This year's Monkey Business follows some very familiar (not to say "tired") themes: xenophobia, paranoia, Light Reading's ever-declining credibility, and wild speculation about Tony Li's state of employment.

Speaking of Mr. Li, and we were, even he dropped some clues about his frame of mind in June, long before he was officially pronounced a Cisco employee (again). (See Tony Li Returns to Cisco.) Thus, wrote the Ton-ster:

How did we not see that coming?

While we're on the subject of looking back, the infamous BobbyMax was banned from the boards this year, but he went out guns-a-blazin' before we "deactivated" him. Note this cheerful post on immigration, Germany, and nuclear weapons:

Germany has nukes?! Holy moly, Marge! Grab the kids! We're movin' to Frostbite Falls! Where Rocky and Bullwinkle are still arguing about the SAN market:

Ahhh, indeed.

But forget Frostbite Falls: We touched a nerve with several folks when we noted in one story that -- surprise! -- not everyone wants to live in Naperville, Illinois. This truth simply did not sit well with some:

The library system? Say no more! I'm packing up now.

Other messages from this year were even more confrontational. This one has to be one of the earliest citations of "ass clown" on the site. Also, it contains this immortal, if ungrammatical, line:

Speaking of bashers (not pumpers), we noted that this message was probably the best response to corporate spin of any we've seen this year:

Of course, marketing guys aren't the only ones who take abuse just for doing their jobs. We get called names, too:

Hard to believe a Corvis fan wrote the above, isn't it? They're usually such calm, reasonable folks. But not us. We are editors. We are yollow. We are ill-informed:

How would one know that we are ill-informed? You have to trust the expurts:

We know what's really going on. We know that some folks can't stand the fact that the Tachion Networks message board is still alive and getting posts.

Point taken. Even when the same point was mistakenly posted on a Cisco message board.

Thank you, as always, for your posts. Without you, we'd be forced to cut costs and move to Naperville. But then, we could at least inform ourselves at their splendid public library.

Happy New Year, my brethren -- and keep flingin' it!

— Larry, Attack Monkey, Light Reading