A Most Perplexing Correspondence

Miss Verity appreciates that maintainers of communities, even mere virtual chatteries, wish people to be talkative and to contribute--except, of course, for those sites which wish people to 'lurk moar' and to learn the rules and social norms at the site before leaping in.

She does not quite think that this gentleman's method is entirely efficacious, however--it is, alas, hard to work up much enthusiasm for resubscribing to a service when one knows it is counting one's silent days against one, having decided in advance to throw you out not for misbehaviour but for reticence. Not, she concludes, her type of lounge at all.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Your account at the Smoking Lounge message board has been deleted.

This has been done either because the unusual spelling or your
username of choice and/or email address has led us to suspect your
account is used as spambot, or because of a complete lack of posting
activity for more than six months. Are you in fact no spambot, and/or
do you wish to be an active member of the Smoking Lounge, we do beg
your pardon for the removal of your account and compel you to
re-register with us. However, we ask your understanding in this
matter, for our forums have recently fallen victim to high quantities
of spam, plus a great number of accounts with zero post count takes up
unnecessary space of our database. I wish to urge that you are most
welcome at the Smoking Lounge, if you are indeed a real person, and
hope that, in that case, you might consider joining us again!

Yours sincerely,

Ottens (Administrator)

Dear Sir or Madam,
Thank you for your kind offer that I spend my time signing up again for a message board which I had not yet had time to actually use. I am sure you can understand why I do not wish to do so--when I do have free time, I prefer to use it at boards that welcome and appreciate people who take their time about joining in conversations with strangers, and not at a website which rather petulantly scolds one for silence and then deletes one's account.

Perhaps one of the dear gentlefolk who have been similarly unsubscribed might know of such a place? In a spirit of hopefulness I have included them in my reply, and I eagerly await their suggestions.
~Miss Verity

Words

Miss Verity, having apparently awoken in the throes of a delusion that her blood pressure isn’t high enough, is amusing herself by making a list of words and phrases she loathes:

• Infotainment. Miss Verity likes to be entertained, but she begs to be spared details of the personal lives of actors and singers, though given the choice between that and having to listen to their “political opinions” she’d…well, actually, she’d throw herself out a high window.
• Differing voices, as used in practically any context other than when describing a choir or an audition.
• Love him or hate him, or any variant thereof. Miss Verity is, she regrets to inform you, most often merely indifferent.

In Search of the Feminine

Miss Verity has been looking for websites to read, or podcasts to listen to, which are feminine without being insipid, materialistic, or bossy in their religiousity.

Please don’t misunderstand: Miss Verity does, goodness knows, have plenty of intellect-light moments of her own; she does own, and take pleasure in, a number of things; she has nothing against faith, and usually prefers the company and writings of people who have some kind of interior life.

But femininity can’t be reduced to shopping, surely, no matter how pretty the items offered for sale? And frankly, Miss Verity finds “celebrity” gossip distinctly unfeminine.

Also distinctly unfeminine: strident flouting of one’s religion in that horrid, pushy, “I know the mind of God, and here’s how he told me to tell you to dress” way. There’s nothing particularly modest about presuming to have detailed access to the inner workings of the Almighty, and Miss Verity wonders a little about the sort of people who think that judging others on their clothes is an appropriate expression of piety. (And Miss Verity seldom lets the public see her ankles, so you can skip right on past the part where you start implying things about her wardrobe, thank you very much.*)

Is Miss Verity the last person on the planet who was raised to think that religion is too personal and sacred a thing to be debased by constantly talking about one’s faith instead of quietly, and without fanfare, living it? She cannot possibly be. She dearly wishes she could find the blogs of some others, though.

*Miss Verity will also just state, for the record, that the sort of men who think the sight of female flesh is a temptation, and that women need to remove said temptation from their path, ought not to be let out in public until they’ve acquired a more robust flavour of “personal responsibility.”