An email to a friend got bounced by email filter software yesterday because I used the term "Oh my god". I've experienced workplace profanity filters, but this seemed unnecessarily heavy handed. A blasphemy filter?

My work seems to scan every webpage I browse, which also throws up some pretty amusing results - particularly the lurid messages that pop up when you you get bounced from a certain page.

Below are the messages I got when I was blocked from my own website (still very much under construction), where I had posted some of the old Package editorials from when we started it up down in Christchurch. As you can see, they give the distinct impression of a filter program with a dirty mind, joining the dots to create smut where none was intended - it's pretty funny:

Text download (TEXT, 50726 bytes) was restricted by the text censor rule 'Scan and block pornographic content'.TextCensor Script 'Pornography' triggered with total weighting of 10:

Expression 'disease OR medicine' triggered 1 times, weighting -1
Expression 'doctor OR surgeon OR surgery' triggered 1 times, weighting -1
Expression '(preteen OR preteens OR pre-teen OR pre-teens) AND (naked OR
nude OR hardcore)' triggered 1 times, weighting 4
Expression 'centrefold*' triggered 1 times, weighting 1
Expression 'cum OR cumm' triggered 1 times, weighting 2
Expression 'fuck' triggered 1 times, weighting 2
Expression 'hardcore OR hard core' triggered 1 times, weighting 1
Expression 'horny' triggered 1 times, weighting 1
Expression 'sex OR sexy' triggered 1 times, weighting 1

Text download (TEXT, 50888 bytes) was restricted by the text censor rule 'Scan for offensive language'.TextCensor Script 'Offensive Language' triggered with total weighting of 16:

Expression 'arse' triggered 2 times, weighting 4
Expression 'bitch' triggered 1 times, weighting 2
Expression 'crap' triggered 4 times, weighting 8
Expression 'nigger' triggered 1 times, weighting 2

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It all reminds me of a cassette copy of "The Twelfth Man" that a friend had at Intermediate School. It had a bleep-censored version of the sketch on the B side, followed by a carefully spliced audio montage of every swear word which had been erased. It was about two minutes long, hilarious, and naughty - and our favourite part of the tape.