You little scamps in the comments have been acerbic and rude and loud again, haven’t you? I’ve received a little threat in the mail about your activities, and you know how threats get me all trembly and weak in the knees.

Dear PZ Myers.

My name is Petter XXXX and I am a graduate student in biology at University of XXXX, as well as active as an ecology consultant in XXXX.

I would be grateful for the removal of slanderous comments directed personally at me on your blog Pharyngula.
I have nothing but admiration for your work with not allowing creationism or ID be a part of education, although fortunately that is not a big problem in Europe.

I commented on your blog that I thought it was unnecessary to riddicule people of faith.
I think it hurts the reputation of scientists frankly.
But that is my opinion, and I fully respect if you do not agree.

However, on your blog I am called

comment 131. Petter the ignorant rude jerk troll:

comment 187: Petter the lying christofascist troll.You are not a scientist. Stop lying. Your grammar, spelling, logic, and word usage are at the level of a highly religious moron. I’ll pray for you to leave your cave of darkness, mental fog, lies, and hate. Petter, time to pull out the xian default.

comment 189: “This comment accuses me of sponsoring terrorism”, it is likely to fall under “slander per se”

comment 191: Comments referring to sexual actions.

comment 192: Accuses me of impending human rights, would have a pretty good chance to fall under “slander per se” to.

I fully understand that it is hard as a blogger to keep up with editing posts that go over the line, and I am aware of that you did not write the comments.
However, you being the author of the blog I kindly ask you to remove all comments above.

A copy of this mail has been sent to my legal representative, in case further actions would be necessary.
I however hope that we can stop here, by you removing the comments.

Best regards,

Petter XXXX

Uh-oh. He’s quite right, you know. You’ve been saying unkind things about people, like for instance calling them ignorant, rude, and a jerk. We can’t have that kind of thing going on in a blog, now can we?

Oh, wait. Yes, we can. I rather like plainspoken responses.

And look, he’s asking me nicely, with only the slyest of implications of legal action, to delete your comments, but doesn’t seem to think his own warrant censure. I’ll have to think about whether I should do that.

OK, done. No.

Just a general suggestion to the thin-skinned who think about commenting here: don’t do that. No one gets treated gently here; even I sometimes hesitate at dipping a toe into the bacon-chummed shark-, piranha-, and candiru-infested waters here. You will get abused. And if you do get abused, don’t come crying to me to protect you, because I’ll just do something even ruder, like taking your plea and tossing it back into the deepest, murkiest, roiling whirlpool I can, and if you didn’t like getting a few boo-boos before, you’ll really hate the public flensing that will ensue.

And please, please, never write to tell me that your favorite authority figure, whether it is your lawyer or your mommy, will come after me if I don’t do your bidding. It makes me cranky.

By the way, I’ve done the complainer the favor of removing the bits from his letter that would reveal details of his identity. What makes this complaint especially stupid is that all any of the cruel, cruel commenters know about him is his very common first name; unless he thinks he is the only Petter in the world, he has not yet been exposed to any public or professional ridicule.

Of course, if someone starts harrassing me with futile legal documents, I can fill in those blanks.