Well E--
You say--"The fun was in letting people "find" the text themselves." Isn't that defining fun in your terms only? It struck me as fun to print it all out and make responses. I thought it was put out there by Hawkeye to get played around with freely--and as I said before plenty of time had passed for other people to enjoy the game.

As to the jabs--hidden text wasn't the point. I didn't mean to make a lot of that. Of course the posts were meant to be read. I understand too that they were put out there as jokes and I am not so overly serious as you seem to think.

I do think it's a question of balance as to whether they feel like jokes to the person they reference. There are lots of ways to make jokes fun for the recipient and I know you know how to use them, bug, because I have seen you use them with others. There are waves, winks, a few positive words slipped into the mix... and all is fun.

If people have stopped having a friendly dialogue with each other in chat or on the boards (and we used to have that I thought, but it's been noticeably absent for awhile)--then "jokes" that don't make the effort to also express some good will are not going to be appreciated. That's reality. Let's not pretend there hasn't been weirdness going on between some people and that other people aren't expressing loyalties in various rather subtle ways.

It's not the case, as you suggest, that I take your statements overly-literally. (A literalist I am not.) Negative energy comes through from the general feel, and the repetition of that slightly negative tone eventually adds up to the same thing as a big burst of flak...it's worse in a way because it's very hard to point out in a single example. If you were unaware of this effect, than I am most sorry if I insulted you, but I would hope you would be OK with hearing that the reception was muddy...

If I was wrong about this, and I took a friendly voice the wrong way--well,in my experience here, when people who have friendly feelings towards someone get wrongly interpreted--their response is to immediately make it clear they are really the person's friend and are just teasing. Look at your own goodbye thread for an example of that. That did not happen in this case...

You can make all the jokes you want if they are amusing you. I'm not the joke police. (And you're not the hidden text police, I would hope.) In the event you thought I was enjoying your comments to me (and those you have pointed towards GT)--I thought it was time to be clear that I wasn't. Sort of like BA saying he'd had enough with the grammar corrections even though Leif was having a great time.

I don't want to get in a feud--not at all. I just got to the point where I needed to clear the air. This is all I want to say about it. Now you can carry on with the program previously in progress...

*goes off to literally smell her roses and chill out*