On the occasion of some family commitments, a reprisal post from last September.

Do you know this look? The one that mothers everywhere have perfected? The one that says, “You just had to go and ruin it for everyone, didn’t you? You couldn’t resist the boiled raising cupcakes – the ones redolent with cinnamon and cloves and brown sugar icing – you ate them all, and now I have to set up and enforce another damn set of rules in this house.”

Well, in this scenario, folks, I am the mother, the comments section in Mad Skilz Part III is the cupcakes, and the offender, the aptly-named Bane. (Laura Eno, listen up, because you’ve balanced on the razor’s edge a time or two yourself, m’girl.)

In case that’s too oblique for you, there are new guidelines here at the Tartitude. Stay within them, and we’ll be fine. Don’t, and face the wrath* that is mine.

*Wrath, in this context, is understood to mean the punishment collectively decided upon by Tartitude’s blog readership, which is to be carried out by scantily-clad persons of the opposite gender, or in the case of gay/lesbian/bisexual readers, persons of the sex they have specified.

Rules to Abide by:

1. Thou shalt not upstage the host with thine humor.
2. Thou shalt use thine clairvoyant powers to never, under any circumstances, pre-empt the punch line of a blog post. (Specifically posts which have taken five hours and twenty rewrites to polish, only to be rendered with a few keystrokes as useful as Rush Limbaugh’s funny bone.)

There. Pretty simple right? Now all that’s left is to determine the sentence. For given the inherently pushy nature of man, it’s only a question of time until another transgressor appears.

This is where you come in, folks. As this is not a Tartaucracy, I value your input. All I ask, as you cast your vote below, is that you remember the Gentle Reader title with which I often address you, and that I didn’t confer it ironically.

FYI, that last smiley there involves me singing country and western music to the guilty party. Or rap, if that would prove more cringeworthy.

So what say you all? I bow my head and await your verdict.

(No Banes were harmed in the making of this blog post. Their welfare was overseen by the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Amusing People. Also, Bane gave his consent.)

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