@Reg: I think Mr. Shiny got it right there.

Oooh, Shiny!

Faster would be better!

@RegDwight — No linguist necessary. Die Antwort ist selbstverständlich.

Genau das.

I mean, if everyone took everything literally all the time, this would be Bizarro World.

We are making a Bizarro World. All of them Bizarro Worlds.

@RegDwight — That's the Lego architect in you talking.

Yeah, I'm glad that our other AFOL tackled the question.

All-Foolish Older Linguist?

Adult Fetishists of Lego.

Yeah, Martha was pretty close.

We're using the word "adult" ironically there.

Ah.

Much like "of".

Hey!

No irony there.

See, that's how we tell the incognoscenti.

My clothes are never wrinkled because I'm always using irony. You should try it sometime.

OMG, I so resisted making that stoopid joke, but sure enough, Robusto goes for it.

The whole nine yards.

Now I am imagining both of you as tv presenters cum Hauswives.

@Robusto THWACK! Sheesh!

WUT???

@RegDwight — You totally did not. You're just pissed that I beat you to it. When was a joke ever too stupid for you to utter if you thought you could get it in first?

Never, that's when.

@Robusto Now you're just talking rubbish.

@RegDwight — I suit the material to the audience.

Thank God Martha is here to maintain some semblance of order.

@Cerberus — It has to be a semblance before it can be a resemblance ...

Bang! Zoom! Smokin'!

Ouch!

Aww, he fixed it.

He laid a typo trap for me and I fell for it.

He's ArthurRex! Quick! Grab'im!

It was made out of Lego blocks, too. I should have seen it a mile away.

Way to go, @Cerberus.

No idea how that suffix got me...

Nooooooooo.........

Actually, it is funny: why should it be a semblance? It might as well have been resemblance semantically.

Where else do we use the word semblance?

Everywhere.

You mean... this whole site...

No.

No, literally everywhere.

Ask Jonathan.

Lies!

Whom?

Jonathan Sampson.

I bet he doesn't exist either.

GTGTTYL.

CU.

Bye!

Besides, he has only 40k rep I see.

He might as well not exist.

Really? I thought he would be at 100k by now.

And only 58 stupid silver medals.

Well, he's a mod. Them mods got no time to get points. Them's janitors.

Fair enough.

Why did you ever want to be a mod?

Searching for duplicates is the most obnoxious thing ever invented.

Because I am that nice, that's why.

I pity and admire you then.

And I was searching for dupes anyway. Might as well do that with a diamond next to my handle.

Hehe.

Dupes seem like a bottomless pit, though that metaphor is less than optimal.

New ones are spit out every day.

I am a bit excited seeing how a whole bunch of users will be reaching 10k rather soon.

Oh? Who?

ShreevatsaR, Hellion, Jimi, JSBangs.

Oh, and you, sir! Yes, you!

Ah but I am only at 70%. Will take another month or so probably.

But I suppose a few months from now reinforcements will be comparatively plentiful.

10 days should be enough.))

I am not @Rob.

Thank God. I can barely handle one!

So did the PR meeting bring anything interesting?

It sounds so silly, really.

YEah well. They kept talking about stuff that would be most interesting to some brick-and-mortar communities.

Ah... you mean like shops?

How should I imagine b&m communities?

Like, you know, an Intel engineer posts on SU, Halp, my computer assplodes! And they help him, and he's happy, so he talks to the press about that real-life story and we're all like famous all of a sudden.

The thing is, I find it rather hard to think of such real-life stories for EL&U.

Hehe yes, for EL&U, hardly conceivable.

Photographers? Sure. Ubuntu? Of course! But "I didn't know whether I should use tits or boobs, and those kind folks over there helped me out"? Um... yeah well, if we're talking about Playboy, perhaps.

Help, I am not sure whether I should use the past subjunctive or the simple past in this sentence! How ever am I to prevent nuclear catastrophe?

Yes or that.

@Cerberus Yeah, quite a few questions related to the Japan earthquake got mentioned.

Even regarding EL&U?

No, obviously. That's the thing.

We didn't have any nucular-related questions lately, did we?

So are moderators at all interested in making the SE sites more widely know, attracting more visitors etc.? What do they care?

Actually it is surprising that we haven't got any Japan-related questions. That Oichi guy...

I did tell a few folks who were having an off-topic grammar rant on one of my mailing lists that "y'all should check out EL&U". I think I even saw one of the participants here shortly after that, but I don't think he actually registered.

Perhaps he works on Fukushima plant no. 1, that must be it.

@Cerberus Well, the job of the mods is to find people who do. To take it back to the communities.

@Martha Yeah, drachenstern and a few other mods mentioned similar things.

Huh, people who do what? Care about having more visitors?

Yes.

I show up and see my name has been mentioned! woot, I'm all famous and stuff.

@Reg: Oh, why would that be your job?

That's timing.

@Hellion: Greetings, semi-fellow mythological being!

There's nothing mythological about me!

@Cerberus Because they offered me a t-shirt and always treated me nice.

@Hellion: To me you sound like a mix of Helios and Hell! And Hell happens to be my home...

@Hellion Oh and BTW, now that you're here, your avatar scares the hell out of me. I can barely sleep. Seriously, dude, what's the deal?

@Reg: Oh, ok... well I don't know, doing PR for someone else... you guys are too good for this world!

It's just a nice little picture of me from a few years ago. :-)

But look at them eyes!

Yeah, pretty devillish...

@Cerberus and your name makes me think your dad was from Belgrade and your mom was from Moscow.

@Hellion, careful, that was almost a pun, and you know what puns get.

Hehe, what, why? Do Serbians and Russians not breed well?

@Hellion: Be careful with puns, as Martha maintains a thwacking order around here...

@Cerberus Nah, it's actually the other way round. I think I should get it straight. I keep joking and tongue-and-cheeking and everything, but those guys are really set to help us in every way imaginable. The idea is that if we can come up with ways to promote our site, but lack PR experience or other resources, they have folks who will help us out.

She is just afraid to thwack me because she'd have to thwack all three heads in a row.

So, we don't do the leg work for them, and neither do they do our legwork, it's more of a symbiosis.

@Cerberus, are you challenging me?

@Reg: Oh, it is about promoting EL&U specifically! I thought it was about SE in general.

It was.

About SE in general, that is.

I was merely lurking.

@Martha: Wait, I'll have to log in as another friend of Hercules's first... this time I shall be female...

I ain't gonna go cutting off any heads, so I should be perfectly safe.

@Reg: Okay I do find SE friendly in general, and rational, which is good.

@Cerberus Yup, there was some talking about promoting us on Facebook. Too bad I'm not a Facebook user, but that's why it's my job to reach out to people who are.

@Martha: We'll see about that... I do think the rules specify that you should have thwacked all heads before a new pun has been launched...

Oops door bell...brb.

I think @drachenstern won't mind if I re-post his image, demonstrating what kind of scenarios we're talking about.

That's kind of what I've been doing on Reddit, too.

(I got two Announcer badges for that. One here, one on Math.)

Nice.

@Cerberus Except Jeff. Jeff is not friendly. (Sniff. I want my Eeeek back. More importantly, I want my /users/recent link back.)

Sometimes it's a dictatorship, but it's always benevolent.

WTH is going on here:

I think @oosterwal's comment is nice and to the point.

Yes.

Sometimes I wish I could delete answers just because they are awfully wrong. But that is not a valid reason for deletion.

But downvotes do help, so I would like to use this opportunity to encourage everyone to use their downvote powers (wisely).

Some stuff deserves to be downvoted into a place from where oblivion looks like a sky-high mountain.

Just for you, I used up my last vote for today on that answer. Hope you're happy.

(Now whatever shall I do for the next 22 minutes?)

You always go to the greatest lengths just to make me happy, @Martha.

:p