BlueSoxSWJ

Jon bought the GPS, not Brandon.

I'm gonna stop making predictions. Even my jokes have been eerily accurate!

I'd have to disagree with the premise here - just because Jerry Clump aka The Scar isn't actually gay, doesn't mean he didn't tell his own son that he was as part of his cover. re: cutting wrists: It is possible to kill oneself that way, it's just difficult. Most important is the direction of the cut - most kids who try it cut across the wrists, which doesn't open the veins enough to bleed too much. Successful attempts occur when the cutter knows to follow the vein up the arm. I gave myself a crash course in this one when I talked my best friend out of it freshman year of college. In this case, I'd say it's a safe bet Lump survived, since it sounds like he never even completely lost consciousness before receiving medical attention.

Yes, everyone has little quirks and imperfections. Like killing people.

Actually, I'm pretty sure it was 8:51 local time, so it meant I was up early. (Although last year, 8:51AM on a Sunday almost always meant I was STILL up from Saturday...) And I don't drink (almost 5 years now, and yes, that includes all of college and three years of living in a fraternity), so no tequila, sorry Steve

I've been on the receiving end of a few of these ... that and drunken IMs in the middle of the night.

I wouldn't worry about it - Google's policy is to manually adjust obvious Google Bombs (when people create lots of pages just to link to a specific page with a specific term - a famous one was "miserable failure" linking to the white house's page on Bush). It just means that if we managed to get this site to #1 for the term "cliffhanger," and Google felt it wasn't legit, they'd manual lower this site's score. And with that, I recommend we stop this foray into

Actually, Google's algorithm isn't all that secret - they used to have it published in detail on their site, until someone realized that might not have been the best way to stay ahead of the competition. Google's algorithm uses a combination of many factors, including: - domain extension and URL (i.e. .edu pages get an automatic bump, sites with a ~ get reduced, since those often mean personal pages) - contents and tags (what every search engine uses) - contents of pages linking to that page, especially the text of the link and around the link - score of the pages linking to that page (a link from a high ranking .edu site counts more than a link from a random internet forum) - manual adjustments to avoid Google bombs - manual adjustments in general (i.e. major sites like cnn, wikipedia, etc. get higher ranks) I actually TAed for a class for 2 years that taught computer basics, and included a question on an assignment that asked why Google was unique in the way it found search results. Well, at the time, Google had replaced the detailed algorithm with an April Fool's Joke that never got taken down. And, well, some students found it easier to copy and paste their answers instead of writing new ones. You'd think that a student, particularly at an Ivy League school, would at least READ what was on the page being copied ... instead, we got the this, word for word, and all had a good laugh (except the student, who won a dean's hearing for plagiarism). So anyways, the answer is that yes, more links to CJ's stuff that use the word "cliffhanger" as the link text will help his PageRank. Even better would be sites with outside URLs (not gayauthors.org) linking to his work.

Oddly enough, my impression this chapter was that The Scar is not nearly as thorough, careful, or even as good at what he does as I previously thought. First, a holdover from last chapter: when he called in Dimitri over Eric going crazy, that was just pure panic and kind of stupid. Did he really think, in the SEVEN HOURS it would take Dimitri to arrive, he was still going to be chasing around a drunk Eric? He also slipped, as pointed out in this chapter, and revealed his identity. Second, setting up a fake charity to help fund his activities was a bad idea. With all the scrutiny and investigations charities face, it was a rather large risk to take given that even Instinct's large donations were "miniscule [sIC] compared to our costs." Finally, once his identity is revealed and he only needs to keep the locations of the bombs a secret, he's already dug himself into a pretty deep hole. If he doesn't eliminate Instinct, they probably would figure out how he shipped everything; if he kills them, he also raises a big red flag about his shipping business, since his connection to Instinct is public, and the band just happening to have a major accident just as the person in charge of shipping their stuff happened to smuggle something into the U.S. would seem way too much of a coincidence. Well, I guess we'll see if "fortune favors the bold," or if Eric's instincts save the day.

One problem with nukes is their difficulty to obtain in large numbers ... here we happen to know that the Scar is making only 3. Much better to use a conventional bomb to prove your willingness to kill people, and simply show one of the bombs as proof you have nuclear capability. Historical fact that people really could make a bigger deal out of: When the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we exhausted our nuclear weapons cache of the time. Now, granted, I've only read For The Love out of CJ's work, but complete and total red herrings that end up being SEPs* just don't seem likely - in FTL, the twists and turns always unexpectedly led to major characters having bizarre connections instead of being false leads. So for now, I'll stick to my guns, and say "they" is most likely Instinct. - Steve * If you don't recognize SEP as "Somebody Else's Problem," go out and read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It's worth it, and will help pass the time until the new chapter is out.

Does the story really have anyone other than Instinct that could be the Scar's target? First, I doubt it's an individual, because the Scar would have no reason to be vague about gender and specifically use "they" instead of "he" or "she" just to conceal gender. While there are minor characters that could be considered famous, it would hardly warrant such an ominous foreshadow just to have the "they" be people we don't care about. I think anyone insisting that it isn't necessarily Instinct is either convinced that CJ is messing with us (ok, possible) or just saying what they HOPE is the case. P.S. Brown's Computer Science network had .plan and .project files. Often if you forgot to log out when you left, your .plan or .project file magically changed to something obscene ...

wildone - it's possible that CJ never mentioned a specific charity because Jerry simply has his own - most celebrities, even not-so-famous ones, do nowadays. Given the availability of funds to someone in the Scar's line of "work," I wouldn't imagine funding to be a problem. Also, if he did need funds, I think his own company would be much safer to skim from. Finally, I don't think the costs of a few hotel rooms would really make a dent in the sorts of monies the Scar would need. Given that Jerry asked Instinct to help Joe if he shows up, we have to assume one of two things - either Joe is in on everything, or the Scar really did "come out" to Joe. Given his alcoholic nature, I would be shocked if the former were true, so I think Joe has no clue about the whole Scar thing. Also, the staff went to Gabe, not Joe, and were told tersely to drop it and not bother the talent. Final thought - As much as I agree with people that I would be hoping that Eric would somehow mess up the Kryton switches, we know it won't happen because of the prologue. P.S. Beastkid - all you need to remember in physics is F=ma. Everything else follows.

For the record, the reason I threw Jerry's name out there last chapter was simple process of elimination. Assuming the Scar was a character we'd met by chapter 21 (a pretty safe assumption), Jerry was the only male character I couldn't eliminate: (in order of appearance) Brandon - duh Gabe - in prison Carlisle brothers - duh Joe Clump - it's pretty clear his drug/alcohol problems aren't faked, so there's no way he could carry out such an intricate plan Dimitri - same scene w/ Scar Vladimir - same scene w/ Scar Gunter - despite the copy/pasted fountain scene, he couldn't be so frequently absent from the country without the band noticing Jim - too minor of a character, really.

Chapter 22 is up!

ok, a possibly crazy theory that I want to throw out so I can take credit later if I happen to be right:

Yay fellow insomniacs! If you need someone to talk to about maths, I'd be happy to help (I'm Brown University '07 with a Bachelor of Science in math). I actually (*gasp*) LIKE parabolas and quadratics and variables, and even if you'd still feel guilty getting tutored online for free, think of it as "payment" for these stories. Feel free to email me any time (and please do!) with questions or anything. My e-mail is my username here at gmail dot com. I also have AIM/gtalk/skype/yahoo messenger if you want more of a conversation instead of an explanation. I was a teaching assistant for a Computer Science course at Brown, and was responsible for responding to e-mailed questions for a while, so I have experience trying to put a clear answer into writing without the benefit of drawing or using examples. re: quitting Keep at it. I was in a fraternity at Brown, so I've seen many people try to quit various substances, with varying degrees of success. My one piece of advice, which may be useless if your family is clueless that you smoke, is to be open with everyone close to you about your efforts to quit and how it's going. If everyone knows why you're being irritable, it may help them have more patience and they can also try to help and support you. Good luck!

Sorry to make a whole thread about it, but I just came across three of my biggest pet peeves in writing in one paragraph, so now I'm noticing them everywhere. 1. loosing - from to loose:

Nifty --> SciFi --> Do-Over --> link to dkstories.com --> link to forums If you want to go back further than that, I guess you'd have to go me going to Brown --> meeting my roommate --> him dragging me to rush what became my fraternity --> overhearing a couple of the brothers talking about erotic stories, and mentioning several sites, including Nifty.