ben said:

I "love you dearly," Uncle Bowerbird. But I am unsubscribing from this list.

can't say that i blame you, ben, can't blame you a bit... i'd leave myself if they weren't trying to chase me away. this month has been quite distasteful and unproductive. the digest for this month is 206k, which makes it the fifth-largest digest dating back to mid-2004.

2010/02 = 210k 2005/09 = 258k 2005/05 = 222k 2004/08 = 290k

for comparison, from may through august, when i was doing an experiment to see if anyone else would pick up the slack if i just stopped posting, the size ranged from 11k all the way down to 1k. while this month's conflicts recalled the old days... but the nature of this month's traffic was different. back in the old days, it was everybody versus me. this month, with the "build our own d.p." thread, a number of my antagonists turned on each other. and i even had a few people actually _defend_ me, which was novel, especially now with michael gone. of course, in the past, i always cautioned people _not_ to defend me, as it put them in harm's way; it's bad to be in the middle of a wolf-pack attack. but these whippersnappers, like ben, survived it! because the wolves, like all bullies, are cowards... but the bullies do make this an unpleasant place. and to think that it was only just last month that i ran my "sweet grapes" series, a model of positivity. on the other hand, maybe that's what set this all off... "we can't let bowerbird be upbeat; throw mud at him!" -bowerbird