I wanted to say hi to everyone after my latest lengthy hiatus. And to respond to a few points made by my old friend Eeyore last August that were passed on to me (yes, I'm finally getting to them!)

He liked martial arts,

I still do! :-)

ordered pizza for dinner every night,

I totally had to stop that!

and had a fondness for very plain legal non-nude girls like "Molly-Model" (sp) and a few other rather plain looking gals.

And I still do! I remember Molly-Model very fondly, she was utterly amazing, and I hope the doubtlessly amazing woman she has grown up to be now is thriving well with a very good life. If ever she should be made to regret her time as a model widely admired by MAPs, I will have her know that we genuinely respected her and cherished the time we got to admire her.

I think he was one of the few posters I remembered crossing over from the long-defunct Danpedo board.

This is the one point where Eeyore's impeccable memory fails him a bit. I was never part of Danpedo, but I do remember its great popularity in the past. GC was the first MAP board I was ever a part of, and I will always be fond of it as a result.

It's possible Tom O'Carroll lured him to the UK and disposed of him for his exceedingly long posts, but that's only a highly doubted rumour.

Yes, that. For the record, Tom and I usually get along very well and respect each other well. However, we have had a few public falling outs over my notorious difficulty with brevity, thus resulting in my legendary diss-ertations. Tom absolutely loathes having to moderate posts of such length. I have publicly accused him of being unfair and tolerating very lengthy posts from others on his blog while getting very irate with me for the same thing, which made me wonder if the issue is more personal than he's making it out to be. He denied the accusation; I stand behind it. Everyone must draw their own conclusions based on the available evidence. Despite that, we basically get along and have had each other's backs on many issues, and I will say that Tom is among the very bravest and brilliant among us, someone whom I have always looked up to and admired as one of the best our community has ever produced.

Oh, and many years ago he lamented that some underage girl on the internet once called him an "ass-rammer" (True).

Omg, yes! LOL!! That was a classic!! Ah, the good old days of arguing in the long defunct but once very prominent Yahoo chat rooms over religion, what music was the best, etc.

Finally, to answer another question as to why I'm not around like I used to be, the answer is largely the same as before, a combination of these two things:

1. My personal and professional situation over the past few years has been very different from what it was during the many years I posted here regularly.

2. During two previous returns, this place did not have the same atmosphere before, and I was not made to feel welcome by a few people that I considered long-time friends.

I will continue to drop in and stick around as long as I can when I do, but I will also be spending my share of time on Tom's terrific blog and the newly revived Newgon. More diss-erations await in the future!

Nostalgic question for Eeyore: Do you remember which old-time poster, long gone from this board, first coined my lengthy lamentations as "diss-ertations"?