jfalkon

That's a great tradition! Happy Friendship Day!

I just read the new chapter. I'm not sure what was scarier the begining or the ending! I enjoyed every minute of it but there is one thing I'm not quite understanding. Betty and Dex seem to have something going on but I thought Betty was only atracted to women. Did I miss something?

Great story! As always I love your characters. The way you introduced Cody was briliant. The amount of surfing terms was perfect. It was just enough to make the characters believable but not enough to confuse non-surfers.

Happy Birthday! Long live the beast!

That is a weird question but it is not as far fetched as it sounds. There are many people who were born from gonated sperm or eggs. At least here in the US, the donor is anonymous. There are many people who have half brothers or half sisters they do not know about. It is entirely possible for someone to fall in love with a half sibling without knowing it. As far as twins go, there are two types. Fraternal twins are just like any other siblings except they share a birthday. They each originated from an indivigual fertilized egg. The other type of twins are identical twins. They originate from one fertilized egg that splits and produces two individuals who share the same DNA. Identical twins are esentialy clones. This is slightly oversimplified. Biologists have found slight genetic variations between some identical twins but the variations are small. The romantic involvment could be an interesting and shocking twist. It could be a source of conflict or a way of allowing the characters to show their true colors. I think most people would be a little uncomfortable with the idea. That could be good or bad depending on your purpose.

This is a local event that some of you in the Los Angeles area may want to check out. I saw the last one and liked it so I'm passing on the info. http://rainbowcarnage.org The show is now at the Nuart Theater 11272 Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of the 405 Freeway West Los Angeles, CA 90025 (310) 281-8223

Congratulations!!! Good job.

Thanks! It really looks great with the graphics and all. You must have worked your tails off.

Congratulations! Thanks for the many inteligent and entertaining posts.

Tax money down the toilet...literaly!

The nature VS nurture argument is not as clear as it might seem. There is a relatively new area of study called epigenetics. It seems to sujest that genes depend on input from the invironment to be activated. Basicly the genes function like a computer program. They are full of conditional statements and feedback loops that govern the expresion of genes. The environment sets the conditions. Some genes are triggered by the same stimulus. That might explain linked characteristics like length of fingers, sexual orientation, and anotomical gender.

Recently I was thinking back on a family vacation my parents and I took many years ago. I managed to do something so stupid on that trip that I thought I would die of embarasment. Now I think about it and laugh. I was on a tour of Yellowstone park. We were walking on a baordwalk. There were little signs along the way that said "Please stay on path." There seemed to be grass on both sides of the path. I asked my mother why we were not aloud to walk on the grass. She told me that the "grass" was actualy a type of water plant. I did not believe her and steped off the path. A second later I was up to my waist in mud and holding on to the planks of the baord walk. The walk back to the car seemed a milion long and people kept staring at me. I found myself wishing I had drowned in that mud. LOL So that's my story. Want to tell me your's?

Now that you mention it that title sounds familiar. I probably just forgot. The story also reminded me of "Standing at the Crossroads". I enjoyed that story.

That would be great movie material. What kind of chemicals were they planning on using? If it works I want that formula!

I just say this story on television a few hours ago. Its part of a series on family secrets. This week one of the stories was about a prince who came out after an unsucesful arranged mariage. He is now openly gay and much happier. (His mom is still passed.) http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/story?id=3337841&page=1

Happy Fourth! Have a good one everyone and be careful with the fireworks.

I would try it, assuming there is a second life time. I already have gender identity issues so I can't imagine being just plain gay being any more confusing. I'm sure I would get picked on but I was picked on for other things for a good part of my life anyway. (I was the weird fat kid at school.) Here in LA county gay people are much more accepted than in other parts of the world. I'm assuming I would be born again in the same geographic area. If not I might reconsider my answer. Being dismembered by a homophobic mob is not exactly the greatest way to die.

I'm sorry if it came across the wrong way. I did not meen to blame anyone. Its just a shame that it has to be such a difficult process. The analogy to grieving for the dead is a bit scary to me. I supose it is a reflection of the society(s) we live in. I do understand the shock it must send through a family. It is probably much worse than I can imagine for a maried person.

As I read this post something seemed strangly familiar about the stages. Then I realized that they are identical to the stages of grief which I then googled with the following resuls: [*]Denial:

This is something I have been wondering about for a while. It seems that lately I am hearing the more masculine gay men complain about the more feminine gay men and vice versa. I have seen the issue come up on television and radio. It has been hinted at here in the forums as well. The impresion that I am getting is that the two groups look down on each other. Is there any truth to this or am I just imagining things? Note: when I say masculaine and feminine I am refering to the annoying stereotypes: masculine-sports, cars, red meat, and no pink shirts, ever feminine-shoe shopping, pretty cloths, cooking, baking, and feather boas

The "Mythbusters" made me smile. I watched them rebuild the crash test dumy they love to abuse and then drop him from a crane. For those who haven't seen the show, its full of destruction and explosions. The dummy Buster is used to test the damage a person might sustain in certain situations. He usualy looses at least one limb but it is presented in a funny way....Then they have to put him back together again.

Congradulations! Goats rule!

Here's an interesting one: eggplant lasagna. It's basicly layers of roasted eggplant, cheese, and tomato sauce. Just salt and papper each layer and than bake the whole thing. Its one of the few things I know how to cook and its easy.

The stem cell/cloning is going to happen on a bigger scale. Regeneration sounds quite possible. I heard that some scientists were able to grow headless animals. If that's possible I'm sure regrowing lost body parts can't be too far behind. Maybe even growing parts you never had to begin with will be possible. Who hasn't wished for a third hand at some point? One thing I would like to see is a better way to interface with modern technology. Computers and TVs are getting better but we are still pushing buttons. It would be great if you could just put on a headset and let your thoughts control your computer, telephone, tv, or whatever. This one may already exist in a primitive form. I'm sure there would be a high demand for glasses or contact lenses that could work as a tv/computer screan. You could sit at some long meeting and watch a movie while the oblivious coworker/instructor dromes on about something you couldn't care less about.

It's not so much about how thick your skin is as what you let pass through the layers. You can be thick skinned in the sense that you are not crying every time someone criticizes your performance but also listen to the feedback. I usualy like to stay out of the spotlight physicaly but when I was in school the instructors seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in making their students do presentations. That ment that every three to six months I had to give one of those Powerpoint talks. What I learned to do was to get ready before the talk. In this phase I would be creative and quite attached to the slide show I was putting together. Once I was satisfied with the performance I would give I could emotionaly detach from it. On the day of the talk I would watch the audience and try to adjust to any visual feed back they gave me in a completely mechanical way. After the event I listend to the criticisms and praises and remembered them for the inevitable next time. At this point none of it was personal and I was not upset by any of the coments. I was treating my performance as a product made to someone's specifications. The key is to think about the feedback instead of immediately reacting. Sometimes someone says, "That sucked ass!" just because they were in a bad mood. Rather than imediately feeling terrible it makes sense to ask yourself why that person said what he said. Then you can sort out the useful coments from the useless ones. Your skin can be thicker to some of them than others. Its also important to realize that sometimes the show does not mach the audience. There is nothing that can be done about that. It happens to the best performers. That reminds me of a line from "Headwig and the Angry Itch". She said something to the effect of, "They threw tomatos...I had a nice salad after the show." Ok, I've had your attention lond enough. I'll let someone else take the stage now.