Having spent a few hours reviewing a substantial sample of my posts here during the first five years following my début at the end of 2002, I must say that I am startled at the vitriol conveyed in many of these. It seems to me that in old age I must have mellowed considerably, because I can’t recall any recent entries approaching the savagery I routinely dealt out back then to some of the regulars here. “Former” regulars, I should say, because the direst venom was squirted at “marlowe,” “nightowl,” and “he who must not be named,” for all of whose absences* from these precincts we all of us ought to give thanks to our respective gods, and regarding whom I would take back not a particle of insult, mockery or abuse directed thereupon. I do regret, owing mainly to his all-too premature death, that I was frequently beastly to “bepatient,” although but for that untimely demise we likely would have sparred for many years more. I was also curt, to say the least, to boxley, who occasionally exasperates me still, but I think I’ve throttled back the trenchancy of my ripostes from back in the day.

Not that I’m “apologizing,” exactly, but “rhetorical mistakes were made.”

ever so cordially,

*Believe me, should any of these reappear I will draw a pentagram and summon up Bad Rand to meet the occasion.

The erosion of the roster here (previous thread), although the absence of the accounts specified above goes, needless to say, unmourned.

cordially,