Gargoyle (with asides to the general Mudcat population):

a. When you began using such adjectives as "benevolent," "magnanimous," and "honorable" before my name it was to introduce messages filled with hostility and contempt. If at some point they came to have another meaning, I failed to notice the transition. I do recall at least one recent message from you that I thought expressed good will, and I appreciate it and regret that our communication has again deteriorated.

b. When I first read the posting by your "elf" to this thread, I was only mildly irritated, and I found Catspaw's assault excessive--and would have told him so if the thread had not followed your clone's creep from the discussion of Dave Swan's treasure to the same tired old argument about the good old days--an argument that has been going on at least since Homer--with the same purists rehashing the same arguments and ignoring the vast quantity on the threads list of just that which they think iis disappearing. By the time I got to the end of that thread I was getting pretty irritable--a condition which had nothing to do with my decision to stop taking an anti-depressant--and found that far from wanting to chastise Catspaw, I wanted to echo and enlarge upon his sentiments.

c. In the Dialectizer thread I actually came to your defense: I felt that Catspaw had gone way overboard and said so. Then I read the Complaint Generator thread and guessed that Catspaw had, too, before he posted his vituperation, since in both threads you were attacking Alice. Your authorship of the cookieless posts was quite evident despite the language generated by the other program: the repeated references to your attack upon her in the Aussie/US Bands thread, one of your all-time nastiest, stamped your signature indelibly on every scurrilous paragraph. So I went back to the Dialectizer thread and withdrew my criticism of Catspaw.

d. I just did a survey of the threads currently active (4:55 p.m. EST). Here's the breakdown:

Lyrics or music requests or postings: 34;
having to do with music theory or technique, 9;
about music history or performers, 7;
about sessions and gigs, 4;
listed as B.S. and fitting that exceptionally broad category, 6;
listed as B.S. but having to do with music, 4;
miscellaneous, perhaps B.S., 6;
miscellaneous with music content, 5
.Mudcat membership concerns, 5

In other words, 63 musical threads, 17 non-musical threads.

e. That you have considered the "nomelclure(sic)" B.S. to mean both bullshit and BSeed hardly reassures me that you ever regarded me with anything but contempt. And your absence from such threads has been sorely missed (double negative intended).

f. Insofar as I may have contributed to an amplification of hostility here in the threads, I humbly apologize to the Mudcat membership; no such apology seems warranted to you, Gargoyle. In one of the B.S. threads I jokingly said that the coinage "ignoranus" was the perfect one-word description of Catspaw. Seriously, it is the perfect one-word description of you, Garg.