Just as much as nobody is "forcing" you to only refer to yourself by means of a pseudonym and not letting anyone know your real given name and family name - a habit which someone also finds to be ridiculous: it's all a matter of personal freedom. Anyway: ++ because what you claim is definitely true: well, to some extent. In fact I often can't cast what I want to say in "IPB form" (as in this very post - except that I did it on purpose) in a reasonably simple manner. And then I both delete the incipit and strike the part of the signature it refers to: FWIW I consider it a mental exercise, to find a way to begin any speech that way, and a funny one. Fun is good, ain't it? But seriously: do you find it that annoying?!? I'm literally astonished that some people do. (Others privately wrote me to tell me they share the fun instead.) Somebody, you perhaps, told me he would ignore me by means of a css setting: which somehow saddens me if that particular person is a knowledgeable monk - like you. But I still can't understand, to the best of my efforts: it's a matter of three damned words; it takes such a negligible fraction of time to read them that one doesn't even realize...

Why can't I have my little bit of cranky trademark behaviour? Because I'm only a mediocre Perl programmer? I'm beginnig to think that if I were considered a Perl Guru then these "problems" wouldn't arise...

But seriously: do you find it that annoying?!?

Yes; it's the Steve Urkel of PerlMonks: an annoying combination of stupid catchphrases the writers consider popular yet have to invent ever more ridiculous situations to include. It's noise. It's repetitive. It adds nothing to the discussion. I block signatures, because they fail the signal test in the same ways. I can't block your pointless logorrhea without ignoring all of your posts. After several weeks of growing steadily more annoyed at its inclusion, I decided it was a fair trade.

Somebody, you perhaps, told me he would ignore me by means of a css setting: which somehow saddens me if that particular person is a knowledgeable monk - like you.

That was me. It only blocks your replies. If I could block your top-level posts in Newest Nodes, I would.

Why can't I have my little bit of cranky trademark behaviour?

You are free to do so, the same way you're free to join London.pm and post your Super Mario Brothers Furry Fanfiction for everyone to read. Whether other people like it is a different story. I only speak for myself, but I don't like it.

That snippet in your Free Nodelet Settings might help.

<script type="text/javascript">
function xl (query) {
    var r = document.evaluate(query,document,null,XPathResult.ORDERED_
+NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE,null);
    var a = new Array;
    for ( var i=0 ; i < r.snapshotLength; i++ ) a.push(r.snapshotItem(
+i));
    return a;
}

var ohrwurm = xl("//em`[text()='I personally believe']");
for (var i in ohrwurm) {
    ohrwurm`[i].parentNode.innerHTML = ohrwurm`[i].parentNode.innerHTM
+L.replace('<em>I personally believe</em>','I guess');
}
</script>
[download]

That said, I'm with you in the perception of "I personally believe" as (according to my favorite online dictionary) something like a "catchy song", an earwig, something that goes on echoing in your head long after you've read it.

Don't take that too seriously. I'm Just Another Heck Parler.

...by means of a css setting...

...If I could block your top-level posts in Newest Nodes, I would

While current CSS selectors don't yet provide an optimal way of creating such selections, you could inject some JavaScript for that purpose. Here's an example that should do the trick in current Gecko browsers:

function xselect(xpath, root) {
  var doc = root ? root.ownerDocument : document;
  var res = [];
  var qry = doc.evaluate(xpath, root || document, null,
              XPathResult.ORDERED_NODE_SNAPSHOT_TYPE, null);
  for (var i = 0, len = qry.snapshotLength; i < len; i++)
    res.push( qry.snapshotItem(i) );
  return res;
}

var pageID = xselect(
  './/table[@id="titlebar-bottom"]//span[@class="addlinks"]/a[1]/text(
+)'
)[0];
var pageContent = xselect('.//td[@class="main_content"][1]')[0];

if (pageID == "3628") { // Newest Nodes
  // ignore posts from these users
  [ 'Anonymous Monk',
    'foo',
    'bar'
  ].forEach(function(monkName) {
      xselect(
        './/td[2][starts-with(@class,"node-from-")]/a[text()="'
        + monkName + '"]/ancestor::tr[1]',
        pageContent
      ).forEach(function(row) {
          row.parentNode.removeChild(row);
        });
    });
}
[download]

Yes; it's the Steve Urkel of PerlMonks: an annoying combination of stupid catchphrases the writers consider popular yet have to invent ever more ridiculous situations to include. It's noise. It's repetitive. It adds nothing to the discussion. I can't block your pointless logorrhea without ignoring all of your posts.

(additional emphasis added by me.)

Ok, one last reply: (for I would have /msg'd instead, but it just wouldn't fit...) I accept everything you say, but it's simply not fair - wrt the emphasized points above:

1. in my case, it's one (stupid) catchphrase; far from being a "combination" whatever that may mean;
2. it doesn't subtract anything either; if I can cast what I want to say (anyway) in "IPB form" then I do, else I pass on;
3. dict(1) tells me:

   1 definition found
   
   From WordNet (r) 1.6 [wn]:
   
     logorrhea
          n : pathologically excessive (and often incoherent) talking
              [syn: {logomania}]
   lines 1-7/7 (END)
   [download]

   Whoa! Excessive! If only I take as an example the last post I did the damn thing, it's 582 bytes (rendered, transformed in plain text, .sig excluded) of which the catchphrase takes 20. To me, that's about 3% of the total, and we're talking about an exceedingly short post. You must have a fairly strange notion of the word "excessive..."

I get back to oblivion now!

--
If you can't understand the incipit, then please check the IPB Campaign.