Former Member

Because you don’t see pitchforks and torches every time you glance out your own windows? ;–)

@Dodger is too Canadian to tell us to quit bothering him with the retired social worker plot line suggestion he clearly doesn’t like. ;–)

Oops! ;–) It’s karmic retribution! ;–) I only knew the word chicanery through a strange connection! I thought it was a pretty obscure word myself that just jumped out at me. When I saw @ColumbusGuy seeming to think Love, Simon was a foreign film plus listing grape juice and chocolate together, I couldn’t resist poking fun at it all. I hope no one took me too seriously. I apologize for offending anyone with my weird humor. I spent today catching up on nearly a week’s worth of notifications because I stupidly plugged a phone cable into the wrong jack and couldn’t get online for about a week. ;–)

I used to work with a woman who was in an on-again, off-again relationship with a guy. When they were together they constantly fought with each other (only verbally) and when they were apart she couldn’t stop talking about him. It went on for years. Finally she had had enough and quit seeing him for good. She met a nice guy and even got married! (The new guy even offered to go to a bar to pick up blondes/blonds with me!) ;–)

Sorry to hear about your health issues but happy to hear that you’re doing better now. ;–) Nick is lucky to have Mrs Rodriguez to help him understand the situation better and put it all in perspective. It seems like something that should have come from either the school or hospital, but at least he got some counseling. The world would be a better and safer place if more people talked to therapists! ;–)

Doesn’t your OS or browser do spellcheck? I know that my various devices have differing levels of assistance when I’ve misspelled a word. Quite often I’m very close, but the AI doesn’t quite get what I was trying to type. My Android phone is nearly useless in that situation. MacOS on my MacBook is much more useful since it comes with Dictionary.app included and it has a much larger vocabulary to suggest from. iOS on my iPad falls in-between the two in usefulness. I would never have known the word except for the connection to the toys I played with as a kid. But maybe I can blame my history of getting speeding tickets on the same toys! Really officer, it’s not my lead foot! It’s the toys I was given to play with as a kid! ;–) I doubt chicanery was a word I encountered when I was reading the dictionary or encyclopedia for entertainment (I was a loner with a boring childhood). It’s much easier to get lost clicking on links on Wikipedia than it was flipping pages in those thick and heavy books. A lot more pictures now than the books had, too! ;–)

While I agree that Trevor is bad news, Dizzy’s mother is in an extremely difficult situation. Housing costs in San Francisco are among the highest in the world, rivaling Manhattan! It’s easy for us to judge her while not fully realizing how unavailable affordable housing is in the Bay Area in general, but in San Francisco especially! Poverty is a downward spiral. It’s actually very expensive to be poor in the US. It’s easier to save money when you have access to lots of it. If you can afford to buy in bulk, things cost less. If you can pay for the Amazon Prime membership, you have access to free music and free shipping. A Netflix membership gives you access to tons of movies and TV shows at a low cost. And then there’s all the time you save not having to wait for transit or for non-membership free shipping… ;–) If Dizzy’s mom abandoned their home to avoid Trevor, where would she go? A battered women’s shelter? If they had space for her, Dizzy wouldn’t be allowed in because he’s too old (boys are usually only allowed if they’re prepubescent). A homeless shelter? If they had space, the ones in SF are kind of scary and dangerous – and they keep people separated by gender. Couch surfing gets old real fast – especially for the host(s). Living in your car is even more difficult than you think because police like waking people up to get them to move and because cars don’t have bathrooms. Republicans have cut funding for social services. There aren’t lots of options for people like Dizzy’s mother. Things are especially tough in the Bay Area where the cost of living is so high. It doesn’t appear that Dizzy’s mom has the skills in demand by either the tech or biotech industries that are driving up the costs in the area.

Jamie seems intent on sowing all of his wild oats on this trip… ;–)

The Pedant in me demands that I comment on the following things: It’s chicanery. It’s derived from French so it only sounds like it should be spelled that way. I recognized the word chicane from playing with slot cars in the ‘70s. A chicane is a turn or turns created to slow the racers down, on real-life racetracks they’re often added where previous racers crashed due to excessive speed. ;–) Love, Simon is an American movie directed by Greg Berlanti. ;–) That’s a disgusting combination! Mint, orange, cinnamon, and even strawberries are more traditional accompaniments to chocolate. I hate them, but raisins are the only kind of grapes that I’ve ever heard of in combination with chocolate. But we all know things are slightly different in Ohio. ;–)

@Dodger keeps ignoring suggestions that the retired social worker might be a useful resource for Robbie? ;–)

What? The retired social worker? And @Dodger keeps ignoring you when you mention him? ;–)

After Mark rescued Bobby by yanking Scott out of the stall, I’m not sure continuing to kick Scott was really necessary. Certainly, it felt good, but I don’t think it was useful. I hope they report the incident to the theater’s manager. Not only will that create a record there, but it’s possible Scott will be banned from the theater in the future. Scott has been skating by punishment-free for too long and that prohibition would be a painful reminder that his behavior is being noticed.

Poor Mark getting c*ck-blocked by his Aunt! ;–) As a fan of (good) science-fiction, I could imagine getting caught up in a similar discussion with Bobby & Aunt Janice. Like all other genres, there are plenty of LGBTQ or LGBTQ-friendly authors out there, but there is also a lot of homophobic trash out there too (some of it overtly hateful, some of it merely rabidly heterocentric). A well-read, knowledgable aficionado can guide you to high-quality stories and series that fit your interests. ;–)

This feels like a @Parker Owens-style beginning! A very dark beginning with what promises to be an extremely rocky journey – and hopefully a satisfying ending. ;–) Dustin has some very positive attributes buried deep under all that resentment, disappointment, and damage. Coal plus pressure equals diamond, right? Even small improvements will seem huge to Dustin… ;–)

Robbie could start to fix some of his problems if he went to visit the retired social worker. He needs to talk to a sympathetic adult with experience dealing with these sorts of problems. Contrary to what Robbie, Don, and Sue seem to believe, Robbie definitely needs to see a therapist for help dealing with the loss of his mother and his anger issues which seem to be related to not only his mother, but especially Don and his homophobia.

I agree, but will finding the business card remind her of the piece of paper that was stuck in a drawer?

I’m wondering why Steve’s boss didn’t seem more concerned over an employee who just stopped showing up. Even for a job that’s relatively unskilled, there are recruiting and training costs to cover. It sounds like Steve was someone they’d hate to lose!

yeah - great attention grabber, but now you have chapter 1 of your first novel outlined Reading it reminded me of a fairly close episode in Felice Picano's Like People in History, and that is a fantastic book by a fantastic author. Now love...let's see....ooops. Ran out of room

Of course your fantasy arctic warriors are dwarfish, extremely muscular and hirsute with dark hair! Mine would be more elven with pale skin, blond or red hair, with tall, thin, smooth, and lithe bodies! Your warriors would be lumbering around and quickly exhaust themselves, dragging all that weight around. ;–)

Actually, I’m Following you! ;–) I’m getting all the other Notifications without a problem. But I’m not going to mention it to the GA authorities because the last time I did that, I got ranted at because others had made the same complaint on different thread. I was led to believe that I was notifying them of my issue in the correct thread (and on that thread, there were no other mentions of the problem). If certain people are so touchy about bug reports, I’m not about to put myself back into the same situation again. I know what customer service is like since I did that pretty much my entire working life. To do the job properly, you need to realize that people are asking for your assistance. You might be tired of answering the same complaint, but to the person making the request, it’s the first time the complaint is being made. Being confrontational when the request is made politely is extremely rude and unprofessional.

Oh, and once again, I did not get a Notification of this chapter… :–(

I’m thinking that Diamond might have other victims if he was allegedly molesting his nephew. With the publicity of his arrest for his attack on the school, other victims might come out of the woodwork feeling safe now that he’s in custody. (Let’s all jump on the bandwagon now!) ;–)

Like @ColumbusGuy, I graduated from high school in 1977. But my high school has (still) the oldest high school buildings in the district (San Diego Unified). The newest buildings in my school were probably from ‘50s and ‘60s. There was no PA system and students who worked in the school office brought messages when they needed to see a student (or teacher). The junior high school was a few blocks away (next to, but separated by a very steep slope from an elementary school) and its buildings were of a similar age. ;–) One of the buildings was supposed to have a state-of-the-art system intended to eliminate the need for air conditioning. Maybe it worked in theory, but high school classrooms are opened once every hour, venting cool air outdoors. I know it sort of worked because there was an office or auxiliary room attached to one of my classrooms that didn’t have an external door and the air in there was always cold! It was supposed to have some sort of passive heat-exchange – it probably worked in an office-type situation where there were fewer external doors. ;–)

I’m no damsel! I love my ‘fancy on the outside’ equipment! And I’ll leave the hairy guys to you! You can deal guys whose hair has all migrated from the top of their head to their shoulders and backs! ;–)

I think most of what Tom left behind was his artwork. It influenced the entire leather scene with lots of hyper-masculine men, often wearing little. He had been a member of a motorcycle club whose members owned no motorcycles! ;–) I saw the movie at Frameline41 and learned a lot about his experiences, especially as he attempted to sell his drawings in places like Germany. Eventually, he is able to sell his drawings to a magazine publisher in the US. When he is invited to visit the US himself, he is shocked to find out that there is a group of Gay men who have adopted their style of dress from his artwork.