To be purely informational, all I know is, threads like this make me unbelievably tired, during a season I work the hardest for other people. The result, at least at Mudcat, is that I share less, be myself less, and look elsewhere for replenishment.

The pervasive meanness just gets overwhelming.

It happens every time there is a Christian holiday coming along. I guess the media saturation gets people going about all their pent-up resentments. I'm tired of people asssuming it's OK to vent that resentment here at people who have never harmed them.

And I'm tired of seeing newcomers to Mudcat ignoring veterans' hard-learned advice about keeping the peace and then seeing these same newcomers aiming thinly-veiled preaching at folks, gaining temporary popularity for it, then learning the same lesson we tried to share with them as they too come to see how Mudcat really is, about religious issues.

I'm tired of people battering at something important to me and then lecturing me about how I ought to handle their battering.

To be purely informational, this season is also the annual reminder of my identical twin's death. Lots of other people have other wounds that bleed at Christmas time.... frankly, it's over the top to have people rub shit into open wounds FOR NO REASON AT ALL.

I'm tired of the whole fucking event, by the time people here are done shitting on it in their wondrously creative, various ways. All I see after a round of that is the shit left over-- an ever-increasing pile of it. But if that's how you want to remembered, by all means keep shitting. After all, it's your "right" to use your creativity in that way. Right?

Merry Christmas, by the way.

~Susan