All Ed was saying was that all the usernames registered that day were, in fact, “toast”. Dozens of people, all named “toast”.
[sup]Yes, it was a board software glitch.[/sup]
I have never felt so insulted, in any of the days of my long life. :mad:
Sanity is the refuge of the meek and the souls of poor intellect. My psyche is constantly aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening thru a cosmic vapor of invention. Gibbering voices murmur ceaselessly in my brain, sometimes crossing the border that separates incomprehensibility from perception. Then, when the commands issue from the darkness in my soul, yes, then do I perform my moderator duties. I fly to my input device, and my fingers dance over the keyboard like a demented Horowitz.
What’s this I cry? An incorrectly terminated vB tag here! A duplicate post there! A thread with no link! Foul language outside The BBQ Pit! I prune, edit, correct, transform, delete, and a vast joy bubbles up inside me. Peals of laughter sometimes resound through my chamber. The cat hides, quivering, in the remotest closet. My loved ones barricade themselves in the cellar, and they recoil from every crash! in the fireplace as I fling another emptied bottle of the precious liqueur, Amontillado, into the hearth. But hark! some unsuspecting soul has not learned of the potential of Google? The horror, the horror! I cackle as I contemplate the vast stores of knowledge that spring forth at my bidding, riding the whirlwind of electrons that spin through the wires spanning the globe, all at the command of my pale, slender fingers. The dark wisdom, gathered by the gnomes who toil ceaselessly on the Encylopedia Britannica, is revealed to me in letters of fire, and the blasphemous secrets are disseminated yet again. The innocent petitioner is little aware that once she has plucked the fruit from the tree, her thirst for erudition can never again be satiated. Shouts of exultation ring out, and my cowardly neighbours huddle in trepidation in their bedchambers. Yes! Yes! A thousand times yes! I cry, and the bats alight on my shoulders, unaccountably swayed by the rays of power that seem to emanate from my very eyes.
Yahoo! Lycos! WebMD! Howstuffworks! Snopes! They all obey my slightest whim, and I am a God amongst men. An ineffable pleasure courses through my veins. This is why I have taken on this task. This is what gives my life meaning. No nectar is as sweet, no woman as loving, no ejaculation as ecstatic. Once I have tasted the joy of moderation, no drug will ever satisfy me. The pleasures afforded by the divine hashish pale in comparison. I waltz on the tiles, and my moderator hat flies through the air, while my hair is whipped to a frenzy by the frigid currents of the howling wind.
Yet the dawn breaks, and the birds start chirping fearfully in the trees. Another glorious night draws to a close. As the bourgeois slowly rise from their slumber, as children creep past my dark house, shaking from nameless dread and whispering of sorcery and dark influences, I retire to my tower. There, amongst the dark grimoires, I fall into a restless sleep, until the SDMB needs me again.
I SHALL RETURN!
moderator, «Comments on Cecil’s Columns»
Ditto!
**
:: amazed :: Garwsh, Mr. Winklereid, you use yore tounge prettier 'n a three dollar whore!
Fenris Taggart
Ditto? Ditto? You provincial :wally
I’m observing the pole with amazement as it completely disappears up your arse! 
ALL YOUR TOAST ARE BELONG TO US!!!
Esprix
That’s Hedley!
At least now we know why the board’s so slow during the day - Arnold’s using those electrostatic voltage thingies like in “Frankenstein” and it’s screwing up the server.
You bastard!
Esprix
“Frankenstein”?
I thought he was using the little tongue thingie like in Buckaroo Bansai.
[sub]I’m such a geek[/sub]
OKAY! thats it! Youre all banned!
Kidding…
For the record, I have never even mentioned any mod by name. It is doubtful that after this post that I will ever have cause to do so again. But after reading Arnold Winkelried’s beautiful post, it is with a tear in my eye at such exquisite writing that I must confess he is my hero.
I now fade to my previous obscurity.
[ul][li]Your mother ate my dog![/li]Eh, well, not all of it![/ul][sub]OK, so maybe this IS obscure. But I have faith in the TM.[/sub]
It’s pronounced Fronk-en-steen, EE-sprix.
FEEN-rhis
May we take moment to thank the mods for not throwing our butts out?
May we take a moment to remember the stability and sanity the mods provide in our daily whirlpool of informational crap?
May we daily appreciate our mods efforts to educate and amuse?
Thank thee, mods.
(ya’ll be do’in fine; don’t let 'em get under ya’lls skin)
Now, now. Mustn’t be hasty. There are many ways to do this. One of them was actually given to me by a mod about the time I signed up, because I was wondering how to go about it. Since then, it’s been sort of funny to find I’m the only one who can find my posts. For someone who asked nicely, I’d give them the link.
But I won’t post it, since I know what happens to non-mods who post code. Kyberneticist and AnTiFLuXX and a few others come to mind.
However, as it actually happened by a different path this time, I’ll try to explain that. (Maybe one of the technically adept mods can help you through it.)
First, I don’t really care to search for everything ever said about me. I don’t have as much time for the board as some. I really only care about people who answer me. But sometimes the tuna net catches a snapping turtle as well, as it were. What I do to save time is have the system read the board for me once a week, in the middle of the night, to reduce the load. This is a service with my high speed ISP, where they try to optimize the throughput by having people “subscribe” to pages. Internet Explorer has a cruder version, tied to their scheduler. I pick up the main Cecil column, plus that moment’s “active threads” page. I usually just get the top page of titles and one layer deep. But I am automatically also subscribed to other pages in the same domain that I have touched that day. You will complain that I am wasting bandwidth, but this is not true. When you do the math, you’ll see that I use far less of that than the average user, who has to navigate through more pages for the same results. At any rate, if I post to a thread and ask a question, I will come back the next day instead of the next week. All pages I’ve read are refreshed. At that point, I can search the Internet Temporary Files directory for anything I want. And, yes, I search for MuMu as well as Mu Mu, since it’s in my automatic search list.
Vinnie Virginslayer*(with microphone in hand)*: Manhattan, Vinnie Virginslayer with Shocking Internet Secrets: Exposed! True or false: you and the rest of the moderators conduct a star chamber every Saturday night to weed out SDMB members you are unhappy with.
Manhattan*(running to car, look of discomfort)*:
I . . um . . can’t answer that question . . get that camera out of my face. . . I really don’t have time for this . . .thank YOU!
Vinnie: Manhattan did you or did you NOT have an affair with Ms. Levy?
(Manhattan covers head, gets into car.)
Vinnie*(trying to stuff microphone in car)*: MANHATTAN!!!
Manhattan, would you answer the question PLEASE!!!
What are you trying to cover up, Manhattan? Why won’t you talk to us on camera?
MANHATTAN*(pushes Vinnie’s hand out of the car)*: THANK YOU!!! *(speeds off in suspiciously expensive Mercedes)
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Coldfire *
**
[ul][li]Your mother ate my dog![/li][li]Eh, well, not all of it![/ul][sub]OK, so maybe this IS obscure. But I have faith in the TM.[/sub] **[/li][/QUOTE]
Dead Alive/Braindead (1992), directed by Peter Jackson.
[sup]I think.[/sup]
Here’s yer cigar, Jeff. 
OK I think we may be done.
We have an answer to the OP. Or at least the best answer we’re ever going to get.
I’ll close this thread and give some of the posters here the opportunity to crawl back to ATMB so they can pop up occasionally just to complain about how we mods are pushing posters to the brink of suicidal depression because we have not yet instituted a “puke smiley” or something.
Besides this whole “I have information that would increase my credibility but I don’t feel like posting it” schtick is getting old.
Ta ta.