Drak

I'm in the middle of my fourth or fifth complete tour of all eight seasons. Even after all these years, Peep Show cracks me up. Can't wait for season nine!

Yahoo disrespects gayauthors. The picture above speaks for itself. I complained to my little search engine provider, DuckDuckGo, which gets its feed from Yahoo & Bing, but have not heard anything back. I may have to stop using DDG, because there are too many sites I just can't find. How about coughing up exact url matches, Yahoo? No such problems with Google.

There's an article on vulture.com on the various controversies surrounding Ellora's Cave, an erotica publisher. I remember visiting that site once. I liked it, because the background was dark and easy on the eyes. I may have purchased a story out of curiosity there or at another web site, but I think it was purchased there. Along with the well-endowed stud, the story was also studded with stylistic, logical and grammatical errors, and the explicit sex scenes made me laugh. My curiosity kept me going for twenty or thirty pages, transforming into a morbid curiosity before I gave up. No one at the publisher's had bothered to give the story anything more than a hurried once-over, maybe a Microsoft Word spell-check at best. That must be how some authors churn out hundreds of titles. I did not complain. I got value for my five or ten dollars in a different way, encouragement to write.

Russia has had a bad millennium, that's all. Reading that region's history is like walking through an overgrown, unmaintained cemetery--depressing, sad, horrible. Their greatest composer in all of history, Tchaikovsky, abandoned Russia for better lands, but when he returned, they murdered him for being gay. Their rulers include Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, and Nicholas II, the last, murdered czar. None were good for gays. None were nice, smart or even half-way competent. Madness. Bloodlust. The last czar deserved to be executed for his many crimes, but the Russian Orthodox Church sainted him and dubbed him martyr of Christ, merely because they disliked his atheist successors. Imagine being ruled autocratically for a thousand years by an endless succession of bloody-minded fools incapable of reasoning their way out of a paper bag. Now the poor sods have Putin, who hates the gays, hates the West, hates democracy, and thinks nothing matters, not God, not good, not rule of law, nor philosophy. All that matters in Putin's world is pride, ego, this small span of years we call life. He wants to be the king of his little hill until he dies and is terrified lest anyone wrest some small particle of his power away from him. I hate Putin and think he is evil. I hope that he does not commit a great evil in our time.

Channel Four's Peep Show is the best-written comedy on television and one of the few that I can watch over and over again. I don't know of anything remotely like it. Everyone I've shown the show to here in the U.S. hates it, absolutely hates it, possibly because it is unique, unlike any other show ever produced, with an ongoing narrative from either Jez the stoner or Mark Corrigan the geek, and the camera shoots scenes from the viewpoint of one of these two gentlemen. Although the show is about sex, drugs, and relationships, the writers toss in pedantic references to history, science, economics, politics, sexuality, psychology, and philosophy. Maybe people hate this show because it is an intellectual comedy. I think the show bursts with brilliance, and many in the U.K. agree, because the show has endured eight seasons across the Atlantic and even spawned an inferior imitation in the U.S. The writing, the camera work, and the acting approach perfection, although the writing carries the show. Sadly, there is only one season remaining of Peep Show, the ninth, after which the show ends. Thank goodness for our English brothers, producing the finest television shows in the world.

I'm always a bit surprised how gun owners seem so aggrieved, like a persecuted minority, as though the U.S. is hounding them from door to door. There is all of this anger and indignation at the mere thought that guns are dangerous. The lady doth protest too much.

Comment verification + Comment moderation + Comment Location = Full Page is the Blogger golden formula.

Comments here on gayauthors.org are fine. Let me say that right away. This web site is a moderated, safe, fenced-in area of the internet. If you blog out in the wild, wild west, that is to say today's Internet, on your own little blogspot or wordpress or what-have-you, unfenced-in and left to your own devices when it comes to security and access, then be skeptical, please. Be skeptical of comments that are left on your blog and of messages emailed to you. Please. Ask yourself first, is the message what it appears to be? Some comments are left by human beings, others by automated bots, which is to say computer programs that access a database of canned messages that may have, at one time, been written by a human being, with an eye to appearing genuine and able to satisfy the scrutiny of most readers, and deposited on a vast number of blogs, including your own. Why would a bot do such a thing? Because it is trying to promote a meme or a web site. I visited a gay author's blog tonight in which a bot had deposited a message that appeared to be a question asking for a recommendation on blogging software. The comment was left because it promoted a web site having something to do with e-cigarettes, a fashionable and profitable product. The writer wrote about five paragraphs in reply, not realizing that the commenter was not human. I will not identify the author. I tried to warn him, but his blog requires logging in with a Wordpress username. Look at the links, please. If nothing else, scan the links. The links give bots away faster than anything. But sometimes, a bot merely wants to promote an idea. If the comment is generic, then it is likely a lie. Delete it. Bots and their authors can have more motives than I have discussed, but the above is enough.

Guns are dangerous and should be viewed with respect and fear. One needn't be sober, calm, fully awake, sane, or skilled to pull a trigger. The gun wants you to kill a human being. That is what it is designed for. That is what is shown on television. Killing is glamorous, manly, and heroic in the fantasies on film. In reality, one can spend the remainder of one's natural life in a maximum security prison. Then there is the guilt, if one has a conscience, and the loss of respect, the loss of friendships, the loss of dreams and hopes. There is relentless hate from the family and friends of the murdered one. All of that is a heavy burden for any soul to carry, and that is why guns should be respected and feared by those who have them.

Yes I think that some people are drawn to the power. I say it's nice to live in a society where we have the option of not using, not carrying, not courting disaster.

I've lived in red states all my life. I walked into a pawn shop and walked out with a loaded firearm in less than two hours. That was twenty-some years ago. The situation has not changed since then or else things have gotten easier if anything. I keep my guns in a safe place. I have misgivings about them. I'd prefer to sell them now, but the pawn shop offered some piddling amount, less than fifty dollars I believe. Maybe one day, I will be able to get a decent price. On the other hand, if society collapses, say, in the event of nuclear war, I guess those things will be worth a great deal.

The gun is democratic. It requires little in the way of training or skill. What can be easier than pointing a gun and pulling a trigger? The gun does not care who you are--rich or poor, skilled or unskilled, young or old, strong or weak, smart or foolish, sane or insane, or good or evil. Guns deal death, and death is equal opportunity. Anyone can pull the trigger. What an easy thing a gun is! Anyone can die. A genius may be slain by an idiot, a billionaire by a common thief, or more likely, a good person by an evil person. What a remarkable thing a gun is, leveling the entire world just like that. Whenever good people are slain by evil-doers, and this does happen often enough, people hate guns and want to ban them or place limitations upon their use. Maybe democracy is wrong where guns are concerned. The evil should not have guns. The insane should not have guns. The old, those whose mental and visual faculties have decayed, should not have guns. Probably everyone would agree on that. Should the poor have guns? The foolish? The young? Then there are people that love guns, really love them. They believe that guns equal freedom, freedom from fear if nothing else. Guns equal power, because what power is greater than the power to end life? Guns give control to the user, control over destiny. Some people feel confident in themselves, in their judgment. They do not fear making mistakes. The power to take away life does not frighten these people as much the possibility they might lose control to someone else with a gun or with a strong arm. I do not see where a gun benefits me, unless I were to receive a specific threat, in which case my opinion would change. I think that guns are dangerous and pose an unnecessary risk for most people uninvolved in the threads of violence, the tentacles oozing with blood spread throughout the world. To remain uninvolved, safe and protected by a law-abiding society, is a blissful luxury that we enjoy and take for granted in our wondrous modern age. A gun is an ugly thing, capable of great evil, and sometimes humans are capable of foolish decisions. The possibility of someone getting the draw on me and ending my life, remote as that may be, does not frighten me as much the possibility of making some careless mistake with a weapon of great power. If someone else takes my life, then I am in the right of things, and they are in the wrong. Being in the right of things matters to me. They will die too, after all, and the only difference is a small sum of years. In the end, everyone is equal. The gun just hurries things up a bit for those that lack patience.

Some of the writers at shortbread see the proverbial writing on the wall and have started up a new site, although unfortunately they chose an url with a year-date in it, something like newlit2014, which doesn't sound so cool now in 2015. They may be stuck with that. Honestly I don't know why they just didn't head over to one of the many already established competing sites. Starting a new site is a lot of work. No. Just, no. As for the stories, they will not be lost. If the rebel faction, the geeks creating newlit2014 or whatever, can create a web site, then they can use one of those infernal programs that can vacuum all the content up from a site, programs with names like AutoSuck (?I think?), and I imagine they have been using just such a program to preserve all the content so it will not be lost when shortbread goes off the air. Problem with shortbread though is their site has some kind of bot-defeating feature that requires the user to click a button prior to reading the full story. I don't know whether that will defeat AutoSuck or not. That may indeed be the intent. I hate those programs myself because they're kind of, not nice, put it that way, not the sort of activity an admin wants to observe in the site log. (Probably a quick way to get oneself banned, btw.) The best sorts of those programs are extremely advanced though and probably can do everything needed. Plenty of content is a good 'problem' to have. In theory, more content should translate into more and longer visits from new and old readers. I always search the database and never browse new, maybe because I'm aware of the precise issue you mention and want to go find the hidden stuff from those that post once in a while or posted long ago or are long forgotten and have moss growing over their stories. Also, I am still in the process of discovery. One thing that seems amiss about the search function is how it defaults to alphabetical order. That allows gaming the system, i.e. naming your story "000 Aardvark" or something early in the alphabet or having a nym like "00Aardvark" in order to appear near the top of the displayed results, or contrariwise, "Zzz" in order to catch those readers that click the Descending/Ascending button. Probably defaulting to search by-date would actually be fairer, although that favors authors who post frequently, say, tiny easily produced stories or chapters over those that post a single, big, chunky novel with all the chapters included at once. If you're posting all hundred-thousand words at a time, then you get less time on the New Posts list. It's not really possible to please everybody and probably any system could be gamed somehow or favors one group or another. I think so too. It is also fortunate that Myr understands the tech side.

ha ha, no tears at the funeral, eh? One thing I have learned is to make backups on my local hard drive, not only of the stories but any comments/criticism received. I like GayAuthors and feel it is advanced compared to a lot of other story-posting sites. Plenty of sites do not have the capabilities that GA does. I was browsing Nifty the other day and noticed it does not link to GA, although GA links to it. Nifty has not changed since back in the day, I think ten years ago. The only way to offer feedback to a writer is via direct personal email, if said writer posted an email address, and if that email address remains valid.

That reminds me of why I don't get on Facebook. Enjoyed reading your post. San Francisco is a lovely city. I'd take it over Chicago any day.

From what I've observed, another writing site, shortbreadstories.co.uk appears to be dying. The site's domain registration expires Feb. 24th, 2015, opening up an opportunity for an enterprising individual to seize an url with a considerable profile on Google and redirect incoming traffic to, say, gayauthors.org. Word to the wise. The funeral may be viewed here and in their message forum. Nothing's certain, but the situation doesn't seem promising. Hopefully, a similar fate won't ever befall GA. I know what happens when the principal person behind a web site loses interest or croaks. Zip, bam, boom, the thing can disappear overnight in a flash or with a few weeks' notice if the owner still lives and cares.

Thank you. I have the lady to thank, she was a beautiful person and dear friend that inspired me and taught me many things.

A collection of short stories and essays, each less than one thousand words, about death, loss, and the supernatural.

Maybe it is new UK slang. I don't remember hearing that in the wonderful UK (and original and best) version of "Queer as Folk." Or maybe I did and just forgot. Thanks for the info. I think I can imagine where the meaning came from.

Kewl. Thanks for the confirmation. I guess it is slang rather than foreign--Urban Dictionary, after all.

I didn't get it either. There must be some foreign meaning to the word "pulled." Maybe it means something like "got lucky?"

If you're playing and having fun then that is what really matters. The rest is icing on the cake! There is a lot I don't know about the game too, and that's what makes the game so fascinating, the sheer complexity and endless number of possibilities. There may be someone that comes on here and says, "hey drak, I found a better move than you did!"

AVG is another free one that a lot of people use. It is fine. You really can't go wrong with any of the mainstream antivirus programs. People have their preferences based on reviews they have read, their own experiences and the user interface and feature set.

Depends on the people involved, as with all human groups. If you've got social butterflies, maybe. A straight lady friend of mine loves her book club, or at least has never complained about it, and it has been meeting for years. I considered joining, but first I read one of their picks. Eh... I told her it was interesting and very accurate historically. Regarding your sole gay guy, I'd reckon there's not much overlap between lesbian and gay fiction, is there? I read a lot of books about gay guys or otherwise written by gay male authors. The only lesbians I've got on my shelf are Mary Renault, who readers thought was a gay man when she first published, and probably some others I'm not really sure about, like Doris Lessing. On the other hand, maybe cross-pollination is enriching and he will enjoy the exposure to literature about a different group of outsiders. Mary Renault wrote amazingly good gay male fiction. I thought she was a he, too. She had me fooled along with the rest.

I'm not and never have been curious about the book, though I've heard of it via the mainstream media. In my opinion, Anne Rampling (Anne Rice) did S&M right twenty years ago. I really don't know what all the fuss is about when the scene has been covered in so many books all the way back, what, a hundred years, to The Story of O, which was an unsatisfying read I thought, maybe because it was hetero, and even centuries ago, by the scandalous Rousseau, who made everything seem so awful. Been there, done that, got the tee shirt, what's the biggie? Oh well, the power of marketing, right? They're selling, and people are buying. That's the takeaway. It's all about the packaging, not so much what's in the package.