Honest, Norm. Within days of your departure the number of cutting remarks about orion fell off steeply. As others have noted, you were alluded to at ever-longer intervals following that final post in September of ought-four (a disappearance immediately preceded, if memory serves, by a last couple of instances of sock puppetry under a new nom de wank), and have figured in our discussions very seldom and then only fleetingly for scores of weeks past. I can't speak for the rest of the group, but by this long, hot summer my own memories of your participation here had faded and mellowed to a vague sense of gratitude that wherever you were, at liberty or confined, sleeping on a sofa or in a nice comfortable bed of loam, you were at least not here, and for that effortless absence of yours you have never stood higher in my esteem.
You racked up an excellent record for 22 months and then threw it all away today. Still, it was a sound proof-of-concept: you can earn some goodwill. Leave now and stay away until March of 2010 and everyone will like you twice as much as we did until today.
curdle-ially,