thebrinkoftime

That would have fit better in the Classics thread, since no one is giving the next question for that lately. *ahem* *thunder and lightning* Thorn Wilde, I command you to go into the Classics thread and do that again (just with another classic). *scoots off in his motor cloud to go off to eat cookies*

Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner! Nice job! Good to see someone acquainted with the black and white classics! Based on the novel Belvedere, the movie pratically created the character of Mr. Belvedere, who is something of an American version of Jeeves.

Let's see, it's lead actor was nominated for an Academy Award, it spawned 2 sequels and its lead character became so famous he spawned his own sitcom many years later.

Nope, nope, and nope. Try again! Need a hint?

It's funny, after I posted this story, I thought, "Oops, this might get misinterpreted." It doesn't seem like that was the case, though if it was so, I'd love to hear from somebody who thought so. I was a little torn on whether to write a more normal 10-year-old and then I reminded myself that I don't like writing normal characters and went on with it, so I'm glad you enjoyed the character voice. Thank you for sharing your review!

*Big appreciative grin* Thanks for taking the time to give me your thoughts.

Dear nostalgiclikeyou, Thank you for the review. We have talked to our close associates, the Arkham Asylum and recommended you for entry into their facilities. You need not respond to this letter, I trust it will find you already under incarceration. Cheers, ACME

Thanks to you too, Mr. CW Prince. Smiles and laughter have been proven to prevent cancer, help you lose weight, make you live longer, propel space rockets, defeat the Nazis, feed the hungry and confuse Elmer Fudd. So I'm glad I was able to provide laughter fuel.

Bemused is a great word because it sounds like a command, "Be mused, my young artists! So you may create great works of stunning creativity!" No wonder it can mean being preoccupied. Anything that has to do with Greek mythology and more specifically, the Fates, Muses and Furies, I love. Cru is definitely one I've never heard before, even though I'm familiar with crue. Makes me want to get creative with poetry: the crood cru crew crooned to the crooks. Though Ron's explanation reminds of how so many words have a pleasant duality to them. Animal-related words tend to have this a lot. Vagaries reminds me of bestiary as another word that is commonly confused for something else. But there's another word that does too. And it brings me to my Word of the Day, which is one of my favorites: nig·gard·ly [nig-erd-lee] adjective 1. reluctant to give or spend; stingy; miserly. 2. meanly or ungenerously small or scanty: a niggardly tip to a waiter. adverb 3. in the manner of a niggard. Origin: 1325–75; Middle English nyggard, equivalent to nig niggard (< Scandinavian; compare dialectal Swedish nygg; akin to Old English hnēaw stingy) + -ard Saved by the d, eh? Mwa ha ha ha ha. No seriously, this a great word, it's just a shame that some people tend to misinterpret its usage. Its sound as a great negative adjective has nothing to do with that other awful word. It reminds me of how a lot of words may share similar sounds or spellings but have completely different origins. Like the Youtube star, nigahiga or Ryan Higa, who is a Japanese American from Hawaii. His username is a play on his last name of the Japanese word for "bitter" which is nigai (but Japanese adverbs need not include the "i" all the time). One time, when he was interviewed, somebody misinterpreted his username as if it were English. Kind of ethnocentric if you ask me! Expand your mind!

Eh? I thought that rule had been abandoned by now? Last week, I looked through the thread and saw a lot of people use quotes that were longer than 7 words. Well, since this is pretty tricky, I'll give two no-longer-than-7-words quotes from the same movie. "I am, in my way, a philosopher." "You might even say I have, everything."

Not a lot of Mean Girls fans, eh? A pity. That's correct, though. If Kiltie doesn't mind though, I'm going for another, one I think is a much, much harder one: "Now eat your breakfast and chew each mouthful 28 times. Not 20, mind you or 26, but twenty eight times."

Hey now! You don't have to be a teenager or a kid to do things like this! Why just last Saturday and my roommate and I were getting stir crazy and so we both went out near our apartment to the sidewalk along the big, busy street where a gas station and convenience store could be found. Perched in front of those establishments, we began to dance. Some fine numbers we did that Westerners might recognize included The Crazy Bollywood Song, Thriller, a Fred Astaire & Ginger Rogers bit, Empire State of Mind (I was Alicia Keyes, he was Jay-Z) and Poker Face. It was kind of similar to the example above, at first the gas station guy asked us to leave, but after we pointed out we were dancing on the sidewalk, which was public property and it was clear we were attracting customers to the gas station, he let us stay. We danced for about an hour and felt much better when we went back inside, thankyouverymuch. So I love news stories like these! Stuff like when a couple from Atlanta decided to not let a beautiful feast go to waste. After their daughter canceled the wedding, they decided to host a fancy, four-course meal for the homeless. Carol and Willie Fowler had planned a wonderful dinner for their daughter's wedding and even though they had plenty of time to cancel it (40 days remained) they decided to turn it into an event where more than 200 homeless showed up to partake of a feast they'd probably rarely or never had the chance to eat. The Fowlers aren't revealing why their daughter canceled (perhaps the future husband discovered he was gay!) and I'm sure we don't need the reasons; it is happier to note that bride-to-be Tamara Fowler also appeared at the feast and reportedly enjoyed herself, turning what could have been a painful reminder into an expression of generosity. The Fowlers are happy they could do it and seem enthused to make it an annual habit from here on out. Three cheers for the Fowlers! We turn now to the news of a young Colorado boy in the hospital for treatment for acid reflux. One of the doctors noticed the boy's stuffed wolf had an inch-long hole in it, so she stitched the wolf up. Some time after returning home, the young boy took off his wolf friend's bandages and pronounced him, "All better now."

Okay, okay. I think someone's going to get this instantly, but I have to do it, because it's been on my mind and it's such an awesome classic. "My breasts can always tell when it's going to rain."

I always seem to coiffure and not coiff, though I'm not sure why. Sound-wise, it kind of sounds to me like what a hair style would look like if a giant sneezed and the person's hair went all "blubububu." Zugzwang? Why is it all the German words I know are all so violent? I'm also surprised that showed up on a TV show! Landsakes and poppycakes! I wonder if the back door jokes started from Backgammon player? Or if there was some sort of secret gay society in Backgammon circles? My word of the day is: a·bode [uh-bohd] noun 1. a place in which a person resides; residence; dwelling; habitation; home. 2. an extended stay in a place; sojourn. verb a simple past tense and past participle of abide. Origin: 1200–50; Middle English abood a waiting, delay, stay; akin to abide Holy creole-y! I had no idea that abode could have come about from a derivation of the past tense of abide, but it makes so much sense! I wonder why I never put two and two together before? I also didn't know it had the second meaning, I wonder how you use that second meaning in a sentence?

I can imagine this being useful for period pieces. It reminds of the word hustling, which also goes along with politics, because it suggests an extremely busy atmosphere. Thanks andy! I know exactly where I can use this word! What a word! So supercalifragilisticexpiallidocious isn't recognized in the dictionary? I like this word too. I found it out in college from a class on Greek classics. I love not only using it against others, but being a sophist is fun as well. I always thought this meant making someone less powerful or castrating them somehow. Interesting true meaning. Has anyone here read A Game of Thrones (I don't actually like those books, but I've read three of them, go figure)? That one pivotal scene near the beginning where two characters are caught doing something nasty and the poor kid gets pushed out the window? That was apparently defenestration! I've never heard of Flaneur, but it reminds of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons. Sounds flowery, like you could eat it. Philistine on the other hand, is another word I love. I put it in the same category of plebe or plebeian; I let pretentious characters use it to put down others. You know where I learned the word Philistine from? Good old Calvin and Hobbes!

Thanks for stepping up to do this and adding more information, though I must disagree with you on Polidori. What matter is not who came first (Polidori's stories are kind of confused and badly written) but who proved to write it best, capture the widest net of popular imagination and become influential in doing so. It's not like vampires were anyone's sole creation, but its undoubtable that Bram Stoker's example was infinitely more powerful and innovative. In any case, I think scotty94 and others might also be wondering about other things like deadline, how, where and when to submit, whether you are requiring editing beforehand and whether stories can be a continuation of characters introduced in other stories or must be stand-alone.

Conan? I don't quite remember, as I only saw bits and pieces, but I seem to remember a scene where some lady asks him this and this is his answer. Hmmm.

In English-speaking countries, children might read Grimm or Andersen, or for modern authors, Roald Dahl, C.S. Lewis, Astrid Lingren, Dr. Seuss, Beatrix Potter or even people like R.L. Stine. What do Japanese children read? What helps inform their world view and shape their moral spirit? Well, some of the same stories do get translated and Japanese children are exposed to them to different extents, but what about Japanese literature written by Japanese people? If you were to ask this question, one of the first names to pop up would be Mimei Ogawa. He was born in 1882 in the north of Japan in a cold and harsh climate, a place called Niigata. He became the first Japanese author to be recognized as solely devoted to children's literature as a professional. His real name is Kensaku. One of his colleagues named him Mimei. The colleague who christened him so claims it means "meditating child," but if you take the literal definition of the characters, it can read "not quite bright yet" or if you just go by the ear, it can sound like the modern Japanese polite, professional expression for "early morning," often heard in the news. A young Mimei Ogawa Mimei's most famous story is arguably The Mermaid and the Red Candle. This story shares some similarities with Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. If you were to compare the two, despite the arguments that Andersen's tale originally ended in tragedy, Mimei's story sounds like it was written by the biggest, most depressed Eeyore on the planet when contrasted with the jubilant tone of the more famous mermaid. Let's compare their openings, shall we? Andersen: Mimei: The translation is mine. (The majority of Mimei's work is in the public domain.) According to various sources who knew him at the time, Mimei Ogawa was the picture of the classic misanthropist: he did not have many friends, loved to study (particularly Chinese letters and fairy tales), was short-tempered and didn't mix well with groups of people. When he moved to Tokyo, he rethought his values, being influenced by Russian literature, he strongly sympathized with the plight of the proletariat and allied himself with a similar movement in Japanese literature. He wrote novels as well, but his many, many short stories (over 1000) are more famous. His stories were constantly about miserable, depressed people running into misfortune and tragedy; they almost always ended unhappily and reflected Mimei's own sorry life. He craved literary attention, but didn't receive much for quite a while. He lived a very poor life and constantly struggled to survive, cursing the bourgeoise. He wrote in the style of famous tales for children, but did not claim that they were children's stories. Then in 1926, after becoming involved with his alma mater's club on children's literature, he declared himself solely devoted toward literature for children. After the war ended, Japanese politicians looked for leaders to bring up morally upright Japanese citizens and Mimei was selected, in 1946, to become the first leader of the Japanese Organization for Children's Scholars, further finding praise in 1951 as a bungaku-kourousha, something like a purple heart the Japanese government awards people who make significant cultural contributions to the country. It literally means "cultural laborer." Can you smell the irony? His fables and stories became even more popular and were praised among a much wider group of people. He was extolled as the premier and best teller of children's stories. He became something of the model, the example for everyone else to live up to and enjoyed fame and money like no other time in his unhappy poor, miserable life untill that point. Funny thing, though. If you compare the stories before he was widely noticed and praised, and after, there is a notable difference. The stories afterwards are filled with silliness and happiness and have mostly abandoned any of the romantic imagery and woe-is-me, the-world-is-a-horrible-place-kids aesthetic of his earlier stories. Critics nowadays tend to view his later work pretty harshly, whereas his many depressing stories where characters meet awful fates (written from roughly 1914 to 1926) are viewed as masterpieces. Why is this? Would you like to hear a sample of one of his post-I'm-a-children's-writer-look-at-me stories? "There is a box that is wonderful! It can do or be almost anything. This little boy is so happy because this box is wonderful and mysterious!" I'm paraphrasing, but that's literally all there is of a one-page short story he wrote in the later time period. Even still, some of his stories contain remnants of his past tortured soul and there are a couple that stand out. However, nearly every short fable he wrote before his revelation in 1926 is amazing. I used to beg my mom and dad to read The Mermaid and the Red Candle. To me the sadness and unhappiness in the story was beautiful. Unfortunately, for Mimei, he went out not with a bang, but a long, embarrassing whimper, something like the sound a balloon makes when it is let out of air. Just at the time of his death in the early 60s, a new group of children's writers emerged who shunned quite a few of the old guard and claimed their writing was facile, amateur and could not compare to the greats. In a shocking, controversial and absolutely pivotal book called Children and Literature, Mimei was demonized as a petty charlatan who was too drunk on his own sorrow to write appropriate, realistic children's literature. The clincher? Some of them were from the same college Mimei studied at and where he had headed the club for children's literature. This publication had a massive influence on children's literature from that period on. You can still find people arguing hotly about it. Mimei's reputation has recovered nicely since then, as the movement that that lasted almost 20 years and began after Children and Literature started to fade into yet another new movement. One wonders what would have happened to both Mimei's reputation and his work if he had remained an obscure, struggling writer. Children and Literature His childhood home was at the foot of a mountain slope and his father built a temple to enshrine a piece of the famous Uesugi Kenshin (some recognize him as a famous general in Japanese civil wars) soul. The temple was built at the top of a sharp incline, so it was a tough trip to the top. In Niigata, at that time, when a child was born, it wasn't expected that they would live very long, so they were often given to other houses temporarily. Mimei (at the time he was known as Kensaku) was given to a candlemaker's house. This inarguably influenced The Mermaid and the Red Candle. In the story, the mermaid we were introduced to is the pregant mother of our main character. She abandoned her newly-born daughter near a small shrine, thinking that although it will be painful to part with her child, it will be better for her to live in the utopian world above ground where she believes humans are saints compared to her world. A candlemaker and his old wife lived near the foot of a mountain where a shrine was built. Mimei paints this scene of fisherman buying candles to make their way up the mountain as they walk up a forest of pines that creak in the wind, and how the red flames of the candles can be seen from many miles away. One day, the old woman decided to thank the god of the shrine, because without the shrine, they would not be able to sell so many candles and earn their livelihood. On the way back from the shrine, she found the abandoned mermaid. Both candlemakers reasoned that the mermaid is a gift from god to them and despite not being human, they decided to raise the mermaid because her face looked pretty and human like theirs, and because they thought the god of the shrine might punish them if they don't. She grew into a beautiful, quiet child, but in order to hide her mermaid origins, they confined her to the back of the shop. They explained to visitors that she was too shy and thus the customers were only allowed to see her face. Nevertheless, the townspeople were enchanted by the candlemakers' young daughter and began to frequent the candle shop more often just to see her beautiful face. The young mermaid saw her father working to create the candles and her mother working to sell them. She thought that if she drew pictures of her spontaneous dreams and thoughts, even more customers would come to buy the candles. The old candlemaker let her use red paints on white candles and she drew scenes of seaweed, fish and seashells that, despite nobody having shown or taught her of, she painted with stunning clarity and beauty. These candles became the talk of the town and before long, a strange rumor began to spread. If one bought a candle from the candlemaker's shop and took it to the shrine on the top of the mountain, burned the candle until only a small remnant was left, that remnant would act as a talisman to ward off trouble at sea. No sailor would meet storms or squalls if they carried one of the remnant's red candles invoked at the shrine. In fact, they would meet nothing but good fortune. Before long, the candlemaker's shop became famous through the known world and customers crowded the shop from day to night. Nobody spared a thought, however, toward the mermaid who worked wearily all day long and all night long, till the very tips of her fingers were sore. She often looked out her window toward the sea, yearning for it, longing for it, tears in her eyes. The Mermaid and the Red Candle After a time, as the fame of the shop spread, it attracted the attention of a showman from the south. Whether he had heard it or seen through the disguise, he knew the candlermakers' daughter was a mermaid. He approached them and offered a very large amount of gold to buy the mermaid. At first, they refused, saying that if they gave her up, the god would punish them, but after he came again and convinced them that mermaids were unlucky and would eventually bring misfortune on them, they relented. The mermaid did not want to go, but no matter how she pleaded that she would work all day and night to sell candles, the candlemakers would not listen to her and remained resolute. At night, she would look at the sea in sadness and often felt that something was calling her toward it, but when she looked out the window nothing was there. One night, the showman came to take her away, bringing an iron jail cell to imprison her with in his wagon. He reasoned that since he had used such a cell for wild beasts such as tigers and lions, and the mermaid was no different from such beasts, she belonged in such a cage. When the mermaid saw it, she was so horrified she put all her might into painting the candles at her feet, but it was no use -- she was dragged into the cage and in the commotion, red paint spilled all over the candles. After that night, the only thing left behind of the mermaid's life in that town were a couple of completely crimson candles. In middle of the same peaceful night, the old candlemaker woman was awoken by a "knock, knock!" at the door. Opening it, she found a woman with a pale face and long, beautiful black hair pleading to buy a candle. Never wanting to pass up the chance for money, she opened the candle box and took out one of the mermaid's red candles. Under the light, she was surprised to find that the woman's black hair was soaking wet, but after looking long and hard at the red candle, the woman gave her coins and left. After checking the coins in stronger light, the old woman noticed they were in fact seashells. Thinking she had been tricked, she flew out of her shop in anger to confront the woman, but could find her nowhere. That night, the sea and sky changed. Just as the showman was putting the mermaid in her cage on the ship, the sea burst alive in a fit of furious storms. The candlemakers mused that the ship would go down and in the morning, they found it to be true: all around, many ships had sunk to the bottom of the ocean in a storm no one had seen in many a year. In a curious change, now when red candles burned at the shrine atop the mountain, the seas would awaken in a rage of storms unlike any the world had seen. Even still, occasionally someone who had heard of the luck of the mountain shrine would come to light a candle, but it always ended in tragedy and death. Soon, rumor spread that the god had cursed the town and the shrine. No one came to buy candles. The candlemakers' shop went out of business. Eventually, the shrine and the town were abandoned into ruin and rot. But even though nobody dare approach the cursed place anymore, people reported strange stories. On cloudy nights when the stars cannot be seen and it rains all night long, dancing and floating above the waves, the flames of a red candle can be seen to rise, slowly and inexorably to the cursed mountain shrine and burn malevolently throughout the night. (Resources: This collection and this collection of Mimei Ogawa stories don't seem to be widely in print any more. I cannot vouch for the former, but even though the latter can be found at Amazon, I don't recommend the foreword or cultural notes. They seem to be blinkered with a hilariously exaggerated orientalism. Modern Japanese Stories: An Anthology contains only one of Mimei Ogawa's stories, but he's in there alongside many other award-winning luminaries, giving you an idea of the stature he commands in his homeland. This is an audio recording The Mermaid and the Red Candle in Japanese. While I cannot find any free online sources for this story, you may enjoy listening to how it sounds for a Japanese child to hear this story read to them. The place that corresponds to the part of the story I translated is from 20 seconds in to the 1:44 mark in the first audio file.) That's it for now! See you again later! Good night and good luck!

There are many Word of the Day programs and websites out there, so you may ask what is the point of doing it on a forum when we've got that? Well the point is, that just learning a word sometimes it isn't enough to be able to use it in the right context. However, if enough people participate, on a forum you can get an idea of how words flow and change in interpretation from person to person that may surprise you, and more specifically from the kind of people who come to GA and like to read gay fiction, i.e. examples of potential readers. Thus, this thread. So participate! Please. Here's the idea: 1) Anyone can post a Word of the Day, and multiple people can do so on the same day, but it must come with a definition that is accurate. You can add your own definition or impression, if you like. In fact, that's encouraged. Also, please only post one a day and do not simply copy Words of the Day from other websites, make it your own word of the day. See a word you never knew before? Had that weird thing happen to you where a word you've never encounted before suddenly starts getting used a lot around you? For dictionaries, I recommend Dictionary.com and Oxford. Use whatever you prefer, though. 2) If you see it and think something, tell us what that is, that's what makes a forum unique! Give us a moment of your time! Let us know if you know that word. What's your impression of it? Do you think it is pretentious, useless, useful, silly, obsolete? Would you ever use it? Tell us an anecdote about it! Or anything really. Building an impression of the sounds and meanings of various words that various cultures have is an undeniable asset in writing. Accessing your conscious and unconscious word bank can provide helpful triggers when you're searching for the right word, even if you never use the words. Simply learning associations can help! 3) Etymology would be nice, but it's not required. 4) Foreign words you'd like to introduce are fine, but make sure you are still giving us a dictionary definition in English. So I'll start. I've heard this word before, had a vague idea of what it was, but never really knew. au·gu·ry [aw-gyuh-ree] noun, plural au·gu·ries. 1. the art or practice of an augur; divination. 2. the rite or ceremony of an augur. 3. an omen, token, or indication. they heard the sound as an augury of death late Middle English (in the sense 'divination'): from Old French augurie or Latin augurium 'interpretation of omens For some reason, I always thought this had to do with farming. I seem to see this word more in the plural, but I had no idea there were augurs. "So what does your father do?" "He's an augur." "Cool, seen anything in the stars lately?" "Nah, he says the stars are on strike."

To whom it may concern at the good people of ACME, Greetings. I identify as Adam McPherson. I apologize if my correspondence finds you at an inconvenience. You see, I could not locate your address. I endeavored to Google it. After filtering out fronts like ACME Furniture, I found several promising candidates. ACME Laboratories seems like a good cover, but I couldn't scope out the hidden entrance to the real site. If you really are a subsidiary of Albertsons, then I commend you on the excell

Adam is a special boy. Lately, he is having trouble understanding the affection and attentions of his friend Joey. So he writes a letter soliciting help.

I don't know where I read it, but I seem to remember that somebody said that the forum software does not currently allow for likes on Stories reviews, and that the software is different for e-books vs. stories. But then in another place, somebody asked about editing reviews and replies to reviews and I believe I remember reading that it was something that might come in an update to the forum software, so maybe along with that change, there's a possibility once the forum software is updated, but not until then?

I'm no good with horror games either. People are all like, "You should play Amnesia: The Dark Descent!" And I'm all like, "No, you should play it...and I'll watch." When I say I love the Resident Evil series, what I mean is that I love playing the not-so-scary bits and leaving the rest to other people who can hold the controller more steadily than I can while being eaten to death by zombies. I remember trying to get through the first Fatal Frame/Project Zero/Rei game and all you have to do is enter a house and start exploring as The Guy from the Prologue who Will Clearly Meet His Doom Before the Real Main Character Comes In and all I'm doing is walking down a dark corridor. But the atmosphere is just too thick. It's dark and grainy and the noises are unsettling and I feel like I'm walking down the corridor to hell. There was no combat. No ghosts. No monsters. Just me and a hallway. And I couldn't hack it. Had to quit not 5 minutes in. I'm even worse with horror movies. Other people will be laughing or shouting, "Go downstairs, dumbass!" and I'll be there with my hands over my eyes squirming and writhing around like a beaten snake. Has anyone here ever had the super-unsettling experience of playing The Dark Eye? Edgar Allen Poe stories told with freaky wax dolls who have no pupils in their eyes? Here was my reaction to that.

"Everybody gots AIDS and shit!"

It seems a shame to limit it to seven participants though. Maybe there should be some other guidelines on length and such as well? I have a prompt story I've been working on for a while that has a spooky/Hallooweenish theme to it that would work under "Curse." Seems like a good idea, but maybe a little more organization and information is needed?