Since I believe in letting everyone stand on their own words around here, I'll share what I just found in my inbox. The name and email address are unchanged. I see no reason to obscure the sender's identity.

From: Cynthia Singler Miura
To: comments [at] domesticat [dot] net
Subject: [No Subject]

I think I've got you beat, I've had a headache for 30 days now, and not a normal one either. It involves a pea shaped object growing inside of my eye, which will later involve a "Local anesthetic," which means they are going to shoot my eye full of drugs, then they're going to turn my eyelid inside out and operate on my eye with a knife while I am able to see it and make perfect cognitive judgments about the whole situation. I don't know about you, but that is certainly fucked up considering that I'm going to have to watch them put a knife in my eye and try to maintain a stoic nature. Look bitch. It's not hard to write with a head ache. Hemingway had the kind of Anthrax you get from sheep (possibly from fucking them) and a number of other health problems and he still managed to create even though his pain came through in every page, and he eventually shot himself in the head with a rifle, and all of his 90 cats licked up the blood and graymatter on the wall, and his head looked like an inverted starfish. That's fucking talent, so shut the fuck up. I mean the only reason people write these stupid blogs is so that someday someone will read them even though the author is dead. Why the fuck would you want to be immortalized like this? You're going to die some day! People will remember you for what you are and what you did. Don't waste your time with stupid shit like this.

(By the way, this is a real email. If you're curious to see it, ask; I'll forward it to you with the headers intact.)

Anyone want to take this? Anyone? Oh, wait, it's my site, so it looks like that's my job.

Cynthia, I don't know you. Never heard of you before in my life, actually. Sorry to hear that a personal site of a woman you don't know, containing an entry about how she made a batch of pork stock and worked on her packing list for a trip, pissed you off.

I'd suggest saving words such as these for the people you know; hopefully the way you've lived your life will give credence and weight to your words.

Personally, here, on this site, that's what I'm counting on.

You have the right of it in two sentences in your final paragraph. People will remember me for what I am, and what I did in this life, and my words will be part of that remembrance. I am content with that; I cannot claim perfection but I can claim that I have lived and written in such a manner to take into account the feelings and wishes of others.

Judging by your email, I doubt you can say the same.

Thanks for writing.