Comment Spam pain

On holiday, and suffering the worst comment spam attacks in the history of sparklytrainers.... 500+ yesterday, the same again overnight.

I just love spending an hour of every sunny Provencal day communing with MT-Blacklist. Not. On the other hand, if it wasn't for the wonders of Wi-Fi at the Hotel d'Angleterre, and Phil's powerbook, I'd have it all to do when we get home by which time it would be much, much worse I suspect.

I know that the volume of comment spam I'm getting probably pales into insignficance compared to other people's experience, but for me it begs the question: Should I turn off comments altogether? I occasionally get some genuine comments, particularly in relation to A little mouse with clogs on, and on my reading, and I do value these. But how much?

It's not only the comments, but it's the notification emails clogging up the pop mail I pick up via Yahoo Mail - over 1000 comment spam notifications, on top of the 200+ spam emails, completely overwhelming the 10 genuine emails in there. Thank heavens for filters....