Dear Dude w/ purse,

Look. I know holding a purse for your wife while she is in the bathroom may feel a bit awkward. Still, that’s no reason to hold it out in front of you like it’s evil or let it drag on the ground while you do the “what’s taking her so long” pace back and forward.

You weren’t the only dude out there waiting for a woman to come out of the restroom. Everyone else managed to hold purses, coats, etc without treating them like dirty diapers.

No one is telling you to sling it over your shoulder; your manhood won’t be compromised if you treated her purse like a regular package.

The April 15th update of Kuma is going to be the last update for a while. The site is going on hiatus–indefinitely. The site isn’t going to disappear or anything like that; I won’t be adding any new content to it.

It feels like a break up. Kuma and I have been together for 10 years. Most of them good, healthy, and happy–but we’ve been growing apart. For the longest time, I didn’t want to acknowledge that.

When I noticed that my feelings for the site started to wain, I did try to “fix” it–doesn’t that sound like a relationship gone south? I cut back from monthly to quarterly. Didn’t work. I tried expanding other sections of the site. After a whole lot of request for it–I finally put Kuma on MySpace and then Facebook.

All of these distractions worked for a while, but none of them addressed the real issue. In January of this year, I looked at Kuma and thought, “I don’t love you anymore. I need to stop this.” Instantly, it felt like a weight was lifted from my mind.

I’d always told myself that I would let the site go when it stopped being fun. In reality, I held on a bit too long hoping the magic would come back. Kuma should have gone on hiatus September 15th 2008–the day of its 10th anniversary. That celebration could have been it’s going away party.

On July 15th 2009, instead of a new update, Kuma readers will find a note officially anouncing the hiatus and thanking them for years of support.