So, the forum’s down again, and there’s an interesting reason for it this time. We’re getting spammed.

We were planning on shutting down for some maintenance some time in the next few days, but an adorable wave of some sort of spam attack made the tech guys decide to do it sooner rather than later. The board will be back up when it’s up.

One of those responsible for the attack, the “ringleader” as far as I can tell, has been contacted with an offer to have her and her friends stop any and all contact with the website in exchange for me not suing the pants of them. Hopefully she’ll let all her friends know and get back to me before my meeting with my lawyer; otherwise, IT’S ON! and a couple misguided netizens are going to learn that actions have consequences.

It’ll be a good lesson they can teach their kids: “Mommy’s crying because she has to pay the legal fees of that lady because Mommy committed 16 acts of libel instead of behaving like a grown-up.” I’ll keep you posted. (Update: They learned it’s OK to disagree, preferably on their own site, but denial of service attacks can have actual, legal consequences. And I don’t fuck around. And their kids’ names still suck.)

Oh, and Bay Areaegians should check out the San Jose Mercury-News this week for the fab article where I’m interviewed about why weird spellings on normal names don’t make them any more special than painting a landfill green and calling it a tree. I’ll leave to you to consider that confusing metaphor.