knotme

The mediation session opening this chapter showed me things that Joshua would not share with himself or Alexi. Well done lilansui! Alexi was a neurotic mess only a few months ago. Today, he juggles a crushing schedule of concerts and promotions, and a supportive but complex and demanding blood family, and still manages to support and encourage Joshua half a world away. Alexi and Joshua mean more to each other than even they know. These two men feel like real people, so it's my pleasure to share in their progress and synergy. I was momentarily taken aback when the mediator turned on Sherry at session's end, but then I put myself in Beatrice's position: Women usually prevail in child custody cases, giving Sherry a sense of entitlement, which I now need to roll back; I've got to be firm. Again, well done. One more thing, don't cross Lily. Forgetaboutit!

A kid babysits and holds power (for now) over a nearly helpless adult. Nice!

Well, well, Luke's wit, moral courage, and tenacity may have their match. Jameson could become more frustrating than Jeremy. Whom Luke has just outed, reminding me that Luke probably knows about as much of Jeremy's home life as I. (They didn't really talk in the bedroom, eh?) Even if our talented author were headed toward one of several deeply worn plot ruts (you know, raging homophobic parents, Jeremy turned out onto the streets or in a coma, …, uncomplicated bliss), Jameson has blocked them. I'm hoping for a delightful mess.

I'm sorry you're down, but I like the result! My gut wrenched. I'm so glad I don't drink.

I feel a turning point. Is Pandora going to bail us out with a beneficial mutation, like Andromeda Strain? Is civilzation doomed? A key issue may be the life span of a victim. If short enough, this terror will burn itself out short of consuming all fuel. Another fine mix of plot, details, and good vs evil and competence vs stupidity from james. I'm hooked and almost diverted from the delay in Hammerhead I'm glad to have found how to review the entire story here. Otherwise I'd be trying to review one square inch of a watercolor landscape. I hope I'll be able to modify this review later.

By only the light of the hallway, I padded quietly through the bathroom towards the bath-shower. Those beyond the curtain suspected nothing. I paused to grab my weapon and position it carefully in my right hand. Then I threw back the curtain! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! thwap! It was over in seconds. A few escaped. Most were down the drain. I rinsed the rest off my trusty fly swatter and returned it to the tank top for next time. Then I showered. I repeated this scene nightly throughout the fall of 2005. Mellower this year, I simply flick pests toward the hot draining water, stunning and flushing them. If another one or two scoot out as I grab the soap, no problem. Yes, I am adjusting. Cockroaches? That would have been my guess when I first moved in. As I opened the front door one evening, shortly after I moved into this rented house, a two-incher flew into and bounced off my face, skidded across the entry floor, and then skittered off somewhere. Damn! I had already deployed roach motels. A few days later it turned up on a window sill, dead, in my bedroom. Because the nearest house in hundreds of feet away, cockroaches are easily controlled with poison. Ants? Another good guess. Roaches follow human detritus, but ants like to set up housekeeping, and this brand new house, previously empty for several months before me, was suitable, detritus or no. Ants were harder to dislodge than roaches, but eventually they succumbed to ant motels, except for tiny (about 1 mm) black ants. A few months after I moved in, I decided to make dough. There was something wrong with the dough blade. The large (10-to-15 cc) cavity, center underside, was the wrong color--dark brown? black?--it appeared to be moving slightly, and tiny ants were milling about. My brain was not equipped to evaluate this scene. After a few seconds, I recognized a molten mass of tiny ants, completely filling the cavity! Had I left food in the dough blade when I packed, months ago? What other disgusting revelations awaited? Flushing the ants down the sink with hot water, I found no food inside. They weren't feeding; they were hanging out. ("Nesting" ) I had stored the blade right side up on a flat melamine surface. Rivets provided access through a gap of agreeable size. The ants had not anticipated a Brobdingnagian attack. Now I store blades on their sides. Smaller and less smelly than "odorous house ants", darker than thief and pharaoh ants, the nameless ones (Them? ) don't eat bait that attracts most ants. (No, vegetable oil didn't work either. Give me a break! ) After making a nuisance of themselves all over town and overrunning the local PO (for several weeks I carefully brushed off mail before walking home with it), they left two years ago. My persistent pests are forky tailies to Scots, earwigs to most of us. This cute European name stems from the legend that earwigs lay eggs in the brain. (Imagine an earwig lurking in a fetid wig, then chewing through the middle ear and into the brain to lay eggs. Or check out the earwig scenes in The Wrath of Khan.) They do indeed like damp, confined spaces. Mean rainfall here is about 1 cm/day. My house is full of confined spaces. Earwig heaven. They especially like the plastic curtain where it meets the tub, the overflow drain, and the damp underside of a soap bar or dirty spoon. Recently, letting laziness trump good sense, I grabbed a spoon from a cutting board, plunging it into a tub of yoghurt and then into my mouth. My tongue immediately recognized a foreign object. Two seconds later I was washing yet another earwig down the running garbage disposer. (If it's not running, they poke around down there for a while, then re-emerge.) Although rear pincers are reputedly able to inflict what feels like a mild shock, my tongue transmitted no lingering sensation. Perhaps the little guy was too stunned to pinch. Awww. Between trips to the farmer's market, my Coleman Extreme cooler sits wide open in the carport. Attempts to seal out pests with the lid backfire, because earwigs, small geckos, and other assorted pests stuff themselves into the crack surrounding the seal. No matter how carefully I later pry off the lid, several of these pests jump or fall into the cooler. Names have power. Water recycling took a big hit in Southern California when someone dubbed it "Toilet-to-tap". I wish we all dubbed my persistent pests "forky tailies." Then I wouldn't mind when the occasional forky wanders a little too close to my bed.

A tardy but heartfelt welcome from Hawaii!

My Buddhist dog won't hunt in this Torah territory. Fundamentalist Christianity has not taken root here in Hawaii, and the fraction of my friends who practice Judaism has fallen to perhaps one-fifth of its mainland value. I don't therefore get much chance to exercise these arguments here. Three days in Eastern Oklahoma next week may give me the opportunity, but my heart would not be in it. My tendency is to let people argue the details of ancient text among themselves. What if we score a debating point or two. Will it help? Or will our opponents follow the lead of a frustrated cleric who, after a drubbing on Al-Jazeera at the hands of Syrian-American psychiatrist Wafa Sultan, threw up his hands, "If you are a heretic, there is no point in rebuking you!" My Nichirin Buddhism has left behind much of the content of the Sanskrit Sutras that found Buddhism. First, Nichirin selected and promoted only the Lotus Sutra, downgrading the others. There are therefore far fewer words to fuss over. Second, the original, Sanskrit sutras are acknowledged to be highly symbolic. Mindful of the smearing of meaning the accompanied translation into Chinese, then Japanese, then English, we struggle to interpret the words today. Nichirin interpreted key portions of the Lotus Sutra in the 15th century. At a recent annual study review, we poured over just a few of Nichirin's glosses of the LS for weeks, interpreting them for today. To attempt to take literally the ancient words of Leviticus strikes this Buddhist as odd. I belong to the Soka Gakkai, which used to be the lay section of the Nichirin Shoshu sect of Buddhism until, in 1992, the NS priesthood excommunicated the leaders of the SG, hoping the keep the membership on the priesthood's terms. The priesthood was largely unsuccessful. The SG now thrives as the NS wanes. This split reminds me of the struggles now in the Anglican church. A good friend of my host in Oklahoma is a female Anglican priest on the liberal side of the divide.

I just now noticed. I'd missed that big payment, thinking he shelled out $4000 over 20 weeks. That changes everything. Chris, that was stupid, but you may get your money back. Die, Eric, die!

Well, this is interesting. Maybe I'm the 2-sigma guy. I went through school as a nurd and a nobody, never having many friends, but also never succumbing completely to peer pressure. I cannot imagine valuing friendship highly enough to submit to blackmail, especially from a friend's younger sibling! If I were in Steve's position, Eric would change permanently from younger brother to fellow lodger. Part of my calculation would be Eric's cold calculation and his ability to manipulate me while torturing my friend. Unacceptable! I don't need a brother like that. As long as I live in my parent's home, I'll tolerate him, but I'd never again like him or trust him. Siblings are great, but they're not essential. Edit: So, if I were Chris, I would hope that Steve would take my side over Eric's. If my feelers confirmed Steve's homophobia, I would promptly move out. (I ran away from problems a lot when younger.) But if my feelers contradicted Eric's claims of homophobia, then I would, I hope, confront Steve promptly. Eric would then probably deny all. What happens then? Depends on how well Steve knows his bad seed brother. If Steve turns on me, then so be it. I get another friend somewhere. Or not. Either outcome sure beats blackmail from some shrimp turd. Is it just me?

So, Chapter 1 gets quite interesting, but I'm having a little trouble believing it. Chris is maybe 2 sigma off the norm; Eric, maybe 3 sigma in another direction. The combination is a little hard to swallow, but that's only how it looks to me right now, at the end of Chapter 1. There's plenty of time to reel me in. (I worded this comment to be the least possible help those who haven't read Chapter 1 yet. ) Uh, probably not. Ya got me there.

A nice start with a believable, realistic premise (except maybe for the blackmail) that has some of us wondering rhetorically how much of this may be autobiobraphical. If, as you say below, blackmail is not central to the main story, then can you find a way to de-emphasize it here? Consider that the blackmail announcement is the final line, set off by vertical space, indented, and split into sentence plus fragment for, I suppose, added punch. The reader has every reason to conclude that blackmail will be central. I like the informal, conversational style. In fact, if this were my story, I would read it aloud, revising sentences that stuck in my throat, caused me to trip, or sounded odd. :pickaxe: I put a couple of minor suggestions in the efiction review. You've gotten better here. A minor example of imprecision: "The onset of School had started, which, together with my new job at a local bookstore, cut down on my time with Steve." I agree with your assessment (prodded by the discussion?) that your "prolog" is really neither prolog nor first chapter, but an uncomfortable mixture. Your suggestion above is to flesh it out into Chapter 1. If so, and if you retain the opening scene, you'll have readers on edge waiting, perhaps too long, to hear what's gone so wrong. Perhaps it would better to tighten up the prolog to less than half it's current size, delaying sections that don't set the essential scene for the next part, Chapter 1. Some pieces that could be delayed include (in no particular order) car-love at first sight -- not excised, merely postponed! weak air conditioning and where to sit when gaydar (but you could mention a lapse of judgement) school, work, and less time with Steve Betty (Others have complained that she is given short shrift. Because the narrator hasn't acted on her advice, maybe you could delay her intro.) On the other hand, how this wonderful Steve is suddenly revealed as a homophobe probably deserves a little more attention; either that, or don't dwell on how wonderful he is until Chapter 1. By the way, a short "prolog" does not have to be a separate chapter. You can set it off from what follows with as little as "* * *". Like Kitty said, 61 40 39 hours and counting.

As I recall, one of these "tendency" bozos managed to get a counseling position on Luka's story "The Ordinary Us". The poor kid seriously considered suicide. Note that homosexuality is lumped with adultery as a "tendency", along with, I presume, a tendency to solicit prostitutes and a tendency to buy drugs so you can throw them away.

James' previous blog reminds us that, sometimes, the manned space effort can help the unmanned: Without the space station, the shuttle program would probably not exist now, and then we couldn't repair Hubble. This works against the point I want to make next. I suspect that we could afford to fund all land-based astronomy fully with help from an increment borrowed from the manned effort. How important is putting a man on Mars? Are way paying for that with redarded science? How to blog readers feel about that? Sorry if you guys covered this already. I confess to not having searched thoroughly.

50,000 words/month 11507 words/week 1151 words/hour (assuming you can spare 10 hours/week for this) 19 words/second one word every three seconds Piece of cake! Try not to get bored between words.

Hey Jensen and darkfoxprime! There's a lot to soak up here. I'm still learning, but GA's environment is supportive. Try posting. You'll like it.

First, welcome to the blogosphere! As I kid, I wondered idly what was magic about setting the clock. I mean, who needs a sprung-forward clock to get us up earlier? The biggest reason in my little world was school. School started at the same clock time every day. I can recall going to school in twilight just before fall-back and just after spring-forward. Once I left high school, day-light savings became merely a temporary inconvenience twice a year. I didn't care much one way or the other until I began to socialize and work over the Net across time zones and continents. Now daylight savings is a real pain. Here in Hawaii, we don't do daylight savings. A couple of weeks ago, planning a trip to the mainland for mid-November was complicated by the changes to the time differences between zones that would take place between my planning date and my trip date. Apple iCal kept me straight. Otherwise, I would have botched an auto reservation for sure. I think we should reexamine whether, as Graeme says, daylight savings really gives us an extra hour in the evening. What is forcing us to conform to a fixed time on the clock? Fixed closing times of restaurants? Fixed times for shows? Would it be so hard on everyone if restaurants, opera houses, and theaters changed their hours with the seasons? Would that be less hassle than daylight savings time? If you add in factory hours for workers, I can see that the answer might be "No". As someone not tied by others to fixed times of day, I'd rather get rid of daylight savings altogether, but I can see the other side of the argument.

My current (03 Nov 06) Personal Statement says I'm "partly out". I was almost fully out before I moved to Hawaii. I felt no hurry to come out again after I moved here, so I dragged my feet. Gay Authors has me reconsidering. This blog for instance. I've restricted it to members. While there's no particular reason for a guest to read it, I do regret forcing members to log in before reading. Also, because I'm not comfortable telling all of my new neighbors about my blog, I can't always ask a neighbor's permission to appear in my blog. To keep things simple, I'll avoid naming names altogether, making perhaps for a fuzzy blog entry. I really should come fully out again. That could be interesting around here. Meanwhile, my blog's subtitle fits. Truth be told, I feel fortunate to be able to choose a comfortably boring life, an option closed to many. OK, on to the question at hand, "Why knotme?" First, I'm not this guy. My choice started with my avatar. I wanted an original, but with no sketching skills, I drifted toward computer graphics. The turning, twisting rope represents a plot line. My current knotted torus represents an above-average TV sitcom: a few turns, a few twists, and back to the starting point for next week. A plot that actually goes somewhere will require a little more skill of me. The colors on the rope nominally show degree of twist--blue for none, red for lots--but they are really an excuse for rainbow colors. Once I fixed my avatar, the search for a text handle quickly turned silly.

Hillary having a lesbian affair? We'll have reached a milestone when that added word sells few additional adverts. Regarding your current sig: "Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it". Mark Twain actually said that! Wow! Comforting in a way--I mean, that we're here and all, so it wasn't fatal. No a-bombs back then, of course.

Works for me! You hit Graeme first, then I'll come in and kick him while he's down--that is, unless someone else gets to him before me!

Ah, the author as sorcerer, witch, conjuror; the dreamer whose dreams turn fatal; the writer engulfed by his own creation. A fertile field for the Halloween theme! I would say formal or perhaps stilted. Some of Edgar Alan Poe's stories open in this way: cool, formal, and officious, providing a contrast to the breathless, emotional terror to come. An excellent technique, quite apart from CJ's stated purpose, which also makes sense. Because the story within the story is one with the story itself, CJ did indeed violate the rules, inflicting 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person narratives on us! The middle one grated on me like nails on a blackboard. A small voice in my head said "Joel has it coming to him!" Alas Joel by this theme is CJ. OK, now he's really asking for it! The notion in this thread, that writers should not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, flows just under the surface of the story. If Joel had stopped at the awful 2nd person, might he have been spared? This time perhaps, but so Joel would seem to be doomed. If not tonight, then some other night. Well, since you're begging us ... Nitpicks: The italicized are redundant: now-leafless trees now-broken ankle sage wisdom (Are we poking fun at the sages here? If so, never mind. ) The sudden crackle of a breaking twig impelled Joel to leap to his feet In panic, now, Joel leapt to his feet (besides, once is enough for "leap/leapt to his feet". ) [*]Don't reuse "scudded". It weakens the image. [*]I would have dropped "..." and "-Finis" from the end. Patterns perhaps to avoid: making explicit a contrast that we readers can form by ourselves repeating a strong phrase or image using the same words, unless the repetition serves a specific purpose and is carefully timed, as in ML King's "I have a dream" or EA Poe's "The Raven". In this story, I think a strong phrase should be allowed to resonate without risking destructive interference with another instance of it. General comment: This is a campfire story for sure. Read it aloud for cadence. I think you'll shorten and rearrange a few sentences.

This is indeed sad. I have often cited Tucker as an author who successfully followed gay relationships well into adulthood. I've read all of the above save Ciao and the later chapters of Super Jeff. A few things I can count on from a Tucker story: tasteful sex (I prefer to visualize sex myself, so I appreciated that) lots of action, intrigue, and plot twists a good bit of violence, most of it directed against gays rich, successful, gay heros who triumph over all adversity through a combination of intelligence, effort, toughness, and persistent decency a happy ending I'll miss him. I hope his legacy at CRVBoy is safe. knotme

Thanks for the thread, CJ. While we're all thanking some of the key folks at GA, we cannot forget the big #3. (I don't know #1 or #2. Maybe they split?) I recall that, while reading old topics, I ran across a conversation between you and someone else (Kitty?) to the effect that "well, I guess that it wasn't your time, and now it is". The idea was that you had toiled for a long time with little result. I gather that running GA is still a difficult affair. (A sample of the evidence: You need to call for funds from time to time. Your fans beg for more stories. Your blog is full of references to having no time left for writing or fun. I recall a comment from Kitty about "hanging by fingernails" or something like that.) But now, at least, there's lots of activity, results, and a good bit of appreciation to show for your efforts. Before, I wonder if I (in your shoes) would have been able to keep going. I thank you, above all, for perseverance! knotme

I really don't understand all that you do, but I do get a vague feeling that it's a whole lot. Yet you've always found time to respond quickly to my minor requests. I echo James Savik: You're a great asset. The firm (if any) that you choose to work for will be lucky to have you. Thanks!

Hear, hear! Last time I was moved to thank Kitty (privately) was after one those excellent anthologies emerged. Now is a great time for a public Thank you!