Ashi

Yeah, you made a lot of friends and family.... EVER EXPANDING I should add. LOL What a "fruitful" year.

Happy B Day Blue Bear!

Happy birthday. Stellar!

Happy Birthday.

I hope everything is well. Take care.

There will always someone who find something wrong with anything. Writing, like all other art forms, "beauty is in the eyes of the beholder." It's subjective. People sometimes forget, critiques, if intended to be constructive, should be kept objective. Comsie also hit the bullseye when he mentioned if you tried to please those few negative criticism, you might just lose the majority of your audience. And I might add, the worst of all offense is in fact, you're going to lose your original vision, the sense of purpose why you wrote that story to begin with. Perhaps that's the hidden danger of such criticism. To critics, the story is someone's brainchild. You can only give advice, not mandate. I am from the school of thought that once my story is published, it becomes the readers' story. There is no single "correct" way of interpreting a piece of fine literature (especially one that has layers). Refrain from making judgmental "absolute truth" statements. Imposing one's idea onto others is unfair. That said, let the author have his/her artistic freedom. It is his/her story. On the other hand, if the criticism is regarding some technical issues in the story, gently bring it to author's attention. Remember the rule "praise in public, and criticize in private." Marzipan already pin the other point I wanted to say. Respect. Criticize is good, but don't over criticize.

I absolutely love Comsie's advice. Just write it! You can always fix it later. Perfectionism is the flaw itself. It was in my late teen when I first wanted to write down a story and that story ended in precisely one sentence before I threw it away. LOL. So I totally could relate to Comsie's super articulated advice which ought to be on the front page of every writing website!

The protagonists teens are exactly what they are..., joyful, adventurous, just finding out love. It is unfortunate the story has to end like that, but in a way, it's beautiful. Life isn't always nice and sweet but a rollercoaster ride. There were some little technical issues and mispellings, but overall an enjoyable read.

Happy birthday Old Bob.

Thanks. I hope you'll read more of my stories.

Thanks Roman.

Happy birthday.

Myrtle Beach or whatever it's called in Dark City.... Someone's dream sequence of a place that may or may not exist. I also see the psychedelic cloud and a man who doesn't know where he is going....

You're passing on the torch! Cool!

Happy Birthday TW! Visit us more often.

Sorry for your loss. Glad everyone kept the funeral dignified and glad some turned out and shows who are the true friends.

Happy birthday, Scotty.

Hello Atomic No. 103.

Though I am only 2 years older than you, but I don't think I was listening to Dandy Warhols at that age. That would be year 2001 for me when I turned 21. If there was some album I was listening to, it's probably some classical music. I wasn't very interested in popular music at that age or music in general. I think someone might have introduced Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism to me, but that might have been 2002 or 2003. 2001 was kind of like a blurb to me.

Well, I was in your situation when I was your age. People were on average 10 years younger than I was. It'll be a good test for you on how well you could adapt to your environment under all sort of situation (you'd be surprised how important this skill is). Try to mix into your crowd, and learn their subcultures. If you poses as less age-conscious, maybe they'll see you as one of them. Being around younger people makes you feel young also, and you get to see the younger generation in first-hand experience, rather than what you heard about them via the unreliable media (what do those people know about young people?). You also get to learn a lot from young people, and new ways of doing many things. And another perk in a job like this is, you get promoted much faster than they are. We all are trying to adapt to the world we're in. If you really can't stand it after a month, well, it's not a job you'd sacrifice a lot if you quit....

I can't believe these cowboys shaved their armpits.

Yes, we were, but it's so stupid. GenXers were very happy to be labeled, and us not so much. Why would anybody want to be labeled by the media who doesn't even know who we were (not that we are all sheep painted the same color).

Born in 1978. I remember it's quite a transition between generations. Like James said, I don't like labels. In fact, that's what my generation hates the most: labels, sweeping generalization, corporate cultures, consumerism. Lots of things happened during our time. GenX was marked by general optimism, we were in a lot of transitions. We were the first generation who grew up in the Internet culture, so a lot of those established netiquettes, use of emoticons/emoji, lolspeaks (though I must admit you guys coin the terms emoji and lolspeaks). We are the children of some golden ages and also the great economic downturns. It's really a giant rollercoaster ride, and we were also mature enough to know what's going on around us. Imagine the Roaring 20's and the transitional in-between wars 30's and then the horror of WWII, and compress that into 10 years, that's what we went through. What our lives went through: High school years (mid-1990's): We watched Mr. Rogers and Barney and Friends. Goths were the prevalent alternative culture and attend live action Rocky Horror Picture Shows. Quentin Tarantino made Pulp Fiction. Urban Outfitters actually sold urban outfits (not suburban clothes). Gap brand launched Old Navy and started selling fleece everything. Game started to come out in multi-media CD-ROMs (King's Quests, Loom, Oregon Trail, Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, 7th Guests, Myst, Doom as shareware, Simcity 2000). PC first became normal household items. Microsoft Windows 95 vs IBM OS/2. Internet became popularized when I was in senior year in high school. Popular shows for high school students included Friends, Seinfeld, Saved by the Bell, Wonder Years, Beverly Hill 90210, Melrose Place, Dawson's Creek. Golden Age of MTV. Popular boy bands were Backstreet Boys, N'synch. Golden Age of Disney (Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King). Dot.com boom, and everyone lived like it was 1920's. You are either Nick or Great Gatsby, i.e., even when you were a nobody, you probably still had a millionaire friend somewhere who made it rich through trading IPO stocks. College Years (late 90's, early 2000's): Cell phone wars (Nokia vs Motorola). The beginning of school shooting era. 9/11. War on Middle East. Krispy Kreme went IPO. Dot.com Bust (party is over man! I started in college in dot.com boom and ended in dot.com bust... guess what I felt like when I graduated). Will and Grace on NBC. Lord of the Ring and Matrix trilogy. The new Star War movies. Al Gore "invented the Internet" and later, published Inconvenient Truth. Abercrombie and Fitch became popular. Boot cut jeans and cargo shorts. Flip flops graced the campus. High speed Internet (DSL/Cable) became popular. Everyone had a personal website through some free web hosting service (anyone remember Geocities?). During this time people sort of know they can't live like there was no tomorrow anymore, but some still refused to end the party. This was also the era when Ashi had his sexual awakening and finally no longer happy trying to be someone else.... Ashi wanted to be gay, and Ashi didn't want to dress like everyone else cause Ashi wasn't "anybody." Ashi was Ashi. Before 9/11, everyone was all about John Locke, Emerson and Thoreau and all that civil disobedience. You had to be your own thinker, be cynical, be skeptical, don't be anybody's sheep. Dot.com boom also brought down the uptight corporate culture set by the WWII CEOs, and be a little more grassroot. End doesn't justify the mean. Don't be fed with major TV network's mass propaganda. Ironically, nowadays, Internet replaced that role, and everyone be the sheep of Internet-pushed propaganda. My generation also tried to defy peer pressure, but it seems peer pressure crept in again. It was absolutely not cool to smoke cigarette (ironically it's okay to smoke happy grass), it's okay to be smart (and not be afraid to be called a nerd), and teenage pregnancy went way down because people actually used condom. And increasing acceptance of homosexuality. Mid 2000's to the end of 2000's: Ashi went back to college once again after doing some shitty jobs due the result of dot.com bust "over-correction" (nobody was hiring, even if you have very high GPAs, as oppose to anybody can get a job, even without a degree during dot.com boom era). Virginia Tech massacre. Proposition 8 passed, banning gay marriage in California. Arnold the "Governator" became California governor. Emo was the successor of Goth culture (and the next outcast everyone loves to hate). Many states legalized marijuana. Teachers gave up telling student not to text in class. Gucci CFO became A&F's CEO, and began to open up outlet stores.... General economic climate was very gloomy and people started to cut down budget, and people tended to dress down a lot to fit in. Occupied Wall Street movement started nation wide. People started to live a more sustainable life by buying organic and local, and be environmentally responsible. Whole Foods expanded several folds. Three major US auto makers went bankrupt, destroying Detroit. 2010's and beyond: San Francisco Giants won several World Series in a roll. Some of us who graduated after dot.com bust had been around for a long time without jobs, went through lots of soul searching, emotionally depressed and distressed, and then came back and accepted this new mode of living. Lots of us went onto arts and crafts movement, and at least in SF Bay Area, the governments everywhere embraced it, so you could see a lot of local artists' works being visible as public art (graffiti as city beautification, utility boxes painted by local artists, lots of Kickstarter projects/Etsy crafts are actually handcrafted one-of-a-kind pieces done by people like you and me without much economy of scale to cut down cost. Some of us drink PBR (because it WAS the cheapest beer on the market). Hopefully one day if you get to see Ashi and other flâner photographers gracing the street and buying non-factory made art & crafts and filled-with-love homemade foods as a way of giving back to the community, you don't call them hipsters. Remember: mass produced item has no spirit, no philosophy, no love. A factory made mason jar is not a hipster mason jar. 1920's = dot.com boom 1929 = dot.com bust WWII = Wars in Middle East/Avoided Korean War/Avoided Crimean War 1950's = 2012 when soldiers came home Industrial Revolution No. 2 (late 1800's) = Internet Revolution of the 90's Arts and Crafts Movement = Counter Industrial Revolution = Love Your Community = Stop all that mechanical life

Where have all the gay guys gone...? https://youtu.be/jwXozO-qKPI BTW, the lyrics alludes to a line from Oscar Wilde. "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." There is also this covered version (I swear I've seen this guy before, but it seems this guy's native language is Italian or something). These two covering artists sing the original version though, not the "Where have all the gay guys gone" version which the original artist Mika altered during the Montreal live session. (Mika apparently is openly gay) (The beginning of the above video has no audio. This is normal) And if you like Mika... and like a more disco sound. Cheer yourself yourself up with this... I vote this as a gay anthem....

Happy birthday NS!