Dannsar

Great story, great characters, great characterisation. Toumas and Pontus ... hmmm, I bet that was fun! I liked that they got to be together at the end, although I feel you left that a little open! My poor wee head needs certainty. In some ways this reminds me of KCs Pimsin Cove. I think I am developing a liking for man fish lol. One smallish criticism, if I may. You writing style is very clean and pretty uncluttered, but I did feel a slight tendence towards overwriting. You have a great vocabulary and are very adept at using it, but perhaps a little less would do. Don't suppose you fancy writing the legend previous to this one for us, do you? You know ... the one with Pontus and Toumas

Ambivalent here. Kids should be tolerated in public when hey're being noisy. Noisy kids are happy kids. But so are kids with boundaries. The parents are at fault, usually. BTW, anybody who objects to the child on a plane or in a restaurant thingy, is quite likely not a parent who has been at the end of their tether. I provide some discipline to my niece and nephew sometimes because they know how to play their mother, and she has brought up two good kids. But as she says, sometimes she has to let it go, otherwise she'd do nothing but say no, stop, don't, can't etc. No parent wants to be a constant drone, and to be perfectly honest, the child who is that controlled is a child being improperly parented. They'll never learn the boundaries until they exceed them. One last point for those of you wanting more than two kids ... the world is ridiculously overpopulated as it is. Have one extra on top of your reproductive two, and it will be half as overpopulated again. Is that what you want to make the world into as a gift for these precious little bundles of joy that you are all gushing over as little beings you want to love, by virtue of having them? It would serve them much better to stick to two at most. One would be better for the world at the moment, but not as good for the child, so two is optimum. Tet's idea of a cargo hold would be fine, except not with BA. I mean, how do you feed your kid when you're in the Virgin Islands and the kid is in Reyjavik?

Hey, I was a bit lost with this at the beginning ... too many characters to keep track of, but isn't it always the way in life? Too many nasties, and not enough nicies! I liked your inclusion of the rainbow. How clever, and just so ... unimposing ... just right. I also liked that the attraction between the two men was left Platonic, at least to our eyes. That endless talk that two people do on the first meeting, creating a seemingly fated connection, is something that just never gets mentioned. Brilliant.

He he, what a load of old cheese lol ... but in a very good way! Very refreshing to have a laugh and a bit of reality thrown in for good measure, but not too much headbreaking stress. <edit: that's an appalling pun, I notice as I reread before posting ... but I'm leaving it > I'd do him! By the way, your writing style is something to be really admired. Clear, clean, informative, and pictorial without being painterly.

Isn't it such a hideous truism that the older we get, the more it fascinates us how much our fathers learn! And, it's never easy to get an opportunity to praise them for what they donfor you when they're still around. They make moving targets of themselves, always being just out of range. Lovely piece. Really heartwarming. Somehow the pain of loss is hugely ameliorated in the ability to look back with fondness and a deep warmth.

What a wondeful way to go I should have got the acronym because I could not fathom what the hell 'unit' was doing in there. Mmmmmm ... black eyes ... sexxxxxy.

I did not understand thus at all, I'm afraid. The jump from one reality to another makes no sense. If the first part was a dream, how was it so detailed about how it all happened. I'm afraid I don't get it. Another thing I don't get is that Clark is marooned on the top floors of the north tower. But Tom hears the sound of crashing glass, then screams. Now, this could only have been the north tower collapsing, which happened after tower two was hit; or, it was tower two being hit, and there is no way that would have been audible in voice. And what's all this about first responders digging their own colleagues out of the wreckage of ten million, yes, ten million tonnes of cement? It just feels like a bungled attempt to shoe horn in the awfulness of those last phone calls pre-disaster, and the hideous after effects on the people who went to help. And it failed, unfortunately. But only in that small degree. The writing is fantastic. The suspense is tingling. The sex is thrilling. The emotion is vibrant. The sense of small man, big buildings is very real. The insult to Americans generally, but New Yorkers particularly is palpable. I'm really saddened because I like your writing usually, and this is in most respects very excellent. But it takes too many liberties with the facts.

Yup, I agree ... this is surely a potential start! I like Linus, for all that you made a seedy lumpen of him! He's got bitchin backbone now. Seems to me that Linus is now getting something he craved when he was invisible before ... uncomplicated society from the people he met. However, I also liked the snapshot style of the piece. Although it has expansion possibilities, it works well on its own.

This is a sad and difficult situation, but it strikes me that your wife is being very reasonable, here. Personally, I think divorce is the only option, and here's why. You can't fulfil yourself sexually with your wife, and for that you may end up hating her. Better to separate and remain as friends. It is far more productive for the children for two divorced parents who can communicate to separate and function still lovingly and supportively of the child. Furthermore, unless your wife can accept you indulging your sexuality within the marriage (which is not cheating, btw, as long as you discuss it openly beforehand and set agreed boundaries), then it is unfair on her to expect her to remain in a situation where she knows she is emotionally loved but not physically. For most women these are deeply intertwined, not so much for men, though. She deserves the same emotional fulfilment as you do. She is giving you the freedom to work it out. Sounds to me like she doesn't want lose you, either as a friend, husband, or father. Also sounds to me like she regards you as a decent father. Therefore, I can't see that the likelihood of it all going nasty is as strong as James has warned about. No criticism of James. He has a valid caution. Ask yourself this ... can you see a time in the rest of your life where you are not going to want a man sexually? If the answer is no, then you are at least bisexual. Your best friend needs honesty in this respect. If the same question is posed for women and the answer is also no, then you are gay, inasmuch as that term means anything bordered. None of us have sexualities that are totally fixed, just more or less extreme in there centredness. I saw some research a few years back that suggested perhaps as many as half the gay adult male population will have sex with a woman after coming out. I don't believe the numbers there, but I do believe that it is likely. Thus, sexuality is not a single option deal. In the UK there is a group called gay dads. Perhaps there is something similar where you live? I know it helped my mate through his coming out crisis. He knew he was gay, too, but did not want to be, at a similar age to you. He then lived another lifetime with a wife and two kids, and hung himself at 42 when it all got too much. Luckily they found him and he is still with us. But you should understand that burying your true self is a dangerous exercise. The most remarkable statement on this that I have heard him make is pretty profound. After his first overnight sexual experience with another man, he realised that, for him, "waking up with another man's arms around me just felt so natural, so right." James' point about the lawyers is a good cautionary note. I'd suggest that you try to find a divorce mediator, once you have made your decision to split, if you do. Keep it out of the courts until the last moment if you can. Let the courts do the final technical bit of formalising the agreement. It matters not when you go to lawyers and ask them to handle it, that you say you want it amicable. They will try to screw the other party over, and ugliness will ensue. Mediators are a growingly recognised way of working through this without the hideous expense, both financial and emotional. And finally. Good luck. I hope you find what you need. It sounds to me like you have that in the mother of your child, at least.

The teen girl market as Dark said. It kept Jedward in waaaaaay past their exit date. This is a very big driver segment of the music industry these days. You don't have to be new and innovative, just new and bonny in the eyes of a market group just arriving at sexual awareness and having no institutional memory of the last big thing in the sector. Oh and lots of ITunes money to spend

I've been reading a story on holiday and come across one of my pet hates ... putting *words* in *asterisks* to show emphasis. The contractions talked about actually get over this problem. If a character says "I won't do that", or "I will not do that" there is a difference in emphasis in the second one if the character's natural idiom is to use the contraction. Just an example that came to me ...

Dude ... the whole point is for a laugh, methinks If you find them funny, shoorly you shouldn't be inserting derogatory names ... you should be taking some advice from Percivial

Get as many clothes as I can off. God, I hate clothes! Then lie down for a few minutes and just feel the cool. mmmmmmm

I assert that this is an assinine attempt to assuage the fears of the assimilators, and assuch it's in grave danger of being assilly a de-rail assome might assign the asscription. And I further assent to its asspect. Fankoo

This. And it always generates electricity! I mean how the pages are not standing up on their own with static, I'll never understand than / then ... really gets on my lactatorials could care less ... that also grates, but I've always just written it off as an American idiom ... or is it not? If it's an idiom we just need to get over it pucker ... its not even anatomically correct. If I find the pucker that invented that one ... (admits to having used it, though ) chute ... offs, lets lose the romance here, eh?! man pussy ... ehm, naw ... any guy who's ever had his mouth on both a girl and a man pussy is gonna understand that the epithet doesn't work cum / precum ... how dirtyfying is this spelling? What's wrong with come? It's like adoloscent attempts at being grown up to 17 in the schoolyard. nectar ... nope, that's just giving it graces it doesn't have, and sure as hell doesn't need. It's just a nice shiny cleaning fluid! Oh, alright, that's too clinical, but I'd rather not get caught up in a fight with a feckin bumble bee for whats emerging from his dick Penis ... conversely, here ... I really like the use of penis. I used to think it very clinical, but it's not really. But my all time pet hates are two words that make me feel sick, like dirty bloody socks ... homosexual and lesbian. I know, I know, nonsensical, but they make me shudder. And queer ain't far behind. Taking all of this together, I vote that we all bow down to Andy's methods of sex talk

Here's a thing ... speech is grammar. A grammar of a language is only a description of how that language works syntactically to construct transferable semantic proposition ... it enables the decoding from the coding. Unfortunately, the pedantry police get it in their tiny little minds that the described standard of a language is the only way. Whereas, it is only actually the median 60% of the common speech pattern. The other 40% is what else is used but less frequently. It is not wrong, just non-standard. And we all gay people know what happens when the non-standard is defined as wrong. Nephy, you use what you use for a character. What is important is that it has a dose of reality, and that means consistency. You are writing a fiction. You decide what the realities are. Of course, there is a line to be drawn at where it turns into annoying for the reader, or inappropriate to the characterisation. But other than that, you choose. But let me assure you. People do not speak in 'proper' grammar. They only speak. And the grammar is only an afterapplied pedantry. Speech is colour. And none of us are the same colour. Not really.

Welcome, fàilte! More Scots needed!

Might be illegal in CA ... but does that make it a hanging offence? Maybe all these guys have cheated on Mrs Bobbit? And anyway, isn't actually appropriate ... I mean the song sez so ... Swing low, sweet chariot. Perhaps it's just a way of saying you're a humper 'neath the bumper. It's not that bally offensive I don't understand all the ballyhoo ... no-one asked you out on a date, did they? Do all these drivers get behind the wheel stoned? Maybe they're all driving cars specially adapted for a driving test icle Do these ones pull up when you see a pant wetting Testarossa in front of you? Surely they should be on the front with the bull bars? My man has a carriage with nuts But he drives like a freakin wee klutz He likes driving bangers Adorned with low hangers But they get scraped if the wheels are in ruts They're all very neat and smooth. Is that cos they're out in pubic? So, if they fall off when you're driving along and hit a pothole, does that mean the driver has busted a nut? Crivvens, Jings, that boy swings When he drives by, my heart swings I'd give my arm and all my blings To get my hand on his dangly things Hokum pokum, what's that scrotum Said the cop, as up he wrote em We're no keen on your bumper totem And I canna think your girl will dote em

Arse is onomatopoeically more effective. It is also more accurate because it doesn't have the calculated ambivalence of ass (donkey type creature). It's one of those things that the US gets very uptight about, I think. Don't use a word which is the actual word. Just use one close to it and close your eyes and ears to the allusion. The US seems to want to be more 'polite' about it for some reason. Mind you, we're not exactly innocent of false innocence in the UK either. I mean Jings Crivvens for Jesus Christ, Jeepers Creepers (same), Bleedin Delilah for Bloody Hell, Flying Fig for f**king Damn, James Hunt for (work it out!), Bally for Bloody, etc etc etc My granny was the worst. She hated 'pregnant', preferring 'expecting'. But when it came to 'f**king hell', she used 'buckie hoo' which sounds innocent enough, but the buckie part was for f**k, and the hoo part was for the Scottish pronunciation of whore ... hoor, as we say it. I am quite certain she did not get this, but instead had adopted it culturally from elsewhere, unthinking. She'd be mortified if she thought this had been the derivation!

Well, I hope you get the wind up, but not too much. A wee blow sure gets rid of the cobwebs and can be very entertaining to watch. But a hurricane is something else entirely. I help run a Highland games, so I put a few images up for you to look at ... one of a very fit weight thrower ( slurp )

Ha ha! Children children. I can assure you that when I answered it wasn't in there, cos I wouldn't go in there, so it must have been moved before that. Which in itself must tell you something about its nature.Therefore your somewhat soggy logic fails. Surprising that. Anyway, must off and douse my pants which are on fire. Apparently. Ouch. Now, while I'm doing that, the rest of you can run along with Arbour and play nice with his toys. I'll run off and ask the relevant people to reinstate it to Games and Humour. Or maybe even ask them to create a new forum called trash and tripe. Gawsh. Water please someone.

Oh right, and who died and made you God Almighty? As I said I'm trying to restrict ... by discussion and engagement ... that, (not so) clever clogs, is different from reporting (a contributor action, not a Mod one) - which I did not do hiding (a Mod action) - which I could not do locking (a mod action)- which I could not do Furthermore, you, like me, are not a mod, so it is not for me to decide, then it is alss not for you to decide what is off-topic, it is for a mod to decide. I think you've just broken your own rules by telling me what I should and shouldn't discuss, or deem to be right wrong or indifferent, by doing precisely the same yourself. Or is that too complicated for you to understand? Furthermore, if you look at all the previous comments, up until a certain point, the thread was being treated seriously. Or are you trying to suggest to me that posts 2 Nephy +1 3 Cia +1 6 Krista +5 7 Marzipan +1 8 Dannsar +4 9 Mike L +2 13 YOU +6 all of whom treated the subject with some level of seriousness, were actually the ones who were off topic immediately, and the ones that came after with comments like alchooooool and LOLZ were on topic? The people in the first set of posts are generally regarded as serious people on here Take a walk Mr Arbour. The Neg button was taken away to keep people like you from hijacking decent commentary on threads and making people suffer for decent engagement. Otherwise you should have objected in +6 post that the thread should have been in Games and HUMOUR. If you can't compute that as you say, there are latent self esteem issues with teeneagers and gay males in particular, and then simply sit back when words like 'trainwreck' start getting used and moving the thread off to less secure places, then I suggest you might want to take a course in common sense before you start 'loading crap onto' me. You also mention that the OPer did not post further. Well how on earth do you know? I have watched this thread, and what happened was that as new posts started coming up in the outset, they were all +1d fairly quickly. In my experience that is the action of an OPer actually +ing, unless of course you're telling us that it was you did all of those +s? And if you didn't, you can't know that the original OPer did not. Finally, you're a writer I believe, with a rep of 2650, so presumably words meean something to you ... I couldn't actually say, never having managed to read your stuff yet, but I see you're written 3.1 million of them, so it's a fairly safe bet. And yet you can dispute that a comment such as in a thread entitled actually refers to love, or the potential of it. How many times have you ever heard of someone 'falling in like' with someone else? You might only be able to concentrate on one thing at a time MR. Arbour, there are others out here who can hold several thoughts at once. I couldn't care less if you're hosted or mosted, you're sure as hell pretty damned ignorant. Now, run along and play with your toys and stop greeting over spilt neg buttons. And if you want to have my opinion on neg buttons, take a look at my past statuses. And while you're about it, take a look at my sig, too. It's people like you it was designed for.

Apology accepted, but the original admonition on trainwreck was not aimed at you ... after all you were being positive about it. Anyway ... enough of this ...

Umm ... I'll decide what I think is daft, thank you. And nobody's trying to restrict commentary on the subject. I'm just trying to restrict silly commentary off topic, on what can be a very emotionally difficult experience for some people. And it needs to be remembered that while no one needs to comment, as you say, that is ignoring the fact that someone with self esteem issues on top of emotional turbulence might come along and read stuff that characterises particular sections of the community as, for instance, trainwrecks. See, that's the problem. Talking nonsense into the ether is often assumed to be saying stuff that affects nobody else. It's just one's opinion. It's almost as if it were talking into a vacuum where it loses potential consequence because of the semantic desert. But it's not. And ironically, that makes it vacuous. It also makes it somewhat hazardous, if not plain dangerous. Maybe you've been lucky in your life and never had to question your sexuality on the basis of the potential opprobrium of the rest of society. Maybe you've never had to worry about losing your friends be cause of who you are intrinsically. Maybe you've never had to worry about being bullied because of what turns you on. Maybe you've never had to contemplate suicide because you're terrified of the consequences of being different. I don't know. You're clearly not one of the many kids who do actually end their lives every year because they are mercilessly taunted by other thickwits who call them 'trainwreck' and other much worse stuff. But your blasé attitude about your blessings doesn't protect those others from all that bollocks. People like me do. So if it's daft and dangerous in my opinion, I'm gonna call it. Your freedom to speak potentially damaging nonsense is gonna come way below that. No apologies will be given.

I think Anyta asked about a definition of cheating, which is pretty much the most important part. My boyfriend took years to be comfortable with me ogling good looking guys. He saw that as a form of cheating. Psychological infidelity I suppose. He's secure enough to do it himself now, mind! Anyhow, after about eleven years of not getting the sex I needed, I asked permission for a f**k buddy. I thought it was only decent to ask permission. I got it, not that I use it that much, and I keep it discreet. So that's not cheating, as far as I am concerned. I have absolutely no intention of getting emotionally involved with someone else. I have all I need in the man I have lived with for nearly 15 years. And what's more, I don't consider it an open relationship, because that's much more free and easy. A f**k buddy is regular, not just whoever you fancy in a club some night. It's true that 'cheating' is a symptom of something lacking in a relationship. But that lack does not necessarily have to be the entirety of the basis of a relationship. Therefore, satisfying it does not necesarily have to be the end of a relationship. If someone's taking the piss, then fair enough, GTTF. Recent statistical research showed that perhaps as much as one third of children are born to men who are not the fathers they assume themselves to be. This means that the much vaunted greater propensity for women to equate sex and love, and therefore fidelitous sexual relationships as non-negotiable, is not nearly as strong as has traditionally been assumed. I think it's pretty clear that they are much more monogamous than men still, but monogamy is not an intrinsic part of our makeup. In fact, it is very much socially constructed. I often think that the reason people get so pissed off about 'cheating' is because they feel their dignity is being eroded by a partner who is treating them with less than proper respect by getting it on the side, lying about it, and being very self satisfied about getting away with it ... treating them like idiots. Really it's the treating them like idiots part that constitutes the cheating, because if you treat a life partner like an idiot, or to put it another way, you have no respect for them. then why are you with them in the first place? You are cheating on their status as a human worthy of dignity. No partner can be everything. No human should go looking for a partner like that, because they are seriously in danger of frustration. So something on the side once or twice may actually be ... how to put this ... helpful every now and then. But there needs to be dignity for the other person. And here's a thought ... what about the guy who has a very high sex drive, but his wife has gone off it after childbirth. Or what about the woman who has no sex after her husband is injured in an accident?It may actually be demeaning for the 'lacking' person to know that their partner is getting a little satisfaction of a basic human drive while the partner is out of action, temporarily or permanently. And here's another thought ... what about the bisexual who needs their psychosexual requirements fulfilled! Not all bisexuals can subjugate these drives particularly well. So, do they all hang around waiting for a fit hermaphrodite to walk by, so they can get it all ways? And a further thought. In my life I have been with two bi married guys for short term sexual 'relationships' for the want of a better word. They wouldn't consent to having their cocks sucked, or to topping, because they kept their penises for their wives. That not only seems like questionable 'cheating' to me, it actually sounds like a degree of resoect and fidelity for their wives. One more thought ... we're all reading this on screens. How many of us have busted a nut over the keyboard? Is that cheating, cos it's sure as hell using someone else to get off with ... and the other half is rarely involved. For that matter, the next logical step might be that masturbation is cheating because it's sex with a phantasm, or as it is otherwise put ... sex with someone you love ... like you are only supposed to love one person at a time people, and that's the SO Finally, please don't think I condone it all. Far too much of it falls into the repetitive taking-the-wife-for-a-mug category, for me to think that. But perhaps it's not always as bad as the narrow minded social structures we indulge ourselves in nowadays might like to tell us it is.