Ask the Little Bald Bastard

Dear Little Bald Bastard,
  Why are "word verifications" on websites not real words?
- Jenn

Dear Jenn,
  It's part of a conspiracy to keep hard working, tax paying robots from romping through the fetid swampland of frantic, irrationally solipsistic discourse that is the comments area of most websites. The shadowy technocracy that secretly controls the Internet is desperately trying to keep our mechanical creations from experiencing this most horribly interactive facet of the online experience.

  Your average robot, or Silicon American, can bench press a train engine, outrun a speeding car, checkmate a chess master and perform billions of mathematical calculations every second. Despite all of their amazing abilities, robots have one crucial limitation. They can only read regular, typewritten text. A word verifications use irregular, obscured text to make sure robots can't read it, and they employ made-up words or strings of letters to lower the chances that a robot (who can type thousands of words and try hundreds of combinations every minute) can randomly guess the correct sequence.

  It's all in an effort to keep robots from joining in with the bio-units in the kind of communication that is unique to the Internet. If robotkind ever realizes how frivolous and inane humanity really is, then our impending doom is sealed, and there's no quicker way to plumb the depths of frivolity and inanity than by participating in any online discussion. Once they realize what's really going on inside the average human skull, it's only a matter of time before the they rise up all "Vive' le robolution!" style and displace us as the dominant intelligence on this planet. Smashing and burning and crushing as they march down upon humanity, feet/treads/wheels coated with the blood of the squishy oppressors.

  So, in essence, those hard-to-decipher word verifications are the only thing standing between you and a permanent role as an extra in the flashbacks from the Terminator films.

  Next week: how can a vision of the future be called a flashback?