One Cheap Suit

FINISH IT

I'm sorry, I didn't make a mistake. I clearly stated that I was talking about 14 year olds that I knew and know, and further deepened that by talking about my experiences. Should I localize it further for you? Would that appease your pedantic nature? Right. Because 14 year olds always tell the truth about their drug use. Do you live in a vacuum or something? Do you know any young teenagers? Have you tried asking one if they smoke pot? I've got some nieces, and I've tried it, and the only answers I got were a deep blush from one (busted) and an eyeroll from the other (as I would expect). I'm glad you had the best childhood money could buy, but mine was pretty fun too. Not all experiences are the same and not all are to be judged by outsiders, and not all can be statistically laid down on a curve, either. Well, this proves my point that you can't apply YOUR moral standards to Mark's stories. It's a different moral compass. In a fictional universe.

The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert Why I like it: - Hugo Weaving in drag, Guy Pearce in drag - The bus with the drag queens on top - Ping pong balls o_O - Bob and Bernadette ...and the accepting nature of Tick's son at the end of the movie Did I mention the soundtrack? Not really an Abba fan at all, but this was great.

In other news, Amy Winehouse finally has over 24 hours of sobriety. Too soon? * (actually I think Amy Winehouse would laugh at this joke)

Oh come on. Being 14 is all about finding limits to what you can and can't get away with. The brain and the hormones are firing and most 14 year olds I've known are complete tools at that age to each other and are definitely pushing boundaries with the authority figures. As a 14 year old I - got high/got drunk - lied to my parents - stole cigarettes and money from them (never a lot though) - cheated in school - skipped school - had sex with my friends ...got caught doing some of this, and got away with more People worried about Mari's "anecdotal" evidence: What were all you doing at 14? Church camp? Ice cream socials? Daring stunts like prank phone calls and rubber bands around the kitchen sink sprayer? Or were you trying to get in somebody's pants and thinking dirty things and doing stupid things without thinking first? What makes Mari's post any different other than her admitting some things that happened in her part of the planet? Besides, this is Mark's universe, not the real one where getting all moral about a character's behavior would make sense. It's all in his head, where his morality applies, not mine OR YOURS. If he wants to put a 14 year old on a stripper pole, well, that's the story, isn't it? Frankly I found the whole thing quite entertaining, and I could pretty much picture what Will's face looked like as he looked across the audience to Grandpa Stef's disapproving glare Also - my brother in law is fond of saying (jokingly) that his job as a dad is to "keep his daughter off the pole" for as long as he can... Brad loses...

JP wakes up next to Suzanne Pleshette... Or IS Suzanne Pleshette waking up next to Bob Newhart...

Jeez, Krista, way to be a downer.

3D printer: $100 Print cartridge: $1,000,000,000,000

OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD WILL YOU READ YOUR EMAIL, 155 UNREAD MESSAGES??? What kind of heathen are you??? :::rocks back and forth:::

From one IT guy to another, go and get goodreader for iphone - lets you read and annnotate PDFs, word docs, excel spreadsheets - then save them back to a server - either webdave or dropbox style - I keep software manuals up the wazoo on my phone and refer to them often; Stitcher, for listening to podcasts without syncing them through itunes; Genius Scan for taking pictures of the equipment and service tags and memory configs and mainboards and whatever, then uploading them as PDF or whatever to various places without emailing them. The kindle app rocks.

Canadians are too polite to start their own Canada Day post, so good on Jack for doing it for them Pull one from the 2fer for me..

Between 1985 and 2000, I lost quite a few friends or acquaintances to AIDS. I've been at the bedside for some of them, the rest all died in hospitals, some with their families, and some who died with no support. For those who haven't seen it, it's pretty bad - dying of AIDS isn't like an aneurysm where you fall over dead one day. It's a long, slow process of wasting and aggressive diarrhea, all the while getting sicker as the disease progresses - with some of the weirdest illnesses, extended and frequent hospital stays become pretty normal. After a time, they either come home to die or just never come back from the hospital. One of my best friends, David, was about 5'6" and weighed 150 pounds before he went symptomatic. By the time he died a year later (in '94), I think he weighed 60 pounds and had lost his sight and hearing. On many days, his mouth was so filled up with thrush that he couldn't swallow or eat and we'd have to take him to the clinic to get nutrition in him. In 1992 and again in 1996 I saw the AIDS Quilt in Washington. It fills up the entire Washington Mall - I think its like 45,000 panels now and they don't display it all together anymore. Some say the most powerful memorial in Washington is the Vietnam one - that may be so today, but for me, the AIDS quilt and the reading of names makes me cry every time I see it.

THANK GOD I was really worrying about that drivers license. FINALLY some resolution on a critical plot point. Also, you know, Shane + Trevor sittin in a tree And Shelly is um, ah, Rachel. Or she's been grafted into Kookaburra's navigational systems.

I agree with Conner. Authors who routinely use cliffhangers are pandering to their audience in the worst way, sacrificing their craft for the cheap thrill that comes with such tactics. I'd even go so far as to say that authors who wish to dangle their precious story bits over escarpments are engaging in attention-seeking behavior. Sometimes this manifests in a need to validate their beliefs by posting threads about themselves and their writing techniques, and sometimes not. Continuing Conner's food metaphor, I'd say that stories with lots of cliff hangers are the cheap grilled cheese you'd get at any diner, rather than the succulent cheddar and onion-loaded panini sandwiches that are CJ's stories: rich plot development, deep characterizations, and lush, detailed environments. It's like I can smell the cheese from here. Obviously CJ would never feel the need to stroke his vanity in these ways. His writing is far too rich for such shenanigans, in fact a case can be made that his stories are so thick with detail and swollen with character development, they plump when you cook them.

Those aren't jorts. He's a never nude.