Dannsar

As I said in the Iconoclasts 3 thread, I just thought someone had said something about Obama that Private Tim and TetRefine had to agree with. That would cause an awful lotta shaking in those boys! Sky falling in, hell freezing over sorta stuff

Oh lordy, can some Mod or other please lock this thread cos it's just got vacuous now. This sort of daft talk can do nothing but damage. The original poster was looking for some advice, but this has now descended into stupidity.

Dan, you could try hypnotism, or brainwashing, or knocking him on the head, or keeping him drugged forever, or blackmailing him, or paying him, or ... or ... or, well nothing really.You know as well as the rest of us that if you did any of the above, he'd hate you. I think you knew the answer to this before you asked it, and it's really only a rhetorical sigh of a post? The fact is, if he's your friend, then he already loves you, just not in the way you might want. Remember, he might get together with you for a bit of fun and exploration. But if he's not really our way inclined, then you're gonna be upset in the end. I am assuming he knows about your orientation already? And if he does, and he's also 17, then it's a fairly safe bet he'll have given you the signals already if he's interested. Just the same as you will have given them to him if you think there's a possibility. You're 17yo males FFS!! Here's the most useless bit of advice anybody can give you ... get over it. It is also the most useful piece of advice, and the most difficult one to be able to enact. But at the end of the day, that is what you are going to have to do. It's hell. And yeah, I'm 44, but I only got there by taking the route via 17, you know! Honestly, if you knew the pain us olds have endured over unfulfilled crushes ... oh enough already For the sake of your relationship with him in the future, you need to be careful. It is far better to have a very good friend you can still see and talk to, than an alienated one who is frightened to come near you because he knows the difficulties it poses for you, and the awkwardness it causes for him. There's another way to look at that. I am sure you have some close friends that you just would not want to get naked with. I have a really good friend, and someone else suggested it to us once. We were both nearly sick on the spot. It's quite possible that, even if he was prone to a bit of exploration, that you'd be the last person on earth he'd do it with. And I have to tell you ... cherish that. That's someone who wants you for what's on the inside and what he can give to you in life generally, rather than someone who wants to get more intimate with all that entails. I had a really really really bad crush on a guy when I was about 23 or 24. I wasn't out then. God almighty, was he nice about it, but I didn't take the hint nearly fast enough, now that I look back. Sometimes you just have to face up to the reality of the situation. Like Cia, I think, said ... you ca give the signals, but if they're ignored, display some good judgement, and try to get over it. Good luck!

Marky. As usual, powerful, shocking, breathtaking. Keep going, boy. You'll get there. Mind you, it might help the rest of us if you didn't write that porno shit in the middle of it ... I mean ... bare naked torsos, wellies, and big choppers! Oooh errrr blessus. Oh, and ehm, we've seen the profile pic ... I'D pay YOU to look at that face. Funny how bullies throw shite which is the exact opposite of the facts!

Lordy, Krista! If you'll forgive me, that seems incredibly naive. How do you have a full and meaningful relationship with a partner if they cannot meet your family and friends, if you can't talk about them to work colleagues etc etc? Coming out is waaaaaay more than shouting "I'm bent! Get over it!". It is the freedom to live your life to its fullest. Furthermore 'coming out - you are who you are' is a contradiction in terms. If they don't know you are gay, then you are decidedly not 'who you are, to your friends and family already'. I understand that your underpinning philosophy is supportive. But this is a very misleading statement. It's almost like saying 'yeah ... coming out .... well we know you want to, because it will make you feel whole ... but you don't need to, to make yourself feel whole ... so don't bother ... and feel unwhole instead, with all that comes with that ... because, truly, it doesn't matter'. Go back to my post and you will see what sort of effects that has.

Personal circumstances is all, as most people have said. I came out pretty much as soon as I was able once it was all settled in my head. I just decided ... cos I'm an awkward cus ... that I didn't care what the rest of the world thought, they could just get bloody well on with it. My mother, for instance, never disputed it really, but didn't want the neighbours to know. Well, tough. But as, especially jamessavik, most people said, it needs to be for your reasons, and you need to understand that you are going to have to live with the consequences. As far as I was concerned, the consequences of staying in were far worse than coming out. I just do not see the benefit in giving in timidly to twats. So, I got beaten up by my cousin and my face was twice its usual size and I couldn't see out of one eye etc etc etc. Would I do the same again? Damn right. But as you can see, you have to be ready for the consequences to be rather different to how you might like. I would say, also, though, that this all works in the opposite way too. My mate was married with two kids and had tried his hardest not to be gay. So he hung himself. Thankfully somebody found him, but this does illustrate that it is not only the xternal which is important. But whatever you decide, good luck and God bless, if you have one of those.

Does this mean that rubbing one's crystal balls is also likely to get one beaten to a pulp? Oh dear, I feel the mists coming on again ... or is that the vapours

Cogs? There's cogs? And there was us all thinking it just tumbled out of you in one easy stream. Ah, well, bang goes another fecking illusion! This site is getting right bad for my innocence.

Changed my life? Nah! Well, except that now not only do I read a lot, I also write. So, yes, it's changed my life ... I now have even less time. Thanks a bundle ppl! But, seriously, I love it.

Ahem, did they construct all that stuff? Did it not happen and they invented the pictures. If the opinion of the 21yo above is anything to go by, then there is one hell of a lot to get onto young people about. Realism for a start. Now, tell me, is 2000+ and rising arrests by the Met an unfair figure whitewashed into existence by the press? This is just ... ocht never mind

OK, so here is my full review. I decided to wait until the contest was over before posting. This was my preferred story. I voted for this. Even though there were four other entries which had sufficient quality to be considered, for me this was way out in front. Here's why: Well done to JC! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- OK. What the hell was this! When I was seven I used to read till 2 in the morning. Reader's Digest (of all things), but that was me! I remember telling myself that looking up a dictionary was pointless for all the words I didn't understand. It was far better to just let them fill themselves in as I went along. And so it was for this story. I was lost. Hopelessly, utterly, directionlessly lost. I could not get a handle on who was who. I couldn't even get a grip on the names and how they related to each other. so, eventually I decided to read and let it wash over me to see what the real point was. And, in fact, I think that the point was this uncertainty. In life, in how we deal with things. In how we relate to each other. In how we relate things together. In how we conflate and confuse things and come up with misleading thought tracks. Now, some people know I am autistic. I have to say, this was like being inside an autist's head. Things moved to places they shouldn't when they should have. The moved to places they should have when they shouldn't. Ideas came together from seemingly antithetical places and generated new ideas. Relations and misunderstanding abounded, and yet there was incredible empathy in some places that seemed almost unbelievable. And at the bottom of it all was an undercurrent of deep, deep fear. It seemed nobody felt particularly secure. About anything. And even those who did seem to be doing OK, were actually as far apart as the moon and mars. The parents; Lucian and Cameron; Lucian and Jason; Jason and Cameron; Jason and Lucian. Jason and Liam. Another thing I have always done is to work a theme over in headings. Twist it and play with it. Someone somewhere is... Cracking! And lastly about autism ... Lucian did not have even the merest clue as to how far he was pushing Cameron. So close and yet oh so far away. A typical autism relationship. One member thinking all was fabulous with the world; the other one as lonely as a snowflake in the desert. Your approach to point of view was very provoking. Changing was interesting because at times I had no idea who was talking. I could not even logically work it out, sometimes. At other points you wrote it as a script. In the middle of prose! I'll bet you got disciplined for that in school, but what an effective tool! A fantastic way to change the pov within a super pov structure. Like a whorl in a fingerprint. It all seemed as of a piece, and yet the pieces never seemed to come together. And Lucian. Poor Lucian. That need to get away and be away. To start over. To not be a thorn in everybody else's side. To not do right for doing wrong. As if going away would be the end of existence and the end of difficulty. Except it isn't. We can never escape from ourselves. I thought this was one of the most astonishing and innovative pieces I've ever read. I loved it, was lost in it, was lost by it, and was lost to it. Somebody somewhere is eating a Toffee Crisp

OK, here is my full review. Idecided to leave these until the contest was over. Hahaha. What a hoot. I honestly thought I was going to hate this story. The start was a real mislead. But, soon enough I loved it. Every bit of it. Of all the five stories in the contest, only two have really stuck in my head in ways that I can recall without having to think about it. This was one of them. And for me it has the colour of a piece of dead sea urchin shell ... all mauvey purple with white spots. I dunno why, but it does. Basically, it made an impression. You took an implausible idea and made it work, so that the fantasy genre was actually subverted and it all became reality. Great characters and characterisation. Good story and plot. Nice twists and turns. And although the outcome may have been a bit predictable (but only a bit, so none the worse for that) it was also somewhat unexpected for some reason. I'd love to see more of this tale. And this is the only story in the contest I would want to see much more of ... Sword of Light excepted, perhaps. There was something about the whole thing that seemed to envelope me. Kinda like that all encompassing pressure when you get in the se and down a couple of feet or so. Interesting metaphor, that, actually. Realy enjoyed it. Thanks

OK so here's my full review. I decided to keep these till after the contest was over. I loved the premise of this. The undertow of good winning out over ... well, evil I suppose, even with the bad thing in the much stronger position. The writing was very good, the story inventive. I also found it pretty cinematic, so that should be a plus, I hope. I was a bit troubled by the on off on off notion of the good doctor and who was in charge of what on his shelves. I think that tide went through too many cycles, but that apart, I found it to be pretty good. Thank you

OK, so here's my full review. I decided not to post these till the contest was over. Nice story, well told, and in a good time frame. I think this is one story of this sort of genre that shows that it is better to keep it shorter rather than longer. I am always afraid of the chapter by chapter release because I think the author is always a hostage to history. S:he cannot go back and modify, cut, accentuate, trim, and improve. Therefore, things need to be explained as they come up and the process of distillation is lost. I have to say, though, I nearly didn't get passed paragraph six. Or should I not say 'past'. I know it might sound like pedantry, but there is a huge issue with us amateur authors with using homonyms incorrectly or just misspelling the same words wrongly over and over and over. Passed and past might not sound like a big thing. But it stops you dead in your tracks because the meaning is completely different. Being made to back over a line over and over when you are already dealing with the complexities of a new story is extremely frustrating. It interferes with what YOU as a writer are trying to do with me as a reader. At the end of the day, it is not about me being pissed off, it is about writers shooting themselves in the foot. I used to wonder if there was a tendency for people to write with voice recognition software, because these issues are so common and so formulaic. Now, I'm not so sure. Breath/breathe, loose/lose, past/passed, grrrrrrr! I did, actually, throw down my ipad and bugger off to do something else, fuming that I was not going to read the story. But then my deeper held principle of giving the author the respect of attention took over and I went back to it. And how glad was I that I did! The story here was very touching for some reason or other. I loved Ed. And I loved that difficulty with getting time alone. I think that was really well done. And the naughty weekend! Anyway, nice job, just the right length and good plot elements to buy into.

Thanks for that Graeme. A heartwarming footnote to a shitty episode in human history.

These videos may be interesting or informative, but they have DRM blocks for the UK, so we cant see them

I suppose there needs to be some sort of ability to differentiate at some points, but in one to one's I imagine simply Dad would suffice. Certainly would for Gregor and I. When was a kid we referred to our grandparents as the same thing in company where they were all present, but otherwise as granny or grampa location. I suppose Dad Arisaig or Dad Glasgow, or just plain Arisaig or Glasgow would be kinda neat, referring to identities which have special meanings for us. I do think I'd hate to be referred to by my first name, though. Thats just way too familiar for good discipline!

True, it would appear. But what is hidden in plain sight in this statement is that he HAD a gun. Furthermore, it was loaded. And on top of that, it was perfectly capable of being fired. Now, nobody wants people dead, or at least reasonable people don't. But if you have a gun, you are automatically a threat in a society where gun ownership is pretty strictly controlled. And if you get involved with police pointing guns at you, telling you to put it down or whatever, you need to make damned sure you aint going to make a wrong move. The circumstances are not clear yet. But I would be willing to bet that he presented some clear threat. Not clever when marksmen are telling you what to do. You make your own luck in this life to a large extent. And walking around with a loaded handgun on the streets of terrorised London is inviting trouble, not increasing your own luck levels. Of course, the police will now be shat upon from a great height by the touch feelies and civil rights lobby. But, ehm, how many times do I have to ask this ... ? ... Why the hell did this Mark bloke have a loaded hangun on the streets of London? Oh, yeah, that's right. It's an invalid question. He was black and therefore oppressed. Therefore his family self indulged themselves by holding a peaceful protest about his shooting ... which was not at all reasonable, because he was only carrying a loaded handgun ffs. Result:? Every idiot in London decides to go on the rampage because a guy with a loaded handgun on the streets of London gets himself shot and his family think this is an objectionable thing because it is clearly perfectly acceptable to have a loaded handgun in your possession on the terrorised streets of London. Do I sound annoyed? Bloody right. What the hell is the world coming to? Posters note ... this rant was not aimed at Mike, just at the situation in general

Nephy, I did try to be very clear in what I said. Paradigmatically ou are correct ... that is to say, in the case at hand, you are right, and I agree with you. But I was trying to point out that it is not ALWAYS wrong to get violent to effect changes. And that is what you seemed to be saying ... Pretty unequivocal to me. After all, middle class bullying (my term for the method by which the middle classes never listen to reasonable complaints, then tell you that if you make a fuss or raise your voice, that they are not going to listen to you, then when you comply they ignore you again) is exactly what other people have pointed out above ... 2000 people march peacefully to Scotland Yard ... no coverage or apparent acknowledgement. As for the HDTV ... well, again, if you read closely what I said, you will see that I do not think one is necessary. But some people live in a culture where they think it is. And there little gainsaying it. It just is as it is. That's the reality of their situation where they are. You don't have to like it. I just don't like it. But that doesn't change the realities.

Paradigmatically correct, syntagmatically so far from the case it is surprising. Nephy, if I thought for one minute you would stand up in fron of the current Syrians, Libyans, etc, or the Russians objecting to the overthrow of Gorbachev, or the Chinese people protesting in Tinanmen Square, I might start to think you had a point. But, somehow, I can't see you doing that, cos as far as I have been able to divine in my few months at GA, you are way too intelligent for that. Sometimes, the only way is to rise up and destroy. But, as I say, paradigmatically you are correct. It is just not what is needed here, although that may actually be stretching the truth a little if you read what I will say below. Again, untrue. And I so wish it wasn't. But it is. The HDTV is a symbol of value in an social economy using relative values such as peer dignity as its currencies. If it is necessary, then it is necessary. And I do agree with your general sentiment ... that's just a crying shame, imo. As for the Mark Duggan affair, as I read it, following the lunchtime news, a gun was found at the scene, and it was capable of firing live ammunition. There is still a question of who actually fired the bullet in the policeman's radio (i.e. him or another officer), but it would seem unlikely to me that they shot the guy for no good reason. But that is yet to be seen. Now, as to the riots themselves. I'd like to suggest the following as a contributory factor ... and only contributory. I think it illustrates a large part of the problem. I wonder how many Polish plumbers, African maids, immigrant Afghan whatevers etc etc etc will be found to be involved in these riots? I'm willing to bet that significantly low levels, and probably all of those will be economic migrants who have not found work. The rest of them will be far too busy earning an honest crust and getting on with the job of living, rather than sitting about on their complacent arses, waiting for an oppportunity to go out and have a bit of a larf, smashing up things they do not value, because the concept of values, as held by the generality of society, has passed them by. The reason these young people are a-riot is because they are bored, marginalised, and have nothing to do. It may not excuse their behaviour, but it sure as hell goes a fair length to explaining it. And bear in mind that the UK school system is currently on holiday, so there is a far higher degree of disaffected youth with nothing better to do, available at the moment, as well as the opportunistic anarchists ready to deploy at a moment's notice. (Oh the irony). I am fairly disgusted at the conduct of our economic policy in the past twenty five years or so. We bring immigrant workers in, holus bolus, employ them to do the shitty jobs we feel we are way too important to do, pay them a pittance, treat them like shite, and castagate them for actually working. Exactly the same thing happened in the 50s in the UK with people coming to mainland UK from the Commonwealth to provide labour. They were black, so our parents etc were content to call them niggers ad such like. Not that I actually think nigger is a bad word, just that when our parents' generations used it, they meant it in a very nasty way. While the 50s paradigm was actually trying to address a situation where there was a real labour shortage for the economy at the time, the migration practices now are ... and I am quoting from many politicians here ... to support the economy of the UK because we cannot support it all ourselves. Think about what that is saying. Our economic costs are way too high for us to manage, mainly in healthcare of an ageing population, pension provision in an ageing population, and higher welfare costs in a ... well more of that later..., and we need to maintain high turnover and output while maintaining a low wage economy as much as we can. Well, that is a normal tension for a capitalist economy. But hold on just a minute. What about all the people in the UK who are perfectly able to perform this work, but just won't because they are too lazy, or are too self-regarding, to knuckle down and get on with the process of learning the skills, or getting their hands dirty. If we, as a society, allow them to sponge rampantly, and provide nothing for them to do, then we are creating a separate class of people who will view society in a different way. And we can jump up and down about this in Daily Flail terms till we are blue in the face. The fact of the matter is that there will still be a separate societal element with a differeing view on things. Curiously Margaret Thatcher throws the truth of this into relief as well as being it's greatest cause. She changed our economic system so that people had to work to maintain a roof over their heads. She sold us the council houses and gave lots of us mortgages. We all of a sudden found it pretty unappealing to be on strike all the time, so our work ethic changed. For the better. But she also began the process of shuffling people off into corners with a small amount of money per week to keep them quiet. They do little, but they don't really care because they are paid to do that, and they can fiddle the rest of it somehow anyway. A gap then appears between the haves (jobs) and the have nots. Those with jobs are constricted by their mortgages, those without are not. Effectively, those without have more power because of their existence outwith 'normal' society, than those within it. They also become disenfranchised and dejected. Raging against the hated machine which farms them to be indolent and treats them like shite in the first place, they disengage, and so the spiral continues downwards. The enfranchised society then declares them not worth a f**k, and gets in some other crew of dejected people to do the work. Except this dejected crew know the value of work and opportunity, and get on with the job. Hence why we won't be seeing too many of the aforesaid economic migrants involved in the rioting. They are like Outraged of Oxley ... working their butts off to get by. But they are also part of the problem, indirectly. Not that you can blame them. We asked them here in most cases, to do our dirty work because we couldn't be bothered to kick the lazy arses of our own people to do it instead. Send them all back? Hell, no. That would be ridiculous. They are prepared to work, and have come here under perfectly legitimate methods, for the most part. They need to be respected and valued. And I don't just mean as economic migrants, but as humans too ... which they are all too often not. But western capitalist systems need to look at their own arrangements. they need to stop importing cheap labour from abroad and using them as modern day slaves (low pay, little choice, treated like sub-human shite) and demand of their own people, who they pay a wage to every week to sit back and do sweet fanny adams (that's Sweet F**k All, to those of you who don't know the idiom) to get their fingers out and get some learning done, then get some working done, and then get some bloody engaging done. Do you know why it is so easy for Muslim fundametalists to maintain a war against other forces? It's because there are huge numbers of bored young men sitting around waiting for something to do. It's the same in this paradigm ... give people too much time to do too much nothing, and they will get into too much bother. Tire them out during the day, they will sleep at night. Ensure they have to fight a little for their daily bread, and they will think twice about being on the streets in the evening burning and looting. And before anybody gets on their high horse and starts ranting that I am a crew cutted thug wanting to throw all of the foreigners out ... go back three paragraphs and read again. This is one of the reaons why London is burning at the moment. Much like Kings Cross Station burned when too much dust accumulated under the escalator, too much dust has been sept under the social carpet in the UK, and it catches light every now and then. Without a good hard look at the facts, the day will come when there will be a real conflagration, and a few extra bobbies on the beat will have little or no effect whatsoever.

Right, Frosty, Darlin! It's time to wrap this one up By which I DO NOT mean stop it ... However, I think there is a great story potential here and it is being sold short by the flash format now. I've enoyed it so far, but I can see there is stuff starting to develop, and there is a roundness appearing, that I think is going to be lost in the flash format. Would I be tooooo horrible to ask advise you to stop and start again with these characters in the conventional manner. That is not to say that the flash format is bad or anything. It clearly has its place, but I feel like it has been a good sketch book up until now. But the sketching is kinda over and it's time to start making a whole with more depth than the flash format can muster. I think, having watched the series so far, that the flash format would be really good if it was started with a total story in mind, and little vignettes were drawn to eventually make a whole. Metaphorically, this would be like creating a picture from a grid, and filling each square with that bit and that bit only. Eventually we get to see the whole thing. The benefit I can see from that format would be that it could be more like small, almost random, flash pieces from differing points in the plot which eventually make a whole sense. This might need to be rippled out in a two dimensional series of sets ... but it would utterly change the normal linearity of the storytelling method, which could be really interesting. The reader would need to develop a differeing set of interactions with the universe created by the writer, and the writer might need to develop a different set of controls to mould the trajectory of the story, because the reader would quite possibly have a much greater degree of control over how they perceived the characters / elements. I offer these comments, because I like this story so much, I'd reallly like to see it developed conventionally, but I can see a potential real value in the experimentation which has gone on up until this point.

Well, it's a rant to be sure .. one I've had plenty times in the past. But believe me, as a doubly labelled person researching a book on parts of the labelling process, I have come to understand that it is completely inevitable, and, yes, actually correct. As sentient beings, not yet out of the danger zone of everything, we still have the security issue to deal with, way back in our subconscious minds. It's what stops us getting mugged, stepping out in front of a bus, etc and so forth. We constantly assess and classify. Not because we want to label for the sake of identity categorisation, but for safety assessment ... what is it, what does it look like, how does it compare to my stored records, how does it differ, are the similarities likely to imply danger, are the differences likely to imply danger, is it friendly looking, is it threatening looking. The way meaning is constructed in our heads, we actually do this at the same time as labelling, because we are dealing on a level of meanings. The meanings are labelled for grouping purposes for future assessment, or for assessment priority. So labelling is actually a normal part of how we operate. It all goes wrong when you automatically assign a negative meaning to a concept. Smoking in the workplace and other restricted areas was banned in Scotland a few years ago. I cannot believe how disgusted I feel when I see someone in the street with a cigarette now. I mean, it's just bloody well irrational. I honestly downgrade them to almost criminal, almost sub-human, for an instant. I am doing the wrong thing with the label. And labels can be good things. They help us shape our responses to situations. For instance, I am slightly autistic. It is not physically obvious in the way more severe autism can be. Thus I have expectations made of me everyday that I am not able to live up to because I have an invisible impairment. If it was visible, people would alter their responses and perhaps expect something different ... yeah, you're right, they'd be much more patronising If you see an old lady in the street, you will try to rush to get past her before the pavement narrows, but you also won't risk getting too close like you might with a younger person, cos she's much more likely to fall over if you inadvertently nudge her. Query, assessment, label, action. Sexual mate selection is the same. We see guys, we think 'yum', we need to know if he is approachable ... we need the label. We need to know how to conduct ourselves in order not to offend him by making a verbal pass, and engendering a bad or physical response. Or if he is looking juuuust that little bit too long at home, you might decide it is worthwhile sending out some signals, but not ones the wife or kids are likely to pick up on. So it is easier to have labels. Don't decry them. They are very useful. It all goes wrong when you misuse them. Like when the straight guys all think the gay guys are going to follow them to the toilets and slip a hand down the back of their jeans while they are taking a leak! That's bad labelling ... or at least it should be

What has a hazelnut in every bite? Well it all depends upon what you ate last night Be it almond, pecan, pea The only way you'll see Is forensic inspectation of your shite

Seriously though, ain't it good fun To go naked when out in the sun You can cook things to brown With your undies pulled down And rub them with oil till they're done

Helllllo there! Well, my name is Lexie I can see that you think me quite sexy But your package is trapped Let me get it unwrapped I'm a witch, I'm the bitch, I'm all hexy