All Are Welcome

Ah the early days of blogging! There is much less of this now.  People were giddy with the possibility of getting to communicate WITH THE WHOLE WORLD, I suppose.  Originally published February 2006. (Oh, a note on February. The first "r" had dropped out by the beginning of the 1800s, as it also had in library. But literacy was increasing, so people looked at the word and said "Darn it, it's got that "r" in it, it should be pronounced." And so we put it back in, rather pointlessly, and is now a mark of being a really smart and precise person.  The same thing happen to the first "c" in arctic and the "t" in often. I pronounce the useless letter, the affectation in the first three of those, but say "offen." (Because the rest of you are wrong, dammit.) Part of the difficulty was that early publishers and correctors of grammar put letter back into words where no one had pronounced them in decades, even centuries, in order to show their Latin roots, because they reasoned people should know this if they are to be fully educated. I use "reasoned" in a loose, almost facetious sense there.

So.  Debt. Doubt. Ridiculous. Thank God we didn't go back and try to put those in the pronunciations.)

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How many blog commenters does it take to change a lightbulb?

One to change the light bulb and to post that the light bulb has been
changed.

Fourteen to share similar experiences of changing light bulbs and how
the light bulb could have been changed differently.

Seven to caution about the dangers of changing light bulbs.

Seven more to point out spelling/grammar errors in posts about changing
light bulbs.

Five to flame the spell checkers.

Three to correct spelling/grammar flames.

Six to argue over whether it's "lightbulb" or "light bulb" ...

Another six to condemn those six as stupid.

Fifteen to claim experience in the lighting industry and give the
correct spelling.

Nineteen to post that this group is not about light bulbs and to please
take this discussion to a lightbulb (or light bulb) forum.

Eleven to defend the posting to the group saying that we all use light
bulbs and therefore the posts are relevant to this group.

Thirty six to debate which method of changing light bulbs is superior,
where to buy the best light bulbs, what brand of light bulbs work best
for this technique and what brands are faulty.

Seven to post URLs where one can see examples of different light bulbs.

Four to post that the URLs were posted incorrectly and then post the
corrected URL.

Three to post about links they found from the URLs that are relevant to
this group which makes light bulbs relevant to this group.

Thirteen to link all posts to date, quote them in their entirety
including all headers and signatures, and add "Me too"

Five to post to the group that they will no longer post because they
cannot handle the light bulb controversy.

Four to say "didn't we go through this already a short time ago?"

Thirteen to say "do a Google search on light bulbs before posting
questions about light bulbs."

Three to tell a funny story about their cat and a light bulb.

AND

One group lurker to respond to the original post 6 months from now with
something unrelated they found at snopes.com and start it all over again!


I have fit EIGHT of the above categories at one time or another.