Spacebar, in a later post, you said:

> In your reply to my post, I need you to say > honestly that you do respect Rinkchatters and
> that it was never your intent to hurt their
> feelings. And that's /all/ I need you to do.

I'll do better then that. Not only will I tell you that I honesty do respect RinkChatters and that it was never my intent to hurt their feelings, I'll elaborate further and tell you how incensed I am and how unreasonable it is that a stupid joke in the chat room requires me to make this truly trite affirmation, however true, of the honorability of my respect and intent.

We are not talking about newbies here. The room was full of, and contained nothing but, people who are quite familiar with RinkWorks and, either directly or through my work, me. It was frivolous joking around. The kind friends do all the time. I am truly disappointed that you are requiring an explicit formal statement like this from me. As I said before, it is a source of great frustration to me that what you know of me from my prolific writing on the site here never spoke for itself.

Your post seeks to justify that your misconception that I *was* being disrespectful and uncaring was a reasonable conclusion. No way. I don't buy one single iota of your arguments and laughably extreme analogies to other situations. You may not like practical jokes; fine. But this one never had the potential to hurt people to the degree you're trying to suggest. I think it more likely that you are simply resentful that you were fooled.

> Here, therefore, is another "joke": "I know of a chat room on the Internet where people have humorous and insightful conversations. I will log onto that chat room pretending to be a drunken frat boy. I will make rude comments to all of the other people in the chat room. I will used misspelled swear words so that they can't /actually/ accuse me of swearing if I am found out. I will not allow any coherent chatting to go on by interjecting my rude comments throughout the chat. I know that people can kick or ban me from the chat room; if they kick me then I'll just come back and if they ban me then I'll come back with a new but similar screen name. I will thereby be able to prevent any intelligent conversation. People will be angry with me and frustrated that they can do nothing to stop me. Furthermore, they will be angry with the language that I use, but no one will be able to do anything about it. The angrier and more frustrated they get, the funnier it will be!"

How about: "I know of a chat room where, at present, we are currently engaged in some frivolous mock-coding fooling around that we started, only it's wearing down. I know. Let's pretend to be drunken frat boys and then reveal that it's us! To be convincing drunken frat boys, we'll have to talk loudly and make comments about needing to get drunk!" Um. There is NOTHING inherently offensive in that. However:

> Regardless of whether this sort of humor was the /intent/ of last night's events, it was the /result/.

We both agree it wasn't the intent. And the only reason I think you found that the "result" was that you couldn't take the joke. As I posted earlier, Morris explained to me how what happened could be perceived as "annoying," and I conceded that to him. You're trying to establish how what happened could be perceived as -- well, something that goes completely off the deep end of the ocean, never to cross paths with rational sanity ever again. Oh no! You were temporarily frustrated! How will you ever live with the SCAR on your SOUL? I apologize for my sarcasm, but I don't see how to do such outrageousness justice any other way.

> - Either Sam or Dave (I can't remember) said: "Yes! We actually RUINED THE CHAT!"

This comment was made after the barrage of negative reaction came out of nowhere, and I was sitting back, stunned. My comment was more like, "Yes. We actually RUINED the chat." As in, a sarcastic resolution to the apparent fact of things. The comment was made in total disbelief.

> - Stephen said something to the effect of "Sam has been PMing me throughout the evening. He's making a funny joke by ruining Rinkchat."

As Stephen said, he made that up.

> 3. Sam said, "Does anyone else want to leave? I'm serious. If anyone here finds this sort of thing offensive, I don't want anything to do with you." (The quotations, of course, are to the best of my memory but probably not exact.) Do you really not want anything to do with people who don't find it funny to scandalize and insult people? How about people who don't find it funny to be manipulated into being annoyed, angry, and frustrated?

Read what I said again. I don't give a flying flip if any of you think it's funny. I'm concerned with you finding it "offensive." You, c0bra, and Wormwood found this "offensive." Morris, Ayako, and I think Kaz found it "unfunny." World of difference. That comment, by the way, was made in anger, fresh from the realization that anybody at all found the gag unsettling. Still, I don't think I want to retract it. But at least interpret it correctly. Whether you find it "funny" or not is something I only care about insofar as that helps me evaluate my attempt at humor and thereby refine my comic talents -- all that is of negligible importance in light of the rest of this stuff.

Any way, to sum THIS post up, I think you're going off the deep end, and by this gross underestimation of me and my commitment to my readership, the integrity of this site, the immeasurably high value I place on it and its culture, the immeasurable respect and regard I have for it -- all things that I should think you would be well aware of by now, being not unfamiliar with the many statements I have made on the subject in the forum and in interviews -- is something that I find personally insulting.