This article is not about Ms. Leick, or Callisto, or any of her other roles, or her dogs, or our hopes and dreams for Ms. Leick' career, (or her dogs' careers for that matter,) or about seeing/meeting Ms. Leick, or any of many other things that I've read about in the last couple of months about Ms. Leick. (And for those of you wondering, I'm not trying to break the record for either article title length or article sentence length.) There are enough of those articles around and I don't think I could add anything constructive and/or original. What I'm going to do is waste some space to write about the Hudson Leick Mailing List.

Why do people subscribe to mailing lists? I suppose it's for some naive expectation that there will be other people who want to discuss matters dealing with the mailing list's subject. Nothing could be farther from the truth! A mailing list is a place to meet other people who have an interest in a common subject. But from there the discussions can go anywhere to the point where you forget what the mailing list is about.

Ok, I lied. In every mailing list, people do stick to the list's subject matter. If you just want to discuss Spam (tm), then just subscribe to the Spam (tm) mailing list and be assured that almost every post will deal with Spam (tm). (Not that I know if there is a Spam (tm) mailing list, but there must be a list dedicated to that delicious luncheon meat, err, processed protein matter.) Correction, in every mailing list excepting the Hudson Leick Mailing List. (I've only subscribed to a dozen or so mailing lists, so there probably are other exceptions. As my Biology teacher once said in class "in Biology, Nature has an exception for every rule." Hence why I didn't Major in Biology.)

Recent discussions on the HLML included: analysis/commentary on Ms. Leick's May 11 chat, analysis/commentary on XWP:Sacrifice 1 & 2, analysis/commentary on what motivates Callisto with regards to Xena, analysis/commentary on female stereo-types and Callisto as pertains to HTLJ:Surprise, and a few others that I can't recall. There were also posts on: conventions (and who's going to which one), Happy Birthday messages, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Cirran Restoration Society (HLML section), Merlin (for a week), lots of Xena stuff not dealing with Callisto, who loves Kevin Sorbo the most (I won't name any names), and other miscellaneous topics.

Personally, I like reading all of the posts, both topic and off-topic ones. For the most part it's more like listening to a conversation. I like to hear people talk about stuff they care about, whether it's Callisto's death or Godzilla. People can ramble on about stuff that they like and eventually I get to know them a little better.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the HLML is more like a group of friends talking at a club on Saturday night. Sometimes it's serious, sometimes it's not. You don't have people trying to censor off-topic posts (at least not like a lot of other mailing lists). It's the only mailing list I've been on where Happy Birthday messages are common (well, I do initiate some of those). It's the only mailing list where I've had desire to post messages and contribute. It's a community.

So if you want to join a community (of 136 subscribers as of mid-May) try out the Hudson Leick Mailing List. It has moderate traffic of 10-50 posts a day (you want a lot of posts, try DND-L). Just hang out and listen quietly or post your thoughts. Oh yeah, and we talk about Hudson Leick too.

-- Kevin (who wanted to write an insightful article but this is what came out)