Without naming names...or nick-names...isn't it getting a little rude around here? I have had to change a false identifier's nickname and hide a conversation for tedious going-on-ery. I like a debate as much as the next person but how about some guidelines...not rules, just suggestions:

• Unless I know you, identify yourself in some manner that gets you, say, within a city or a humanoid-like group - "Joe from Baltimore" for example is pretty much abstracted yet associative with a life form. If you have an issue with that email me ahead of time. First names are fine and I don't care to see your email so leave it blank if you like. Spoil us with links to your blog, though.

• Let's agree to disagree as soon as the "oh yea, says who" comments hit, oh say, double digits. If a new idea gets added in, pick it up and run with it but let's not get diatribal. I never liked the Dias as a people and their fast food sucks.

• Write as much as you like - really please do - but if you have written the same thing over and over on many threads, you do not have to write more the 27th time. Try cross refencing to other things you have written with an HTML link. This blog system is fully HTML capable unlike most. Use it. Italicize all you want. Link to unrude things.

• No one is barred or, horrors, made subject to the ever popular non-response of superiority but let's remember we are all amateurs and hypocrites here and share an equal distance from the truth in just about all subject matters.

• Have fun. I am much more interested in your powers of humour and observation as well as personal experiences than whether anyone - including me - could actually be called right in relation to anything. With any luck the interesting dialogue we have hear can snowball genially, a merry little avalanche of an unending coffee-break.

• Stay near point. Reference to a fact about a place, politician or an edible spread product should not cause the blowing of a gasket (which has no doubt been blown before) sending us spinning off into a tagent of you own making. A more appropriate place for the comment may be found in one of the other 1250 or so posts I have started around here. Use the search tool to the lower right (way, way lower right) or the archives and go find the right place to make the comment. It will pop up as a recent comment for all to cast marvel upon.

Thoughts? In the greater Pajamastan, there is a real danger of going "Usenet 1998" in light of the polar stances folks take in their chit-chat. In the end that is all there is - chit and chat. A great multi-lateral pen pal circle.  Be nice.  If not for me, then for Hans.