CAPTCHA!!!

You know what you're thinking: ugly penis.
(In Latin)

Those annoying "prove you're not a robot" prompts that ask you to type what you see? What we see is not always what we're supposed to type.

There is a purpose for adding what is commonly known as "captcha" to your blog.  Captcha filters out spam that can appear as a comment.  You know the type: foreign women looking for husbands or male enhancement products.  (Which may or may not improve the ugly...they don't say.)  Let's face it--no one wants that stuff in their comment thread.  Our friends don't want to read it, and, if someone is visiting your blog for the first time---well, what kind of first impression is that?  You can just imagine them thinking, "Doesn't this woman know how to keep the crazy townfolk off her blog?  She must be a real LOSER!  I'm never coming back here again!"  And then she runs off to tell everyone else that you have spam comments in the same voice she would use to tell them you have the bubonic plague.  Or cockroaches.

What I find interesting about the captcha is the way it can trick your brain.  (Unless you are dyslexic.  The inability to see the pattern is why dyslexics have such trouble reading.  They need a special type of instruction.  This has been a teacher update.) 
We look for patterns in words, and if we see part of the pattern, our brain gives us the word, even if it ISN'T the word!  Case in point:

But if you learned to read phonetically (aka 'back in the day' before whole language), you can take it a step further.  Knowing that certain letters produce certain sounds, the letters don't need to be exact.  We know that 'plain' and 'plane' and 'air' and 'heir' are homonyms, and so we might see a captcha that says 'eirplain' and it makes sense as 'airplane.' 

I started thinking about this today, when I had to prove I wasn't a robot over at a young friend's blog.  Sometimes when the words come up, they just seem so real.  They have the standard pattern of a consonant sound/vowel sound beginning and ending with either...and I find myself assigning these captcha words definitions.  Today's was "pearfac."  This could be a particular type of orchard, a yellow-green color, or a fruity dessert. 

I'm leaning toward dessert.
But then, I always do.

See what kind of dirty words you can make from what you see on captcha, and feel free to give everyone the scientific explanation.