Tomas

Wonder if he snickers all the way to the bank.

George Shearing - Lullaby Of Birdland from his 2001 "Back To Birdland" album.

Yep! Do that all the time with online stories. Bad writing, no discernable plot or the plot just falls apart, an inordinate amount of time between chapters, etc. Dead tree books? I have my favorite authors (Raymond E. Feist, Janny Wurts, Joan D. Vinge, Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven and a few others) and I usually don't bail on one of their books, but it has been known to happen. Back when I first discovered LOTR, I bought all three books. Started Fellowship of the Rings and didn't get past the first chapter, put them on the bookshelf and forgot about them. Then sometime later, I read an article about how they were all the rage on college campuses. I remembered that I had the books and wondered what was so great about them and started to read them again. This time I went through all 3 books one right after the other. Then went back and got the Hobbit and read it. Because of the time lag between chapters of online stories, if I'm really enjoying the story, I'll likely re-read, at least parts of it, while waiting for a new chapter. Usually, when I do that, I discover little things that I've missed the first time around. Jamie's The Scrolls of Icaria is one such story. There are many little gems that I've discovered in re-reading all or parts of the story. But, there again, a story has to be well written with all of the elements that hold my interest. By the same token, I frequently re-read dead tree books. With books in a series I'll start with the first book and continue through all of them.

Are you kidding? As uptight as the country on this side of the pond is about anything that might even suggest that humans are a sexual animal, anyone attempting to produce a show like that here would likely be drawn and quartered. Look at the uproar that Janet Jackson caused when she showed a tiny bit of tit. Oh, just so you are aware unless you have an UK IP address or are using a UK Proxy you can't watch UK TV programing on the net outside of the UK. THelink will take you to the Channel4 web site, but if you're in the US... not going to happen. Found that out when I tried to watch an episode of Merlin on the BBC web site.

The only time, that I can recall, that a movie scared the hell out of me occurred when I was 8 or 9 years old. Only thing I remember about the movie is the name: "The White Gorilla" and that it really scared me. It scared me enough that I went into my dad's tool box and got the hammer and put it under my pillow when I went to bed that night. I guess it was a case that "No Stinkin' White Gorilla was going to get me without a fight." The only other thing I remember about the incident was trying to explain the hammer to my parents the next day.

And for heavens sake... DON'T OVERCOOK AND DESTROY THE SHRIMP... It doesn't take very long for the shrimp to be cooked.

Talk about schizophrenic. I put in 7 different entries from my journal and got the following: 1. Edgar Allen Poe 2. Mark Twain 3. Kurt Vonnegut 4. & 5. Margaret Atwood 6. Leo Tolstoy 7. Vladimir Nabokov Everything that I have written are like short entries in a journal. All non-fiction. As hard as I've tried, I've never been able to write fiction. I get these ideas and when I try to expand them into a story, they never seem to go anywhere and then just disappear.

"How Green Was My Valley"

Hear! Hear!

Katherine Hepburn and any one of her leading men. Henry Fonda, Spencer Tracy, John Wayne, Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Jimmy Stewart. That's all that I can remember.

Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor Op 18 Earlier I was listening to Leonard Cohen - Everybody Knows & Tower Of Song

Precisely. I'm not anti-sex scenes if they are necessary to advance the story and are done... well let's just say tastefully and do not become the focus of the story or of a chapter or multiple chapters. I am anti gratuitous sex. If I want porn I can always go to Nifty. LOL It really does boil down to each his own.

WOW!! When did they capture aSASQUATCH!?

I'm with MikeL. I tend to skip over paragraphs of nitty-gritty, down and dirty, fully detailed sex scenes. And, if such scenes seem to be the focus or occur in every chapter, I usually drop the story from my reading list.

Thank the current deity it isn't snow. *shutter* Fantastic looking trailer. Only about 5 months to wait. And a movie in two parts yet! A one year cliff-hanger... unless you've read the book of course

I would have chosen the 5th movement of Beethoven's 6th in F Major "Pastoral" The Shepherds Song after the storm or the 2nd movement Largo of Dvorak's 9th in E minor "From the New World", or Perhaps the 2nd movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, but that's just me. The Symphony of which I spoke in my OP is indeed a part of the music of the past never to he heard again because that concert hall no longer exists, but it still abides in my memory. The new music is all around and I can sense it quite clearly, but it doesn't as of yet fill my heart. There are many doors still to be opened that were shut over the years and pains to be worked through and the concert hall to found before the music again plays in my heart. But it will in it's own time, of that I have no doubt.

Thanks, that would likely be fun. Even though there are numerous places of solitude near here, no matter how much I wish it or how hard I may try, learning how to listen again has not been easy. But, I haven't given up, I keep trying to hear the music again. It may be a new and different symphony, but I'm sure that it'll be one to touch the soul. Some of the venues are simply breathtaking. Minneapolis, huh! I lived in Minneapolis for 17 years. First in an apartment not far from Loring Park. Then had a home on South Lyndale Ave near Lake Harriet. After I sold the home, I had an apartment near Cedar Lake. Left Minneapolis for awhile and traveled. Then went back to Minnesota and rented a house in Brooklyn Park. The winters finally drove me back to New Orleans for a time. Grew to hate snow. LOL

And don't forget the "gators". Old "Allie" would be heart broken.

Familiar images all. Especially that first one, but there are many places like that on the bayous. Sometimes I wish I were back down there and other times I'm glad that I'm not. Thanks James, for those.

"Listen. Can you hear it? The music. I can hear it everywhere. In the wind... in the air... in the light. It's all around us. All you have to do is open yourself up. All you have to do... is listen." That is the opening voice over for the 2007 movie "August Rush", but this isn't about the movie. If you want to know more about "August Rush" here is a link August Rush When I was growing up my maternal grandparents owned a farm just outside of Hammond, Louisiana, about 60 miles north of New Orleans. It was about 170 acres in size. Some of it pasture, some of it farm, some of it Pine forest and a small part swamp land. The house sat way back from the gravel main road behind a Pine grove. There were two driveways. One that ran in a straight line through the Pine grove from the front of the house to the road and a second that ran from the house to the road in between the edge of the Pine grove and the swamp. A part of the land was across that gravel road. A small part of that was pasture, but the largest part was Pine forest. I vividly remember that swamp. Walking down the middle of that gravel road along side of that swamp going home from a neighbors farm on a bright moonlit night absolutely sure that those swamp shadow monsters were going to jump out and grab me. Of course, they never did, but you couldn't have convinced me that they wouldn't. Each summer after school was out, the family would cross the Mississippi River from Algiers, where I grew up, to the railroad station in New Orleans and board the "Panama Limited" or the "City Of New Orleans" train for the trip to Hammond for our annual summer on the farm. I think that I explored the entire 170 acres when I got to be old enough to go exploring on my own. While exploring the Pine forest across the road I discovered a clearing that was pretty much close to the middle of it. The clearing was large enough to let some sunlight in, and was covered in a carpet of soft green grass. But it wasn't overly large and made a perfect hideaway for a small boy. But this isn't about the farm or that scary swamp or the summer train trips and this is where that quote from "August Rush" comes in and why it had an impact on me. In the early afternoon I would make my way through the forest to my hideaway clearing and there I would lay on the grass carpet and dream the dreams of boyhood. I would watch the clouds drift across the opening in the trees that surrounded the clearing and imagine all of the fantastical shapes that they would form as they drifted by. I would be open to the sounds and I would listen. To the song of the breeze and wind as it played amongst the pine trees. To the songs of the birds. To the sounds of the insects and whatever forest creatures that were about. They were the sounds of natures symphony. At the right time of day the symphony was punctuated by the lonesome wailing of a train's whistle as it approached a far off crossing, hurling down the tracks to destinations unknown. That was only the day movement. The symphony didn't end at nightfall. The night movement for me would start when I crawled into my bed. My bedroom on the farm was in a corner room diagonally opposite a corner of the swamp. Then it was the crickets and the tree frogs. The soprano singing of the frogs in the swamp along with the basso profundo of the bullfrogs. The hoots of an owl would add occasional accents to the music. The lowing of one of the cows or the bell that hung from the neck of the bellwether, as she moved to a different part of the night pasture, would add their own notes. Every once in awhile a new performer alighting on a branch of the Oak tree that stood outside of my bed room window would add it's voice to the symphony. A blood curdling sound that would send my head under the covers to hide sure that the swamp shadow monster had found it's way to my bedroom to grab me. But it turned out to only be an old Screech Owl. At some point in time I stopped listening. I don't recall when, but I suppose it was when I had to join in the cacophony of survival that is the bane and burden of adulthood and didn't have or didn't make the time to listen. By the time that madness slowed and there was again time to listen, I had forgotten how. I am acutely aware of what I have lost. I know that I'll never again hear that symphony. It is now, as a character in one of the stories said, a part of the music of the past.

Air Conditioning, Air Conditioning, Air Conditioning. Homes, cars, buildings, offices, stores, shopping malls, movie theaters. If memory serves, Houston was and likely still is the most air conditioned city in the world.

I vote for pie.

I use font=verdana and size=3 for posting. When I DL anything I copy it into Word and convert it to Verdana 12 or if I write something I usually use Verdana 12. I find Verdana 12 easy on my eyes, but that is just me. Not everyone's eyes are the same, so I would suppose that each person would have to make that call. What is easiest on their own eyes for reading. Personal preference, maybe?

Currently 62

I've read "The Fountainhead", "Anthem", "We The Living", and Atlas Shrugged". I've watched and have in my movie collection the 1949 movie that was made of "The Fountainhead" with Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey. I enjoyed each every one of the books and the movie. Whether or not I agree with Ayn Rands philosophy is totally irrelevant to my enjoyment of the books and film.