Don't do it, Mary! Drowning yourself in the lawn sprinkler -- someone else's lawn sprinkler -- is just not the way to go! If you're into self destruction, follow my lead by repressing and sublimating everything into a molten ball of ickiness, until it explodes in various unpleasant ways and, like, eats your spleen or something. That's much more rewarding. Really.

I actually feel bad about all the trouble I caused. Rich, thank you for leaping to my defense, and saying that I'm an exceptionally cool person. You're pretty damn cool yourself, and I think you've out-geeked Wendy with your sentient TiVo and your Spock code. And Mary, you do realize that you are among the coolest folks ever, in the office or out, and your blog makes my laugh my ass off. Let's all be friends!

(This, of course, is just more of my stodgy Northern European conflict-avoidance behavior. Why clear the air when you can repress and sublimate?)

Andy... OK, I'm pretty sure I have nothing to apologize to you for. You are a wimp about neighborhoods. But in the nicest of all possible ways.

I'm going to shut down before I cause an international incident.