I am actually a straight man who lives in my parents' basement in the Midwest.

That whole swinging coastal lesbian thing was a LIE. A LIE.

Oh, for goodness' sake, Jill, hush!

By the nth excuse Gus came up with for not meeting anyone F2F (especially you, tommy), I decided that something significant about his story was off--something he couldn't fake in person.

In high school a friend and I had this extended oral story going on about how we knew Michael Praed, but she started getting so into it, and telling the stories to other people, that I freaked out and stopped. I might even have stopped talking to her a little. It was just weird.

Most of the people in my family who lie are lying in order to make themselves more boring, not more exciting. Or are lying to themselves as much as anyone else.

Someone (or ones) told lies about me at the krav centre, and I never found out who. But people would insist I'd said or done things that I didn't know or wouldn't say, and one of the reasons I cut ties so cleanly was because *I* was being treated like a liar, and they were some weird assed accusations, ranging from harmless to really fucking hurtful. It was just off..

My whole worldview is shattered!!

Your worldview is shattered? Think how Bob Saget must feel!

Oh, for goodness' sake, Jill, hush!

YOUR SECRET IS SAFE WITH ME, DARK AVENGER.

(Did I mention we had a team lunch out today, and I may have had a bloody mary with my food? Mmm, corporate-sponsored alcohol.)

I haven't met any of you F2F, but I swear I'm not a 80 year old man who only posts in his underwear.

But you could be, le nubian, and as long as you had told us that up front we'd be okay?

I mean, I'm a suburban mom of two who posts in her pjs. Really.

It seems like so much work to misrepresent oneself.

In other news, it's the time of year when I watch Wonderfalls. We just watched the Single White Female One. Then we watched puppycam then we watched Hamlet the pig on the stairs. FUN!

It seems like so much work to misrepresent oneself.

Yeah, that's what I don't get. One would need spreadsheets to keep track of everything about all the different characters/sockpuppets. Who did I tell what to about Character X, the gay lion-tamer with a bionic arm? ETC.

I hired an actress for all my F2F's, and am actually Elvis, rolling around in a pile of money while burning books I have never read while concocting more falsities about my life as a woman. And I have never, ever had a single problem falling asleep! I also hate owls. And my arm is not broken, I never stabbed myself in the butt accidentally as a teen and I have never exfoliated anything, much less my butt.

Seriously, though, I, like Gud, was grey during the whole debacle, and while it didn't impact me emotionally, except for a giant, slack-jawed OMGWTFBBQ! HULK SMASH! when I found out, I am infuriated that Ginger -- or anyone -- feels, even a little, that they might need to "prove" an illness or anything else because of superdouchenozzle's fuckwaddery.

It is -- I know that in the case of the weremonkey (ptui), I thought he was acting like an asshole in his later times in the thread, and I suspected a lot of his stories had to be exaggerated for effect (although I never went so far as thinking his whole identity was a fake), and I would never have said a damn word.

Ditto, especially his changed behavior towards the end when he got more ass-holish. I talked with him a lot early on. The conversation I had with him about my imaginary Encyclopedia of Lost Pop Cultural Tropes was something he found useful.

But I'm down with I.B. Singer's "Gimpel the Fool" where part of the price of being a Good Person is that you have to trust people sometimes. Even if that makes you vulnerable.

And besides, we already had a theremin playing actuary who went to MIT and a Gothic etiquette expert and a witty British woman teaching in Cairo and Bangkok and a Jamaican woman who was the child of a diplomat and a scientist, grew up in London and became an expert in computers and martial arts.

But you did change your user name. Hmmmm.....