Is Wil Shipley re-uniting with Kim Rollins? A rumor emerges to fan the flames of Kim Rollins-watchers everywhere. Tuesday night, someone calling him/herself "Not Telling" (ainttelling@hotmail.com) contacted Pigdog with unverified -- yet tantalizing -- reports on the latest possible development...

Six months have passed since the final entry appeared in Wil Shipley's journal "Scab" -- an on-line diary chronicling Shipley's tortured recuperation from the end of his nine-year relationship with on-line diarist Kim Rollins. In a January 20 essay titled "Journal Ends," the OmniGroup founder and CEO reports that Ms. Rollins had resumed contact. "She feels like maybe someday we'll get back together, and maybe not," Shipley's final essay reported, "but time apart doesn't hurt us. I agree."

Further evidence of Shipley's feelings had been provided by the 51 essays he composed in the ten weeks after Rollins left him for another man. Shipley's very-public recovery provided fodder for the internet community. 53 captions were submitted for a picture of Shipley and Rollins in Pigdog's "Kim Rollins-Wil Shipley Break-Up Caption Contest." ("If you'd gotten me that $2000 Carmela Sutera gown like I wanted, I wouldn't have left you. Well, no, I would have.") Mentions of the ongoing saga ultimately appeared in alternative newspaper technology columns in Baltimore and Jacksonville, and in March, Suck -- whose readership numbers in the tens of thousands -- ran a humorous essay containing a link to Pigdog's coverage.

In the winter months that followed, Shipley -- and Rollins -- remained silent. Readers were left to ponder the hopeful hints in Shipley's final essay ("Our paths will cross again, sooner or later.") As well as contrasting hints in earlier essays. ("I'm such an idiot. She isn't coming back. She left, for god's sake. She did that for a reason.")

Perhaps the legend should end there -- with the final outcome left as a speculative exercise for the reader working from Kim and Wil's abandoned web-journals. Did Rollins return to Shipley and his car "Whiplash?" Did Wil welcome back her "stripey bad kitten"? Did Zoloft prescriptions change their lives?

Enter "Not Telling," who offers the following mysterious -- and wholly unverified -- rumor.

"It turns out that after that whole mess about Kim Rollins and Wil Shipley in November, she's back together with Wil now."

The unidentified reader provided no corroborating evidence whatsoever. Kim and Wil's reunion may simply be the product of an anonymous prankster, following the irresistible tug of the collective imagination.

Or maybe not. In any case, "Not Telling" reports that Ms. Rollins had "Moved back in and everything."

"They've been very quiet about it. bizzare huh?"

Indeed.

All's quiet on the "Scab" front...

Check it out yourself

dunsmuir@pigdog.org