On Sat, 14 Jan 2006 08:46:35 -0700, Glorfindel wrote:

Derek wrote:

snip

I hate to burst your bubble on this issue, Jon, but I'm not
sure that her real name IS Lesley anyway.

He tends to go off half-cocked, leap to assumptions, and then refuse
to modify his wild statements.

Why do you help him anyway?

How is putting reasonable doubt into his mind over
something he felt so certain over, helping him, you
idiot? Read what I wrote again. It's only on my
suggestion and the way I went about deducing her
name that she kind of acknowledged it as Lesley.
She has never announced to me or declared in any
way that her name IS Lesley. She acknowledged
it on the basis of the method I used to deduce it as
follows;

"I put it to her that her real name had to start
with "Le", because both her Usenet nyms began
with an "L" followed by a vowel.

lotus
lilweed

And so I called her "Lesley", to which she replied,
"Lesley it is then."

As we can see, she accepted my conclusion based
on the method I used, not that she was in fact called
Lesley. I didn't help him; I've just burst his bubble.

He has never said a kind -- or even
vaguely civil -- word to, or about, you, ever.

And what makes him different from everyone else I
know? If I stopped talking to everyone who hates
me, I wouldn't have anyone to talk to.

He has cynically
used you as his cat's-paw to avoid dirtying his hands directly
with things you *know* are wrong.

You'll have to expand on that.

What kind of masochistic
pleasure do you get out of abasing yourself to lick his boots?

How is bursting his bubble licking his boots? If Pearl's
name really IS Lesley, then she'll have the pleasure in
knowing Jon can never know that for sure. If her name
isn't Lesley, then she has the drop on both of us and is
laughing her tits off. What's got into you?

You are better than that. Stand up and be a man, Derek.

snip