Former Member

Even in our lovely Bay Area! But I love how at least three candidates for state level offices (Governor & Lt Governor) are unambiguously and aggressively courting the LGBTQ vote in their TV ads! Oddly enough, Ricardo Lara (candidate for Insurance Commissioner) is listed by EQCA as LGBTQ, but hasn’t mentioned that fact in any of the ads I’ve seen – if he’s even running any. My ballot has at least four LGBTQ candidates on it with one race where two are running against each other. California’s Primary is on June 5th.

If I were wealthy, I think I’d prefer a housekeeper more than a butler. I have no interest in interacting with lots of wealthy people and attending fancy events. I hate wearing ties and dressing up! But I also hate cleaning up after myself. ;–)

Are you foreshadowing Noah following Billy’s move further up the Kinsey Scale? ;–)

The Bank of Italy was founded by AP Giannini in San Francisco. It later merged with a smaller Los Angeles-based Bank of America and adopted its name. We’ve always called it ‘B of A’ or ‘BofA.’ Of course, now that all the big San Francisco (and Los Angeles) banks have been taken over by out of state banks (BofA being merged with Charlotte, NC’s NationsBank who kept the BofA name), who cares what they’re called now. But I’m not bitter, not bitter at all! ;–) Crosstown rival Wells Fargo took over the Los Angeles-based First Interstate Bank and then was itself taken over by Minneapolis, MN-based Norwest (which later took over Charlotte, NC’s Wachovia). ;–)

I guess I must reading all the stories that have been done before! ;–) When you read through the Comment on various stories, you know that we’ve all found things to enjoy. ;–) I think this is a shades of gray sort of issue. At some indistinctly marked point, those issues overwhelm the story and become too difficult to ignore. If the story is well written and the mistakes are rare, it’s easy to ignore them. When the story is clichéd with difficult to understand dialogue, nonexistent editing, and bad formatting, it’s harder to get through the story. I know that I’ve put up with quite a bit of stuff that bothers me when I like the story overall. (And, no, I’m not referring to anything that anyone here has edited.) But I only got through a couple paragraphs this morning when I had to stop. There just wasn’t enough that kept me engaged. It was easier to quit.

Shatner is a native Canadian speaker. He’s speaking English phonetically. We should be more forgiving of his disability. ;–) Yes, this is a mean joke. I love all the authors from the other CA! Even if one protagonist was much too forgiving. ;–)

Nope! You’re not that sloppy! I think the author is just a kid. ;–)

I just tried reading a new story this morning. I got about a quarter or third of the way into the chapter when I just had to stop. The frequent, incorrect use of apostrophes really annoys me! I cannot understand why it’s so difficult to use them properly! Only slightly less annoying to me are excessive commas. If some of those sentences were read out loud, they’d sound even more odd than William Shatner’s idiosyncratic delivery. I haven’t decided if it’s worse when there are too many or too few commas. It can be difficult to read either way. One author who I complained to in a story Comment is going back to school. The stories are getting better technically, but I’m not sure if it’s the school or better editors and beta readers. Judging by the replies to the Comments, I’d guess it’s not the school – yet. I’m just glad the author’s stories are easier to read now! ;–) Now I realize that not all of the authors I read here and elsewhere are native English speakers. I applaud ESL writers because English is the only language I can speak and I’d never survive if I were placed in a situation where no one spoke English! I only wish I could converse in any of the three languages I took classes in. ;–) I have managed to learn all sorts of interesting homophones and near homophones that seem obvious to me, but not numerous authors: peak/peek/pique (height vs quick look vs irritation), clique/click/cliché (a group vs a sound vs overused [yeah, it took me a while to realize what was meant there]), sic/sick (as in what one orders a dog to do vs what happens when a dog eats chocolate), sight/site/cite (ie vision vs location vs quote). And then there are all the imported words of French origin that have been ‘creatively’ misspelled. ;–) It’s so much easier to quickly look up a word than in the past – I can remember my mother insisting that we look up a word in the (physical) dictionary when we asked her how to spell it. Dictionary.app on my Mac does a fair job of figuring out what I’m trying to spell even when I’m wildly wrong! (That’s when you try synonyms – either as a substitute or as a possible hint at the word you really want to use.) ;–)

I hope we’re all right that Jeff’s brother will be both the voice of reason and the source of refuge for Simon.

My only disappointment was that you tricked me! The first build up, mentioning Jack having had a bath. And then you revealed his canine heritage! Naughty Headstall! Mean author! ;–) But the second peak (not peek or pique that many other authors get mixed up with), the proposal was very creative and very Jimmy! ;–) I’m still a little sad that Drake & Jimmy won’t be daddies for more than a year! Will they adopt an older child like they did with their canine companion? I can see Jimmy being just as intuitive with a troubled child as he was with Drake and his dysfunctional family! ;–)

It’s interesting to contemplate teaching those concepts to beings who have not understood or even considered them before. I’ve read that gorillas who have learned sign language (and other animals who can communicate with humans) have never asked a question. They have apparently never conceived of the idea that they can learn from others by asking. Things that toddlers quickly understand are not universal just because a creature can communicate with language. ;–)

My friends and I would have been the kids from the wrong side of the tracks except that they were busing in kids from an even worse neighborhood. There definitely were kids who lived in very fancy neighborhoods who attended our high school. We had a fairly well representative mix of economic, ethnic, and religious groups and we all got along reasonably well. In the anti-war, post-Vietnam era, we even had people who joined the military after graduating – including my (straight) weedy, little runt of a best friend with poor eyesight and an allergy to the sun who joined the Navy. But of course, San Diego was still a sleepy, little Navy Town in the late-‘70s. ;–)

This happened in the US Military too. When we are at war, it’s more important to have bodies than it is to examine what those bodies are doing in bed. During WWII, there were many stories of LGBTs being valued members of the Armed Service. As soon as the war ended, they were given discharges, some Dishonorable, a few not. This pattern was repeated in the Gulf War.

The Love is for the writing, not the content. ;–) A huge percentage of cops are ex-military. The whole system mirrors the military, rank and all. Firefighters are similar too. There’s a reason they were compared when the politicians were investigating the ending of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. It’s not just a parallel, it’s more of a continuum. They are only now beginning to consider using psychological testing to filter for additional issues like racism and other biases and the propensity for violence. Issues that cause repeated scandals and unnecessary deaths. Too many of the wrong sorts of personalities are drawn to the field as a career, people who want to impose their own brand of morality on society, people who want to force the community to follow their rules, people who believe they know better than everyone else what’s right and what’s wrong. People who see everything in black and white. It’s very difficult to take someone who was trained to kill anyone they should negotiate to avoid violence. New generations are growing up playing extremely violent video games where they get points for shooting at anything that moves and ‘death’ takes just a reset button to fix. Mediators tend to enter other fields like psychology, negotiators tend to go into business. We aren’t doing a good enough job of teaching our kids that the world is filled with shades of gray – and I don’t mean that pseudo-pornographic rip-off of Anne Rice’s erotica ;–). How many times have soldiers killed their fellow troops because they were not straight? How many others were explained away or blamed on other causes? Not all cases of ‘deviance’ are accepted.

You’re just about as easy to tease as @Wesley8890! ;–)

You said there’d be no women in the wedding. You didn’t say wedding party! You were the one who said it! ;–) And now you’re saying the women will be altered? Gabby & Betty are Transmen? I guess Gabby will change her name to Gabriel, but will Devon’s mom become Bertie? ;–)

So the women aren’t being banished from the wedding they are planning! ;–) I remember going to a Mexican Catholic wedding of a coworker. Another coworker (a lapsed Catholic) asked me what the Bride & Groom were doing when they left the alter for a minute or two in the middle of the ceremony. I told her they were consummating the marriage and she nodded and said ‘Oh.’ Obviously, she really didn’t know what I had said. I couldn’t figure out why she thought I would know what they really were doing! ;–) A few years later, I went to a very fancy Filipino Catholic wedding. The ceremony was so long that the Bride & Groom had chairs to sit in while at the altar! There was something about coins and a cord to bind them together. At one point, I recall them pinning the veil for some reason. During the reception, the very flamboyantly Gay Filipino guy who made the wedding gown caught the bouquet – they took it away from him and tossed it again. They’d been calling for the coworker who was my plus-one to participate in the bouquet toss, but we were both hiding in the back of the reception hall. They tried to get me to go up for the garter toss too. I only went [to the wedding] because she finally got her very intelligent and sexy Marine Officer. He had no idea just how spoiled she was and still is! ;–)

Why? So Hartley could film you taking a shower? Hartley is a disgusting perv!

That last chapter better be a whopper! It has to cover Billy & Brett’s lives as they go on to college, start their lives, start a family, deal with the passing of their parents (and Dave). Ideally, it will also cover the corruption court cases of the Taylors and all the other ‘fine people’ of Denora! ;–)

Didn’t somebody here predict that there’d be money stashed in the coin collection? And no wonder George warned them repeatedly not to sell the collection! If they had, they’d never have discovered the cash! ;–)

Hey, aren’t you a married woman? If you’re getting some on the side, wouldn’t it be smarter not to post about it – especially if there are multiples? We’re not good at keeping secrets! ;–)

Where are your priorities? Naturally, we come first! You can sleep and eat in between writing! ;–)

Ugh! Nifty! But I suppose Nick won’t notice all the misspellings and grammatical errors since he’s just a teenager… ;–)

@Bndmetl, I think you’d have at least three or four days a week covered – if you posted each of your stories more regularly! ;–)

But that would be boring – and very un-Bndmetl! ;–)