Advertising on blogs: how to make me laugh

Almost every week I get unsolicited emails offering me money to place ads or "sponsored posts" on my blog. To be clear, I will basically always refuse such offers since my opinion is not for sale. Sometimes, however, the content of the offer make me grin and shake my head in wonder. I just received this email:

Hi,

I'd like to inquire about doing a sponsored blog post - about 150-300 words that talks a little bit about cars and automobiles and links back to our site [site address redacted]. We are a car dealership and thought we might be a good fit for your readers/visitors on
nothing-new-under-the-sun.blogspot.com*

Here's a list of some blog post titles we've done in the past:
- What To Look For When Buying A New Car
- 2012 Cars That Look Good And Saves You Gas
- Reasons Why Buying New Cars Is Better Than Used

Our budget is around $15 for the post. Is this something you'd be open to?

Also we might be interested in a small banner ad if the price is right.
Our budget is $40/year - something like this:
[banner address redacted]
Let me know if you'd be open to either or both of these.
Also if you have some other sites just send them over and we might be
interested in doing a sponsored post on there as well!

Regards,
Phil

*Note unnecessary line break to ensure form letter is easily spammed.

Normally, I wouldn't even respond to such spam in order to avoid attracting more through confirming the fact they found an active address, but on this occasion I made an exception:

Greetings Phil,

I can't help but laugh - have you ever even looked at my blog?

A quick check of posts tagged "cars" might lead you here. Or here. Or here.

Thanks for brightening my day.

Grace & peace,
Byron

Peer review as spam filter

This is a good brief read on why peer-reviewed science is not about to be replaced by blog science. In short, peer review cuts out the spam and indicates what might be worth reading.

Comment verification back on

With sadness I've turned comment verification back on. I find it annoying and had lived successfully without it for a couple of years with only an occasional spam comment which I deleted. However, overnight, I've received over 350 new auto-generated comments with links in Chinese characters. I don't have the time to fight this battle manually.

In a fallen world, some doors need locks.

UPDATE: Just in the time it took to write this post (which I wrote before actually turning comment verification back on), I received another 100 comments.

2nd update: Now I have over 700 spam comments. I have turned on comment moderation for comments on posts older than 14 days. I'm curious, how many of my readers can read Chinese characters? If I go by the reader stats that I very rarely look at, less than 1% of my readers are from China.