But I need to point out that P.J.'s kite is much larger, and steadier, than the kite of the modest little Norway ping list.
I have always noticed on Free Republic, that after about the first fifty comments, which more or less stick to the topic posted, there is a slow erosion into other topics, and then after about the first hundred comments, it is a free-for-all.
Sometime, when you have time, and if you wish, you should go back to read the ending comments on some of the long-ago DUmmie FUnnies; there are a lot of laughs there, but generally ignored, because others have already moved on to the newer editions of the DUmmie FUnnies.
"Residual remarks" can be funny too; it's just that they're posted so long after a thread has "died," that few people read them.
I think I have been a residual quite often here, when I get home late from work and put my two cents worth in, only to find out that I am talking into a void--everyone else has wandered off to something else!