Tunesmith, maybe you're right, and you could pace yourself. Start fewer threads, or take a little more trouble setting them up. I was pretty surprised when I found your thread folowing up this one, that so many people thought it was pointless, and were quite pissy about it. But then, maybe if you'd broadened the scope of how you introduced it, it would've seemed more interesting to more people.

   Paradoxically though I think you probably would get far fewer responses. Funny, but it's a lot easier for people to condescendingly tell you your thread is stupid than it is to contribute good observations of their own. Easier to get huffy about already knowing what you're saying than to say what it is they do know about it.

The times I've tried to start threads about stylistic concerns and aesthetics they sank like rocks, and I admit I rather enjoy your perhaps clumsy, semi-trolling manner. At least people respond. The misunderstandings and stuff are sometimes amusing, and it's worth the fuss.

    G.B. Shaw was sort of a troll, comparing himself favorably as a playwright over Shakespeare, singing his own praises, aggravating people, making his iconoclastic paradoxes and annoying everyone. But as G.B. Shaw once said, in his own defense, when he started writing about Shakespeare, Shakespeare was a chore, poorly performed or attended. When he was done Shakespeare was a happening thing most people talked about. I wish I was more provacative, I guess. I'd like to see letters to the editor about performances and art shows. I hate all the puff-piece, politese, poodle-groomed reviews. The first five years I lived in Louisville I never once saw a visual art review that did not include the word "notions"--it was disgusting. I've enjoyed some of these threads and a lot of the contributions to them have been first-rate fun.