Where to start? Sorry for my absents. First off, I've been working on a laxicon, i.e., a list of lax words; y'know, verbs like air instead of err or moot for unarguably. Anywho, second-on, between re-reading back copies of Scott's Laugh and Pleasers Day Fest, it was revealed to me that Dale is a bot, pure and simple. Well, maybe not so pure. (I blame the other annoyance bot which dare not speak its name.) So, but, indeed. I am gathering together a crew of twelve to help me in the task of reverse engineering the DaleBot (tm) to turn ag'in itse'f. I'm particularly interesting in its bubbling algorism. Be it the same as the infamous Knuthian bubble and squeak sorta? Or is it new furrin technology? Once we have the algorism, then we can write it all up in the programming lingo du jour (I've heard of a new functional programming language clone of ML called Lambda Vindaloo, or LV). All numbers are represented as continued fractions and it has fuzzy selection statements. Yay! But I proceed myself. (Needless to say, its semantics are non-destructive and it is monotonic to the nth tuple.) Contact me at my nose-to-finger private email address, as this is all hush hush. We don't want you-know-who-bot or its master to find out. Shtum!

var: Most kindly thank you for the encomiums. Actually, "bubbling" is becoming a very common neologism, meaning to reply to a thread or followup in order to bring it to the top of the topics list. But be careful where you use it. At some sites it is encouraged and in others roundly c ondemned, with dire threats

It also means to become moist (I mustn't pursue this one). There are a dozen earlier meanings too, that you can find in Cassell's etc but I'm mainly interested in neologisms

Ken, if you're listening, I now make it a practice to go there first

var: Your proposed project is fascinating, but I am wondering whether you will find a dozen, though I'm sure you can enlist at least three or four. Doesn't WS have a routine for taking polls

If you can't find the little red flashing PM flag, which I'm still looking for, but wish to comment further, I am dalehileman@verizon.net and don't care who knows it

Thank you again for your interest and a warm welcome while I am still able

But who is the other "bot"

Perhaps all this could be made into a movie, something like "Attack of the Sock Puppets".