This is it. I could drag it out, but would prefer to wrap up before the weekend.
For the record, down in the Next Stop Dow 11111 thread, I did vaguely hope to hit 15551 today, thereby validating another prediction -- but that's fine, it will still come soon enough. Right now I want the Dow to remain in a relatively narrow range, between its original all-time high from 2007 of 14164 to my own superstitious ceiling of 16384, leaving a mere 2220 points to go up and down with. I do hope someone like bignatslover can look in on that from time to time. I'd've posted this down there myself, but I was waylaid by today's news of Rachel Aldana's newborn son.
I first registered here as a callow youth of 42. I discovered this place at the even callower age of 41, by plugging porn cliches into the Google advanced search. (Honestly, I can't be the only person to notice that Google is spelled "Go ogle.") Those led me to Chili Palmer's stories here and the Addventure, and I began posting rather haphazardly and infrequently on the Addventure as of July 26, 2002, less than eleven years ago, in those tender days when I could still try to dodge the Library Sex Police.
I keep hearing suggestions that the "right" way to leave is curtly and mysteriously, letting reality bluntly interrupt you, and that it can only be abstract and arbitrary to choose a time window, but such has not been my experience at all. I quit the Addventure at 3267 episodes and that worked out all right, because I've not taken one more peep over there ever since, I feel oddly relieved. Likewise, I thought I'd be in some madcap whirl right now, rushing around trying to relive various threads -- but no, this too is fizzling out quite naturally at its own good pace. This is the time to go, all right.
There's not even that much left to maintain. The M thread, the Dow thread ... and the very curious fact that my Pittsburgh outings thread somehow managed to rack up a views-to-posts ratio of 432:1. However, I find that awfully suspicious, and take it with several heaping tablespoons of salt.
I will miss a very unusually well-run site. The world at large is foolish for imagining this to be merely a "fetish" site, as I find it highly exemplary of how to try to maintain a cyber-community. I have also been gratified to discover that the "fetish" simply acts as a kind of highly universal calling card by which people of some intelligence and wit can mingle and not be exclusively defined by said "fetish." Truth to tell, if I ever moderate a place of my own, I will be relatively intolerant. I think we do well to reflect on what we ourselves would do, before we pass judgment on our moderators.
I've met good people. gOOber may never believe in evolution, but in a way that is not nearly as important as his embodying the very principle of it. He has always been a fine fellow, but I've been heartened by how his mind has changed over the years, while I continue to appreciate his dogged skepticism. I do wish I had some idea of how to keep track of him and others, such as Zookie and Goldeneye. And pedonbio, I will always know where to find him ... and who knows, I may yet figure out how to get pictures of a certain Germano-Turko-Circassian woman to him. I even salute solvegas, who I have rarely agreed with and yet I can't recall his ever once truly infuriating me, and maybe the world could use more of that.
I also salute various caretakers here, from A for Adama, that steady hand at the helm of the Addventure, to Zorro, king of morphers and fellow Vixen Lamoore fan.
And of course I will particularly miss the women. RandomX and Shara are still out there, still kickin' it, but I miss the sardonic Notty. And ohh, where has my BadKitty gone? That naughty, naughty girl with her naughty, naughty pictures, for which I would sometimes try to write naughty, naughty stories? What collaborators we might have been! And I am of course indebted, as so many of us are, to Kithara, and I am consumed by memories, reaching all the way back to Zasha, so cruelly and stupidly taken from us.
This place will be worth haunting, although for many peculiar reasons, such as its computer advice, or my wishing to deconstruct "Atlas Shrugged" all over again. The point being, this is not a place to be ashamed of. The true shame is that the world at large could learn much from it.
For some this place is an indulgence -- and it definitely has been that -- but I think it has been of some help too. So I thank you all for your help, however unwitting or inadvertent.
Written in a church in Sussex circa 1730 is the saying "A vision without a task is but a dream, a task without a vision is drudgery, a vision and a task is the hope of the world." I've had lots of visions. It's task time.
Godspeed to you all.