quick notification: changes made to comments

I've been getting a huge amount of spam lately so I'm re-enabling the "captcha" -- where you have to prove you're a human when leaving a comment. It can still be anonymous, but now there's just that extra pain-in-the-ass step. This gem cinched it:

"Reading this info So i am satisfied to show that I've a very excellent uncanny feeling I came upon just what I needed. I such a lot surely will make certain to don?
t put out of your mind this site and give it a glance regularly."

Typically it's some vaguely intelligible string of words with a link. My web background tells me spammers target blogs because Google ranks pages partially via "votes," or inbound links. Blogs get indexed by Google often if they're updated frequently enough. Some schmuck can hijack your post with a generic comment linking to their own shitty site scoring Google points on the way. I don't know if the captcha will decrease this because I think actual humans ARE doing it; it's today's equivalent of a digital labor camp. Maybe they get a penny per comment, who knows.

I originally tried to make it easier to comment since someone said it was hard via phone/RSS reader/etc. and now this makes it one step harder. Sorry! I'll switch it back if it doesn't help.

Some of you have asked me, behind the scenes, about your own blogs because you've observed the same thing. So that's what I think is happening. If you have any suggestions for limiting spam, let me know.