Th..th..th..that's all, folks!

We're done. We are posting no more. We'll keep this site open so you may communicate with us via our email . Thanks for all your support.

Trial of the Century

FYI Dear Readers:
The Swartzes continue with their lawsuit against this blog. We were in court on March 13.

Dearth of a Salesman

Back when we first clamped the jumper cables to the shiny, titanium neck bolts of this creature we baptized as StopSwartz (RagingPsychoNeighbor dot com was already registered) we expected to be crushed beneath a storm-surge of first-person narratives from those Villagers who had experienced directly the malicious activities of Old Hickory’s Friendliest Duo. In other words, we figured that you, gentle readers, would flood these virtual pages with your own stories of stalking, harassment, and intimidation.

That didn’t quite happen. We were not overwhelmed with stories of bizarre and threatening behavior. We weren’t even whelmed. While there is certainly no dearth of these first-person accounts between you and a particular Swartz, you have chosen to maintain your silence so as not to incur further retaliation from the Riverside Misanthropes.

We know these stories exist. We’ve heard them with our own ears. You have shared them with us via email, over the phone, and in person. We have urged you to submit your account to the blog—change the details as necessary—but tell your story, reveal to the world how the Swartzs were behaving. We believed that the anonymous nature of this blog would enable you to share your pain.

Alas, each of you, to a person, declined. No one desired to stir the pot. If you believed you were flying below the Swartz radar then you wished to remain there. You didn’t want to reveal any detail which may allow them to match a blog entry with an individual.

The irony is that what they did to you was not unique. For every story of stalking, we’ve heard a dozen more. Did you catch them circling your block one night? You are not alone. We had hoped that by sharing stories this community could be educated to the Startzs’ nefarious tactics and be better armed in the fight against them.

And that is maybe where we have failed. We know these stories are out there; we’ve heard them. But we won’t air these tales without the permission of the offended. To date, no one (with one exception) has volunteered to tell publicly exactly how the Swartzs harassed them. We are left with little more than third-person gossip. While we are an anonymous blog, we like to think that we are an anonymous blog with integrity. We’re not just going to publish hearsay no matter how salacious it may be.

So, as we wrap up this blog, we simply wanted to apologize to you, our faithful readers that we couldn’t deliver the goods. We gave it our best. We appreciate your support.

We're Just Curious

Take a sec and tell us where you live by clicking on the poll to the right. We've always been curious about the SS demographics. Also, you can click on the Response button at the bottom of each posting to tell us feedback on the post.

Civil Unrest

In the last comment made on this site, a commenter identified as HaHaHaHa wrote this:
There is nothing civil about this website.

Our response:

Dear HaHaHaHa,

You are absolutely correct. There is NOTHING civil about this website. It is precisely because of the un-civil activities of a couple of people that we were forced to create this site. We don’t like it. We didn’t want to do it. We dread posting to it. It is not civil!

We dream of a Village where a site like this has no place and no purpose, where neighbors are civil to one another; when someone has a complaint they address it directly in a mature, civil manner. We dream of a Village where people work together for the common good of all. We are tired of worrying who is on whose side; we are tired of watching our street looking for whoever might come cruising by with their clipboards and cameras acting like God’s own hallway monitors.

We are sick of the whole mess and we’re going to end it now. We stated much earlier that it was never our intention to maintain this site forever. Hey, we’ve got lives, too. This blog is a canker sore on the Village and we’re going to cover it up once and for all.

Thank you to the many helpful commenters and readers. And to those who preferred to be insulting and rude, well, we would have hoped that your mothers had taught you better.

This will be our last post. Leave a comment if you will. Any comments which we find offensive will be smote (smited?). In a few weeks, we’ll probably delete the blog altogether.

Be good.


Addendum:
This blog has lain quiet with nary a post or comment since September. A year ago, we were about to take it offline when we got slapped with a lawsuit. Never ones to flee from a fight we left the blog running a bit longer (although out hearts were clearly not in it).

It's now been nearly a year since the suit and we think it is finally time to pull up stakes and pack the tent. We removed all previous posts and comments and put up the announcement that this blog was headed for cyber-heaven. We wanted to say farewell to our faithful readers and then slide slowly into the sunset.

But dang it all, within a few hours of our posting our plans to terminate this blog Shelly Cargill (or someone using her name) began posting a sonnet to the Swartzs detailing what wonderful people they are. We deleted her comment not because of her support of the Swartzs but because she named and attacked other people not associated with this blog. She re-posted and we re-deleted. Rinse and repeat.

As we stated in the comments, if you want to gush about the Swartzs, fine. We'll keep it posted. As we've stressed several times in the past, if you've got something to get off your chest and you don't like how we run this blog then START YOUR OWN BLOG. It's easy.