The main reason is that I haven't got enough of these people's journals on my friendslist to make it possible to keep up with the tenor of the conversation in various venues- another reason is I feel like I'm being repeatedly attacked for saying '...is it really that way?'...
--though there's also a fair bit of self-recrimination over how deeply I've shoved my foot down my throat.
You guys carry on- I'll leave you to it.
EDIT to disable comments. I thought I'd killed comments on the post (instead of selectively screening comments): thanks for underscoring my error,