed this little idea is great, really great- after all they are saving cyber-space, one bot at a time. And honestly I don't really have any explanation for my current frustrations with said word verification. I think it may have something to do with the score:

machine administered word verification: 100

real live person named tara: 0

Now, I did warn you in this post's title that it would be, me, on a bit of a soapbox... But, let's be real. It comes down to one embarrassing fact- I have a hard time typing those dang things in, and that, is silly.