Former Member

I didn’t realize you were a teacher! ;-) People have told me I should teach (or should have taught)! But I don’t think I have the patience others think I have. If it’s a brief ‘one on once’ situation, I have no problem because they’re going to go away relatively soon anyway. It’s when I’d be dealing with the same group for months on end when I start to lose patience… ;-)

When I checked to see what I wrote that @Butcher56 reacted to, I was struck by just how short the chapter is! I don’t think I could have endured a long chapter filled with so much pain. I would imagine it would have been too difficult for you, @Parker Owens to write! ;-)

You’re evil! Another cliffhanger! But at least we know that Troy isn’t too badly hurt! ;-) I suppose that Mr & Mrs C’s open-mindedness must have come from somewhere and it looks like Gran might have been at least one reason. ;-)

[sarcasm] Because it’s obvious that if you never tell a kid about sex, he or she will never think about touching his or her naughty bits, much less touch someone else’s! Just like only explaining VD will scare a kid away from ever having sex. Because clearly never talking about sex worked back in the caveman days! [/sarcasm] ;–)

I said before that Oli is like the kid Teddy & Ryder might have had if they had gotten married a dozen years ago! ;-)

Yeah, whatever happened to SuperMom? It doesn’t sound like anything was done at all! I realize things don’t happen instantly, but has anything happened on that front? ;-)

I remember back in the ‘70s, one of the San Diego Top 40 radio station used to bleep out the word ‘crap’ (replacing it with ‘zapped’) in Paul Simon’s Kodachrome! Words like damn and hell weren’t uttered on TV in the US either. I’m predicting that some day we’ll be looking back and thinking the fuss over the f-word was quaint. There will be something else that people will panic over. ;-) Personally, it upsets me more to hear the n-word, especially when some people sprinkle it throughout their conversations, seemingly every other word! But the language choices by some young people suggests to me that there is a tremendous bias against women and girls – and LGBTQ people and other minorities! Most often by people who fall into one or more of those categories themselves! In many cases it seems like a self-hatred issue, but I’m sure they’d disagree with me.

As I read the words, they looked similar to Can (I) help (you)? Of course, I have no clue what it sounds like! (And, while that’s the way most people would say it, it’s not as correct as ‘May I help you?’) ;-)

I’m wondering why horses were needed at an observatory! What do horses need to observe besides other horses, their food, and (theoretically) predators? Or did Danes worship horses in their pagan period? ;-)

This reminds me of a somewhat similar sounding Japanese salad, Sunomono. It uses very thinly sliced cucumbers (sliced using a mandoline) and rice vinegar – the cucumbers are marinated for a few minutes to wilt them before serving. I’m not a big fan of cucumbers or Western pickles, but I do like Sunomono and cucumber Tsukemono (pickled in some sort of soy bean tofu-byproduct, I think). They don’t taste anything like Western pickles! ;-)

I don’t think we should tell you. (Sorry @Parker Owens!) Otherwise you’ll get distracted and we’ll be waiting even longer for updates on your stories! ;-)

Well Alex could have given Robbie a Happy Ending before killing him. La Petite Mort avant la grande finale? (I’m sure I’m mangling my really bad French.) ;-)

No, it’d be much easier to frame Alex! Just one look at his father’s rap sheet and a glance at his older brother’s criminal convictions and the jury will be ready to convict him too! Nathan is too innocent looking and he comes from a loving and supportive family – the contrast couldn’t be stronger! ;-)

You know, I think the first time I read this I mentioned to @Ronyx that Kevin Williams was the name of a very popular porn star who had a very long and successful career. ;-) I see lots of interesting conflict. I’m wondering if Kevin is right and Paul is interested in Devin. How ironic that would be if Devin is surrounded by Gay people who love him! ;-) And just like before, I’ve forgotten what happens in this story! It’ll be like reading it again for the first time! There are advantages to being forgetful… ;-)

What I don’t understand is how Parker Owens, who seems to be such a likable guy, can write such disturbing beginnings in both Predator Prey and A to Z! ;-) Parker had me engaged from the first chapter until the very end, usually speculating on what would happen next! ;-)

This was always kind of like watching a scary movie. You shout at the screen, warning the incredibly stupid, but sexy, teenagers not to go check out that odd sound in the basement during a power outage! Sure it’s fun when the guys get naked, but you know they’re going to die before you get to see the goodies! ;-)

I was very good friends with a very open-minded straight couple. They got very frustrated when I wouldn’t tell them my middle name. So they decided to give me one in hopes I’d hate it enough to tell them my real one. ‘Hank’ was not particularly annoying and didn’t even begin with the same letter as my actual middle name. ;-)

I agree with you, but Oli actually did call Teddy a bully. ;-)

I’m not a fan of metal (or hard rock in general) so I go with what I know. It’s more about the fact that drummers sometimes sing lead. With one not being known for her drumming since her voice eclipsed her skills behind the drums. ;-) There are also drummers who rarely sang lead (Ringo) and many others who sang harmony or never sang at all. ;-)

Wasn’t this to Kirstin?

So Oli’s not a Karen Carpenter, but maybe he’s a Phil Collins! They’re both drummers who were also lead singers at least part of the time. But Karen was known primarily for her voice, not her drumming. ;-) It appears that Ryder picking up Oli at school went over better than I would have expected. Oli gets cred from his classmates and yet the media didn’t make too big a fuss over it. It was probably TMZ (or a successor) which ran the story since it seemed to be more gossip than news. ;-)

@Timothy M., this time I paid attention as I read the chapter in Safari’s Reader Mode and noticed that instead of a box, there is a nice, clean vertical bar to the left of each email message. But the message to Kirstin has a box enclosing an icon indicating a graphic that is missing just before the ‘Love Russell’. It’s not formatted like the other email messages. ;-)

Well, in Safari’s Reader Mode*, there isn’t any visible difference. I can see the boxes as I skim down to Comment (after I finish reading the chapter and leave Reader Mode) and they do make things much more obvious, but the way you have formatted the sequence (ie ‘Russell to Evan’) is clear enough for me. Sorry to disappoint you. ;-) * Reader Mode gets rid of all the extraneous clutter on the page leaving a plain white field with plain black text. I think it overrides font choices too. Sometimes pictures used to illustrate the story are visible, but often they get blocked too. All in the cause of making things much easier to read. Firefox also has a Reader Mode that does the same thing. ;-)

It was so long ago that I read this chapter! I know I didn’t read it when it was first posted, but I guess I was one of those people who didn’t even Like the chapters, much less Comment on them! My how times have changed! ;-)

Some people are into feet. I’m not and I have no idea what anyone else on GA feels. But to each his (or her) own and I’m not judging anyone over this… ;-)