Hi everyone. I don't have much to say tonight. I'm dead tired from work.

Thankyou, Christi. I'm glad to be aboard.

What's with the strange colors? It does weird things to my eyes.I wanted to mention that I've loved the Muppets too. My favorite sketch was Veterinarian's Hospital. The jokes were so bad, worse than my husband's jokes.

The cat's yowling about something. I think he wants some attention. I'd better go attend to his needs. Now you know who wears the pants in our family.

Well, it's more purple than pink, but it's still good.



Lets try blue

Sat Mar 31 14:35:40 PST 2001

Lets try PINK!!

One more try...it should be white

Try this on for size. Ow! My eye!!

HOWARD: Ok hon, enough is enough. It's all fun and games 'til somebody loses an eye. I know it's April Fool's day coming up and all, but really! Green, bold italics? Crikies!

Hey, hey, hey,
Bold italics. Now we're getting places.

Thought tomorrow was April Fools Day.

I think it's gonna be a loooong weekend -- that bold text wasn't me!!!

APRIL FOOL!

Oooops! :-(

Does conversion to italics count as an April Fool's prank?

Didn't think so.

Embarrassed again...

mea culpa

'snif !

Morning all,

TINA, JERRY, MARY,
I love horse stories. Glad Tina's question brought out some. I know we're not the only one, but San Antonio uses police on horseback in certain areas. I'm not sure, but I think the policemen have to own and care for the horses themselves. We have had a number of search possies on horseback, especially when a child is missing. Local horse owners volunteer.

OWHARD,
Hoo Hoooo, you almost blinded me with all those italics. Did you know the smiley face has a bit of a leer in italics?

JERRY,
Thought you might be interested in the police problems we have been having here. There have been five law enforcement deaths in the last year (one account said five in four months but I don't think that was right.) The last one was the day before yesterday. The husband in a family dispute killed his wife, wounded his brother-in-law and killed the policeman answering the family disturbance call.
A couple of weeks ago, a federal sting brought down eight members of the SAPD. They were filmed making arrangements to protect drug shipments get across town. My surprise is that the feds are releasing those tapes to the media. I would think that would compromise the trials. Everything happens at once.

Have a good weekend all,
Rosemary

Jerry:

By the way the police couldn't do anything for me because there was no law against that at the time.

No one has more respect for the men in blue than me.

They wanted to help me. They did what they could. Several times they would follow behind him when they saw he was tailing me. That's how I would lose him a lot of the time.

Debra

Christi:

Thanks. To this day I think I still remember hearing angels singing looking into his eyes for the first time when he came back in and asked me if I was all right.

Of course I had been without a man and all that goes with men for five years. I think after thirteen years of marriage and seventeen years of being together, I don't have to worry if I just fell for him for the wrong reasons. He was supposed to be mine.

It's weird knowing me and how much I love being in love, I would have long been with someone and wouldn't have been available to be with him if it hadn't been for that idiot chasing me. So!

Let's not forget all the beautiful babies he gave me.

beleive it or not for the rare occasins when people ask how we met, we just tell them he moved into my apartment building. I get really humiliated telling people I was a victim of stalking and violence.

All those years ago, no one even had a name for what that guy was doing. Now we know it is called stalking. The police couldn't do anything for me either.

Long time ago water under the bridge. It's not however for other women. That's why I wrote my manuscript. I hope it gets published.

Gotta go the water is back and Dan is getting tired of sucking it up. My turn.

Debra

Tina wrote:

"...they probably do have a totally ordinary name like 'fly nets'. I just hate getting technical terms wrong in my story."

Not to nit-pick or anything, but that brings up an important point in our writing.

(I am only using this as an example!!!)

Since there are new writers here, and since we're all here to learn, I think the following observation would be appropriate:

Accuracy in "technical terms" is very important in technical (instructional) writing. We must not leave out those jots and tittles lest we confuse the reader that we're trying to instruct. That audience demands and expects that level of accuracy.

Writing for entertainment, however, is different. Most of that audience is unprepared to deal with technical accuracy, and must be pampered with generics. In effect, we as story-tellers/writers are translating the technicalities for the reader, so that he doesn't have to stop and do it for himself.

The technical name for those fly nets may be very important in a saddle supply catalog, but remember the horse only needs his eyes protected, the rider only wants to protect them, and the reader only sees that when you tell him in his own terms. Or when you show him.

Does anyone here besides me see the pictures in this place? Oh sure, the puppies were cute, and all that, but I'm talking about the real pictures.
I could see the girl riding her horse on a winter's night. And the magazine-inspired dreams of a 12-year old about the horse she'll someday own. Or the picture of Black Jack's last birthday party. Or the one red shoe in the road.

And that was me (and you) on the floor by the couch in the picture of the kids sitting around the radio or tv,watching cartoons on a Saturday morning.

Even the darker pictures - the flooded basement, the kids lying awake late at night, afraid to go to sleep, the fear of being in an abusive relationship, the heartache that the viewer may never experience, but should know that others do.

Some of these bring back memories - good or bad - and some bring us experience that we might never have known but for the one who took the time to record it for us. All of them play an active role in the growing that we all must do.

Sasquatch talks about the "racial memory" that enables him to know what his ancestors saw and experienced. I think I know what he means. I think that we are recording a sort of racial memory in places like this, in the musings and writings that we share.

That's why I never tire of coming to this gallery.

Now I have to go and install a toilet.

Heather,
I like the muppets too. I think Beaker & his assistant are our favorites. The long thin assistant who makes "Oh no!" noises, looks and sounds just like my husband.

April Fools day is tomorrow. Already my daughter has carefully wrapped my car with tons of saran wrap. This should make opening the doors a treat tomorrow morning. I am planning on making a blue breakfast for dinner. I'm going to make blueberry pancakes with blue whipped cream for topping. How about the rest of you? What are you up to Teekay? What's your April Fools Day like? How about you Heather? Jerry, I'd like to hear a few of the tricks you've pulled. Howard???? What terrible things will you pull.

It's nice it's Sunday. We have an entire day for small "in family" comfortable little jokes. Well, off to bed. Viv

one more question people is there such thing as being too graphic in a book...
I got these character traits for the bad girl, but the behaviour may seem a little too extreme, dont know if I should post an example though

and now working on my new short story, in between novel writing times...
Dont like the title though, but it suits the story
called, 'Phsycotic Pets'
Gruesome tale of getting biological contaminents in DDT or something

I was having a break on writing and came up with my favourite movie and tv quotes that I could remember

*So what I told you was true, from a certain point of view*
Obi Wan to Luke in Return of the Jedi

*If Bob was real and we let him go, where is Bob now*
Sheriffe Truman in Twin Peaks

*The truth is out there, you just have to know where to look*
Agent Scully to Agent Mulder in X-files

*The difference between you and me, is that I make this look good*
Agent J to Agent K in Men In Black

*I wander what this thing does....(click)I wander what this thing does*
Roy in Men in White

Heather: It's okay. We have parties like that around here sometimes, but instead of handstands on the furniture, we have little fires--candles and such stuff. Drunks really shouldn't have candles burning, should they? And they shouldn't make their own candle holders out of wood! But hey, we're happy drunks over here. And yes Jerry, I just got home from work a while ago and wanted to have a glass of wine, so I did. Now I'm gonna have another. Drinking problem? Naw...I know where it is!

My favourite cartoon character: Marvin the Martian and his little dog. Love that guy!

Ben

Howdy!

I can't believe I forgot the Muppets! I love the Muppets! Sam the eagle and Pigs in Space and the two old men at the end and Kermit's little cousin... I love them all! The first toy I ever saved up my own money to buy was a Kermit stuffed animal with velcro on his feet and hands. I still have that Kermie. And the Smurfs. I always watched Smurfs. I even dressed up as Papa Smurf one Halloween. The difference is that I still love the Muppets, and I strongly dislike the Smurfs.
I can't believe I just admitted to liking the Smurfs, even if it was years ago!

Rosemary, they probably do have a totally ordinary name like 'fly nets'. I just hate getting technical terms wrong in my story. I'll keep looking. :-)
When I was 12 I bought a subscription to 'Horse and Rider' magazine. I didn't have a horse, or even a pony, but I bought that magazine for four years, and read it avidly. I'd go riding with friends who had horses, or rent time at a stable, and I dreamed of those late night rides like Mary took. Never did get my horse. One day, I still intend to. (sigh)

Christi, I almost cried when Watterson stopped doing Calvin and Hobbes. It's the best comic strip out there. Period. I don't have a reason to read the newspaper funnies anymore, cause I know Calvin isn't there and nothing else is as good. Far Side is pretty good too, but not as consistantly. My favourite poem (other than Jabberwocky) is 'Cow Poetry/Distant Hills' by Larson.

The distant hills call to me
Their rolling waves seduce my heart.
Oh, how I want to graze in the lush valleys
Oh, how I want to run down their green slopes.
Alas, I cannot.
Damn the electric fence!
Damn the electric fence!

Hey Christi, did you know that they're trying to make 'Elfquest, the movie'? Wendi Pini has been working on it for several years now. Who knows if it will ever happen, but I hope so.

Okay, I'm off to bed now. Pleasant dreams everyone!
T.J.

Not much about horses I don't like. Growing up, my best friend's horse was named Lucky's Disco Jo and he was the most barn sour animal I have ever seen. Just when you thought you had him a safe distance from the barn and were going to get a good ride out of him, he would pivot, toss his head back just enough to break your nose and then run full throttle right thru the side door of the barn and into his stall. He was so crazy over it that he wouldn't even slow down if the barn door was closed. Well, I can tell you THAT only happened to me once and I pulled splinters out of my shoulder for a week!

Right before I met my husband I was dating a man who raised pulling horses. He would enter them in contests and events and used them around his farm. I never got used to how he treated them though. I would ride them and brush them and hope that my kindness was at least some comfort to them, but I knew full well that what he was doing was wrong. I don't know why I stuck with him as long as I did.

Those horses wear special shoes with hooks on the front to dig into the dirt for more purchase when they take off pulling a load. You can't let the horses run with those shoes on because if they catch their front hooves with the hooks on the shoes of their back hooves, they can rip their front hooves clear off their legs. These horses were huge and not wonderfully saddle broke, but I had been riding for years and thought I could handle them well enough. One day a new horse, a Belgian, showed up in the barn. I got him out into the hemlock woods surrounding the farm and he took off on me and I couldn't slow him down. He was rubbing me against trees and the branches were slapping me so hard I had to bury my face in the side of his neck and pray that he didn't rip his own feet off. We made it back to the barn after he ran himself out, but that was the last ride on those horses for me. After that, I stuck to the Tenessee Walkers and the Quarter Horses that were taken to the local rodeos and horse shows.

Of all the bad things that have happened to me on the back of a horse, none of them can take away from those snowy midnight rides all by myself, when the only sound I could here was the breathing of the horse, the creak of the saddle and the muffled clop of his hooves. Nights so cold that the tops of my thighs would sting and my nose would go numb and I'd watch the whitetails nuzzle through the snow for limp grass and never raise their heads. Nope, there's not much about horses I don't like.

Yeah, everyone, what Christi said, except for the parts to me in it! (Where have you gotten your energy, Christi? Pass it on)

Could be I'm so lameoid... (that's an invented word, hereby sworn into all Dictionaries) ...because I've been reading Hemingway and his style makes me sleepwalk. Now sleepwalking can get interesting, especially if you were like me, and pretended to be asleep when Mom and Dad had those vicious, adult only parties where the laughter prevented any children in the vacinity from getting any h'or deuvres or sleep; nd one of the adults, by the end of the night, usually ended up doing head-stands in the livingroom on the gold shag carpet.

Whew, well, now you know my childhood. Wonder what happened to parties like that. I always wanted to have one but they mustn't make parties like those any longer. Shame, really.

Heather

Rosemary - We had horses when we lived on the farm, well they weren't ours but we kept them for some friends in town. I used to ride them, thought it great fun. On another horse note, I was stationed with The Old Guard out in Arlington VA back in 1976, and had the privilege of attending the last birthday party for Black Jack. Black Jack was the last quartermaster horse in the Army, and was the horse seen in the tape they always show of JFK's Funeral. He was the horse behind the Cession with the backwards boots in the stirrups. I also attended his quiet funeral ceremony a few weeks later. I still have the napkin that held the butter pecan cake, that some Senator's wife made for his birthday. The reason I was there was to run the sound system, but what the heck, I got to attend anyhow. The napkin has a picture of Black Jack on it, not a good one, but one made in probably a copy machine by the looks of it, but I held onto it as a keep sake anyhow. Funny how we keep such things.

Jerry

Debra, Your how-I-met-my-husband story was better than any I've heard. What a great thing ... and how could you NOT marry a guy that great? ;) Thanks for writing about it; if you ask me it more than qualifies as your shortie.

Howard, You've honored Klaus with your story. I'm sure he'd be darn proud that your story on patriotism was about him. I'm not ashamed to admit I shed a tear or two.

Barnabas, I'd say you've been around long enough to not be considered 'new' anymore. :)

Mark, Guess I've given away one of my main faults--laziness. Often I do trust Word to check my spelling because I'm pretty good with usage and I edit and re-edit fiercely. Once in a while a misspelling gets by me, but by and large I thank goodness for Word, the tool of the lazyman. And lazywoman.

Cartoons??? Zoiks! You guys have awesome taste! Love the muppets, Simpsons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Tom and Jerry, and pretty much all the rest mentioned (Wonder Twin powers ... !!!!). I also loved comics---Superman comics, Elfquest, Peanuts, Garfield, Calvin and Hobbes, you name it. I think I like comics better than cartoons now--how weird.

Hey Susan, If I haven't said so before, welcome aboard!

Hey Banky, Daffy is indeed the king.
May I ask what Banky stands for? If not, no biggie. It's just that we refer to my little boy's fave blanket as his bankie. Are you a beautiful, soft yellow blanket with satin edging?

Taylor, Congrats ... and don't worry about it. You just reminded me that the last batch of stories I sent out were also without word count. Damn.

Hiya Bartlett. Any relation to the pear? haw haw. Gee, I'll bet you've NEVER heard that one. ;)

Hey Mary, I like the ground. I'm very fond of it actually and often wonder why anyone would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane. My Mom, however, wants to go skydiving and would most likely join you in a flash. I'd be there to take pictures.

Heather, Tweety-haters unite!!! Just once I'd like to see that little bird get chomped. I forgot about the Tic too; that's hilarious. They don't show it here anymore.
I hated Piggy too when I was a kid, but as an adult I can appreciate her. Cracks me right up.

As usual ... a post about mostly nothing. I really should be on Seinfeld ... if it was on still.

Christi

PS Teekay. I sure be missin' you. Come back soon, won't you? Please?

Evening,
TINA,
I knew it wasn't blinders. They are to keep the horse from being frightned by side things. My sister said she has seen the things you asked about in a catalog. They were called "fly nets" I don't know if she was right or not.

We usually have a short fly season and wipe their faces with fly repellent. Besides that, we spray the stall, and that usually carries us through the season. The lighter color the horse, the more flys and gnats bother it. At one time, I had a white mare. Her face would sunburn and there must have been damage to her eyelids because she grew tumors on the bottom lids. By the time she died, she was mostly blind. We vowed, no more white horses. Now we have a palomino a grey and a chestnut. The grey is almost white but he is Polish Arabian. The skin under all that white fur is almost black. He turns purple when we spray him down with the hose.

Enough horsey stuff.
Hope that helps, but if you could find a catalog of horse things, it might help you out. Call 1-800 information and ask for "Omaha Vaccine" Call them and ask for a catalog. Specify for horses, because they have other kinds.

Good luck,
Rosemary

Now, I remember Felix the Cat, and his bag of magic tricks, then there was the X-Rated cartoon movie, Fritz the Cat, I went and saw that shortly after I got back from Viet Nam, if I remember right, I was about three sheets in the wind at the time, but I thought it was a great movie, for what it was. Try doing a search for it, there is a site, I don't remember where exactly, but the guy has cuts from the movie. It is so funny.

Jerry

I loved the Muppets, too - especially Ralph the dog, the two old men in the balcony seats, Kermit of course, (though Miss Piggy could have gotten the boot) and Kermit's little cousin... let's see... the big Condor who did the news. Loved him. Or was he an eagle? Beaker was another fave, and the Swedish Chef. Used to try to do that little 'Isky Disky Doo Bork Bork Bork!" ditty the Chef would sing while tossing salad and live chickens. Never could quite get it right. I liked the blonde girl who was always in the dancing segments, and the sax player too. Just about all of them I can remember I liked, with few exceptions. Miss Piggy was the one, and Fozzy was the other.
Funny - the characters we don't like say as much about us as the ones we loved.

I've never liked extrememly pushy women, or people who don't know when to get off the podium!
Think of all the Muppet shows over the years, and the one I remember the most was when John Denver was the guest host. I just love that 'Grandma's Feather Bed' song, and I can remember all the chickens and every Muppet that could fit on this giant bed! And he sang a cute little song with Kermit and Kermit's cousin. Always forgetting that cute wee frog's name. I think I have a thing for frogs.

No cure, so they say.

How about mercy?

Heather

Oh Howard, I forgot: "Not bird nor plane nor even frog, it's just little old me Underdog!"

Jerry

Howard - Sweet Polly Purebread was Underdog's girl friend, I did like his show to, just forgot about him, been a long time.

How appropriate, Jeopardy just had the final Jeopardy question about Betty Boop.

Heather, I liked the pink panther too, but do you remember the origin of that cartoon?

He was born on the movie by the same name about a large diamond named the Pink Panther, with Inspector Cluso. A wonderful move, the whole series of the Pink Panther movies were great. At least that is where I remember first seeing the cartoon character, in the beginning of the movie, he worked the credits, also at the end. In fact I recall sitting through the end credits just to watch his antics. That was very rare for me, as I always sat way up front, in the front row of seats, and Loren, my best friend and I always tried to be among the first out of the theatre. This usually meant getting out of our seats and making for the exit long before the credits showed, and turning to look back at the screen for the closing moments of the show.

I never thought about that until two years ago, when I saw Loren for the first time since shortly after I married some thirty-some years ago. Funny, that was the first thing he mentioned, how way back then, he thought I was rich, because I got a dollar a week for doing my chores, I would take that dollar and split it with him, he never got an allowance, so I would take him to the movie, it cost us a quarter each, and we sometimes splurged and got a box of milk duds to share during the show. The movie was run by a little version of Hitler, or at least that was what we thought when he did his patrol of the isles. He would thunk you on the back of the head for talking during the movie. Taking a soft drink into the seating area was worth a quick walk to the front door, then a boot in the ass to propel you from the theatre. Two such violations would ban you from the theatre for a month, a fate worse then death for us. Well I ramble on again, I am beginning to remind myself of an old man. The Dentist I went to day-before yesterday gave me a load of crap because I turn 50 next month. He kept it up until I remembered he once told me he was a month older then I was. When he finally took his hand out of my mouth, I reminded him of that, and he quit. His nurse gave him crap then until I left. It took some of the pain out of the drill to listen to their banter anyhow.

Jerry

MARY -- Not the Underdog, just plain Underdog! There's a difference!
:-)

And I like Pooh too, and Piglet, Tigger, Owl, the Roos, but my favorite there is Eeyore.
Also collect Taz!

SUSANS - One writer I read about couldn't write unless he had a basket of rotting apples under his desk.

'nuff

HEATHER: I don't think there is anyone who doesn't love that singing frog. "Hello my baby...Hello my honey....Hello my ragtime gal...send me a kiss by wire...baby my hearts on fire..." hehe

All this cartoon talk is lifting me right out of my funk. Of all the things (rolling my eyes.) I used to love the Muppet Show. Especially the chickens and the two old guys that used to sit in the box seats.

I like Pinky and the Brain and Animaniacs. I especially like Yakko, Wakko and Dot. I don't watch cartoons a lot anymore. My husband likes Spaceghost Coast to Coast. I've seen it and its very strange. He does a great impression of Brak and my friend Logan does a great Zorak. They would do this in the car, so I got to ride around with Brak and Zorak. It was very bizarre. I also like Rocky and Bulwinkle. I used to work with someone who sounded like Bullwinkle. We all hated him, not because he sounded like Bullwinkle, but because he was a jerk.

I should go back to my writing. It's my day off, but I've been too tired to do a whole lot. This always happens. I look forward to having a day off so I can do a lot of writing, but then I'm too tired to do much. I've been laying on the couch for the last hour trying to do some writing, my notebook propped on my knee, the cat sleeping at my feet. I saw a program once that said Mark Twain's favorite place to write was in bed. I can see the benefits of writing in bed.

Favourite cartoon characters? Bugs Bunny. Pepe Le Pew (sp)
Wily Coyote, and the singing frog. I liked Sylvester a bit, but I hated Tweety. I loved this saturday morning cartoon called the Godzilla Power Hour, but I don't remember the cartoons they showed! I adored the Pink Panther - the original Pink Panther who didn't talk. And now-a-days I absolutely love The Tic. If you haven't seen it, please DO. Not only is it hilarious, it's well, uhhh, well, it's bloody funny anyway. The Tic is on Teletoon weekday evenings around 8 or 9 pm (EST) - this may only be a Canadian station, but I'm not sure. Some of you living in the northern U.S. might get Teletoon.

I wasn't online yesterday at all, and didn't compose a shortie this week.... too pooped.

Heather

Howard - Yakkey Doddle was the duck, how appropriate with Patriotism our subject for awhile anyhow.

Jerry

Mary, I'd *LOVE* to jump out of an airplane! It's been a dream and goal for several years now. I just have to come up with the cash.

Didn't do a shortie. Couldn't come up with anything. I thought about reposting a bit I put in last Rememberance Day, but decided against it.

Hallee, Rosemary, they're not blinders. I know that down around Vancouver there's a really nasty little fly that can cause blindness, so the horse's eyes are covered for protection. It's kind of a netted thing; that's the gizmo I'm looking for. Thanks though!

Barnabos, 'Pegasus in Space' is pre-hive. I think you're thinking of 'Tower and the Hive'. I haven't read that one yet. Your opinion of the 'Wheel of Time' books echoes mine. Think I'll skip the rest.

Favourite cartoon? As a movie, Lion King for sure, followed by Secret of Nymm (sp?). On TV, hmmmm, Goofy. I love Goofy. And Scooby Doo.

Must go do yardwork. My neighbour is lending me a BIG ladder so that I can prune my apple tree and some branches that hang over my fence from another neighbour's yard. We have a free chipping programme here, and they come around next week, so I'm running out of time!

TTFN
T.J.

HOWARD: I forgot all about the Underdog! And Hong Kong Phooey......and Captain Caveman......Grape Ape in the Laff-a-Lympics.

Wonder twin powers...Activate!

I was a big "Flipper" fan too! Flipper and Gilligan's Island, Brady Bunch, and those "After-School Specials".

Then I got older and was hooked on "General Hospital" when Luke and Laura were the big deal.

Last year I was stuck on "Survivor" which I can't stand this year. Mostly now I only watch "Everybody Loves Raymond", anything on Discovery, "Dharma and Greg" occasionally, and anything good on BBC. "NYPD Blue" used to be good, but I haven't watched that in a while. I watched "ER" until they started killing off kids every week for ratings.

Steve Irwin....."Crocodile Hunter"...love that guy!

I need to find some excitement. Anybody here jump out of airplanes? I would love to do that.

Posted the first part of my new novel to the Workbook; comments would be appreciated!

BANKY -- Welcome! Shortie night can be a bit confuzzeling. The "nice-lady-in-charge-of these-things" (Mary) specifies a topic, and we all try to write a short story/poem/essay/whatever based on that topic. This week's topic had been announced as "Patriotism," and I wrote on that. Imagine my embarrassment when I found that it had been changed. Chagrin, even!

Cartoons? Mighty Mouse! RoadRunner! The Yellow Kid! And who could forget my favorite - Underdog!

back on yer heads

Taylor - I understand - so close sitting in the mailbox, but gone. We've all done it - except with me it was the postage hike.

Now re: the Big Duck, Tom and Jerry and cartoons in general - you combine them all to get my favorite - who was the little duck-lett that Jerry was looking out for all the time. Now HE was my favorite - but I forget his name. Adorable but full of moxie - brains when it mattered - carfree when it didn't.

well my short story has been sent off to a magazine...
I didn't pause as I dropped in the mailbox, unfortunately after dropping it in I realised I had forgotten to put the number of words on the cover letter

Hey, and good-day.

BARNABAS : Yep, "toodles" is British. I get you with what you say about having to get it all down before it's forgotten. But why is it that so many of us seem to have conversations going on inside our heads? No wonder writers can seem strange to the normies.

Daffy Duck is the finest thing in animation. The Duck is a God. I can relate to Daffy, I tend to get compared to him a lot. I think it's a temper thing, and because I always end up getting beat by a darned rabbit.

I'm supposed to be getting my new computer soon, my old one died a while back and I never got around to replacing it. Hopefully I will be able to post a bit more regularly then.Right now I'm stuck to using the library machine every few days.

And could someone explain just what the heck shortie night is. Ok, so I'm new and stupid, but don't hate me for it.

Toodles.

Susan - Sounds like we have a lot in common. There were three of us children in my family. My oldest sister married her first husband when she was seventeen, I will always think she married just to leave home. Sadly her first husband was a lot like my father, he was a drunk, and a mean drunk at that. They had a wonderful little daughter, and I think more for her safety then my sister's, my sister left the SOB and came home again. Her divorce barely final, she married another drunk, this one was a soldier. Again she left him after being beaten. From that time on she dated many men, but never again married. Now she lives with her youngest daughter, who's father was also a drunk, but they never married. My sister no longer dates, but spends most of her time either working, or online with one of my old computers, that she bought from me when I upgraded. The next in line, was my second sister, who also married when she was just seventeen, but she was lucky, her husband quit drinking shortly after they married, and she has lived happily ever since. I spent most of my youth from about fifteen on, drinking. Getting alcohol was very easy, as dad never kept track of his booze, and they had parties at our home all the time. Those parties were huge binges by everyone present, almost always relatives, dads brothers or moms sister and their family. Many times they escalated into bloody fights, usually with dad involved as the aggressor. I continued to drink, sometimes heavily, until I got back from Nam, my wife told me that I was becoming my father, and I think that scared me half to death. I cut way back on drinking, only a few beers with my buddies, or while we were grilling hamburgers. When I went into law enforcement, I quit almost entirely. There were times after I became Chief of Police, that the pressure would get to me, and I would call my Assistant Chief over to the house, we would each take a fifth of Cutty and retire under one of my huge apple trees in the back yard, where we would drink and call each other names, hammer out all the problems in the department, then pass out. Those ended when I moved up north to a different job and I quit drinking completely. Now we have on drink a year, that on Christmas Eve, being eggnog with a shot of rum. I like life a lot more sober then I ever did drunk, but I always thought I was having fun when I was drinking.

Well There I go filling the notebook with my ramblings again.

Hi to everyone, hope your weather is better then ours, it is cold here again, but it did warm up to about 50 yesterday and melted all the new snow. Now they are saying either rain or snow tonight. Oh well I don't have anywhere I have to be until next week when I must again journey down to the VA for my 3 month check up.

Bye
Jerry

My favorite cartoon was daffy duck. I just love that guy.
He sometimes, not all the time,reminds me of my hubby.

Debra

The best cartoons ever: Tom and Jerry! No question.


Good shorties you guys. Hi Howard. :-)

Jerry - I like the Simpsons too. And I liked Family Man - especially Stewie. It's too bad they cancelled it. :( Have you seen "My Wife and Kids" - it premered this week on ABC and I was laughing through the whole thing. It's starring Damon Wayans - who is hiliarious.
*smiles*
Allein

Hello everyone!

It's late. I can't sleep even though I'm dead tired, and the cat's on a rampage and shows no signs of settling down. Presently he's laying on the floor, playing with my shoes and looking wild eyed.

Barnabas, go ahead and send me that info on DNA identification. I would like to have a better understanding of the process. And thankyou by the way.

Jerry, I also come from an alcoholic home and at age 37 still have to deal with the problems it created. My father was an alcoholic and a tyrant. He was mean and domineering when he was sober and he was even worse when he was drunk. I still have problems with self-esteem and anxiety which I believe are a result of living with an alcoholic. I fear change and am obsessed with stability because there was little stability in my childhood. My father has since quit drinking, but we still don't get along too well. To be honest, he's not really a very nice person at all.

I've been lucky though. I didn't marry someone like my Dad. My husband is a good man, who doesn't drink. I have problems, but I haven't become an alcoholic myself. I rarely drink. On those rare occasions when I do drink, my limit is one drink. Personally I don't understand binge drinking and I don't understand why so many young people do it when it can lead to alcoholism or worse.

Writing became an escape for me as a teenager, living with my Dad's problems. It helped me to forget at least for a little while the unpleasant world I lived in.

Who mentioned cartoons? Makes no difference I guess. My favorite are:

Popeye - used to watch that cartoon with my dad back when we first got a TV, brings back some good memories of him.

Sylvester and tweety, Droopy Dog, Bugs Bunny, Betty Boop, Elmer Fud, Tennessee Tuxedo, Underdog, Bullwinkel, Yogi Bear (sp?), Mighty Mouse, The Simpson, Family Man, Jetsons, Flintstones.

Well I could go on, I used to love cartoons, and even today, if I find myself bored, I will turn to channel 25 which is where we get the Cartoon Network, and watch, if the right ones are on. They usually are.

Jerry

Barnabas - I guess Psiforce could become a graphic novel. I'm not sure because I really don't know what it is but it seems they're making graphic novels about lots of stuff. And from the title I gather it's scifi which sells really well as graphic novels. My favorite GN is actually a Japanese comedy called Ranma 1/2 - all the guys are incredibly buff and cute (except the older guys - ewwww!!) and one turns into a girl, one into a pig, and the other into a duck. I could marry all three and then if I ran out of something for dinner - pork chops or Peking duck. Actually, both the pig and the duck almost ran into becoming entres in a couple episodes. This has also been turned into a TV series and movies and the people in Japan loved it so much that when it was finally discontinued in 1998 (that was only in Japan - here it'll keep going until 2004) many people mourned it's loss, but the animator felt it was time to move on. My parents think the show is stupid but what do they know?
I also enjoy Sailor Moon, Tenchi, Outlaw Star, and several other animes. Except the perverted or Hentai animes - those are sick.
WOW!! Look at my rambling! I'll shut up now.
*smiles*
Allein

Hop - no problem, it seems great minds run on the same channel, or something like that.

Speaking of abusive relationships, I grew up in such a home. I think that helped me a lot in dealing with such situations as a police officer. You see, I knew exactly what to say to an angry drunk, how to talk them down, how to stop them when they decided to end it all and had a gun to their heads, because I had to do it with my father many times. I knew what the children were going through, because I went through it myself. A couple of weeks ago, my son asked me when my father quit drinking. My son was only a couple of years old when dad died, so he had no idea. I told him the truth, dad quit drinking when he died. Things sure changed after that though, mom seemed like a whole different person, so did my sisters. Such a life has effects on children that sometimes only surface under stress. While in college I did a research paper on adult children of alcoholics. Before that time, I simply thought that such groups were simply people trying to make excuses for their own shortcomings. You know, "Officer I just had to steal that candy bar, because of the way my folks treated me when I was growing up." Funny though, the more research I did, the more I could see the dynamics that formed in my family as I grew up. I could see where each of us kids fit in, in the illness of alcoholism. I guess one learns more then readin' written' and rithmatic in college.

Jerry

HOP - Alexander Kent was Douglas Reeman's pen name for the Bolitho series of stories. I believe he's still writing. His books (most of them, anyway) are available at Amazon.com $10-$12 each.
-
Shortie on patriotism? Been thinking about this all day -- it's a true story too.

For Our Country

I first met Klaus Vogel in September of 1963, on an olive drab bus at Fort Dix, New Jersey. We were both trying to make some sense of the shouting and cursing that was to mark the brief eight weeks we were to spend together. And we were both trying our best to drag/carry those godawful duffel bags full of everything we'd need for that eight weeks. It was tough for me, even harder for him, because he didn't have much English yet. I thought he could speak it pretty well, but he tried to hide his German accent.

We were about the same age - a couple of years older than most of our basic training company. I had fooled around in a couple of jobs after high school, and had joined the Army for lack of something better to do. Klaus had spent that same time coming to America, to find a place to live, to live a dream. He was a hopeless romantic, convinced that America was his "promised land," a place where he could be anything he wanted to be. So he came and learned, and worked, and saved, and applied for citizenship.

And got drafted.

Drafted!

I had enlisted mostly because I was bored, and he had been drafted for applying to be a part of what I had taken for granted. It didn't seem fair, somehow, but he took it cheerfully, saying that it would give him a chance to learn more about our country. Already he was calling it "Our Country," with a note of pride in his voice every time he said it.

He was one of the most good-natured men I ever met. He had to be, what with all the flak he had to take for being also one of the slowest and clumsiest guys I ever met as well. Not so much slow, as deliberate. He wanted to get it right. He usually did.

We were about as evenly matched as anybody could be, and we got to spend a lot of time together. Push-ups, KP, gas mask training, hand-to-hand, bayonet drills, mud, dust, you name it, we ended up in the middle of it. I asked him why he put up with it - he could have quit it any time he wanted to, and still gone on for his citizenship. And he said "For our country. I want to do this."

I stood next to Klaus on the bayonet range the day we were told that John Kennedy had been assassinated. We stood together and the tears ran down his cheeks just as they did mine. We went to chapel that night - we spent a lot of our spare time there - and prayed for "Our country."

Something changed in him that day. Something changed in all of us, I think, but especially in him. He became quieter, more determined to do something good, to make up for the atrocity in Dallas.

We finished trainfire, the grenade range, and the infiltration course, and it was all I could do to keep up with him. And then it was time for graduation.

I had orders cut for signal school. Eight months of training lay ahead of me, then an easy assignment in Germany. He laughed at that - I was going to be stationed near where he had grown up! He, on the other hand, was slated for Advanced Infantry Training - another eight weeks of the same kind of hell we'd just completed. He just shrugged it off. "For our country" was the mantra we'd gotten used to hearing from him, and his acceptance didn't surprise us.

We said goodbye at the end of November, and promised to keep in touch. I told him he'd have to take leave and come see me in Germany, but he said no, he wanted to see more of America. He gave me a hug goodbye, and we noticed several of the other guys making their goodbyes in the same way. Then I got on the bus for Fort Monmouth, and he picked up his duffel bag and headed to his new barracks. I remember thinking that he carried that bag a lot easier than the first time I saw him.

The eight months went fast at signal school, and I got my orders to Germany, and headed back to Fort Dix to wait at the replacement station for the next troop ship. I had a few days there with not much to do, so I wandered back to the old Echo Company barracks to see if any of the cadre were stil there. Our platoon sergeant was gone, but the company clerk and a couple of the other NCOs were in the orderly room when I got there.

Wiggins, the clerk, remembered me from chapel. He used to sit with me and Klaus so we could sing together. We got to BS-ing about different events that had happened in my training cycle. We laughed over the rain and mud we got into on bivouac, and how Klaus and I ended up eating seconds and thirds of the liver and onions they brought out to us.

Wiggins stopped laughing at that, and I looked at him and saw tears in his eyes. I just looked at him, and I knew. "Oh God, don't let him say what I know he's gonna say..."

Klaus had finished AIT, and had shipped out to VietNam two days later. No muss, no fuss, just sayonara, sucker, and don't bother to write. Wiggins was sketchy on the details, but one of the other guys who got shipped out with Klaus had written to say that a week after they landed and were shipped up country, there had been a mortar attack on their compound.

Three guys bought it. Klaus was one of them.

"For our country," he'd have said with that gentle smile -- "for Our Country."

Sometimes I get pissed when I think about the guys who headed north of the border. I always get pissed when I think about how the guys who made it home got treated. But somehow I think that Klaus wouldn't have let it bother him. He wasn't so concerned about what other people did, as long as he could do something "for our country."

CHRISTI -- You trust Word to do your spell checking? Wow. Well, this time it was right. Mary had it spelled wrong. oops, and i went along with her single R spelling. Now I really sense impending doom.

There was one classroom at Lamar University where I had a few embarrassing moments. A small one happened when one student, an ill-equipped one at that, said she got 700 on her SAT. I said, "Hey, that's what I got." She asked what I got in the math part, I said 720. She looked at me blankly for a minute and we both realized that I meant I got 700 on the English part and she got 700 total. oops.

Not nearly as embarrassing as having a student in a remedial writing class walk up and hand me a note right while I was trying to make a point about essay structure. I let the note sit for a few minutes and got to it when I had a bit more time. She had written, "Your zipper is open."

I stepped up behind the lectern, so that I was narrowly hidden from about chest down, tugged at my pockets, could tell that they came out farther than usual and knew it was no joke.

I couldn't hide behind the lectern and zip up because it was too narrow (zipping up requires a bit of elbow spread). I didn't wish to walk through everybody to get to the back of the class, so I settled on getting their attention on something other than me. I prattled about some extraordinary idea they could practice, then announced "If you'll look at page 105," and every head in the room tilted down to find page 105. I was awestruck at how everyone followed my direction; that didnt keep me from getting properly zipped, though.

At the end of class I said a quiet "Thank you" to the note-writer.

Party? What party?

As for cartoons, one of my most favourite is the Sonic the Hedgehog cartoon. The version I'm talking about is the serious one where the good guys can be robotasised (turned into robots) not the kooky "funny" one. I have nothing but insults for the funny one.
Too bad there was no series 3 for the serious one.

I haven't had time to write a shorty.

Ramon
There you go again. I hope your new job allows you to surf the net and post stuff. Otherwise, we aren't seeing enough of you.

Katrina
Hello. I'm new too.

Banky
Hello. I'm new too.

People write for various reasons.
In my case, I write most of the time because my heads getting a bit too full of people chatting to one another and scenes playing themselves in my head and I want to record them before they get "deleted" from memory.

"Toodles" is a British dialect expression right?

Like you, I defected from drawing (which I was never even good at) to writing because I wrote better descriptions.

Taff
Hello. I'm new too.

I see the wise Kitty has told you rule number 1. Just to reinforce the idea.

Always back up. Always back up.

More specifically.
Write it in a book or on paper first (what I always do). On the computer, always back up your work on a disk every few pages. Distribute it to friends you trust and finally, (if you don't mind the idea) post it on the web, that way you have several backup copies.

Rhoda
I'm don't think the word "Ang Mo" even traces back that long. From what I've been told I think it's a South East Asian word actually.
What's the link by the way?

Taylor
Werewolf story huh? I've got an idea for a werewolf story about a teenage werewolf but problem is its already a movie.
That's good, trying new things.

Rachael
Oh no! A baby-eater!

Tina
I've read all the books of the wheel of time except for the last one. While the world is highly detailed I'm afraid even I, a frequent fantasy fanatic (an FFF) got lost in all the terminology and got really confused with what was happening.

Initially I forgot what Pegasus in Space was but after some thinking I finally remembered. It's okay and wraps the series up nicely with the solution to the Hive problem but nothing new.

Hallee
Well I see, you suffer from multiple character disorder as well.

Susan S
I know how DNA identification works, in fact I did a biology essay for it in high school/college. If you ever need something which tells you about it please e-mail me and I'll send you the essay and a few scanned pictures.

About history though. No matter how impartial we are, history will forever be biased or miss out certain things. Soap box is good by the way.

Andre Norton was confusing for me. I think her descriptions weren't lucid enough.

Jerry
I didn't realise my shorty about mercy was like yours, I just wrote and posted it without checking the current state of messages.

Trudy
Yahoo states that it can only use material for advertising purposes only and specifically to advertise for that particular type of material. I actually sat down and read it because I was posting some work on my website which is linked to yahoo although my work is on 50megs.com. I think Mary is right about first rights.

Cassandra
Do you think Psiforce has the ability to become a graphic novel? It's what I thought off but I can't draw.

Allein
What do you think about Psiforce becoming a graphic novel?

Mary
Thanks for the tip on publishing.

Christi
I like Twelve monkeys. That was intriguing although the ending was bad when the good guy got shot to bits and saw himself die. I'm old-fashioned in this sense because I prefer movies where everything turns out alright.

Howard
Who was Alexander Kent by the way? I loved Richard Bolitho stories but they were given to me and I have no idea where to find more.

Robert Shaw
Hello?

Okay, fine. Watching those commercials for the new movie coming on Memmorial Day, Pearl Harbor, gives chills all over my body.

How's that? Am I in?

Debra

Christi:

Speaking of wife beaters, I just sent a manuscript out today on that very subject to an agent who asked to see it. There is no sure thing that she will want it, but we'll see. It maps out the horrors of an abusive relationship, start to finish. It talks about why they seem so great all the way to how to escape. It's plain talk without the doctor lingo. So let's hope it gets published. I really think it could help girls. It's one book I can write.

I was in one of those relationships another lifetime ago. I went out with him for a few months. Once I realized he was a nut, I broke it off. He stalked me for five years. That was way back when no one knew what stalking was. I had a bad reputation in my area as a person who had a crazy man following her, so no one would date me for five years as well.

It came to a climax one night in my hallway. He didn't know where I lived for four of the five years. The first year he chased me out of my apartment so I moved, and made darn sure he didn't know where I lived. He found me though at work and out and about. That was the whole day. I was always careful not to have anyone following me at night when I went home. One night deep into the fourth year, I slipped. Shortly after I came home from my second job as a waitress, I heard a knock at my door and opened it like an idiot. It was him. He started pounding me hard. All of a sudden he ran down the stairs for some unknown reason. He had a view of the hallway I didn't. Within seconds I saw what he did,a hansom man chasing him with a bat. It was Dan, my future husband. He had moved into the apartment upstairs that had only been empty for 24 hours. I didn't even know he moved in there. That might be because he only had a paper bag full of clothes and a sleeping bag. We still have that sleeping bag. It's red, white and blue.

Well this coward never came back after that night. Imagine? I had been running scared alone for five years and all I needed was one person to chase him out. He had no idea that I had never seen Dan before and just figured that he would be beat every time he came back. He didn't bother me anywhere else after that either.

On top of all that, Dan had already killed the beast so he felt comfortable dating me. yiiiiiipppeee. I was good and lonely after that. Of course we have a ship full of kids now, as you know.


Does the red, white and blue sleeping bag make this count as my shortie?

Debra

No there isn't

Yuck. Is there anything worse than coming back and finding your own rotten post staring you in the face?

Jerry, I forgot to say that I liked how you addressed the protesters of the war in your story. :)

Hey guys, Happy Shortie-day!

Hi Ramon, Nice to see you back!

Jack, Many well-wishes for a quick healing.

Litter, You too! What's going on with your hand?

Mark, I believe I spelled embarrassment right. I questioned myself until I typed it into Word and it didn't correct it. *PFFFFFT!* (Tongue sticking out) HEE!

Mary, I KNOW I suggested embarrassment, but Jerry went and wrote about Patriotism, and then I starting thinking about it too. :) Oh well. I guess I have enough embarrassing moments in my life already.

Ben, I really did hate Pulp Fiction. I have no problem with violence in movies if it's for a reason (like Braveheart, Gladiator, etc.) or it's unrealistic (like Terminator, Jackie Chan, etc.) OR in slapstick fashion (the Three Stooges, Looney Tunes). Otherwise I feel it's a blight on the butt of society. Just my opinion. :)

All in all, I'd say you guys have great taste in movies. Most of my faves were in your lists. I also love Return of the King (animated). Can't wait to see the live-action movie.

My shortie, errrr. Yeah, I'll post it.

Battlefront
By Christine Ritchotte

Robert sat at the head of the table beaming. You’d have thought he’d won the lottery or something. “There’s no greater honor than serving your country … none!”

The kids squirmed in their seats. They didn’t understand what was going on. How could they?

“Do you understand what Daddy is saying?” Marie asked them.

Her eldest, Julian, eight now, refused to look up from his plate. Cindy, only four, was picking apart her pancakes with precision. She’d eaten about as much as she was going to.

“Sure they understand, don’t you kids? Daddy’s going to kick some camel-jockey ass.”

Marie clamped down on her urge to scream. Her eyes began to water, though she willed herself not to cry.

“Jezus, Marie, you’re not going to cry are you? What kind of an example are you? This country was founded on the backs of strong men and women who were willing to make sacrifices and fight for their freedom. The last thing you should be doing is crying.

Marie said nothing. Let him think what he wanted. She brought a shaking hand up to wipe away the wetness and winced at the pain it brought. Her eye had puffed out to twice its normal size, red and welted. She’d worn sunglasses to breakfast, telling the kids that her eyes hurt from the sunlight. It was an excuse they’d come to accept.

She stood to take Robert’s plate, which he was handing to her, impatiently and silently demanding a second serving. Her breath took in quickly, her stomach a mass of pain. It throbbed from the punching Robert had administered the night before. She guessed he’d wanted to get in a few licks for the road, seeing as he wouldn’t be around for some time.


Later, after watching Robert hug the kids goodbye, Marie stepped up to give her own farewell. The taxi driver waited, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

Robert strode over proudly and grabbed her by the waist thrusting his tongue into her mouth. Once again, he was laying claim to his property.

Marie choked back her disgust, then she tiptoed up, her mouth next to his ear. She breathed heavily, her excitement building. “I just want to do one thing for me while you’re in Saudi Arabia. I want you to catch a bullet for me. Catch one right between the eyes, you sorry son of a bitch.”

Robert shoved her away in surprise and stared at her.

She only smiled and motioned to the kids. “Come on Cindy and Julian, let’s go inside. Daddy’s going bye-bye.”

She imagined that his face was a mesh of disbelief and anger. She didn't care. He’d never see her or the kids again-her first stop was to be the police station, and then she’d go to her mother’s until she figured out how best to salvage what was left of her and her children’s lives.

“Thanks, Uncle Sam,” she said to herself, closing the front door behind her. She performed a mock-salute into the air and stifled a hysterical giggle. “Thanks.”


The End

PS Sorry about this. I really do LOVE men, it's just that I've been seeing a lot of stories on the news about wife-beating lately. Makes me so MAD!

Have a great day, all!

Christi

TINA: Blinders?

Im gonna get my short story sent off today without second guessing myself...
there will be enough time to second guess myself after I send it off
I'll keep you all posted see how it pans out

Thanks. Well it has become my habit to post my shorty a day early, since I rarely know what day it is to begin with. Anyhow, as I sat here thinking of youth, having children, all that, my muse tapped me on the sholder, and I whipped out this shorty. This is just of the top of my head, but I think I will post it anyhow. Oh by the way, the question of someone ripping off our shorties, I guess if I saw my story posted somewhere else with another's name attached, I would be proud that it was good enough to get published no matter whos name was on it. No, maybe not, maybe I would get fighting mad, but I doubt I would do anything about it, unless of course it won some sort of prize or something, then maybe I would file a law suit, which is a writters only recourse should your story be stolen anyhow.

Anyhow, here it is:

The Patriot
by Jerry Ericsson

“Come on dad, for God’s sake, it’s 1969, not 1939. I will not get my hair cut, hell it’s shorter then most of the guys in college, and have you ever seen a picture of the Beatles?”

“Not tonight Bob. No, I am not going to get into it with you tonight. Now pass the chicken will you, I still feel a bit hollow.”

“Oh did I mention, the brass at the plant said we got another order from the government. Yep, they ordered another twenty five thousand of those new M-16 rifles. We will be busy for two years getting that order out. Wonder what the hell they want that many for?”

“No Bill, nobody is interested in guns. You should let Al talk, after all he won’t be home with us again for supper for twelve long months.”

“Al, you will be careful over there won’t you dear? Don’t take any foolish chances, all we want is to have you home with us again. That war must be about over anyhow isn’t it, my God, that seems to be all they talk about in the news anymore. Why yesterday, Chet Huntley said that our troops killed seventeen hundred of those dirty communists over there already this year. With that many dead, you would think the war should end soon.”

“Don’t worry mom, dad, I’ll be careful. They trained us real good at Fort Leonardwood. We know how to live in the Jungle, how to hide and not get shot. Oh yes they sure did show us how not to get shot. And besides, I trained as a combat engineer, not Infantry.”

“Ah dad?” Bob said, passing the potatoes to his brother Al. “I ah got this letter, ah it is my draft notice.”

“Draft notice? Isn’t there some law that says if one son is drafted we don’t have to give up another?”

“I checked into that first off when I got the notice. Mr. Connelly at the Draft Board said that only works if the first son is killed in action, or missing in action. He says I gotta report next week.”

“What you going to do?” Al asked as he ladled gravy onto the mashed potatoes.

“Well you know how I protested this stupid war all when I was in college, I meant that. I think the war is wrong. I hate to see you go Al, but I know you think it is right to fight for your country, and I am proud of you for your beliefs. But you know how I feel. Well Stan Peterson got his notice today too, and he is going to make a run for Canada, I think I will go with him.”

Bob watched his father’s eyes as he said the last sentence. He could see the tear fun down his cheek.

“I’m sorry dad, that’s how I feel.”

“I know Bob, and I support both my son’s in their beliefs. I am proud of both of you. Bob if you need any money to get started just let me know. When you get settled in Canada, call me at work and let me know you are ok. Let me know if you need anything, money or anything else I can get for you.”

Al reached over and patted Bob on the shoulder. “It’s just as well you go north little brother, we all have to follow our own beliefs.”

With this Bernice cleared the table, and the men were off to bed. It would be a big day for all of them tomorrow.

Jerry

JERRY: Big hugs and congratulations!! Wow....a Grandpa again. That is great news, hon.

I feel for you about the dentist too. I am petrified of mine. It doesn't help that my mouth is so small that he has to use child-size tools on me. They are small but they are still scary! You would never guess I have a small mouth for as loud as I can run it! Ha!

Your news has even cheered me up a bit. :-)

Mary - just cheered up. Got a call from my son and his wife, just a few minutes ago, I am going to be a grandpa again, come October. I feel much better now.

My mouth is a bit sore yet from my meeting with the dentist. Over an hour in that torture chamber, and the instruments, many of which belong in torture chambers, not a dentist office. And the dentist, who shoves his whole hand in my mouth, then asks a stupid question, and expects an answer.

Someone wanted to know about riding habit. Those cloths worn by the social elite who wish to join with the common man, but riding an animal, yet look rich. Myself, when I go ridding horse, it is the old blue jeans, a western shirt, complete with the pearl snaps, a blue jean jacket, and cowboy boots, black cover my feet. Oh and the pants leg covers the uppers of the boot, not the other way.

The shorty story supposed to be about patriotism right?

Jon, so happy to see you checking in. You can tell Americo that I gave that Mac to my daughter, but found a Power PC on Ebay for $25.00 Plus Shipping. Couldn't resist. Boy is that thing fast compared to the other 6800 series. This one has OS 8.6 on it, adds some nice features. I played around with it for a few days, learned some of the ins and outs of the Mac world. Overall I can see why some folks like the little machines, although I am not yet ready to give up my PC.

Randall - Did I ever mention that I did live in Texas for several years in the early 70's, down in El Paso. We all loved that part of the US, we always talked about moving back, but I think that dream died with my career some 8 years ago.

Allien - loved the shorty.

Jerry

A clammy, cold evening to all,
TINA,
I've seen the horse attire you mentioned, but have no idea what it is called. Our horses get the basics. Saddle, saddle-blanket, bridle, halter, maybe a tie down. We don't use cover blankets, wraps, blinkers or other pampering expenses. HOWEVER, I will ask around and if anyone knows, I will let you know.

Later,
Rosemary

Litter:

By the way, I'm sorry to hear about your hands. I hope you find some way of getting the words down without having so much pain. They are really coming up with so much new stuff these days. I hope something happens there for you.

Debra

Good evening friends!

Hi Jon! Say hello to Americo for me and Pussy as well!

Sorry for the mistake on the cell phone thing Howard. I had skimmed through several days of posts and made a wrong call.

Jerry, I understand pal, I understand.

Cell phones, like all techno gizmos are only as good or bad as the folks who use them. And, there are a lot of persons in our world who don't give a hoot or hollar 'bout anyone else but old #1. Makes us "Old timers" reflect upon the future. Thank goodness my future life is based upon a 3 step program. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

Came across a couple of quotes last fall. So here goes:

"The individual, the great artist when he comes, uses everything that has been discovered or known about his art up to that point, being able to accept or reject in a time so short it seems that the knowledge was born with him, rather than that he takes instantly what it takes the ordinary man a lifetime to know, and then the great artist goes beyond what has been done or known and MAKES SOMETHING HIS OWN." (Caps are mine.)

Neat, huh?

The second and final:

"From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE REASONS THAT NO ONE KNOWS?" (Caps are mine."

Eh? I've yet so see a better definition of a writer and the why of it.

Quotes are from Ernest Hemingway. Certaintly a writer who enjoyed a modest success.

Randall

I don't have a problem with cell phones. I have a problem with the way people use them. I hate it when people come through the drive thru at Arbys where I work with a cell phone on their ear, and won't put it down long enough to talk to me while I'm waiting on them. That is just rude and disrespectful. I want to slap the stupid cell phone out of their hands, but I can't because then I would lose my job, which I need until I can get a teaching job or get published.

I have problems with my hands if I type to much or do a lot of needlework. I think I'm getting carpal tunnels, because my fingers will get numb and tingly. Ironically however my right hand is worse then my left handed, which is strange because I'm left handed.

I should go write. I've been getting quite a bit done lately. I should enjoy it while it lasts. I hate Writer's block, but I seem to get it a lot. Maybe it's all in my head. I'll go for a while writing a lot and getting a lot done, then suddenly I won't be able to write, or won't want to. It's so irritating.

Hey everyone!

Moved in...well, the stuff is there, anyway - still unpacking. Work has been so busy and my phone didn't get transferred until today, so I haven't been able to check in.

I'm not going to even attempt to try to catch up. I saw Tina's well wish for my move (hug) and the mentions of favorite movies...Terminator (the first one), Aliens (the second one), Amadeaus, The Scarlett Pimpernell (was a TV miniseries then put on video - the Scarlett Pimpernell was played by Anthony Andrews - he could be my husband's twin), Starship Troopers, Matrix, Dirty Dancing (something about that movie calms me), Cassablanca, Indiana Jones (all 3), Star Wars (all 4), 60 Seconds to Gone (man, what a movie!). I could go on and on - I love movies.

Okay - I have to go get Kaylee then get her fed before church. Glad to be back, all - I've missed the interaction. OH!!!! I'm writing the last chapter. YAY!!

Hallee

Hi Jerry:
I'm with you on cell phones. I returned my Docomo to the shop the other day. I started tracking the bill and realized I was paying 50 dollars a month just to have the darned thing.
Mary- I know what you mean about getting down in spring. Happens to me too.
Viv

Litter:

That is curious, very very curious. I always felt that Scottish men were by nature more gentle than most. I have proof now. I wonder though, why the women are not. I would love to get to the bottom of that one. I thank you for answering. All of my questions are relevant to my story.

Anyone:

I am activly trying to find an agent. I bought the 2001 Guide to Literary Agents book. I just wrote a letter that I will be sending with a SASE. It is short to the point and says it all, or maybe one of you would like to be the judge of that. If anyone would like to see it and let me know, then let me know.

Debra

Hi All!

I have been plagued with almost unusable hands/fingers, which made typing a tad difficult of late.

DEBRA -- To answer a question from an eternity ago re Domestic Violence -- Unfortunately, Scotland is no different from most countries in the West and it seems that domestic violence here is on a par with most 'civilised' countries, no better, no worse. Strangely, though, recent research has shown that 'Husband beating' is MORE of a problem than 'Wife beating' in Scotland but the problem is more hidden as men seldom come forward and seldom hit back. Food for thought there ladies!

MARy -- Thanks for the URL, but did you really read all that Knox stuff? Heavy going huh? Things are not quite that puritanical and oppressive any more, thankfully :o)

Films and stuff --

HIGHLANDER -- The whole package. The music by Queen is both evocative and haunting, and quite how Bryan May can get electric guitar flourishes to sound like bagpipes is beyond me but sends a shiver down my spine, every time I hear it. There are a thousand stories (of the loneliness and curse of immortality) wrapped up in the song "Who wants to live forever?" My favourite ever film.

Braveheart -- Historically a howler, but I love it!
Ben Hur
Quo Vadis
Apocalypse Now (WOW!)
A Man For All Seasons
2001 -- A space Odyssey (Is somewhat optimistic date-wise)
The Name of The Rose
Labyrinth
Dr Strangelove
The Blues Brothers
Crocodile Dundee
Good Morning Vietnam
The Wild Geese
Mash
Terminator II -- I agree with Tina that it is better than 1

I agree with Jerry about:
The Deer Hunter
Psycho
The Silence of the Lambs
And 'The Mouse that Roared" is post-war British film comedy at its best!

Too many to mention. I like most with Mel Wallace/Gibson and big Clint (including the 'Any Which Way' films) and almost anything Science Fiction (even the really bad stuff that doesn't make the B-Grade…)

Fingers hurting again, but a BIG Hi! to all,

Litter

Submitted two pieces today. One of them was my latest story that is in the workbook now. The other is a shortie that I entered in an online flash-fiction contest. Christi like it way back when I wrote it, so I figured what the hell.

CHRISTI: It's the one about the homeless man and the shoes, in case you were wondering.

JERRY: You still blue too? I can't shake it.

Hi all-
Just a short little message cause I've been sick for the past 4-5 days, and I have to get running off to class.

Tina- I totally agree with the artistry comment, the best comics are some of the lesser known, small run pieces. Those are the people that actually have something to say, because usually they're risking bankruptsy to do so... But if anyone doubts the literary quality of comics I only have to mention Maus. Maus was a comic about the hollocaust (sp?) and won a Pulitzer.

cya
Cassandra

Shortie for the night and all Spring nights to come.

Embarrassment

That's what I feel now
Announcing my holidays from you
for one thousand and one nights
Be well
And write as well

Jon

PS. Kisses from A* and Pussy, who also say good-night.

PPS. The best movie ever? ARISTOCATS, obviously.

I got this through e-mail - it's for all the parents out there. The Call at Midnight

We all know what's it like to get that phone call in the middle of the night. This night's call was no different. Jerking up to the ringing summons, I focused on the red
illuminated numbers of my clock. Midnight. Panicky thoughts filled my sleep-dazed mind as I grabbed the receiver.
"Hello?"
My heart pounded, I gripped the phone tighter and eyed my husband, who was now turning to face my side of the bed.

"Mama?" I could hardly hear the whisper over the static. But my thoughts immediately went to my daughter. When the desperate sound of a young crying voice became clearer on the line, I grabbed for my husband and squeezed his wrist.
"Mama, I know it's late. But don't...don't say anything, until I finish. And before you ask, yes, I've been drinking. I nearly ran off the road a few miles back and..."
I drew in a sharp shallow breath, released my husband and pressed my hand against my forehead. Sleep still fogged my mind and I attempted to fight back the panic. Something wasn't right.
"And I got so scared. All I could think about was how it would hurt you if a policeman came to your door and said I'd been killed. I want...to come home. I know running away was wrong. I know you've been worried sick. I should have called
you days ago, but I was afraid...afraid..."
Sobs of deep-felt emotion flowed from the receiver and poured into my heart. Immediately I pictured my daughter's face in my mind and my fogged senses seemed to clear. "I think -"
"No! Please let me finish! Please!" She pleaded, not so much in anger, but in desperation.

I paused and tried to think what to say. Before I could go on, she continued. "I'm pregnant, Mama. I know I shouldn't be drinking now...especially now, but I'm scared, Mama. So scared!"
The voice broke again and I bit into my lip, feeling my own eyes fill with moisture. I looked at my husband who sat silently mouthing, "Who is it?"
I shook my head and when I didn't answer, he jumped up and left the room, returning seconds later with the portable phone held to his ear.
She must have heard the click in the line because she continued, "Are you still there? Please don't hang up on me! I need you. I feel so alone."
I clutched the phone and stared at my husband seeking guidance. "I'm here, I wouldn't hang up," I said.

"I should have told you, Mama. I know I should have told you. But when we talk, you just keep telling me what I should do. You read all those pamphlets on how to talk about sex and all, but all you do is talk. You don't listen to me. You never let me tell you how I feel. It is as if my feelings aren't important. Because you're my mother you think you have all the answers. But sometimes I don't need answers. I just want someone to listen."
I swallowed the lump in my throat and stared at the how-to-talk-to-your-kids pamphlets scattered on my nightstand. "I'm listening," I whispered.
"You know, back there on the road, after I got the car under control, I started thinking about the baby and taking care of it. Then I saw this phone booth and it was as if I could hear you preaching about how people shouldn't drink and drive.
So I called a taxi. I want to come home."

"That's good, honey," I said, relief filling my chest. My husband came closer, sat down beside me and laced his fingers through mine. I knew from his touch that he thought I was doing and saying the right thing.

"But you know, I think I can drive now."
"No!" I snapped. My muscles stiffened, and I tightened the clasp on my husband's hand. "Please, wait for the taxi. Don't hang up on me until the taxi gets there."
"I just want to come home, Mama."
"I know. But do this for your mama. Wait for the taxi, please."
I listened to the silence, fearing. When I didn't hear her answer I bit into my lip and closed my eyes. Somehow I had to stop her from driving.
"There's the taxi, now."
Only when I heard someone in the background asking about a Yellow Cab did I feel my tension easing.

"I'm coming home, Mama." There was a click, and the phone went silent.
Moving from the bed, tears forming in my eyes, I walked out into the hall and went to stand in my sixteen-year-old daughter's room. The dark silence hung thick. My husband came from behind, wrapped his arms around me, and rested his chin on
the top of my head.
I wiped the tears from my cheeks. "We have to learn to listen," I said to him.
He pulled me around to face him. "We'll learn. You'll see." Then he took me into his arms and I buried my head in his shoulder.
I let him hold me for several moments, then I pulled back and stared back at the bed. He studied me for a second, then asked, "Do you think she'll ever know she dialled the wrong number?"
I looked at our sleeping daughter, then back at him. "Maybe it wasn't such a wrong number."

"Mom, Dad, what are you doing?" The muffled young voice came from under the covers.
I walked over to my daughter, who now sat up staring into the darkness. "We're practicing," I answered.
"Practicing what?" she mumbled and laid back on the mattress, her eyes already closed in slumber.
"Listening," I whispered and brushed a hand over her cheek.

Heather - I'm sure Monty Python has been traslated into several languages by now. :) It's so funny. But, that was Latin - the quote.
*smiles*
Allein

JERRY -- to paraphrase a well-known statement:
Cell phones don't irritate people, people irritate people!
;-)

Viv: how about selling it too a nearly blind old lady as a lovely cat

Howard: I like the idea! That's great. Now I still need an inside joke but that with the bird seed makes it. Richard, I still need your input! I also need it from anyone else. I am out to make a list of things I can do with a bad wig!
(Plus you know, if you water bird seed it sprouts~!)

Heather- I told you something that wasn't quite true. I'm definitely out to publish. I have been being too calm about the whole thing because I didn't want the hurt of getting those rejection slips. Time to fill my nail as well. I really want to see the dragon fly. I like the way you set goals. Time for me to set one...this dragon will fly into the finish line on the close of August 12th. I will post on the rough parts and let you all help smooth those out starting about June. I want to be 3/4ths of the way finished before posting any of that to be critiqued. That way I don't get into any of this..."Awww, it's no good discouragement cycles."

I guess you aren't scared of anyone taking your ideas. I think you are probably right. Is this over rated? I know I have to be super careful with my teaching jobs. I have to not say who I teach, where I go, or what I make. It's very easy to have a "killer type" move in and take my job. I have a next door neighbor who likes to do the job-stealing routine. It's made me very defensive.

Ethical behavior is second nature to most people, but when you run into an unethical type, it's enough to take your breath away. I think though, perhaps posting it where we all can see it is a good defense. I think if work from the notebook were to suddenly appear under another name we'd notice and let the writer know it had happened. I also would back up a claim to work that was posted that I had read. Perhaps the idea of 5-15 people coming out and saying that it was in the notebook or workbook and that it had appeared first under the name of.... would pretty much stop that sort of person. I'm sure if we worked together a decision would be reached in favor of the author. I'm going to take the risk and put bits and pieces of the dragon in for editing. It's something I'm scared about but I think that without a few ideas, a first piece might founder. I want this dragon to FLY! It's important for more reasons than one!

Tina - I know they are good for some things, but when I see the idiot driving down the highway at 70 miles per hour with his cell phone glued to his ear, and the other hand reaching down to adjust the radio, I burn a bit. When I am in a movie, and some inconsiderate SOB is chatting with his wife, or buddy on the cell phone, I get a bit hotter under the collar.

I guess the way I see it, now that I don't have to be anywhere at any given time, I don't need one, and should we go camping, we go to get away from such things as telephones televisions, and any other telethings that come along. I do take along my laptop in case the urge to write takes hold, I know that's what they make notebook paper for, but I find it much easier writing on a PC.

I am sure they are good for such things as calling in accidents, however where we live, they are rare, because driving on our highways, one can drive for hours and never meet another vehicle, and better yet, one can drive for hours and never have to slow down for, or pass another vehicle. Also they tell me that cell phones aren't that well supported around here, I have a friend who has a cabin down at the local lake, he has one of those blasted things, but says it simply will not work in that area, no towers near by, and the hills must interfere too. I did want to get one for our daughter when she was driving back and forth to college, I think they would be good for that, and our son has one he takes with him when he travels, which is a good thing, since he has his wife and our grandchild in the car. I guess they have a place, but what gets me is that they seem to be everywhere at once. Maybe I am just to old fashioned.

Jerry

Randall, if you need someone to read your work and give you a downright honest critique, I am interested. Just email me chapter 1 and I can get started. And, by the way, I don't think your ideas are so outlandish, as your previous reader did.

Allein! You mean they've now translated Monty Python into Japanese? It's about time!

Debra: yes, do bleach the dag-nasties out of the basement. No water is perfectly clean or else Britta wouldn't sell. Ground water can be full of bacteria and spores; in fact rife with it. Remember - it's been soaking in whatever's under the cement in the basement (muck, gravel) for a while, and spores will 'keep' in freezing temps until warmth come along and they'll 'wake'. The water that rose in your basement probably contained the little unicellular titans. You could be surfin' in more than you bargained for. Make sure the basment has been dry for at least 48 hours (bacteria and viruses can't live/breed/move without moisture)and then give 'er a good splash of undiluted bleach. That's what we've had to do with every flood here. Only one of the floods was from rainwater, the others from plumbing and appliance leaks, but regardless, the bleach is a must.

Anyway, hats off to the typewriter. I just love the clack of the keys. I'm going to make further key music and write more tonight. I went into work early tonight so I could spend more time writing before I got too tired!

I'm mailing my short story tomorrow! My mom brought me american stamps to use for the SASE so I didn't have to buy the International Reply coupons - they're about $4 each! Crazy. I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up only to have them crash disasterously if I get a rejection slip. But I'm going to try using a spike to hold my slips too, and I might as well start filling it. Thanks to everyone who wished me luck. Luck to all of you with stories and books out there in circulation or slush piles.

They say the key to getting published is perserverance. I think it's more than that. Talent has a lot to do with it too. There's more talent here among us than you can point a pointy stick at.

Forbes came out with a list of the highest paid writers:
Stephen King makes 44 million a year!

Holy Shnikies.

Heather

RANDALL -- That would be me with the cell phone. One of the best investments we've ever made, I think. It's a tool -- that's all -- and used correctly it can be a real help. The one my wife carries is the one we use for 99% of our long distance calls. We pay a set rate that covers 450 minutes per month, of calls to anywhere, from anywhere, and with kids and other family in eight different states it really helps! My trac-fone is different. I pre-pay for my time, and use it for local calls. It's mounted right in my truck, and that's about the only place I use it. My mother lives alone, and needs to contact me sometimes, as well as folks from church who need occasional help. This way they can reach me.
Check out the Reeman/Kent books - they're a good read.

RHODA - Close -- it was Jean LaFitte.

SASQUATCH - you said:
"...when humans persons stop thinking we are we will not be."
Sounds like Tinkerbelle to me, my furry, pedally-enhanced friend! :-)
And are you talking about the crack in the Antarctic ice pack? That's a long way from Teekay. How did you know about that? You're in North America, aren't you?

HEATHER - Just got lucky on that hardcover "Midworld." Found it online. Almost got a hardcover copy of "The Anything Box" last week, but it got sold before he got my email.

MARY - Embarrassment? That should be easy for me! I'm used to that!

MARK -- Where'd you go?

gotta head for bed - meds starting to kick in, and I don't want to fall asleep between here and there.

zzzzz

Provincial parks, Love 'em. Honeymooned in parks in Ontario. Crossed the bridge at 1000 Islands, turned left, drove maybe 45 minutes, then headed North. Found 2 parks to enjoy and a third to think maybe we should practice for. Two crazy city kids out in a borrowed tent.

One evening we made sandwiches from the chicken I had cooked at lunch. Cate got out her red pepper (Edgar Cayce said it's better for the psyche than black pepper). We had a small squarish tin of pepper, she opened the wrong end and poured a huge glob of pepper onto the sandwich when all she wanted to do was sprinkle some on. It was inedible, she tried wiping the excess off, no avail.

We figured, "What the heck. It's all natural stuff, we can throw it into the woods and it will naturally decompose. Several hours later we were frightened by a loud screeching noise, some animal, we didn't know what. We located the noise, it seemed to rise in the trees. My flashlight revealed a raccoon well up a tree trunk. Uh oh. He bit the hot pepper sandwich.

Movies. Anything with Johnny Depp. Scissorhands got a lot of attention, Chocolat is gettin attention right now, I particularly enjoyed Mr Depp in Tim Burton's "Legend of Sleepy Hollow."

CHRISTI -- I sense impending doom. Edgar must surely have made note of your "EMBARRASSMENT" spelling. HAHAHAHAHAHA HOW EMBARASSING !!

Then again, try sitting in Spanish class and saying 'soy embarrassado' [don't remember the spelling]. OOPS. That means 'I'm pregnant.'

HEATHER -- glad to know 'Ender' arrived. "Madame Bovary"?? wow, what brought that on? There are pills for that condition, you know.

I've called a personal hiatus on classics. Really, I remember when the major authors seemed like the only sensible way to spend my time. Nice to know they still have appeal.

War of 1812:

English ships were impressing American sailors off American ships. England was still maintaining forts in the Great Lakes areas and arming Native Americans to fight against pioneers. Of interest to our resident Canukes was that there was an attempt by American forces to "free" Canada from the English. I believe we tried to forcibly take Canada. It was a total disaster and I think a great embarrassment. We should have known better, for most of those Tories we threw out of the colonies landed in Canada.

Oh, yes and who could forget the bloody battle of New Orleans, the song made famous by Johnny Horton. Then there as Jean La Foote who helped the Americans. Washington DC was burned by the British.

There is the extent of my knowledge of the War of 1812--just bits and pieces. It seemed a stupid little war, but necessary. The American hawks needed a dose of reality, and the British had to get it through their thick heads that their former colonies were really a country.

Actually British press gangs were operating everywhere if I remember correctly. They impressed British subjects as well.


Kitty,

I have sent THE RELUCTANT BARBARIAN to all the best publishing houses. Hopefully in its latest incarnation, it will be better received. Currently I have sent proposals to TOR/FORGE and Ballantine. I haven't heard anything back yet, but responses often take months, but I look at my phone messages everyday just hoping some interested soul will call me and ask for the rest of the manuscript. If only I could have an editor actually call me; would that not be the life? Hey, I would even settle for a personalized rejection--definitely a step up from what I received from VALERIE'S SONG.

Off to Missouri tomorrow to visit with my in-laws. The kids are excited, and I am tired from doing laundry and packing.

Take care, all,

Rhoda

JACK: When I mentioned about the archiving, I just meant that probably not a lot of general public are likely to see it, recognize it, or cause any problems over it. I too agree about the shorties being things that are off the cuff, or so short that they wouldn't be very tempting to someone other than the author to use as their own. I was just speaking that technically, it was cloudy to me, whether they would go under the same rules as what appears in the Workbook or as stories that would be considered drafts. I generally take the same attitude as Gary over the whole subject. If anyone thinks they can make any money off of something I have written, more power to 'em!

Work hard and carefully on that elbow....that really smarts.

Mary: I just noticed your comment about archiving of the Notebook. As it happens, I archive and place it in a separate directory, so if there is an issue about being posted on the internet in a public location it is still public. I really am not sure what the status of first publication or whatever is where there is no password protection. However, the issue of copyright is hard and fast. Whether on paper, the internet or wherever you retain the copyright to your own words. The existence of copyright notification is not even required, as I understand it. However, first serial rights and so forth might be in place for the shorties. However, I tend to concur with Ben in that the occasional shorty that I throw out are spur of the moment and not really meant as final pieces. They may inspire or become part of something larger, but then that is something entirely different. I know this will just muddy up the waters. But I am presently looking at a more secure means of password protecting areas of the site. Actually, I am playing hooky at the moment from preparing a presentation on tying web pages to databases using Dreamweaver UltraDev4. So, back to work. Take care everybody.

Also, if you get a chance, please direct healing energies in my direction. I am presently making frequent visits to the Physical Therapy department at my health system to try to get over tendinitis in my elbow, what is commonly known as tennish elbow. Partly the reason I am taking a break. I do not like pain. And, it is putting a bit of crimp in my possibilities of diving until I get it worked. Oh, well. This too will pass and get better :-).

Me again. Speaking of losing things, I can't find my book about all things horsey. Rosemary, (or other horse people) can you tell me the proper name for the piece that covers a horse's head against flies and other pests? I'm sure that 'eye cover thingy' isn't right.... hehehe.

Thanks
T.J.

EMBARASSMENT it is! :-).

Shortie night theme, that is.

c-ya

Jerry, I defend cell phones based on one priceless service. Mine has saved/helped save a life. My husband and I witnessed a horrendous car accident five years ago. I had 911 on the line before the cars stopped moving, and the ambulance was there in minutes. Every second counted in saving that little girl, because although my husband did artificial respiration and brought her back to life, she needed oxygen and medical intervention ASAP.
I've actually called in three car accidents and a forest fire with my cell phone, and a tow truck for myself in a bad situation. I abhor using it for everyday stuff, and heaven help the fool who brings one into a theatre or restaurant! But I won't be flushing mine down the toilet. :o}

TTFN
T.J.

Hello all!

Kitty, I'm in British Columbia. All of our provincial campgrounds are very reasonably priced. Some don't have as many services as my local one, but some have more. Everywhere we go, we try and find provincial campgrounds because they are spacious - we don't feel like we're breathing down anyones neck - and usually very beautiful. There's Goldstream P.P. (provincial park) on Vancouver Island which is basically a rain forest and is gorgeous. There's Sprout Lake P.P., also on Vancouver Island, and so is Greenpoint P.P. which is actually part of the Pacific Rim National Park. Wow! We spent our honeymoon there, whale watching and beachcombing and diving and eating crab almost every day. That was eight years ago, and it cost $12 a night. These days it's a good idea to book ahead, although it costs a bit more, because the sites fill up quickly. Some sites are first come first serve, the rest can be reserved.
Unserviced sites require a provincial camping pass, but that's pretty cheap. Just enough to provide toilet paper in the outhouses!
My hubby and I have a goal to visit every National Park in Canada, and as many Provincial Parks as possible. I think we've made a good start!

Heather, I'll be watching my box! I've finished Anne McCaffrey's 'Pegasus in Space', so the timing is perfect.

Hallee, hope the move proceeds well, and that you find everything! I always lose things during a move. Nothing major, but I can never figure out where things vanish to. :-)

If I had only known then what I know now... I wouldn't have bought a brand new truck when I was 19.

Dinner time.
T.J.

Cell phone? I wouldn't have one of those things if they were giving them away free! Why in God's name do people want those pesky things, I love being out of contact, it makes for such peace and tranquility. One should flush those cell phones that fit down the drain, those which are too large can be taken to the nearest primitive camp area and tossed down the pit toilets.

Jerry

Hey

Writing and inspiration. Hmmmmmmmmmm, well, I sent a portion of my novel to a gentleman as the segment dealt with a web site he operated. A scientific, holy land, somewhat SF, based on an old Russian scientist. I. Velikovsky theory. This guy sent back his thoughts, not of the tale, nothing of the linkage, but stated that I was telegraphing my thoughts (still pondering that one) needed an editor, and it wasn't a good idea to use the term witch as it was verbotten in the Bible. Huh?

So, I gathered that writing, formatting of the work, ideas are as in most areas, all in the beholders eye. I write as I speak, somewhat rural Texanese, which is a mixture of German, Polish, Negro, Anglo, Mexican immigrant, with a rural aspect and values not far above poor white trash in thought and action...and why is it a bad idea to use the term witch in a novel? But my question is retorical. My source was viewing through his eye, and could not, or would not raise or lower his standards to mine.

What? Well, to paraphrase Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare. A tale is a tale is a tale. My story is not like yours, :-) possibily years of my loving labor would bring even the most wild eyed SF reader here to gales of laughter. But, like brains, it's all I have, imagination that is, a plot that streams forward like a river, charactors born of personel observation and reading. My reader could only see that my thoughts clashed with his and he never moved beyond that aspect. Annnnnnnnnnnnd that brings us to inspiration.

Inspiration comes from years of reading and observing and like gold, is where you find it...but then so does sex. Sex?! Uh, I digress..... I attempted a novel when I was 15, another when I was 22. Both are bad, bad, bad. So bad I caught the cat trying to cover them up one evening! It took 30 years of maturity and insight to begin a bio of a hunting trip to Utah. Utah? Uh, yeah, one of those guy things. In writing the book, a dusty file cabinet inside me opened and influences and observations spilled out that I never knew I had. Inspiration may not be visable at first. It may only become apparent years later. But you can only find it if you write. Who cares if someone does not approve of it? You did, or it would not have come to life...and that is what it's all about. Creation of a world, your world, perhaps a place where you feel more comfortable there than any where else?

Uh, Jerry, I guess your cell phone is smaller than mine! I still use a bag phone.

Howard, I'm big on WWI and WWII history and still have a Navy website you sent me 2 years ago.

Sorry if I misspelled any words Edgar. :-)

Randall

Kitty:

I will take that advice. My husband is still being stubborn. Of course, that's what men are famous for. He is a great guy. It's just he gets these ideas and they are made out of super glue.

I am praying that there isn't too much icky stuff in the water that came in. It came in through the floor of the basement. It didn't fall from above the ground. My dad assures me that water that flows through the ground is clean. I don't know. I'm taking bucket of bleach and water and washing the whole thing down.

Debra

Kitty - Glad you liked the Latin phrases. Here's another one you can add that I dug up:

Mater tua criceta fuit, et pater tuo redoluit bacarum sambucus.
Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries.

Hee hee,
Allein

All you guys should read a book entitled "The Light Bearer" by Donna Gillespie. It dwarfs the story of Gladiator and, even better, its hero is a heroine! A beautiful, fierce, strong and noble woman.

All you guys should read a book entitled "The Light Bearer" by Donna Gillespie. It dwarfs the story of Gladiator and, even better, its hero is a heroine! A beautiful, fierce, strong and noble woman.

Hey, y'all! After a weekend filled with great amounts of heavy wet Spring snow which made my driveway an obstacle course (pot holes and fallen branches), ignited a tree branch which was weighed down by said snow and resting with lively sparking activity on the hydro line-subsequently the line finally broke with a series of loud pops and brilliant shower of sparks-and loss of power, the loss of the phone line again due to the weight of the snow AND a ravenous squirrel, and various other trying moments. Ted, the Northerner, was away this weekend in Europe, so of little help to me, the Southerner. I wish I could say I was stoic and handled all with grace under pressure, but Jackson kept a tally of all the "bad words" I uttered and I fear the atmosphere must have been pretty raw around me. Viv, I think I need one of those girls in the kitchen breaks.

Rosemary: I am not sure to whom you were supplicating for mercy in your shorty/post-- the publishers or me. I hope not me. I was not trying to be contrary, rather I was responding to an interesting thread of discussion. I grant you that the examples I cited were of older books, they were the first things that came to mind, but I don't think things have changed that much and you can find examples of serious issues in contemporary novels. Snow on Cedars, One Thousand Pieces of Gold, the Rei Shimura mystery series are some. In genre romance, there are all those love stories between the Native American warrior and the feisty pioneer woman or the loyalty torn Northern officer and the feisty Southern belle-I have heard and read editors moan and groan about these done-and-done-to-death stereotypes, but they keep publishing them. Why? Bottom line there is a market for it. Also, when you do have serious issues you create obstacles, internally and externally, for your lovers to overcome which gives the story more depth and complexity, conflict and tension (Kathleen Eagle's contemporary romances come to mind). And serious issues are not just about culture and race, how about the environmentalist falling for the industrialist? There is no reason why romances cannot show and teach the reader about something the writer holds dear. And publishers do take chances. The proof is on the bookstore shelves in the romance section.
What I find amazing today in genre fiction, especially romance, is how broad the parameters for what is acceptable are. In romance you can write historical, contemporary, sci-fi, time-travel, gothic, suspense, otherworldly (featuring the lover who is a ghost) romances-even romances that are overseen by guardian angels! It is a veritable feast of lovers. Whenever, I read or hear about an editor droning on how such and such can't be done I think of Diana Gabaldon and Connie Willis, both highly respected and successful, and neither of whom listened to such advice, much to our benefit.

About the War of 1812: It may have been brief, but it does count! It was the first time the U.S. was invaded by a foreign army. I don't recall when I first started studying American History in school, but I do remember that all through grammar school we were told stories from U.S. history: Washington and the cherry tree, Honest Abe, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Benjamin Franklin and the kite, etc… It may not have been PC or historically accurate, but we were presented stories about the early days of our country as if it were one big exciting adventure of which we were the current chapter. The story that came from the War of 1812 was of Dolly Madison cutting the portrait of George Washington from its frame moments before the British soldiers arrived to pillage and burn the White House to the ground. Very dramatic stuff.

Tina: Was that $14.00 a day Canadian, cause that would mean less than $10.00 a day U.S.? What a bargain! Which campgrounds? I keep hearing about this national park called the Dunes between Montreal and Toronto, which is supposed to be wonderful, but you have to book your campsite early cause it is very popular.

Rhoda: Are you planning to send RB to a publishing house?

Allein: I have made a special file for your funny posts. Loved the Gilligan's Island perspective and the Latin phrases.

Debra: Regarding sleeping where the floodwaters have been, you may want to call your city hall or maybe your local Red Cross office if you have one or maybe the insurance company and see if they have information on when it is safe healthwise to resume living in a house after flooding. I wouldn't be very comfortable sleeping above a damp concrete floor. Not only would I want the floor to be completely dry, but I would want the floor to have been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected.

I have too many favourite movies to even start a list, though I can see there is a lot of discerning taste in the lists cited.

Did anyone see South Pacific last night, the new version? What did you think? I want the house and the ocean view (and think I deserve it after this weekend), but I'm not too sure about the choices in casting.

Kitty

Thanks, Ben - needed some perspective. It's good to be careful, but too cautious and I might not send anything out.

Howard, you're lucky to have the hardcover of that green, lovely gem 'Midworld'. I'm going to have a look at the nearby second hand bookstore.

Heather

hello viv person i sasquatch am not fear to myself or to other creatures but only to humans persons who are together in big houses many all with others. you do not feel earth as we do feel. i sasquatch have Yeti memory of before times when earth moves very terrible. some humans persons do know about this thing i say. mary person Yeti know when time is to go away from all and not leave sign of when we are here. i sasquatch have been on that trail times before and come back again only having more memory. but we are perhaps only in humans persons minds also like other creatures when humans persons stop thinking we are we will not be. we understand and memory this. howard person and teekay person i sasquatch did not say about earth moving same but below where teekay lives there is ice that moves and breaks and frightens. i must go.

HEATER - Glad you enjoyed "Midworld!" It's one of my favorites! By all means send it on - I recently got a hardcover copy of it in excellent condition for my permanent liberry. Foster has written a number of great ones.

More on books - if anyone is onto sea stories, Alexander Kent has written a great series of stories based on the 18th century British Navy, and revolving around the career of Richard Bolitho - a fictional character who enters the navy as a very young midshipman, and grows through the series to the rank of admiral.
He also wrote (under the name Douglas Reeman) a series of WW1 and WW2 naval stories that are excellent pictures of that era as well.
Both series are very good sources of information on their respective periods.

Other great sea stories are "H.M.S. Ulysses" by Alistaire McLean (he also wrote "The Guns of Navarrone,") and of course Nordhoff and Hall's "The Mutiny on the Bounty." If you read the latter, be sure also to read their "Men Against the Sea," and Captain William Bligh's account of the voyage to Timor in an open boat after the mutiny. This was taken directly from British Naval Records.
A follow-on to "Mutiny..." is "Pitcairn's Island," the account of the mutineers' settling on a then uncharted island (their descendents are still living there), and "Botany Bay" - a very much romanticized version of the settling of Australia, where one of the first governors was William Bligh -- the same Captain Bligh from the Bounty.
-
For something completely different, Zane Grey's "Wilderness Trek" is a great cowboy story about two cowpokes who go to Australia to drive a herd across the Outback. I loved it!.
-
back on your heads...

Damn, it has been a long time since I felt the earth move.

Why are we so blue? Well tomorrow I go to have two teeth filled, so what happens today? Well how about a half inch of new snow, and I have to drive 25 miles to the dentist office. Oh well it should all thaw before my appointment tomorrow afternoon.

Oh and on the movies - a few I missed

Peter Pan, The Mouse that Roared, LiarLiar, Lost in space (well it sort of reminded me of the series, which I loved to watch when I was a kid), The Toy, did I mention The Deer Hunter? OH and The King of Kings.

Well best sign off as I feel a ramble coming on, and the notebook is getting full.

Jerry

Hello All: I think a few of us here are too worried about first rights and copyrights and all that stuff as far as the short shorties go. I think of the shorties as an excercise in creative writing. They are throw away stories. What you read here is not something I've worked on and honed down through the week so it can be posted on this site. What you see is something that is written directly into the box without thought, plot, or "working it out. " Sure, there are small edits, spelling errors and what not--lines that don't read as well as when I first thought about them and wrote them down--but that's normal. I play the stories over in my mind as a daydream adventure, but I don't really think about it until that very day. I took one story and expanded it--but after I posted it here, because it sort of got my mind going. I made it into a short story which I was supposed to mail last month--but then my printer cartidge died and I started another story, so it never got sent out because I forgot it. But you see? These are not serious stories for me (the shorties), and if anyone wants to take it as an idea and run with it, I couldn't care less, because whatever idea they come up with is going to be worlds away from what I come up with. They are not going to be able to find a publisher with it "as is". "Bullroots" was good, but it's past now. Once it's finished and sent out--regardless of if it was posted here or not--move on to the next one. Every story I write, means something to me--until I start the next one. I always think the one I'm working on is the greatest thing I've written. Then I send it out and it comes back, and I say to myself: Okay, maybe I have to add more, or something else to it? I ask myself: What element am I missing that I had in the only one I did publish? Even if you are entering a contest that specifically says "never been published before", this writer's site will not disqualify you. It is a "workshop". So stop worrying and fretting over things you have no control over, and just write. Write one story and go on to the next. Send it out and forget it. I keep my stories recorded in a notebook, and tick them off as they come and go. Right now I have--I have to go and check--Wow. Right now I have six stories out there. They'll all come back eventually, because this game is like a crap shoot. It's just a matter of getting the right guy to read it.

Christie: I'm sorry you hated PULP FICTION. I thought it was great. It was different--structurally speaking--and that's why it interested me. The violence? It's movie violence. It means nothing as far as that goes. I can understand why Bruce Willis would want to be in that movie. It was ground breaking. THE GODFATHER was violent, but I think on my list of all time faves, it's number one. Same with THE DEERHUNTER. I look beyond the violence and look at the story. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, another on my list. I loved reading the book. It was difficult, and challenging, but riveting as well. TWELVE MONKEYS was excellent, but what about SEVEN? The violence and language in these movies means nothing to me, because the story itself is what holds me. I liked a lot of the movies on Jerry's list, but as far as THE GREEN BERETS, I think any other John Wayne movie would have to take its place on my list: FORT APACHE, SHE WORE A YELLOW RIBBON, RED RIVER, THE SHOOTIST. I love those movies.

If I had only known then what I know now, I wouldn't have wasted my youth...I guess Mark Twain was right.

I gotta go work on my story. I love it. In fact, it's the best I've written yet...
Ben

MARYLOU - Have you ever read any of Allan W. Eckert's books? He wrote several historical novels based on the settling of this country, and each of them contains an extensive bibliography section. "The Frontiersmen," "Wilderness Empire," "The Conquerors, and several others on Tecumseh, Blue Jacket, and other individuals. His other books include "Savage Journey," "Wild Season," and "Song of the Wild." He's quite good!

Susan,

Thom writes nonfiction with a fictional twist. He has written about George Rodgers Clark in "Long Knife," Chief Tecumseh in "Panther in the Sky," an Appilachian woman, Mary Ingles and her escape from Indian captivity, Lewis and Clark in "Sachajawea (sp>?)" and several later works. I can't recall the title of them offhand. His wife is Indian, don't remember the tribe, but she heads up their chief council. Younger than he is and very pretty. They live in Bloomington, IN.

I'm not into science fiction although Rosemary (one of my best friends) is. I used to like time travel but haven't read any for a long time. (Tried to write one once and abandoned it after about four chapters.)

Rosemary got me hooked on Anne Perry, the "Monk" series, and I'm waiting for the latest one to come back to the library.

I'm not writing much of anything right now. I submitted all the material on Tarnished Honor to the publisher so am waiting, waiting, waiting . . . A friend and I are trying to collaborate on a nonfiction work about early Texas women and actually have our foot in the door at Texas Republic Press, but she is having a lot of problems and hasn't been able to get together to work out the details. (She is going to provide most of the material from 25 years worth of genealogy. My contribution is non-related Texas women who are fairly well known.

Enough for now. ( do tend to ramble on!)


Rhoda,

I have spend a lot of time in Kentucky since I used to have relatives there. Suppose I may have a cousin or two left but never hear from them. I agree the green in Texas is different from IN and, yes, so are the "rivers." My home town is on the Wabash River which is three or four times bigger than the S.A. River or any others around here. But there are many other things that IN doesn't have like the bluebonnets, Indian paintbrush and other beautiful wildflowers which are blooming now. It's hard to find anything to compare to them.

Enough for now. (For the second time!)

Hi everybody! I surely have missed you all these past few days.

Taylor, The main thing I heard from my friends about Blair Witch was to take anti-nausea pills before viewing it. I get motion sickness, so I decided to only watch parts of it here and there when it was on cable. Aaaand my conclusion? The end was ludicrous and lazy; the movie was ludicrous and lazy. You wanna see something REALLY scary on a home video camera? Watch one of our family get-togethers; they're much more entertaining. :)

My movie list? It's much too long and varied to post here. I love good movies. I even love terrible movies, like Tina. But I don't love horrid movies. I hated Pulp Fiction. The graphic and nonsensical violence made me question my love for human nature for a time. I was disappointed in Bruce Willis for participating.

Anybody else love 'Twelve Monkeys'? That was one great brain-teaser of a movie.

Heather, HI! My parents were hippyish (they loved the music and the non-violence but never got into the drugs and free-sex thing) and played Dylan all the time. I must say that listening to him as a child I thought he was hilarious! It wasn't until I got a little older that I realized the messages were serious. How could I know? I couldn't understand him! ;) Still, there's a soft place in my heart for the guy.
Good luck with the contest; it's a great story!

Jerry, Awwww! Bambi, how cute!

I get the feeling that a lot of us have been feeling the blues lately. Isn't spring supposed to be a happy joyful time? HUMBUG! Guess I'll snap out of it soon. The newest stupid rejection letter for my kid's story sure didn't help to improve my mood. Large {{{{{{HUGS}}}}}} for Mary and Jerry and anyone else feeling sad. I hope we can cheer up by shortie night. How about changing the shortie topic to EMBARRASSMENT? That's sure to enliven! What do you say?

*sniff* *SOB!*

Christi

PS TEEEEEEEKAY! Come out and cheer us up, won't you?

Viv - I'm not worried about copyright infringement, but rather first rights. I can't sell a story to a publisher and claim it's unpublished if it's already considered published on this site. But, whether or not we can consider it published if posted here is still debatable. I'm on Mary's side, but still have an iota of worry down deep about it. I don't consider it published if it's in the workbook, because those pages are clearly for working on pieces and critiquing, and it's password protected so five hundred people aren't surfing it every hour.
Here, we just don't know. The reason I'm still sitting fence is because I posted Bullroot's in both places!
Tina, thanks! I'm going to send it on without any blabber about the NB. Just wish that little tingle in my gut would stop zinging!


I haven't been writing much for shortie night since our loneliness topic because I've been writing on my book and if it happens to compete with shortie night, the book wins.

Mark: I forgot to tell you that Ender's Game arrived about a week and a half ago! SORRY! I haven't started reading it yet - just finished reading Madame Bovary, an Erma Bombeck classic, Midworld, and Huck Finn. Midworld was excellent - read it in an afternoon while my son slept! I had it for a while and finally decided to read page one and got hooked. I knew I would so that's why I waited to start it. If I start too many books at once I get in a pretzel! And you would think that reading so much takes me away from writing but I tend to write more when I'm knee deep in other books. I just have to be careful which books - and also careful not to be too influenced!

Tina: (again);o) I don't know how long it will take to reach you, but I FINALLY sent out 'Holding Wonder' last week! I have Midworld packaged up and ready to roll, for whomever wants to read it next!

This time I won't take three months to take it to the post office! :o>

Ok, Ok, I was going to go, but here's a few movies I love:

Labyrinth
Sound of Music
Most of John Candy's movies
Matrix
Terminator 2
Fried Green Tomatoes
Misery
Gladiator
Groundhog Day
Cinderella
Mannequin
Mr. Destiny
Beverly Hills Ninja
The Burning Bed/Black and Blue
Army Of Darkness
Truman Show
Most of Nicholas Cage's films


There were a whole bunch I had in mind and conveniently forgot. Looks like I'm a comedy girl.
Heather

VIV - Wig? Kid?! Devious imagination!!? A few days to work on it? Consider the possibilities of the following:
Kid acquires wig that looks just like The Wig. Kid inocculates said wig liberally with birdseed, and places it somewhere near where the wearer of The Wig sits outside to eat his/her lunch on nice days. Kid keeps refreshing the birdseed until the birds get to know it well. Need I go further?
-
ALL - Finish this sentence:
"If I had only known then what I know now..."
-
TEEKAY - You don't have any real earthquake activity in OZ, do you? Sas must be wrong in that one.
-
HEATHER - The problem with Bob Dylan is that he requires attention. You can't listen to his songs as background. You have to work at it to enjoy them. He irritated me at first, but then I took a closer listen and really enjoyed the lyrics.
-
SUSANS - You made your cat watch "Plan Nine...?" It's lucky for you the ASPCA didn't hear about it! Old Barlow put that on a TV/VCR in his garden to scare the deer outta his rutabagas, and next day he found three dead gophers, a comatose woodchuck, and a raven leaning up against the fence mumbling "Nevermore!"
-

I can't pinpoint one favorite movie, although all the Star Wars movies are on my list. I'm especially fond of the Back to the Future Movies. I've watched them a million times. And I've seen all the Star Trek movies.

Thanks to Mystery Science Theater 3000 I've seen and laughed at some pretty bad movies. Manos the Hands of Fate still makes me shudder, as does Wild World of Batwoman. Thanks to my husband we own a copy of what has been considered the worst movie of all time Plan Nine From Outer Space. Watch this movie if you want to learn how not to write a script, how not to direct and produce, how not to act. This movie was so bad that when it was over my cat Jenny (sadly now deceased) looked like she was in pain.
There's a movie called Hawk the Slayer that has my friend Logan so traumatized, he refuses to acknowledge its existence.

Sasquatch, Please don't worry! The earth is supposed to move. It has been moving for many years and many times. The more the earth moves, the less the big terrible movements will be. We need to have a lot of nice little tremors so that the earth will breathe easily! We have two very active volcanos in our area and Mt. Fuji is also becoming active again. It is a part of living on this plate of the earth, it's a wobble plate! I think your plate is larger and set more firmly. When it wobbles, go out from the trees and wait. It will settle again. It is simply the way the earth is.

Ben: This was a little one. No one was hurt but there was a lot of damage to the store shelves. I wouldn't have wanted to have been standing in a liquor store!

Heather: Is that the reason no one is posting shorties to the notebook...worries about copyright? You and many of the others DO need to worry, you have stories that sound like they are right from a book I'd pick up off the library shelves. I'm sorry because I had fun reading your shorties etc.

Richard: I agree with your idea. I think it's time to move away from the series and go it on your own. It's a small step but a big one. You are feeling your OWN voice and that's three times as good as writing for a series that already exists.

Something interesting and fun happened the other day, I started writing a story about two boys about age 10-12. I have no idea where this will go...well, I do have soooome idea. I know I may have to borrow a few ideas from your idea bank. If I get in a tight spot, can I ask for some help? I will want you to observe other kids at your school and look for some definite Darwin award types. You know what I'm talking about don't you! The kind of kid who doesn't know the old Cause/ Effect/ Result type behavior. The kid that jumps off a roof because he thinks, "Neat, I wonder what it feels like to fly."

What I'm looking for is the kind of kid who might do something to a wig that is attached to a person's head. I want to know exactly what that kid would do with that wig. I'm having a lot of trouble getting away from the idea of a fish hook, a little line and a wig. I want something different than that. I might accept having an old fashioned fan involved. I am just mulling this over and over. What could happen to a wig attached to a person's head (a slightly nasty person) if a kid with little cause/effect/result behavior control decided to get involved?

Anyone is free to speculate on this problem. I need to come up with something original and quite frankly after the image of "going fishing" I'm "going blank". Fishing has been done to death.

Viv

Hey, how you all doing?

Taylor : The main beef that I have with Blair is mostly that it was over hyped. Hype tends to raise my expectations of something and in Blair Witch's case I guess I just ended up expecting something that wasn't really there. But hey, if you like it then fair enough. I'm sure I like some flicks that you wouldn't be too keen on.

Heather : I sorta agree about Dylan. When he started singing I couldn't make out a word of what he was saying. The guy is a legend though, but then so is Sting. The good thing about Dylan was that when he was announced as winner he actually had a look of genuine surprise. Thats something that is usually rare at these awards. And just out of curiosity, am I the only one who thinks that all the songs Randy Newman gets nominated for sound exactly the same.

About Julia Roberts - hey it was fun to see her. Sure it was a little over the top, but at least she never started screaming, 'You like me, you really like me!' Or then she would have had to have been killed.

Gotta go now. Just finished work and I want to get a couple hours of hard graft in with the novel before I show my face in some social circles.

Keep it real.

Movies? I love movies. Even bad ones because they are fun to bitch about. "Blair Witch" seemed shallow to me, but I must say that ever since I saw it, I can't help but look for rings of stones when I am out hiking in the woods. Good marketing ploys though. That tells me that the makers knew they would need all the hype they could get to sell tickets.


Good luck with GlimmerTrain, Heather. :-)

sasquatch: Yeti have always been very good at hiding. Very few glimpses of you by humans, but (and I mean no disrespect here) what do Yeti do with the remains of the ones who have passed on? You seem like such solitary creatures. Why hasn't anyone ever found any bones?

Hi All:

Things are slowly getting back to normal. The one thing nice that is getting ruined is my marriage. We slept down there. My husband insists that we still sleep down there even though the water was higher than the rug. Now that he tore it up, there is nothing but wet cement and he still insists that once you get into bed you would never know. We have been living here since 1992 and this is the first time we have even gotten a drop of water in our basement. The first time turned out to be hundreds and hundreds of gallons, not a drop.

I am sleeping up stairs with the babies in my daughter's room. There is space for all of us, including my husband.

We are planning to put down the tiles and have the rug bound. That way if it happens again we can roll up the rug suck up the water and get on with it. I am waiting until the tiles are down, before I sleep down there again. Of course he thinks I'm just trying to rush him.

The power of water!

Debra

What have people got against the Blair Witch Project??

and I remember one night I couldn't sleep, when I was younger, and I snuck into the lounge to watch this tv movie
*remember i was young at the time*
And I watched most of this movie called 'Screamtime'part of it scared the hell out of me and I couldn't sleep the rest of the night

Must not forget SHANNONDOAH with Jimmy Stewart. Another Jimmy Stewart movie, BROKEN ARROW was good too.

I guess I could go on and on with my list.

Heather, you posted 'Bullroots' with the desire for input, right? Sounds like a draft to me. I say tell them nada. ;-)

T.J.

PS Dairy Queen makes good blizzards!

Trudy - I love Leonard Cohen too. I love his voice, his lyrics and the mood of his work, though not in large doses. The main reason I can't stand Bob Dylan is that he can't sing and he can't sing because he can't carry a tune and he doesn't seem to know how to enunciate. No one can tell if he is actually a good guitar player with all that moaning going on. The lyrics may be splendid, but if you can't understand a word of 'em, what's the point of writing lyrics at all? Why not just hum every bar of 'Rolling Stone?' That about wraps it for me. He may be a legend but I've always thought of that as a peculiarity. If Bob can do it, then surely I'm a bloody Diva. I should call A & M tomorrow morning...

About posting things right in the NB where anyone can access it: If it is in definitive form I think it would be considered published; if what you post is in draft form I should think that it would be considered unpublished. Perhaps the best way to find out is if anyone here knows someone into copyright law, or just plain law. Anyone with lawyer friends? Or, anyone with a website that goes into this topic indepth? I posted a website a while back but it didn't really get into web material very much because there aren't as many guidelines/laws concerning it yet.

Ben: It's too bad they didn't snub Dylan again - there were others who deserved the Oscar more, I think. They could have awarded him a lifetime achievement award and I wouldn't have batted an eye: People like Keith Richards and Bob Dylan do deserve acknowledgement simply because they're still breathing (and mobile). It might be canned air, but it's still considered respiration. And if that was a GOOD performance, I really couldn't bear a lame one. There's only so much I can take!

Mary: I hope your blue funkiness fades quickly! I agree wholeheartedly on the 'published or not' discussion. I'm sending in 'Bullroot's' to Glimmer Train, and have changed it a little since it was posted here. I am writing a short/sweet cover letter and here is the million dollar Q:

SHOULD I tell them that Bullroot's was posted here, in close-to-finished form? I've maybe edited ten or so sentences. Or SHOULD I just introduce myself and my work and say nada? Herein lies the ethical debate.

Heather

Oh almost forgot to say -- Teekay - so happy to see that the Russians didn't drop their space station on you.

Jerry

Love Dylan, guess you had to grow up with his music, as he grew up with it.

Movies:

1. Willy Wonka
2. Wizard of Oz
3. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly
4. The Absent Minded Professor
5. The Computer who wore Tennis Shoes.
6. The Apple Dumpling Gang
7. The Reluctant Astronaut
8. The Ghost and Mr. Chicken
9. Star Wars (I agree ALL of them)
10 Star Trek (again All of them)
11. Robinson Caruso on Mars (Don't know why but I love that movie)
12. Psycho
13. Mask of the Red Death
14 Pit and the Pendulum
15. Silence of the Lambs
16. Old Yellow
17. Sleeping Beauty
18. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
19. The Deer Hunter
20. Dirty Harry - et al
21. Bambi
22. The Green Berets
23. The Pink Panther et. al.
24. The Mouse that Roared
25. Green River

There is my top 25 list, some of you may not have seen or even heard of some of them, but they are movies that have stuck in my head from the first time I ever saw them, many of them I have only been able to see once, as they are not all that popular.

Still cold up here on the High Plains, but most of the snow is gone now, just a bit left on the North side of our house, where the sun never shines.

I guess it must be something in the water, maybe it is the cold, but like Mary I have been sort of down the last few days. Things usually get better, so I look forward to that. Mary, you should too.

Jerry

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY'S.

Oh, heck, Go to bed, Rhoda!

Must not forget A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS.

Got to add THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR to that list below.

Rhoda

Howard,

We are on the same wavelength as far as movies are concerned. I would add PRINCESS CARIBU, WITNESS, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, TITANIC, Kenneth Branagh's HENRY V, some John Wayne movies, SABRINA (both the Bogie one and the Harrison Ford one), and all the STAR WARS movies.

Mary Lou,

I am not too anxious to return to Indiana thought I like that part of the country. I actually like Kentucky better (I was born there). My roots are in Kentucky. I do miss the forests and large trees. Texas can be green too, but I am sure you have noticed the green is just not the same. And then back east rivers are really rivers with water in them all the time. The Brazos would be considered a creek compared with the Ohio.

I like Tulsa because it has so many of the physical attributes of the mid-west. This part of Oklahoma is actually a transition zone, and that makes the weather around here really crazy.

Rhoda

Hello all!

Favourite movies? Hmmmmmm. Lion King. Amadeaus. Star Wars - all four. How to Make an American Quilt. Fried Green Tomatoes. Casablanca. Wizard of Oz. Indiana Jones. True Lies. Good Will Hunting. Enter the Dragon. Terminator 2 (1 is good but 2 is better). Neverending Story. Princess Bride. And bad B grade like Beast Master and Scanners. I love B grade movies, but only when I can watch them alone.

How's that for eclectic?

Cassandra, I used to collect a lot of comics, when I was younger. Then the art went bad and I dropped most of them, except 'Magic' and 'Elfquest'. I absolutely adore Wendi Pini, but 'Elfquest' has been suspended for the time being. Mike Grell is another favourite. I do still enjoy a good graphic novel, since the art is *usually* of a higher quality.

SusanS, I also tend to place my stories in the future, but not futuristic. My main story, 'Shadow of the Freeborn', is set on another planet but with a mix of technology, mostly medieval and none advanced.

Mary, your funk will pass, I'm sure. You are a strong person, so it's just a matter of time.

Richard, I think your idea sounds interesting. Feel free to e-mail your intro to me, if you think it's ready for input!

Viv, hope all is well!

Sasquatch, I'm getting a creepy feeling here. Stay safe.

Anybody have any opinions about writers-bbb.com? Went and checked it out but didn't feel like registering for something I know nothing about.

Gotta go. We're heading for the DQ to get a blizzard treat. They're on sale this week! Yummy!
T.J.

Movies? Braveheart, Fantasia (both), Starman, The Wizard of Oz, anything with Mel Gibson, Julia Roberts, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, etc etc. "Beckett" is one of my all time favorites, as is "The Longest Day." There are so many good movies that it's impossible to list them all. I'd have to do my own "top 100" list, and that would change on any given day.
I started this post about 4 hours ago, got sidetracked, and just got back to the computer. That's what my day/week/month has been like!

MaryLou, I'm sorry to say I've never heard of James Alexander Thom, but email the titles of his books. I'm curious as to what he writes. Although I confess right now I'm on an Andre Norton binge. Her science fiction and fantasy worlds are so vivid and her stories and characters are excellent. I love space opera type science fiction, but sadly it doesn't seem to be in vogue right now. Like you, Mary Lou I don't set my stories in the present. I either write in the past, (the twenties, thirties and forties are favorite time periods for me), usually mysteries, or the far future for science fiction. I also write some science fiction. I do plan in the future to write an alternate world Victorian adventure novel. I have characters created and an outline nearly completed.

Taylor, I agree that certain history is not taught in the schools, although that situation is beginning to change. A less rosy picture is being painted of American and European history, and there is more focus on women's as well as multi-cultural history. We've a long way to go, but things are beginning to change.

Hi guys. In a funk. Don't know why. Hope it's over soon.


It is my understanding that work posted in a forum such as this one, especially since they are obviously works in progress and not finished articles, is NOT considered published. Sharing your works on-screen worldwide with others is not legally any different than sharing them on-paper with in-person writer friends at a local workshop. The items in the Workbook are open to critique and change. Only the writer himself has posted it, and the rights remain with the author. Websites that showcase an author's works in a form that is considered "complete" or "finished" is another matter. (ie. sites that run contests unless they specify otherwise.) Now I am no lawyer, but all that makes sense to me. I would not hesitate a single New York minute to submit something to a publisher that I had already posted here.

Heather said something about limited access and I would imagine that the Workbook being password protected does indeed work in our favor. If we wanted to get really techical, however, I would not be so confident in saying that the stories submitted to the Notebook on shortie night were not published. They are, after all, finished and open to the public as representatives of our writing skills. With as quickly as Jack archives the Notebook, though, I would hazard to say that you will never run into any type of problems with infringement.*


fine print:*The comments above are solely the statements of the individual and do not represent the views or opinions of the administration or affiliated sponsors.


nytol

Rhoda,

I live in San Antonio. There are many things I miss about IN (not the cold winters, that's for sure). I left the field of dietetics and food service to teach in order to have more free time. (My husband was already retired.) I taught at Ivy Tech (in IN) one year, then came to San Antonio to teach at St. Philip's College. I taught five years, then decided I wanted to have even more free time so we could do more traveling. I took early retirement. That's when I started writing. San Antonio is a very interesting city but, it has required lots of adjustment after living up north for so many years. We do like TX and have no plans to return to IN to live.

Cassandra - My Japanese club Sensei has all of those books (I think if we're thinking of the same thing) and I have some pages copied. I hope to have all of the books someday. I'd like to make more comics. Did you get Pepper the Peppy Puppy yet? Not really an action comic - more of a comedy.
*smiles*
Allein

Mary Lou,

I don't live in Waco any more. I just went to school there at Baylor. I then moved to Houston, then to Farmington, NM, back to Houston, then to Dumas, TX, then back to Farmington, NM, then to Perryton, TX where I lived until 6 months ago. Now I live in Owasso, OK ten miles north of Tulsa.

My brother lives in Sellersburg and my father still lives in Evansville. I haven't been to Evansville since my mother died over ten years ago. Most of my husband's family live in Louisville, so when I go up to that part of the country, I go to Louisville and my father meets us there.

My husband works in gas gathering. That is why we move around so much.

What part of Texas do you live in? Do you like it as well as Indiana?

Rhoda

Wait - lemme check my copy of "Things to Say to People Who Dislike Bob Dylan." Hmmmm... it's only blank pages! Well, I like him, ever since the second time I heard him, back in '64. Hated him the first time. Grew on me.

Heather: The thing about Bob Dylan is that he actually gave a good performance last night, believe it or not. I've yet to see him live, mainly because my wife hates him about as much as you do, and she just sulks in her seat when I turn the car radio up because he comes on. "Knocking on Heaven's Door" is one of the best ever--oh yeah, I don't know why that was never nominated for an oscar. I think that's why he won. He was snubbed before. They have a habit of doing that, don't they? I didn't think Julia should have won, but I knew she would, because once the machinary gets rolling, you can't stop it. We were going for Ellen Burstyn. As for GLADIATOR winning best film, well, whatever. I didn't like TRAFFIC any better. I saw the original t.v. show it was based on, and that was intense. But that movie? Overrated in my opinion. I did just see ALMOST FAMOUS this weekend, and that was a great movie. I'm glad he won for best writing.

RAMON: Good to have you back.

Trudy: I like Cohen too. I loved his comeback song, "Closing time." We have a copy of his novel at work, "Beautiful Losers." I've picked it up and tried to get into it, but sorry, no can do.

Taylor: The Blair Witch Project? Hello? Saw it, hated it.

Edgar: I'm sorry, but just who the hell are you talking about? I think you should try to overlook those little idiosynchracies in people's posts. It's not that bad, is it folks?

Viv: I don't believe many peole were hurt, were they? I'm glad to hear that. But how about the property damage? You know, with the softwood lumber trade coming to a close in a week, and the bottom falling out of Japan's market, all the guys at work keep saying they need an earthquake over there so they'll buy our lumber and keep us working. But at least it's said in humor.

Gotta go now. Got a sick kid in bed when she should be in school. I gotta walk to the store and get medicine for her. I guess having the last week off for Spring break wasn't enough for her?
Ben

Rhoda,

Thank you for the warm welcome to The Notebook. I'm happy to hear from a former Hoosier, particularly from my neck of the woods. Do you still live in Waco? We went to IN last September. Hadn't been back in five years. (We lived in the Indianapolis area.) Things sure have changed. My husband still has family there, but my immediate family have all passed away.

Taylor, very light reading indeed *grin* I loved all those movies you mention, but then I am a huge lover of the horror genre, so what can I say? The love affair began when I was around 10 and snuck downstairs with another cousin to watch the original Frankenstein from the stairwell (The older cousins were allowed to be up that late!) I was hooked. My cousin was not and she ended up having nightmares and admitted to why, dragging me down with her. (-: Ah memories!

Heather ... what about posting it to the Notebook right here where everyone can acces it? What about all the wonderful shorties?

I'm with you on Bob though he's one of those musicians people either love or hate. Guess my musician that fits into the same category is Leonard Cohen...I just LOOOOOOVE his stuff. But I know a lot of people who react to him the same way I react to Bob.

OK back to work...have to write a story about the wild turkey reintroduction program in Ontario...now ain't that exciting? LOL

Trudy

Hi all -

Heather: I was just looking at that copy of Writer's Digest mum brought back from Canada a few months back, and then I suddenly found out it was the one with your manuscript in it - I never saw it in there before.

Me and Mum went out looking for the English equivalent of the Writer's Digest on Sunday, but the two we picked up didn't seem to be as good. If we can't find a decent one then we might look into an overseas subscription. I also got Tom Clancy's 'The Hunt for Red October'.

I've also dropped Call to Action for now. Part of me wants to keep on writing it, but its becoming more and more important to me that I try to get my work into print, and since Star Wars is a copyrighted franchise it wasn't going to get anywhere. I haven't decided on the tital for my new novel, but its science fiction. I'm basing it around the space-age equivalent of an aircraft carrier. I'm going to start researching information on carriers and life onboard to see if I can use any of it in the novel.

I wrote the opening scene at some deathly hour in the night - it just came to me and I just HAD to write it before I went to bed. It needs some revision, but what I'm most interested in is whether it catches the reader's attention. Can I mail it to anyone for a critique?

Logging off -

hello viv person i sasquatch am hoping you will be okay after the earth moved. this was strong but there are more we can feel to come. earth is not at resting and we creatures are aprehending about it. creatures in ice place below teekay person lives feel ice will move. i must go.

Hi all :) Once again it looks like the network here on campus isn't going to let me online all that often... *sigh* so much for hope. I guess I'll just have to wait until next year. Supposedly they're going to improve our network connection then... they've dragged their feet on it enough already.

Tina- I've been out of practice with comics for a while. I was really just looking for something stylistically and artisticly solid. I ended up picking up what I think is the last issue of this series called Magdalena, and a little book about drawing Manga (particualarly interesting because of the action scene section). I've actually toyed with the idea of paring my story writing with my art work and doing a graphic novel.

Off to Class!

cya

Cassandra

Trudy - I don't think posting your story in the workbook would be considered published if it is in draft form and the page is password protected so that a limited number of people can access your work there. If it's in definitive form, then it might be questionable... I asked a similar question not too long ago and Mary responded... It might be better not to paraphrase her, still haven't had my morning cuppa Joe Dimaggio, and the chameleon knocked over my Venus De Milo figurine on his way to his perch (the top of my livingroom blinds). Venus De Milo is now Ve. Nus. Sans head.
Now it's personal. I think Cosimo has free-ranged about enough. I'm too peeved to elaborate.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Ok, coffee's on.

Anyone see the Oscars? I think Julia Roberts might have been better off to prepare something ahead, even if it was merely rough... I did like her comment, 'since God was a boy'. The rest of the time I kept wondering if she was stuttering or simply schizo. Oh, yes, she deserved to win an oscar at some point, and I'd be excited if I were her too. I thought the best part of her speech was when she finally gave up making any sense and just started laughing.

I enjoyed Steve Martin as host, but I think Billy Crystal was more dynamic.

As it is with judging movies, it's opinion and that's the height of it. You can't prove that your opinion is correct, only agreed with. Judging artwork no matter the medium is a difficult thing; very difficult to compare vastly differing pieces and techniques.

BUT

Am I alone on this opinion? WHY IN THE HELL DID THEY GIVE BOB DYLAN ANYTHING? I'm surprised he was nominated. Well, ok, so I'm really just still in shock over his music being desired for the movie. His performance for The Awards was so awful I wished I was his dentist so I could fill in that last, wide gap. Not in his teeth mind you, but his whole mouth. I know I am venting my opinion again, but it is in the sake of comedy.
Did you see the expression on the crowd's faces during Dylan's mumbling off-key crime against the inner ear? Poor Ed Harris looked like he was tasting his lunch again. I'd rather taste Ed's second-hand lunch than listen to Bob Dylan any time.

And that, folks, is just my opinion.
Heather

RRRRAMON: Congratulations on the job! Hope it turns out to be a great job with a bunch of nice people...plus some decent pay.
Debra: Hope you are high and dry and all your nice stuff isn't too bad. Mostly I hope your writing and computer were high and dry. I'll think dry thoughts for you until you check back in.
Jerry: Women are like cops I guess. We have to be sooooo selective about cussing around the general public, and especially the kids. What is fun is when we all get together, go into the kitchen, tell the kids to go out and play, then turn on the kitchen fan. The cigarettes come out of our apron pockets and then the dirty jokes and cuss words come out. Should a door open or one of the kids come in, it's business as usual. What is fun is I work with a majority of these women. At work none of us smoke. We wouldn't get caught dead smoking on the street and absolutely, the vocabulary words are completely private. It makes it a lot more fun if you are selective and careful with behavior!

I'm with both of you on violence. I can't watch it. I get a horrible physical reaction from violence. My stomach twists up and gets tight. I don't find it fun at all. I don't even like really sad things. I go to tv for relaxation and entertainment, not emotional highs and lows. I don't mind bad language but I hate the word F* when overused. It's kind of mindless. I like good creative swearing with a feeling for the cadence of the words. My husband put together a futon couch tonight (and we didn't get all the nuts and bolts to stick the darned thing together.) Now you talk about a nice sense of drama, cadence and feeling for words!

Well I 've been abscent for a while but now I am back and hopefully on a more regular basis. I start my new job in a weeks time so I intend to use my free time to do some serious reading and writing. I've started another piece called MIND GAMES (HA HA HA HA). Like my last creation I don't intend to sell it or offer it for publication, its just an exercise, besides I am hoping my writing later will be more varied. I would like to say hello to Mary, Jerry, Teekay, Christi, Heather, HOP, Laura, Ben and everybody else whose name is not included.

I am going to have to dash now but before I do I am going to have a browse around the system.

Take Care all

RRRRRAMON

Oh, you were talking about vulgar language, and cussing. I guess there are folks around who cuss more then a cop when he is amongst other cops, but not many. Yet we were always carefull that such language not be spoken when there were civilians about. The same is true of soldiers, and back when I wore the green, we didn't give a damn who was about it was F**k this and F**K that FTA was popular all around. Now however, I never swear, cuss or use any vulgarities, except when I am, oh say at my uncles mechanic's shop where it vulgar is spoken by all, and even then, I hold back, in fact it sounds so forgin now to hear someone cut loose with such language, having been away from it for several years now. I guess it depends on where you are, but when I go to the movies, and one of the most beuitiful women on the screen cuts loose and says F**k it, I am shocked and I think it takes away from what could be a very good movie. It seems now that in order to fill the seats in the theater there must be an R rating on the movie, so they take a fine movie and spice it up with some cussing, a bit of nudity and everyone thinks it a great movie.

And since we are on the subject, I have nothing agains homosexuals, well I guess I may have when I spent my days in the arms, but since then, I have been enlightened. Yet I think it not only strange, but just plain wrong to have television shows where the entire theme of the movie is how good two homosexual men can get along with everyone else.

Guess I am just a bit old fashioned, but when they won some emmys for thier show, and coaxed other networks to join it, I have to shake my head. I guess things that belong in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom. Maybe I am wrong, I don't know but I still think it would be nice to observe some restraint in all things, television included.

There I go again ranting and raving. It is just one of those days I guess. Had a nice Sunday though, it was my eldest sisters 55th birthday, so we all gathered at my mothers to celebrate. I had a very nice visit with my nephew, while all the women played pinochle. What a wonderful week, all week and I didn't have to play pinochle. It does get old after a bit, and I think I have mentioned it before, in our little family down here in Lemmon, I am the one and only male left, in a family of women, there is my wife, of course, who I wouldn't trade for a hundred 21 year olds (well maybe for an hour or so but not permanently) my mom, who is 75, my sister who just turned 55, her 21 year old daughter who still lives at home with her mom, and spends her days messing up her computers to give me somthing to do (fixing her messes), her other daughter who lives in a neighboring town, and my daughter who lives here in town. Should I have the desire to speak with another man, I have to drive over and visit my uncle who runs an auto repair shop, and he is usually very busy, as the is the best mechanic in town. ( not brag, even the fellows who are mecanics at other shops bring their cars to him when they need fixing.) The only male around except me, in the house anyhow is Renn our little dog, and he was fixed many years ago, so he doesn't count I guess.

Well I am taking up entirely too much room, so will read you all later.

Jerry

PS the story for our ghosty project is coming along fine, I do just a bit of work on it every day, soon it will be ready for posting.

Hello from the Writers' BBS (www.writers-bbs.com). We're a very large, varied group of writers with many forums. We have began conducting challenges. What are challenges?

Challenges are where the winner of the previous challenge (say its a humour challenge) decides what the topic will be as defined by the genre itself (in this case it is fantasy). The king/queen then announces it to the rest of writers. Then the writers will compose short stories in response, they post and then they comment on the other entries. We also have a Humour challenge being conducted too. We then vote on them -- to vote you must comment on 3/4ths of the challenge entries.

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to write a fantasy story based on TIME. I do not want to curb your creativity too much, so I'm trying to keep this as open as possible for you. The central theme is time and your characters' perception of time, and the conflict should stem from this element in your story. It also gives you a chance to flex your writing muscles and give us your view of time.

A few optional elements you can include will be: a seeing stone, a sorcerer, or a mirror.

Word Limit: 2500. Minimum word count will be 500, unless you do a verse entry.

The challenge will be held in the Fantasy Forum www.writers-bbs.com

Posting Dates for entries: April 1st to the 14th

Commenting/Critiques: April 1st to the 18th.

I will post the voting thread on the 14th in the Fantasy Critique forum. The voting will be as thus:

1st: 5 points, 2nd: 3 points, 3rd: 1 point.

Good luck, and may the best person win!

MAC

SusanS: yeah they should teach history in primary school. But theres alot about history that they wont teach, they seem to only teach the parts that make it sound good.. eg australian, not really the violent genocidal behaviour of the english colonists

more on violence, the JFK assassination, i wasnt alive when that happened, but I really would like to see the footage

But I found that there was no way I can watch Ghandhi again, I know it seems strange, but I just cant watch that without virtually screaming at the television at the people who shot all those women and children

Ben, sorry about the spelling error. I guess what I don't like is the fact that when I watch prime-time TV I have to put up with the violence. I saw plenty of violence first hand, first growing up in an outrageously alcoholic family, where fighting was the expected behavior every weekend, when the men got together. Then on to Viet Nam, where I saw enough violence to suit anyone. When I got home, I went to work on a Police Department, where I saw lots of violence first hand. Now it would be nice to be able to sit down and enjoy some television, maybe something like the old Wonderful World of Disney, Gillian's Island, or Hazle. I know there is the Cartoon Channel, but that too has plenty of unnecessary violence. TV land, is a bit better most of the time, as is Nick at night. Right now the TV is running, and set to the learning channel, they are doing the wildest police chases. Just more violence. Can we expect our children not to be effected with all this crap on the tube? I don't know if that is the problem, maybe I just long for a kinder gentler time, like the '50s. I remember those a bit. Like yourself, I remember where I was when JFK was shot, I was in school in the 6th Grade. I heard about it on the playground during lunch break, the teacher in charge of the playground blew the whistle early, and gathered us all around her in the center of the playground. "The President has been shot!" she said, "Go home and watch it on television. If you don't have a TV, go to a friends house and watch it." And home we went..

Ok, now you got me rambling too.

History, I love it too. I mentioned my treasured set of the Worlds Greatest Histories, They are very old, and a bit hard to follow at times, because of the English they used in writing it was much more formal then we use today, but with some studying, you can understand it. I recall a time when my daughter had to write a paper for her history class about one of the Presidents, Taylor I think it was, anyhow we looked him up in the old books and came up with some amazing facts that would be hard to find anywhere else. She got an A on the paper because of the good research skills.

I think I got my love of history from my father, who read every book he could find on history. Mostly the History of WW2, he had quite a collection of them that I got when he passed away. Sadly, my wife thought I never read them, so put them out on a garage sale some years ago, and that was the last I ever saw of them. She now knows that such items should never go on the .25 cent table without passing my review.

Edgar - Get back in your box where you belong!

Jerry

Trudy: it does all depend on the perspective viewer... yes

I was brought up watching whatever movies we wanted to see..
Like when my brother and I were kids we watched movies like Amityville, Jaws, violent old ninja movies and those old vampire movies that scared the hell out of me.
Haven't been able to find them again

But I was reading something the other day, that maybe I do love violence, I was reading some of the casefiles found on the internet on Jack the Ripper. When someone asked me what I was reading I replied, just some light reading about Jack the Ripper
She laughed

Mary Lou,

Welcome to the Notebook. I have had the pleasure of being both a Hoosier and a Texan. I grew up in Evansville and went to ISU. My husband is a graduate of Rose Hulman, and my brother graduated from PU in 1978.

I went to Waco, TX when I was twenty and never returned to Indiana. I had a good school friend from Vincennes.

Great to have you,

Rhoda

Susan, Caught your post re history and whole heartedly agree with you. I've written four novels, three historical and one contemporary. No more contemporary for me! My work has been set in TX (where I now live), but I'm orginally from IN. (Graduated from IU and PU. How's that for a challenge?) I want to write a novel about the 18th century Indian/French War, George Rodgers Clark capturing Fort Sackville, etc. (My hometown is Vincennes.) I told my husband we had to spend at least a month there for me to do research. Preferably in the summer. It is a BIT cooler there than it is here. So far I haven't been able to convince him to stay that long.

By the way, have you ever read any of James Alexander Thom's work? (He was a professor at IU until he became a full time writer. I have several of his books and have enjoyed them very much. If you haven't and are interested, I can send you the titles.

Hope I haven't intruded but do have to come to the defense of learning history.

Mary Lou

Taylor, you wrote..."modern day movies are so bad these days, with the exception of What Lies Beneath, Blair Witch and the Sixth Sense..."

I guess I'm of the opinion that most things, be it art, fiction, movies or something else, is all personal preference and just because someone likes it while others don't doesn't mean that movie/novel/piece of art is truly bad. I probably wouldn't have responded to your comment except for the fact that you put Blair Witch in as one of the good modern movies. Personally I hated the Blair Wirch movie and felt like many people who saw it at the theatre (cheated out of $8) To me the only great thing about that movie was the marketing. That was fabulous!

Trudy

Haven't seen What Lies Beneath but loved Sixth Sense...of course I like Bruce Willis and any movie with a twist.

Hi,

I've been asked a question and am not positive of the answer so thought I'd post it to you guys.

I know that if someone posts their short stories or poems on a web site, this is considered first rights...if someone belongs to a yahoo writers group (or one of those other community zones that people can only access with a password) anything they post to the members is also archived on the list. Does this count as first rights? Is yahoo the same as the password protected section here, Jack? Anyone?

Thanks for any input.

Trudy

Ben, I share your love of history. My love affair with history begins in high school when I was writing a time travel story and had to do some research on the middle ages. History has always inspired me to write for some reason I can't explain and one has to be creative, I think, to research and write history. I have a master's degree in history, and I considered my master's thesis to be a creative as well as a scholastic endeavor. I put as much of myself into that thesis as any of my stories. I remember a professor of mine commenting on a paper I wrote. He said it was one of the best graduate papers he'd read at CMU (Central Michigan University), and remarked that part of what made it such a good paper, was that I put some of myself into the work. That made me feel so good.

I agree also that history is not taught enough in the schools. My personal opinion is that the teaching of history should begin in the primary grades and continue through all of grade school. But I don't look to see that happen. We live in a society that tends to value business skills, technology, and the hard sciences over history, which sadly gets short shrift in the educational curriculum. But it's time to come off my soapbox.
I do love history though. Writing is my first love, but history is a very close second. I wrote a poem some time ago about my passion for history.

"Passion for the Past"

History is my passion.
It makes me feel alive,
To delve into the distant past,
And see how others live.
You say history is boring.
You say the past is dead.
But the past lives in all of us,
And speaks to those who listen.
The past is all around us.
It shapes our present and future.
Listen to its voices.
Let them tell you about yourself.
Then you'll understand my passion for the past.
And the wonders it reveals.

I wrote this when I was on a major poetry writing jag. I write most fiction, but for a while I had poems filling my head, demanding to be written. Now I'm lucky to eke out a poem once in a while. I don't know what happened. Oh well, time to get off here and do some writing.

SusanS

AWRIGHT, LISSEN UP. Sometimes it's a typo, and I can overlook those, but too frequently it's a simple bad habit and requires PAINful remediation. I'm talking about spelling here, and I'm talking to you, you verbage-slinging bag of human FLESH. Call yourself a WRITER do you? Sit still a minute and shine a little light into that gray mass.

• The prefix "de-" is a categorizer. It indicates that we speak of belonging to or coming from some state (physical or mental).
• "Finite" is the state of being limited.

I HAVE A NEWSLETTER THAT LISTS OVER 100 FREELANCE MARKETS MONTHLY PLUS TIPS AND ADVICE ON WRITING AND WHAT EDITORS WANT TO SEE! ONLY $10.00 FOR A FULL YEARS SUBSCRIPTION! GREAT WEBSITE URS TO CHECK OUT TOO! INTERESTED? EMAIL: KRAZYDAYZ333@YAHOO.COM PLEASE PUT "MARKETS" AS THE SUBJECT

Susan S: I wish they would've taught me more history in school. I can remember a lot of it now because my daughter in grade seven is coming home with ancient history stuff: Mesopotamia, Egypt et.al...In grade 11 we studied European History from 1815--after the Congress of Vienna, up until the end of the Great War I believe. I loved it. It was fascinating. Imperialism, Colonialism, Expansionism...Bismark, Gladstone, the Boxer Rebellion. As a result of that one year studying that one hundred years, I lost myself in history. A lot of the stories I write take place in Vienna just before the First World War, because I find that era the most interesting. The First and Second Balkan Wars of 1911-13? Love it. Adds background to a lot of things I want to write about.

Jerry: You're right, we didn't send any troops there. And it's CANUCK, not Canook. I just figured being in the Army you might have come across one or two during your time.

I'm sorry to hear about your borther-in-law.

As for movie violence and swearing, it doesn't bother me in the least. I know it's made up violence. But I think it doesn't bother me because of what we used to watch on the news when I was a kid. I live on the border here between our two countries, and so we used to watch good ol' Walter Cronkite on the C.B.S. Evening News. All those famous pictures you see now-a-days: The girl with her clothes burning, running down the street? The guy getting his brains blown out in front of the camera? I saw all of those when they originally aired. I even remember where I was when Kennedy was shot. I remember I was pretty pissed because they cancelled all the morning cartoons and I couldn't watch "Firsky Frolics". I think my parents never thought twice about it because they'd both come through W.W.II, and for them, it was a normal thing. My Dad didn't like watching war movies, but he never turned off the news for some strange reason. Go figure...?

As for the language, well, I'm sorry to say this, but that's how everyone I work with talks, without exception. I call it Industrial Language. I talk like that from the moment I cross parking lot, and leave it behind the moment I leave. My Dad always told me swearing was a sign of no education, when you can't think of a word to use instead of Go F*** yourself, then maybe you should be reading more. I always liked that explanation. My Dad worked in a mill as well. I never heard him swear once in my life as I was growing up, until one day when I was around twenty-two we went to a union meeting together because my ex-brother-in-law wanted us to vote something down. I actually heard him swear fotr the first time.

So if you don't like swearing and violence, does that mean you didn't like PULP FICTION or THE GODFATHER? GOODFELLAS? A CLOCKWORK ORANGE?

SO what is too violent? I can't answer that. Like I said, my brain was numbed when I was a kid. I saw a man get his nose tip bit off by a dog when I was eleven. He bled all over the place. We were kids. We laughed. That's because he was a drunk though, and teasing the dog through the truck window. We watched because we were sure the dog was gonna get him. I mean, the window was open just enough for the dog to get his head out, if he turned it right. The drunk kept bobbing and weaving in front of the dog, barking at him, waving his arms while the guy's girlfriend kept tugging on his arm, trying to get him away from the dog. Too late. He weaved in, the dog turned its head sideways and got an extra inch or two closer than before, and presto! no nose tip. I didn't think it was violent, but there was a lot of blood.

Now I'm rambling, so I gotta go. Gotta wake the wife up for work. She's expecting me to have dinner ready, pick up her gown from the cleaners, and her new shoes; she wants the champagne chilled and waiting, because, she says, she's going to the Oscars. Oh well, living on the west coast means it'll be over early enough to watch something interesting afterwards. Maybe even SOUTH PACIFIC?

Ben

I used to love, "Taxi". Lot's of stars came out of that show.

I know this is very late but heres a shortie...

Keep this quiet, I just received something by mail today
its labeled Bill Clintons Secret Inauguration Day
Speech Rehearsal

Its a microcassette tape
Director voice: OK Mr President Sir take it from the top

Bill Clinton: oh ok(pause)My fellow American's, I am a new type of president. And I promise there will be alot of sex, good humour and
Director: Cut! Mr President, its sax S A X, sax try it again

Bill Clinton: Sorry.(pause)My fellow americans I am a new kind of president. There will be alot of sex, humour
Director: Jesus Mr President ITS SAX OK, if youre gonna say sex, people are gonna think youre gonna have sex. Oh I cant work in these conditions...

Bill Clinton: Over the mic it may sound like sax
Director: Oh forget it, we'll have the Gerald Ford Institution of Politcal speeches to prepare it!
*Tape stopped*
secret exposed-Bill Clinton wanted to be a truthful President
-And when in doubt go they always go for the old, long boring speeches
Yours Faithfully
Bill X

Taylor,

I have two words for you: The Contender. On video, now.

GS

modern day movies are so bad these days, with the exception of What Lies Beneath, Blair Witch and the Sixth Sense...

anyone seen Urban Legends: Final cut
I mean, we've seen those things before...
All the slasher movies follow exactly the same plot...Always
Like:
Killer kills a few people easily, comes across one girl, tries to kill her but fails, killer chases girl, girl comes up with the way to kill killer
Thats basically it...

And I use to like the really old twilight zone series, then it got better when it turned colour
Another favourite movie of mine is Zoultan: the hound of dracula

The only TV shows that have any inspiration on my writing are those old beyond belief, and when I can find them on cable, the Twilight Zone. I haven't seen a movie that I like since the last star trek next gen movie. Guess I don't like most of what the movies folks are putting out now, too much violence and unneeded cussing. THere is a place and a time for such things, but not in place of a plot, or good writing. Hell any kid can sit down and write a bunch of swear words. That's what the modern movie folks seem to think it takes to make money today.

WEll gotta go, my oldest sister is on ICQ telling me about our other sister who called, her husband is ill, in the hospital. I think most of his suffering comes from the three packs of ciggarettes he smoked every day, he if off them now, replaced them with an oxygen tank.

Latter

Jerry

EDDIE -- I salute you. I can feel it. Strength to you, and prayers for an end to this.

HI ALL
speaking of favourite shows...does anyone recall the old tv sitcom Taxi...
I like it.

and as for movies and videos that get me in the mood to write(music too) is anything Elvis Presley...

Eddie,

It was not mere rambling. Your poem was poignant and thought provoking. I don't think you give yourself credit for just how good a writer you are.

Rhoda

Ben,

I learned that part of the War of 1812. Perhaps someone here ought to write an alternative history about what the world would now be like had we only succeeded.

Rhoda

I guess I have run into a canook or two when I lived up north in North Dakota, they used to come down to New Rockford, the last place I served as the Chief of Police, for the annual steam thrasher celebrations. Many of them ran the steam engine's, and I did develop a great friendship with a few of them. They even took me out drinking one night, when I had the night off. They could have drank me under the table, that's for sure, but I quit and went to club soda's very early in the game. Never saw any of them do that though, they all seemed very found of beer. While in Viet Nam, I did run into many Australians, Koreans, but none from Canada, I believe they didn't send troops there, did they? I do remember a few of my classmates from High School who ran to Canada to avoid the draft. At the time I didn't think much of them, I guess after all these years, I have settled down a bit, and might let one of them buy me a beer, should I go to a bar, although I haven't been in one of those establishments since I retired from the PD.

I do recall the tales of both World Wars, where many a Canadian gave his life for the cause, side by side with their allies. I guess I got into an argument one time with a Canadian who said that Canada suffered more casualties then the Americans. Now I know if you go by percentages, that is probably true, but not in true numbers, as there were many more American troops then there were Canadians, simply because there are so many more people in America then in Canada.

We used to go up to the Peace Gardens, on the US/Canadian border once a year while we lived up in New Rockford, simply to enjoy the fabulous view, and enjoy the conversations with those who came from Canada. If you haven't been to the Peace Gardens, you are missing a real treat. They are located right on the boarder, in fact there are two sidewalks, on one you are walking on the US side, the other in Canada, they go about a half mile or more through some of the most beautiful flower gardens in the world.

Bye for now

Jerry

Hi there, just stopping by.

BEN W.,
I live in San Antonio, (I know--I mentioned that before) and we have 4 or 5 military bases here (there closing at least 1) and a lot of basic Training. There was a big stink recently about them letting one of the recruits die of dehydration during training. That sounds hard enough to me.

Just a thought about shortie length--try continuing them to the next week if they are too long. (like I did with Beaky) I got more comments on that one than all the other really short shorties.

We might all hope Gilligan is Saten. That would make him dumber than we thought.

I returned that lousy lawnmower. It was made for five-foot-tall people. (I'm about 5'10")(I might have those marks wrong.) I had to bend over so far that after about ten minutes, my back was killing me. Forget about pushing the handle down to raise the front end.

Enough of that for now,
Rosemary

I'm sorry Tina, I forgot to mention in my earlier message that I was addressing the comments in my first paragraph to you. Oops! It's been a long day.

I really sympathize with your predicament. I would suggest taking the best parts of your story and seeing what you could do with them, but I know that is scary and uncertain. I also refuse to write without an outline to guide me. I don't follow it strictly and will often veer from it in certain places, but I've just got to have that outline (does this make me anal retentive or just too uptight) I have written one story without an outline, but I had an idea in my head where I was going with the story. Occasionally I try to write without an outline, but it never works and another story gets abandoned. I just need to know where the plot is going even if I don't take the plot in that direction.

I don't remember studying the War of 1812 in school myself. It wasn't a very long war anyway and it really wasn't that important of a war. I don't know about other states, but in Michigan where I'm from, the teaching of American history is done in grades 5, 8 and 11 with 5th and 8th grades focusing on U.S. history up to 1865. I student taught 11th grade history and the focus was on 1865 to the present. I don't think it's a very good way to teach history, but getting people to radically change the educational system is like pulling teeth.

Allein: The War of 1812--and don't ask when that was (giggle). Apparently, they don't teach that part in American history classes.

Tina - You burned down the white house - when did this happen? Our Veteran's Day is November 11th - *smiles*. That's cool.

Also, now that I remember, in Shadows, they talked about a Canadian army - my bad.

Jerry - The Simpsons are great too. I don't particularly like reruns either. ER went through a dry spell a few years ago and I stopped watching it but then it picked up again. But recently, it's been nothing but reruns and I've been craving something new.

I also enjoy those old shows - Popeye, Scooby Doo, Gummi Bears (though it's on while I'm at school so I can only watch on weekends), Bugs Bunny and all the old Looney Toons (esp. Wile Cyote and Road Runner). Now if only they had Rainbow Brite and My Little Ponies on there, my life would be complete.

Here are some silly and weird Latin Phrases I picked up out of a book.
Enjoy,
Allein

Are we there yet? = Paene advenimus?

Why is that man running through the street without a toga? = Cur ille sine toga per viam currit?

Beware of Dog = Ceve Canem (this was accutally found written on a sign in Pompeii)

Oh, look at his big pecs! = O, specta musculos magnos pecoralis!

I spit in your face = Sputo in tuum vultum.

Shut up and sit down! = Sile et Sede! (Singular)
Silete et Sedete (Plural)

Pepper = Piperis

Stuffed Chicken = Pullus Fartus

Hold my pet monkey = Tene Simiam meam

No more boiled brains, thanks = Non plus cerebrorum elixorum gratias.

Atta girl Tina! You tell 'em!

But in all seriousness--or, maybe, putting all seriousness aside--two of my brothers served in the Armed Forces. That's what we call them. They're all lumped into one. They have Basic Training in a place called Cornwallis, in Nova Scotia, and it lasts ten weeks. I hear it's twice as hard as what they put the Americans through when they go through their Basic. But you can tell your brother and your friends, that if they kept up with current events even a little bit, and perhaps read something about World events instead of sporting events, they would know this. It's pretty common knowledge.

Now, don't take any offence Jerry. I know you were in the service at one time, and you must have come across a Canuck or two in your day as well. They have a lot of pride as far as what they've accomplished over the years--the two World Wars and all--because I've heard it all before, from my brothers. So, let's not even get into that movie U-571.
BEN

Next week's shortie theme: PATRIOTISM

Gilligan Satan? Come on now, not my little buddy! Couldn't be. Just shows you that you can read anything into anything and make some people believe it.

Watch television Allien? Well, I do watch although most shows bore me to tears. My favorites are Law and Order, and The Simpsons. I also enjoy some of the comedies such as Everybody Loves Raymond, and The King of Queens, oh and how about Becker, love that show. I do watch ER simply because my wife can't go the week without seeing it, if it is not a rerun. She hates reruns, even of ER, so leaves the room when it comes on, if she has seen it. That is my signal to turn off the boob tube and put on one of our old LP's.

Playing old records is quickly becoming a favorite habit of mine,, we must have around three hundred of them, so I can play them for quite some time without ever having to hear the same one twice. Since I got that old Pioneer PL 120, the quality of the music is super, but it is a "Professional" grade turntable, so it only plays one record, then you have to get up and turn it over, or replace it with another. This does provide me with some much needed exercise, so it isn't all bad, and some of the songs bring back so many memories. Memories of youth, virility, those memories of going from adolescence to adulthood.

What wild and crazy times those were, what with the war in Viet Nam, the protests in the streets, riots in Harlem and Watts. Great men like President Johnson, General Westmorland and the rest. The news was still news, but was beginning to show the turn from telling us true stories to interrupting them for us, and telling us what we should be thinking. Discussions of sex education (I was all for that when I was in school, but I wanted to pick my own lab partner.) Cartoons like Popeye (still watch him eat his spinach on Cartoon Network), Magilla Gorilla, Tennessee Tuxedo. Shows like Batman, and Superman, The Lone Ranger, Zorro, and The Mickey Mouse Club.

Well I ramble on, like an old man in a nursing home. Will shut up for awhile and let someone else speak.

Have a Great Weekend ALL

Jerry

Hello!

Well Allein, I'd say your logic outshines theirs. As Heather pointed out, we have a military. We have and army, a navy, and and airforce. We have dragoons - kind of a reserve force - we have militia, we have peace keepers, and we have cadets. We participated in the Gulf War. We have active peace keepers in Bosnia and a handful of other countries. If your friends and brother don't believe me, tell them to find someone from Holland, someone who lived during or just after the second world war, and ask them about Canada's military. They were in both world wars and very proudly so. Every November 11 we celebrate Rememberance Day, to honour and remember all of the men and women who have served and died for Canada.

Not that I mean to rant, but...
If you ever go to an airshow and see the Canadaian Snowbirds perform, they are our version of your Blue Angels, a military unit. We have ships patroling our coastal waters, we have airbases staffed with jets and helicopters and other neat stuff, and they can respond to threats quite nicely.
Here in Vernon where I live, we have a cadet base and a militia base. Each summer about 3 thousand kids descend on us, from all over the country. The militia base is active year round. And, on the next shuttle launch to the International Space Station, Colonel Chris Hadfield, a pilot in our air force, will be among the crew and will help deliver the new Canadian Remote Manipulator Arm.

I just realised that I sound like I'm bragging.

Guess I am! :-)

Now that I've waxed on and on and on, I must get ready for work. See ya!
T.J.

PS And don't forget that Canada once sacked and burned the White House!

You, of course, don't here the sound. You hear it. Sorry.

~~M

Eddie French- Good grief that wasn't a poem? Just rambling? Boy, I wish I rambled like that!

Jack, post a few of the character sketches. It will be fun to read them and meet your characters without knowing any plots. That's sort of like going to a party and meeting people, then finding out about them later as you get to know them. It'd be a good teaser to make us buy the book when it comes out.

Back to work. I can't get into my stupid on-line graphics program. It is denying me access. I own the software so I've written a letter and now I'm wondering just how I'm going to get graphics to cover my #@*** so I can get this powerpoint stuff done in time for the first week of school. Does anyone have a graphics program they like on the internet?

Hello One and All. Thanks to all those who posted shorties! I love to read them and I am sure that we all get a good deal of enjoyment from Thursday (Friday in some areas) nights! :-)

To All who didn't post a shortie: on the tail of previous weeks which were jam-packed with shorties, I am inclined to believe that it is the new limit on length that is holding people back. If that is the case, then you can bet I am throwing that 500 word limit right out the window. (This is the part where you here the Wile E. Coyote whistling sound like when he falls off a cliff chasing the Road Runner followed by a small cloud of dust and a muffled thump.)

TINA: I think that even people who don't normally frequent the Workbook, would go there if they thought that was where the shorties are. Especially if someone says here in the Notebook that there are shorties in the Workbook. Plenty of people went over and read mine. More people than even commented I would reckon. Big hugs to you..it wasn't my intention to stifle anyone.

TEEKAY: Well, I gave it a whirl hon, but it ain't workin'.

Back to regular shorties night everybody! The sky's the limit! :-)

Hey RANDALL -- I bet my cell phone is smaller than yours!
:-)

Tina - I came back to writing after a long bout with the 'other' fine arts. I say bout because I find writing to be just as exacting; a punch without aim or purpose is neither effective or efficient. What does the first part have to do with the second? I'm just the conduit for my muse: Ask her!

Allein: Canada most definately has an army and a navy and marines and militia. We just don't hop on the bandwagon with the same frequency that the U.S. does. The main reason? We're not as large a political power, therefore have fewer challenges from potential threats. We also don't have as much manpower or money as the American army, navy, etc., so we generally hang about lazily in the back and hope the myth works. (That was supposed to be humorous)

I haven't put on my sanity cap this evening, forgive me.

On my way

Heather

Hey all,
I have a question and you're probably going to think I'm a complete idiot for even asking, but we were having a debate in class today so I was wondering. We were debating about Canada having an army/navy/etc. There were people in my class saying that there wasn't an army in Canada because they aren't active in war or whatever (even my brother doesn't think they have one) but I'm thinking that they must at least have armed forces because I think every country has an army. Including Sweden, which hasn't fought in a war since 1849 (I think). So I was just wondering about that - to put the debate to rest.
Incedently, the thing that sparked the debate was talk of the South Park movie, which I saw once in theaters and we now own (my brother taped it off of TV). I think it was dumb (no country is going to go to war over something so petty), my brother thinks it's cool. Pepper doesn't give a darn - she'd rather chew on her bone.
I don't recommend this movie or the TV show. Watch something better - ER is good. Touched by an Angel, 7th Heaven - those are good too. I also enjoy the Discovery Channel, The Learning Channel, etc.
Out of cartoons though - Sailor Moon, Daria, Rocky and Bullwinkle - those are all good. :)
Anyway, enough of my 2 cents. 2 1/2 cents.
You're sick of my rambling by now.
Cheese is good.
*smiles*
Allein

Hi all,
Got this through an e-mail. It's something to think about.
*smiles*
Allein


The Secret Behind Gilligan's Island.

Years ago, CBS had a popular little series called GILLIGAN'S ISLAND.

There is, however, a dark secret about this "comedy" you may never have realized.

The island is a direct representation of HELL.

Nobody on the island wants to be there, yet none are able to leave. Each one of the characters represents one of the 7 deadly sins:

Ginger represents LUST - she wears skimpy outfits, is obsessed with her looks, and is a borderline nymphomaniac.

Mary Ann represents ENVY - she is jealous of Ginger's beauty.

The Professor represents PRIDE - he is an annoying know-it-all.

Mr. Howell represents GREED - no explanation needed.

Mrs. Howell represents SLOTH - she has never lifted a finger to help on any of their escape plans.

The Skipper represents two sins: GLUTTONY - again, no explanation needed and ANGER - he violently hits Gilligan on each show.

This leaves Gilligan. Gilligan is the person who put them there. He prevents them from leaving by foiling all of their escape plots. Also, it is HIS island. Therefore, Gilligan is SATAN.

........ Crazy? He does wear red in every episode.

It was a dark and drerry night in the Ozarks, when the first lieutenant said to the second lieutenant, "Let me hear a story!"

Said the second lieutenant to the first Lieutenant. "It was a dark and dreary night in the Ozarks, when the first Lieutenant said to the second Lieutenant. "Let me hear a story!"

. . .

Well that was exciting!"

Jerry

Oh and then there was this lady and her daughter who were touring Graceland. When they came to the guest register, the young girl ran forward to the book and pushed this catholic nun out of the way and began to sign her name. Her embaressed mother ran up and grabbed her hand pulling her back and said "Wait till the nun signs Shelly!"

Jerry

Liked the drag joke Randall

TGIF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hello everyone!!! :-) :-) :-0 (oops!)

In the immortal words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, (champion of the downtrodden and poor!)

"Friday at last, Friday at last. Good God 'oh Mighty, it's Friday at last!"

Well, at least that's what the boys in the local pool hall told me Dr. King said. I thought he mentioned something 'bout freedom, but what do I know? :-) As we all know freedom is just a word...now.

Seen a couple of referances from the guys 'bout computers with a lot of specs related too (I guess?) available power. I wouldn't know, my first one was pulled outta junk (salvage) yard. My writing computer was brand spanking new in 1991. Our internet computer only a few years old. Neither have enough power to do Apollo 13 any good, or make a decent cup of coffee.

Mountain men on beaver traps. "Can catch anything in these hear Shining Mountains. How about yourn Ephraim?"

Settlers stood 'round the campfire inside the wagon train. "Yes sir re Bob. This un haul 2 ton and my wheels are 6 feet tall."

Gold miners. "My sluice is bigger'un than yourn! Give me an hour and I'll find all the gold in that hill."

Outlaws. "Jesse, looka the size of the bore on this here pistol. Shoot straighter than that old hog leg of yourn too, I'll wager."

Sheriffs. "Wyatt, ever seen one any bigger. Who's at the OK corral? Hey it's cocktail time. Wonder what they want?"

FBI men. "Edgar, hey Edgar, come outta that closet. This little beauty will shoot a 100 times afore you have to reload. Jesus H. Christ! Edgar, back in the closet!!!"

WWI officers. "Now men, our guts are better than the Hun's guts. So, over the top."

LBJ. "This evening one of our ships was attacked in the Tonkin Gulf....."

Politicans. "Now my tax cut is bigger than theirs."

Bill Gates. "Fellows our megs are bigger than theirs."

It's a guy thing folks. "Say, I'll bet my old Chevy 4 x 4, with dual mufflers and 2 headlights has more horsepower than yours. Wanna drag? Hey! Hey! Edgar, back in the closet!"

Randall "A meg short" Lynn

Well, got my shell fish license today. I can start crabbing April 1 or, at least, I will check and make sure, but believe that is the case. It will be interesting to see how much difficulty it will be getting them and keeping them lively enough to get home and in the boiling water. We will see, next couple of dives we do in April.

On several of the pictures that do not seem to show up except with the logo of the free site they are stored. Right click on the pictures, copy the name of the file and then past it into the address window and you will be able to see it. Then when you back space to the page again the pictures will show up as the correct picture. Not sure what is going on, but seems to be geocities and angelfire that are the culprits.

Also, down to the doctor to see if they can do anything with this pesky tendinitis I have in my elbow (aka tennish elbow). Means I will be keeping a kitchen timer next to my computer, taking breaks and doing certain stretches. That and drinking two quarts of water and icing the elbow three times a day. Ugggggh. Oh and go see the Physical Therapist twice a week. Still, better than letting it keep going on and on. Sigh. Hope all goes well for everyone. Am taking a little time away from a presentation I am doing and toying with finally starting a novel project that has been simmering for several years. I finally truly feel ready to sink my teeth into it and finish it. Several of the characters in the mult-character cast are sitting over my shoulder stamping their feet. May start with some short stories telling the stories of individuals in the story arc, but we will see. Talk with everyone soon.

OH, and I do not mind having to archive more frequently. Shorties add greatly to what I had in mind for this place when I first began it almost five years ago. So, this is just fine. Take care.

Viv,
It was not intended to be at all poetic.
Just a few disjointed thoughts running around inside my head. I think that I've probably just about seen enough killing for a bit.
Ed

Cassandra, what titles do you read? The only one I've been into lately is the Books of Magic from Vertigo/DC, and they haven't been out lately. I used to collect many titles, but cut back a few years ago. I couldn't stop reading 'Magic' though. Tim Hunter is just too interesting of a character to let go of easily.

T.J.

HaHA! With the information I now possess I can actually get a web page to load in the middle of the day! It's amazing, it's fantastic, it even makes juilenne fries!

Now I can actually post work and talk to you fine people when I'm bored out of my mind.

Barnabas- Thanks, I'll probably take a look into it this weekend. I'll let you know what I think.

well, I just went to the comic book store with a friend of mine so I have some reading to do. :)

cya
Cassandra

Hello again!

Hallee, sounds like you need more hours in the day! I'd volunteer my truck, but the drive over is a bit long. :-)
The 'ending' I mean isn't part of what I've posted here. It's about 600 pages later. My story has 7 distinct sections, and I'm working on #7. I've been unhappy with it for awhile now, but have kept pushing through. Usually my first draft is fairly bare bones... person A went here, did this, person B did this to person A... etc. Subsiquent drafts flesh it out and it takes the form I wanted all along. It's just not happening this time. None of the characters feel true right now, and I have no enthusiasm to write about them. It all feels too contrived. There are some scenes that I do love, that feel right, but the overall storyline is just wrong and bad and wrong. I know what results I want, but just can't seem to get there!

SusanS, sounds like we're both caught at the same speed bump. I'm playing with the idea of just pasting my favourite scenes into a new file and seeing what ideas suggest themselves. Who knows. But I'm a control freak and hate proceeding without some sort of outline or idea. Persevere!

Many things to do, so I'm outa here!
T.J.

There's that number - uh, web address - again...

Well, my shortie is overdue but I might write one anyway...

Tina, I've been in that kind of situation before myself. I've had a story or a novel go in a direction I didn't want it to go. I abandoned one novel in the first draft because I just didn't like it. I'm currently in a love-hate relationship with the novel I'm working on right now. There are parts of it that I really like and enjoy working on, and there are parts of it that suck, but I don't know how to make better. I just grit my teeth and try to plow my way through the difficult parts. Occasionally that works.

Hallee- I got my moving orders for August! That will be interesting. I won't get my house assignment until I've packed out of this house. Once I've packed out and cleaned the place...and perhaps repainted the walls. I'll quibble on the repainting. It would be a power stuggle. I painted mine up rainbow colors because they are knocking down the house!!!

Well, in the middle of this letter I got involved in a cat-racoon (tanuki) fight. The racoons are mating again and our cat got left out on the front porch when we went to bed. Oh dear! He got into a good scrape and I had to go climb the tree and clap at a racoon to scare it off. Good thing I bought new pajamas. These racoons (Tanukis) aren't the cute little masked bandits you have in America. They are ugly dog like things. They call them racoon dogs here. I think they are distant relatives of the racoon but if anyone calls them distant relatives of rodents, I'd agree. I am mad at them tonight! Anyway, the cat came scooting back down the tree into my arms, and I felt so glad to have him back safe and sound.
Viv

Kitty,

That was the Paul Gillette contest sponsored by the Pikes Peak Writer's Association.

I have been working on The Reluctant Barbarian forever it seems. It is a historical novel set in 6th century Britain after the time of Arthur. My character is half Briton and half Angle who finds no place in either society.

Anyway, I had three critiques. One was a partial blow off because the man (and I am sure the judge was a man) did not understand the story and did not take the time to read the synopsis carefully. Though he made some true comments, he looked like he had spent maybe 10 minutes on my entry, and what was really bad was that he had not identified himself by number. I took that to mean that he thought that I would be offended by his comments, though I was not. He had one concrete thing to say and it was right on the money, and he was not nasty like some judges can be. The other two critiques were priceless, and what was really telling was that in their own way they said similiar things about my main character and pointed out weaknesses I had never noticed before. One of these critiques even provided a line edit, and that is rare indeed.

All in all this last contest was a good experience.

Rhoda

TAYLOR: You don't have to send it to someone first. And, go for the romance - I'd be interested in reading one I knew came from a man.

TINA: After a 5-week absence from your book, I'd trust your judgements right now. Don't go over it and over it and over it - your mind adjusts things, takes things for granted, fills holes. After a long absence, you come back and it doesn't do that any more. Which is why I don't edit as I go along - my mind WAY overcompensates. I'd be happy to read the end and let you know (because, I've read it all but the end *sniff*). Since I'm stopping after I finish this one (YAY!! one more chapter to go!) I'll be focusing on my editing (cringe) and will be happy to take a break - hahahaha.

Okay - off to work I go, then some absence for me - moving moving moving.


Hallee

to enter a short story on the Workbook...do you just write it on that manuscript thing and click on publish??
or do you have to send it to someone first

i was bored while watching Urban Legends: Final Cut
and came up with this

I happen once every term
Nobody really wants to watch
Another person nobody cares about
Upper class people like to dress up for it
Gets more boring every time
U.S.A makes a day of it
Really long speeches are a must
A promise thats never kept
Thanks go out to everyone, but alot of people didnt want him
Impossible to ignore
Only exclusive guests attend
News covers it over and over again

Do people really care about this event?
Allow someone to speak out for a very, very long time
You guessed what I am yet?

this is probably to easy

Tina - I got my HTML info from HTML Made Easy. :)
*smiles*
Allein

Speaking of the workbook, I just popped in.

Mary, that's some secret. The ending didn't surprise me, though. I expected it.

Who posted Dearest Diary?

Virginia Bell, are you still around?

T.J.

Hello all!
Everyone who's come along in the week I was away, welcome!

No shortie from me tonight. No inspiration this week. :-( I see that Teekay's challenge has carved many shorties down to quickies hehehehe Although, sorry Teekay I disagree about the length thing. The short shorty excercise is effective BECAUSE we write and post it here, for everyone to see, where being experimental and taking risks is welcome and encouraged. I'm not convinced that many people go to the workbook to read the entries, since many many pieces in there are barely, if at all, commented on. If the excercise fills up the notebook and Jack has to archive a bit more often, so be it, because I think it fulfills the goal of the notebook (sorry Jack for volunteering you for more work!) Anyone who doesn't want to read the longer posts doesn't have to. :o]

Allein, what are you doing to post your Pepper puppy picks, that makes yours visible and not the others?

Debra, wishes for dryness and warmth, and less groundwater.

Rachel, a kiss on the forehead to Sebastian, and a backrub for you! Personally, my favourite baby part is their little puckered lips, and tiny tongue when they learn how to stick it out! Just too cute!

Jerry,.... $75 American to CAMP? :~<=> (me gagging) Remind me not to visit Rapid City! I cringe to pay $25 Canadaian for a camp site! Our nearest Provincial campground, an absolutely beautiful place with over a hundred sites, four beaches, rock climbing, hiking, free firewood, water, power, septic and showers is only $14!

I'm interested in how many people here came to writing via fine art. Me too. Although I've been writing since I was knee high to a grasshopper, it was fine and graphic art that I pursued in high school and college. I still draw and silkscreen, but writing has taken first place in my passions.

I just caught up on the last week's posts. Wow! I can't possibly remember everything I read, but for the record...
I'm in the middle of 'Pegasus in Space' by Anne McCafferey, her latest book in the 'Talent' saga. I'm debating picking up the second 'Wheel of Time' book by Robert Jordan. Wasn't thrilled by the first one, but I bought 3,4 and 5 at a garage sale and now I feel compelled to read them all. Anyone here have an opinion on that series?

Oh my, I'm baking a pound cake and the smell is soooo goood! nummy nummy can't wait!

A last closing thought. After having not worked on my novel for the last 5 weeks, I sat down with it today and realised something terrible. I don't like the way I've chosen to resolve the story. I don't like the ending. I don't like the situation I've placed my characters in. It feels stilted and boring, and my characters aren't acting like themselves. I don't know what to do! Aaaagggh! Now I'm in a bind. Can't make a decision. Very frustrated.

So I'll go eat pound cake.

TTFN
T.J.

Bounce, bounce, squeak squeak!

"Oh Mercy!"

bounce, bounce, squeak, squeak!

"Stop jumping on the couch!"

Thud.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Heather

Ah, the first day of spring has come and gone. It was a wonderful day, got up in the high 50's we were all running around town in our shirt sleeves. I even took the clipers to my beard, and trimmed it down to it's summer form, that being a sort of gotee (sp) style. Oh, but this is South Dakota, today the highs were in the low 30's, and the #()*&#$! weatherman says the lows tonight in the teens, with wind chills down to -15 to -20 below zero. Sure am glad I don't have to work outside anymore, god how I hate the cold. We did, however take our annual trip to Shade Hill campgrounds, just to see how the renovation is going, seems every year they must expand the campgrounds due to the high volumn of city slickers from the Rapid City area that rush to take our cheap camp area. Down in the hills, one night in a campground goes for somewhere in the neighborhood of $70.00 to $100.00 depending on if you need water and electricity or not, and which part of the hills you are willing to camp in. As you can well imagine, hotel rooms, even the cheap ones are much higher. At any rate, there are now another twenty campsites, so finding one may not be all that difficult this year. That campground only charges $13.00 per night.

I see my dog photo's did dissapear completely, just as well, I think I have forgotten how to code in HTML, been a long time since I did any, and as with any skill, it deteriates with lack of use.

I have started another ghost story for our little project, this one will be much better then my earlier contributions, or at least that is how I have it planed. It does seem, though that my plans seldom develope the way I intend.

Well I ramble on.

Have a great night everyone.

Jerry

MERCY with a twist.

He watched with barely concealed disgust as she forked another mouthful of escargot in garlic sauce into her mouth. Dribbles of sauce ran from her lips and trickled down her chin.
In silence he handed her a napkin.
"Merci," she told him.
Why had he ever thought he fancied French chicks?

Banky, I also switched from art to writing some years ago. When I was a child I used to draw all the time and I was pretty good at it. I won third place in an art show my freshman year of high school. I took an art course my freshman year of high school however, and the teacher was not very good at all, and I lost interest in drawing. Not long afterwards I took up writing. I find it infinitely more satisfying, though sometimes I still draw a little, because I find it relaxing.

I've thought about entering a short story in the Writer's Digest Writing competition, but I can never get my short stories short enough. The limit is 5,000 words and my short stories average 8,000 words. I tried to write a short mystery story specifically for the contest, but when I finally got it down to 5,000 words, it lost something. I felt like I destroyed the story by cutting so much of it. I'm much more comfortable writing novels anyway. I write short stories occasionally for a little variety. I did submit a couple of poems to the competition, but alas they did not win. Oh well, maybe next year.

I saw a program on A&E the other night that was really interesting. It was Investigative Reports and it focused on forensic anthropologist and crime novelist Kathy Reichs. It was really interesting to see where she gets the inspiration for her fiction. Alas, my job at Arby's does not inspire any great fiction. However after one rather bad day at work I wrote a poem. It's called "Old Shoe"

"Old Shoe"

Some days I feel like an old shoe.
Worn and scuffed, I've lost my shine.
I get kicked around, Thrown in a closet.
Abandoned, forgotten, unappreciated.
Neglected in favor of shiny new shoes.
Until they need someone older and wiser.
Until they remember I'm comfortable and familiar,
Reliable and punctual.
Then suddenly I'm wanted.
Suddenly I'm needed.
Until another shiny pair of shoes comes their way.

Hi Guys: I finally took a look at the HTML and worked out the errant bracket that was causing the problems. You should be able to see the pets correctly now if you scroll down. I will also be snapping some pictures later tonight and adding them. Take care everyone. I will try to think up something interesting to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the Notebook.

Evening all,

KITTY,
You make a good point. Of course, many of the books you mention also have elements of mystery and terror. The deep social issues are there, but not beating you over the head. ---BUT, do you really think an unknown author could get any of those books published in today's market? Maybe with a combination of brilliant writing and a brother-in-law who is a publisher. Almost all writing groups mention that Hemmingway could never get published in today's market. Things change and like I said, it depends upon your goals. Have mercy.

That'll have to count as my shorty.
Rosemary

Christi - Just thinking good thoughts for Sebastian is a beautiful gift (hugs).

Allien - He is a very loved little man. He still has the most amazing blue eyes. I wonder if they will stay blue?

Jack - I look forward to seeing you. Even if you are just a blur of motion that will be good enough for me (grins).

Mercy - I have no mercy, ask my kids (BWA, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaa)! I am the destroyer of all fun. I am the queen of consequence. I am... Hum, we won't go there (grin/wink).

Ciao for now,

Rachel

Debra: Hope the waters recede before the pumps give out! Glad to read that your family has somewhere safe, warm and dry to stay.

Barnabas: Yes. It was the best and most memorable time of my childhood. I saw and did things very few North American kids of my generation would ever see or do. On the other hand, when I returned stateside, I was totally out of step. Rolling Stones? What's that?

Rosemary (and Barnabas): What about South Pacific which was based on Michener's Tales of the South Pacific. Romance, action, and cross-cultural romance. Also, doesn't Show Boat, based on an Edna Ferber's novel have a cross-cultural/racial romance subplot? And what about Guess Who's coming for Dinner, which I think was a play first? And Ivanhoe, big time cross-cultural romance and action, etc... These are not little known works of fiction. Coupling romance with serious themes is nothing new. The Brontes had serious themes in all their books--and theirs would be categorized as gothic romances. Jany Eyre would be nothing if she weren't so steadfastly true to her sense of morality--she admits her love to Rochester but at the same time rejects him because as a married man he is off limits. Cathy and Heathcliff would have come to a far happier end if there wasn't that little matter of social standing. And the Tenant of Wildfell Hall is basically about wife abuse. So I think it can be done and done successfully. It's all in the telling of the tale.

Rhoda: I thought of those mummies too when I read the Ang Mo definition. The book I have about them is called The Mummies of Urimachi (I think, I'm not sure about the spelling).
I loved the title of your story. What kind of story was it and which contest?

Mary: I didn't quite follow what you meant by entering the contest and garunteeing you didn't win? When you do get your first check for fiction, don't forget to photocopy it before taking it to the bank and getting that "spanky one dollar bill." It's only a matter of time.

Allein and Rosemary: Lucky you! If you are messing around with lawn mowers that means there must be grass to cut. It has been snowing non-stop since early morning. Once again we are knee deep in heavy wet white stuff. I'm not going to need a lawn mower till June at this rate.

Ben, Trudy, and anyone else who has reason to e-mail me: I think I have solved the e-mail address mystery thanks to some excellent tech support. Learned something new today.

Hello all. Been busier than I am comfortable with. Came here to read once or twice. Get my fix. I think I now know why people get hooked on soap operas.

Got a new Cumetrix Athlon 950 with 128 meg RAM, 30Gb HD, 56x CD, 56k faxmodem, decent embedded sound (got slots to upgrade if I want), subwoofer speakers, 32Mb graphics card. $600. Went to Sams and got KDS Avitron monitor. 17" .24dp that I run at 1024x768. $200.

If you are in the market for a system, go to suredeals.com. I call their number and talk to Sandy. Bought 7 systems from her for work and one for home. They get my recommendation.

Here's a shorty: MERCY

Jonathon Edwards wrote about a boyhood episode that troubled him for years. He'd watched a robin flit about, gathering food for its nestlings. In a moment of ... what? ... he pulled out a slingshot, carefully aimed, and killed the robin.

That evening, he knew he couldn't sleep, so he went to the nest of the motherless birds and killed them. Better that then let them starve to death. This he called, "the tender mercy of the wicked.

At about age 15, I shot a robin with a .22 rifle. A gang of us were walking the tracks outside of town. We came to the beginning of a forested area. On the first overhanging branch we approached, I spotted that robin. I hushed my friends, aimed, squeezed the trigger, and watched. I remember being a bit disappointed, the bird did not move. At first I thought I had missed. But by the time I began to draw my next breath, that robin simply fell over backward; he pivoted on that branch as though his feet were little loops around it. A simple backward spin and a straight fall. As soon as it happened I didn't know why I had done it.

Hi all, busy with non-fiction stuff but thinking of you often. Glad to see it's so busy here though it does mean I'll likely never keep up.

I can not believe the Notebook's been around for five years the first of April. Wow! Congrats Jack. I must go back and see when I first joined the ranks...I know it was a lot quieter in here at that time.

Well will try to visit on the weekend and catch up...loving all the pet pics.

Catch ya all later. Trudy

ROSEMARY: I have to agree with you about the eyes getting use to seeing things a certain way, and not picking them up when it is not appropriate. That is why I knocked it off, at least here, with the all lower-case typing. Also, when I had to format my submission to Writer's Digest, nothing looked right. I was used to typing for this place. No indents, single spaced. Everything I did to that story looked wrong. Even though it was right. I had to go back through all my manuscript formatting books to double check what I was doing. That was a major tip off to me that I wasn't doing enough work. High fives to you for that pick-up.

LITTER, MARK, GS......where are you guys?

Rosemary: Thank you!
Debra: I hope you have a way to read posts at your Mom's house. I'm so sorry about the flooding. What a pain! I'm glad you have a higher/dryer/safer place to head for. Will keep you in my thoughts!

Eddie, that poem was impressive. You know, I know this sounds harsh and critical but I'd leave off the last line. It's more dramatic. The last line has a wry humor that detracts from the poem itself.

Here is why I'm being so harsh....it's a real keeper. It's just the right time to publish that. Make a few pictures of the bonfires and send it out NOW! You have an audience waiting for it and it's timely. I'd send it to American audiences especially. What about sending it to some of the "news magazine" type shows or newspapers. With the newspaper you might have to write an "insider's view" type article to go with the poem. I've been lucky enough to get a few articles in newspapers. You don't get a great deal of money but you do gain reputation.

Sunday Morning might be interested in it as a filler poem to be read before they talk about the problem. They often do poetry as a lead in to an article.


Anyway, it's GOOD GOOD GREEEEEAAAAAAAAT! Standing ovation!

Mercy is not allowing a sick animal to recover.
Mercy is to drive a bolt, a bullet into a furred head.
Mercy is to follow up with a coiled spring.
Mercy is hoping that the animal is dead before the spring travels through to the spine.
Mercy for the slaughter man, lest he get kicked.
Mercy is to do it a million times.
Keep warm by the bonfires on cold March night.
Mercy is for food. Medium rare please.

Guys:

I have to leave my house. The water level rose so high that it came right into our basement. My husband and several people have been sucking it up all day and it is still coming. Our bedroom and the twins sleep int here too is in the basement. The rug is slapping with water.

So it's off we go to my moms house.


Barnabas.

Yes, you're right about mothers and babies. Although in the back of my mind I thought the doctors were treating me like a cashcow for all their buddies. See HMO's won't pay for much these days. I was over thrity-five and pregnant for twins. I felt that they could get my HMO pay for anything. I didn't want to sign myself up for anything. I was a cashcow who didn't want to play.


Debra

CHRISTI,

My two "dogs" are actually cats. Their names are Buttons and Sparky.

I tried the dog thing once. The half golden retriever, half black lab I had was just too much dog for me. I had to give him away. Unfortunately the dog was only a few months old when we moved to a rental house in Perryton, TX. I was not able to give him the care and nurture he needed at the time, and he became quite incorridgible. Dogs are too much like children. Cats are great for us because they don't require huge amounts of attention, and other than feeding them and cleaning out their box, there isn't much that one has to do for them.

HOP,

I cannot remember the names of these people, but there were some very well preserved mummies found in the desert of Western China. They lived around (2000 BC ?); I am not sure of the date, but it was in prehistoric times. These people were of Indo-European stock. The were extremely tall and had red or blond hair like Scandinavians. Eventually they married into the population, but the Chinese in that area tend to have more European type features. This find has brought up many interesting questions about the way people migrated. Could it be that when the word, "Ang Mo," crept into the language, someone had these people in mind? These people were featured on a NOVA program, and I read the transcript about 2 years ago. I have forgotten much, but I can check my other computer's bookmarks for the website about them if you are interested.

Jerry,

You and your Dobi friend would have been a sight to see. You poor man. Perhaps it was your aftershave.

I got my contest entry back for The Reluctant Barbarian. Sorry to say it did not win, but the critiques were great and well worth the $35.00 I spent.

Rhoda

No time, but this one popped into my poor brain this morning.

Three

Impressive,
imposing,
equal (in his mind)
to the god he'd created.

Derisive,
chuckling,
better than "that man."

Downcast,
broken,
unworthy (he was sure)
to approach holiness.

Pleading,
hoping,
begging for mercy.

Two hands,
outstretched,
extending (to both men)
love offered freely.

One wept,
one laughed,
One kept His promise.

(c)2001 howard tuckey

Thanx to everyone who answered my question. Personally I still don't have an answer that satifys me, but I've always been that way.

Ben W: I get you, my man. Your reason sounds a lot like mine. I used to be an art student and much like you my love for it sort of fell away. It must have been about six years ago now, something inside me just changed. I went from putting all my creative energies into my art, into writing.


Thanx to everyone for the warm welcome, you all seem like a real friendly bunch of people.

Morning all,

BARNABAS,
Mixing serious subjects with Romance may be intelectually stimulating, but mixing mystery or terror with romance will more likely sell. It depends upon your goals. Good luck.

The above was my opinion backed up with 40+ years of reading.

Another opinion I am going to mention is----that the internet habit of typing without using capital letters could lead to becoming a very bad habit.---When you have to compose something important, it could be very easy to slip up and ruin the effect of the whole thing. Also, it would be easy to miss when editing because you are used to reading in lowercase. Again, just my opinion.


VIV,
Great shorty. Reminds me of when my sister first got married and couldn't afford to keep her hair blond any longer. She used a temporary color to turn it brown but it mostly went green. Big tempertantrum day. No Mercy there.

Got a new lawn mower yesterday. Now, I must see if I can get it out of the box.
Later,
Rosemary

Mercy
(My poem for the night)

Can I have mercy on you?
Can you have mercy on me?
How can I have mercy on people who only speak about dogs?
How can you have mercy on me who only love cats?
Mercy?
No mercy!

(That was my poem, in case case you did not notice it).

Good morning everybody! Looks like you guys are on the ball and I don't need to remind anybody 'round here that it is shortie night!

I sent my entry to the Writer's Digest short story competition off yesterday so that I can NOT win yet another year. Somehow I get a lot of validation from getting a cancelled check to Writer's Digest back from my bank. Mostly I just feel like I paid someone ten dollars to read my story. I think if someone ever actually pays ME to read my stories I will make sure to get a spanky one dollar bill when I cash that check so I can frame it and put it on my wall next to my spike full of rejections slips. Kinda like restaurants have their first dollar hung on the wall behind the cash register. Maybe I will put a little sign on it that says, "In case of emergency, break glass." Don't ask me why...that is just nuts.

Back later with my shortie. :-)

hop: i just want to give romance a try, to challenge myself
if you know what i mean

Ang Mo
Translated literally- "Red hair"
Pronunciation- Ang as the "ang" in "Tangy." Mo is pronounced "Moor" without the "r"

Warning!!! Do not attempt to pronounce any of these words unless you speak a fluent
Mandarin or a Chinese dialect. Otherwise it sounds weird and terrible and will not
generate any sympathy from me.

Definition- Ang Mo is the term given all Europeans or Westerners. Why "red hair" is completely beyond me.
Possibly because red was the Chinese colour for luck and the Westeners brought increased
trade and technology. Another reason could be the fact that "Ang" sounded better. Finally
it could be that the first few Westerners had predominantly red hair although this seems
unlikely.

I think my posts will be weekly now because I'm busy.
Apparently MIR can be seen in the sky around here very briefly at certain times.
Got my knock knock joke from "Beak man's world!" an excellent science show and funny too.
So far there are 5 people in my writing club. And that includes me. Not good. I need 20 before I can affiliate to the Uni.
I have this ghost story about a ghost hero. Unfortunately the plot hasn't yet resolved itself yet in my head so it may be a while before I share the ghost story. I do know there will be a big action show down. Sorry, I like big action showdowns.

Somehow I get the impression these Moondance people don't want male writers.

Where is Ramon by the way?
Politics
As part of a report, I'm doing a report on US domestic politics and it's role in the world.

Debra
Scary experience with the babies. If you don't mind me, I think it proves that mother and child share a strong bond (possibly Psi?).

Hallee, Taylor, Rosemary, Teekay
Maybe I do have a chance at being a romance writer. Of course I will mix it with serious themes like cross-cultural romance and racism. I'm sure you all can tell by now I love to tackle serious issues.

Cassandra
My prologue's in the novel section of the workbook.

Kitty
That's great. Do you remember much about Taiwan?

Teekay
Don't worry about arguing. It's very healthy (in my unprofessional opinion) and although it may not win a lot of friends, you will have really close friends. This is just from personal experience.

SusanS
Hello. I'm new. Please visit here regularly to get more input and support. I've been motivated by the feedback I get.

Randall
You're probably right about aggression.

Richard
You're going to have to post that address again for your website.

Allein
Chuckle.

Mercy??? Okay, okay. Here goes.

"Action or inaction. Do we know what is morally right? Do we know what is morally wrong? It is obvious we should do the morally right thing. But what is it that must be done."

He paced around the room again.

"Both roads end the same, only one is shorter, in the end however, I the chooser will suffer if the shorter road is taken."

"But to be moral means acting even if the world thinks you're wrong.?"

"Then if I am to be a good moral person I must do it."

" Good-bye father."

He unplugged the machine.

This is sort of influenced by all those Ethics lectures I've been having.

Hello all: Well, I am glad I could inspire someone. Hopefully, I can do something about inspiring myself and getting in the water on a more regular basis.

Re the party, all are invited and I look forward to meet people face to face. If not this time, we generally have at least another event sometime during the year. So, we will see. Keep me posted. Also, I'll try to get pictures of our pets up sometime tomorrow. Hmmm, now there is a thought for a shorty. Pets. Not sure where to go with it personally, but a thought.

me again, im on break at the moment..
still unsure whether to add in short stories of my own to the workbook, but i never seem to have one that suits the topics...

ii love dogs, and your ones look so cute, reminds me of a lassie spinoff i wrote once...
but that was a spinoff story, not original

hi everyone...
quiet days???

been busy myself, figured out how to feed the beast...
the beast as in the need to write that is

Heather, your adventure with cutting bangs sparked this idea. Thank you for the idea! ;-)

Jack: You inspired my husband and I. We're going to get in shape, take the scuba class again this summer and go for Micronesia. We looked on the web and it looks pretty good. It's going to take a lot of getting back in shape though! What's good about scuba is it's teamwork.

Mercy

“My hair could really use some help,” Mary stood looking at herself critically in the mirror. “It’s bad enough being 10 months pregnant, why does my hair have to need a touch up right now.”

Her husband Steve glanced over at her. “Go to the beauty parlor. I think we can afford it.” He calmly continued getting dressed.

“Nah, you have to make an appointment. You have to get an appointment a couple weeks in advance. Everything is inconvenient right now. I can’t wait a whole week or two. I could be in the hospital or home with two kids instead of one.”

“Hire a babysitter.”

“Nope.” Mary was tired of his logic. Being two weeks overdue was irritating. She hadn’t planned on the little inconveniences, such as not being able to plan anything. “Besides, I can’t imagine sitting bent back for the shampoo anyway. My back is so sore.”

Steve looked over at her and smiled. “Tell you what! I’ll bring home a bottle of hair dye and do it for you tonight. You can wash it off in the shower.”

“That’d be great!” Suddenly the day felt cheerful again. Mary gave Steve a brief hug . “I could stay right here in the house, we wouldn’t need to get a babysitter for Sasha. I hate to leave her right now, just before the baby is born. Could you get a little darker blond color. I’d like kind of an ash blond color.”

“Is this a good color?” Steve held out the box. The model on the side of the bright yellow package had beautiful long ash blond hair.

“That’s exactly the color I wanted,” Mary smiled. “We can eat early, then I’ll take Sasha for a long walk so she’ll be ready for bedtime. Then we can get started.”

Once Sasha was safely asleep, they started. It was a little more difficult to put on than they’d anticipated. “Watch out, I don’t want it on the carpet!”

Catching a small rivulet of dye with a white towel, right before it cascaded down her cheek and onto the bathroom rug, Steve frowned. “ Boy, this stuff is watery, it’s a weird gray color too. What do you think?.”

“It’s a funny color too when they put it on at the beauty parlor. Boy, it really burns!” Mary shivered a little under her towel.

“Stinks too!” Steve said, rinsing off the gloves he’d worn under a gush of water. Little droplets sprayed the bathroom mirror. “Fifteen minutes it says on the package. I’ll set the timer and let you know when you’re cooked.”

Mary sat alone. She wished she’d brought a book or a magazine with her into the bathroom. This was certainly boring. She didn’t dare walk outside of the bathroom. Her hair dripped steadily. Most of the dye she caught with the towel, but some was getting on the bathroom rug. “Oh brother,” she thought. “I’ll have to get a new bathroom mat.”

She heard the ping of the timer and her husband’s voice. “You’re cooked! You can get in the shower now.”

She hopped in the shower. It felt great to wash the eye stinging, head burning solution from her hair. She applied a large amount of shampoo and enjoyed the foamy feeling of the lather and the hot water pounding on her sore back.

She heard the door open. “You about finished?” her husband asked.

“Yup. Just finishing.” Mary opened the door of the shower and grabbed a towel from the rack. She rubbed her hair dry, wrapped the towel around her bulging middle and stepped from the shower.

Her husband stood in front of her. His jaw hung open and his eyes were wide with astonishment. “Oh boy,” he gasped in a worried voice. “Honey, this is bad.”

“What?” Mary pushed by him and went over to the sink. Using her hand she wiped the steam off the surface of the mirror. A brilliant royal blue surrounded her face in the mirror. Unbelieving she grabbed a small washcloth and scrubbed the last bit of steam off the mirror.

Her hair was blue. It wasn’t just a light shade of blue, it was the color of her daughter’s favorite stuffed toy Elmo. It was the color of the denim dress she wore. The only dress large enough to fit around her extremely pregnant middle. She looked at her husband’s reflection in the mirror. His face reflected the horror on her face.

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry.” he began miserably. “I don’t know what happened. I didn’t do it on purpose.”

Mary looked back at her reflection in the mirror. How was she supposed to go out like this? Wasn’t it enough to be so terribly big? “I’m a monster!” she wailed.

“Oh honey, it’s not that bad. It’ll grow out in a few months.”

Mary felt her back stiffen. It wasn’t like Steve had to walk around on swollen ankles. It wasn’t like the front of his shirt kept getting horrible stains from brushing up against dirty counters. He still got the child...he didn’t have to waddle! She whirled to face him.

She saw the little boy look in his eyes. He wasn’t laughing, he was scared. She looked over her shoulder at the mirror, then she let her head fall on his shoulder. “It was as much my fault as it was yours. Can you believe what we’ve done now?”

“No, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”

Mary felt a small bubble of a giggle rising with the tears. “Oh Mercy, can you believe it? At least I match the only dress that fits!”

Jack: I wanted to get fancy and turn the text color blue on this post. I went into tools, hit options hit colors, changed it to blue and...drum roll ...a big fat nothing. Suggestions. That and how do you get your signature to come out? Well, wait a minute...something did change...yes, the entire page, except what I posted has turned a brilliant blue. I love this computer!

Jerry, Randall, I gotta go blow my nose, wipe my eyes.
Be back.

T.J.

Well I tried to keep it short, and since it has almost become a tradition that I post a day early, here is my contribution. Mercy is the topic, is it not?

Mercy

“I am here my darling.” He said, holding her hand.

“Aahhgg.” She answered, her eyes flicked open for a second, then closed again, the machine went, aaasssh aaahhssshhh. She squeezed his hand.

“Remember that day in August, I think it was, when we sat on those rocks by Four Mile Run. The leaves were turning, it was all so beautiful, the kids were playing behind us on the swings. Oh what a wonderful time we had that day in 1976.”

“I was just thinking of another day, when we drove up that twisting road that lead to the overlook in the Franklin Mountains. How we sat on the bench, and looked at the beauty of two cities in two different nations. Remember how it was so hard to tell until you spotted the Reo Grand? The kids were playing on the rocks behind us, I can still remember their voices, as they jumped from rock to rock, laughing. Wasn’t that a wonderful day? Oh how I wish we could turn back the clock.”

The machine went, aaasshh aaahhhssshhh. He could hear the monitor beeping behind him. Another machine inflated the blood pressure band, then the air was released.

“Then there was that day on Point Defiance, remember how our kids thrilled at the story book island, how they loved that little petting zoo. How John tried to pull the little boys finger from the dike? Oh, the air was so fresh, the trees so tall they nearly blocked out the sun.”

“Oh, and do you remember John’s first wedding, how nervous he was, how nervous you were for him, and how relieved we were when it all turned out all right?” Then there was his second wedding, how the old Judge drove two hundred miles, just to perform the wedding ceremony. Oh, you looked so beautiful that day, with your pale blue dress, you hair put up just the way you know I loved it. You always had such beautiful hair.”

“Yes we had some wonderful times over these last forty-five years darling, and you know I really don’t want you to go, but I know you must. It’s ok to die you know, we all have to do it sooner or later. Please when you get to heaven, wait for me, because it won’t be long before I will join you. You are and always will be part of me. When you are gone, I don’t know what I will do, but I will go on so long as I can, not for myself, darling but for our children, and our grand children because I know the still need us.”

He reached down and pulled the plug on the respirator, the machine went quiet, and behind him an alarm went off on the heart monitor, she slipped off and it was over. Her pain had ended.

After several hours, the nurse and an aide came into the room, and helped him leave. The tears still ran down his cheeks.


Jerry

Kitty - Your dog sounds like a sweetie. I can't imagine a great dane thinking she's a lap dog. Pepper thinks she is and she's only 35 pounds. I can't even think of a great dane on my lap.

Randall - Sounds like you had some special doggie friends. Pepper is my first but those purina commercials are right, no relationship is like the one with your dog. Can your Chihuahua say "Yo Quiero Taco Bell?" :)

*Smiles*
Allein

Rhoda: Your trip sounds like it is shaping up nicely. The town in Wales famous for its many bookstores is Hay-on-Wye. There is a website: www.hay-on-wye.co.uk There is an annual literary festival around the end of May, beginning of June. Other travel ideas... There is a train that leaves London around 11 p.m and arrives in Edinburgh around 8 a.m. Ted and I booked a sleeper and this is how we travelled up to Edinburgh. You don't waste any waking hours "on the road" and you get the fun of rail travel. The porter brings you a tea tray bright and early, so you get to watch the countryside pass by as you sip your tea. For our return trip we booked a car and meandered our way back down to London... I can't remember whether you will be spending any time in London, but if you are I can recommend a wonderful little guide book called Londonwalks which is literally 5 or 6 walks through various neighborhoods in London like Bloomsbury or Georgian London. The walks are not strenuous and the book is full of anecdotes about what happened at the very exact spot you are standing... Try to pop into Hatchards Bookshop either on or just off Regents Street. I think it is one of the oldest bookstores in London... Pick up a copy of British Good Housekeeping, familiar but very different, for the trip baack (Ted always brings me GH and Country Living)... The following is the website of the Tower of London which was in the paper yesterday and I thought of you: www.tower-of-london.com
I'm stopping while I'm not quite a total bore on the subject.

Allein: Thanks for letting me know what Lumpia is. I can better appreciate your and Viv's enthusiasm. Now, I have to find a Fillipino restaurant.
Pepper looks like a sweet charmer. I had a rescued Great Dane named Nanny who thought she was a lap dog. She was a gentle sweetie who adopted a half drowned flea bitten kitten we found abandoned on our property. What a pair.

Kitty

Speaking of Dobi's there was this lady in a town where I used to cop. She had a dobi, and absolutely refused to keep him tied up, much to the dread of those who lived in the neighborhood and had children. The tales of Doberman's are I am sure exaggeration, but the size of this dog brought fear to the hearts of many of the good souls who lived in the City. One day, a lady called me and reported that the dog had chased her four-year old to the door, barking and growling. She wanted this dog picked up and destroyed. Well now we just didn't pickup and destroy dogs in that city, dogs had a right to trial before they were destroyed. The city Judge heard several such cases a year. So being the good officer that I was, I went in search of this huge Doberman. He was not all that hard to find, hell he was nearly as big as a shetland pony, and I found him trotting down the street not more then a few houses from the owner yard. I jumped from my trusty '91 Lumina, and coaxed him into the car. Problem was that I had left the front door open, and was trying to coax him into the back seat on the passenger side. I made the mistake of asking him "Want to go for a ride?" to which he barked ran around the car and jumped right into the front seat, and sat on the passenger side. Well I figured at least I have him in custody, so I got in and started to drive out to the Vet Clinic, where the dogs were kept until their court date, or they were bailed out by the owner. I had driven several blocks, and was just about through the business district, when the dog decided that my arm looked almost like a female of his breed, and breed he did, all over my arm. So there I was driving rather fast, not wanting to be seen with a huge dog attached to my right arm, and of course there were lots of folks on the street, I could see them pointing and laughing. How embarrassing. I did get him out to the vet clinic, with no more harm then a couple stains on the arm of my jacket, and a rather red face. To this day, I hate the sight of those dang dogs. Oh and by the way, my arm did not get pregnant.

Jerry

Sure is quiet in here tonight.

Hey! :-)

Dogs. At age 53 I've had my share. I live in my parents home, where I grew up. Nearly 50 years in the same house, second family to grow here. Most of my folk's dogs, and cats, and assorted animals are still here. Buried in the back yard. How many? Eh, a dozen, maybe more. Each had a story, a life, a personality. Each had an influence upon me. The most recent addition was my wife's Poodle, Fiesty, done in by an amarous smelling female dog and a speeding car. Such is life, huh guys?

Best dog I ever owned? A Dobie, for sure. Kind, gentle, a faithful companion for many years, before I married. Actually, when I married I had 2 Dobies. Tuco, the father ... and son, Sepp. Both liked to sleep on my bed. I mean, where else do family pets sleep? As Sepp grew the bed became smaller. One Saturday I journeyed to Monky Wards and purchased a king sized bed, sheets, bed spread, headboard. Mom and dad came over that night to view the purchase ( I lived in a trailer house then) and noted both dogs on the bed. I suppose they felt this was just another sign that their oldest son was not entirely stable.

When my wife Debbie arrived Tuco was VERY jealous. Sepp was a laid back kind of a dog and accepted her as the Alpha female of the pack. Tuco never did. When we were together he would get between us, not allowing Debbie close contact with me. And, when we moved out of state I took Sepp and left Tuco with friends. For a sort of delayed departure date. He never made it. Poisioned one bright spring morning when all was right with the world and flowers in bloom. There are a lot of mean people in the world, just in case you ain't noticed. :-) My friend loaded Tuco into his pickup and raced across town, but he was gone when they slid into the vet's parking lot.

Sepp made the trek okay...but a year later broke his chain and got into some sheep in a nearby pasture. He was wild dog content, chasing, biteing and killing with happy abandon. Sepp had a half-dozen sheep down, some dead, others dying, when a local constable showed up and shot him with a shotgun. I heard the gun from a block away and in one of those rarest of incidents, knew he was dead.

But he wasn't. It was a sad scene when I arrived.

I knew the constable kept a small rifle in his car and walked over to get it. He started to say something but I guess the play of emotion over my face stopped him. Anyway, I took the constables 22 rifle and shot Sepp in the head as he looked at me among the carnage of bloody grass, dead and dying sheep. The constable had shot him so bad, life wasn't possible and he was suffering. So it was mercy on my part. I cried like a baby as I buried him in the backyard where we lived later that day. It was a moment I'll never forget. I hope none of you ever have to go through something like that.

Dogs? Yes, I've had my share, most died of old age, a few died badly but they all left me something good. A dog will always forgive, never devious, and wait with endless patience till you give him a pat on the head and say a kind word. Dogs give us something that can be named...but only after you've had several, seen them grow from puppies, seen them develop personalities, and in Sepp's case seen the light of life go out of their eyes at the end. I have a streak of cold in me, best defined as flower-child gentle, but just plain mean as a snake when the ocassion calls for it. I believe some humans are bad from the get-go and deserve what they format. But I never met a naturally bad dog.

Our latest is a Chilualaha C..h..i..l..a, oh heck with it. one of them small brown Mexican dogs. He's a treasure...and give him 50 pounds or so, a black coat might look like a Dobie. Sleeps on the bed, naturally. When I rise in the morning to go to work he moves to my pillow and settles in for a few ZZZZZZZZZ's content that I'll bring home the money!! This causes a certain amount of anguish as I have to change the pillowcase every night. All part of living with dogs.

Sorry for the cold water tonight, but, hey, a writer writes, always!

Randall

Christi - I think Sebastian is the most loved baby in the world. :) Pepper's not a troublemaker - she's actually a very good and loving dog which is why we can't figure out why her last owners abused her. She likes to lie in your lap and be petted and she's very calm and quiet most times.
I love my dog.



Pepper greeted me at school today - my dad thought it would be nice to take her on a car ride so he took her when he picked me up from school.
After taking her for a walk - I mowed the lawn. Then I took a shower because mowing the lawn made me tired and sweaty.
Now I'm eating dill pickles and Doritos (no I'm not pregnant, I just have weird tastes). Pepper is lying here, wagging her tail, hoping that I'll drop one. Oops! I "accidently" dropped a chip! Oh dear, Pepper ate it, bad dog. ^.~
*Smiles*
Allein

I know this is not the place to learn HTML, but I have to try, just one more time!

Try clicking on the link above

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR - when I checked an hour ago, the second one worked! Think I am going to have to find a better place then Geocities!

Ahem. That's me below. You know, I feel a sense of guilt when I write a silly post and get the 'your reflections have been published' message. Shouldn't my reflections be deeper and frought with meaning? Sigh.

Oh I'm so happeee! I get little baby-kisses from Sebastion! I send fairy Godmother fairy dust to Sebastion. It's for a long life with much love and happiness. (I don't think I had to actually send fairy dust for that.) ;)

Jack, I'm incredibly bummed! I could have joined the party (albeit only virtually) when it was on the twentieth, but my sister is getting married on the nineteenth, so I won't be able to join you. :( I wish you happy hosting. Have a great time!

Welcome back, Tina!

Cute dog, Allein. He looks like a trouble maker, he does! Hee!

Jerry and Rhoda, Your invisible dogs are cute too. I'll bet invisible dogs are easy to clean up after. No messy fur!

Happy Windsday everybody.

Christi

Hi again,
HALLIE,
Your theory holds water. Your current weather is what we had about two days ago.

Good luck,
Rosemary

ROSEMARY: Thank you! Haha...Currently, it's cloudy, wet, and 48 degrees. (yuck) In Florida in late March! ((hug))

Howdy all,

HALLIE,
The weather is beautiful here today, so your weekend move should be fine. It's neat to be able to predict someone's weather. If any of us was in New Mexico or far West Texas, they could predict my future. (mood?)

Got stuff to do,
By Rosemary

Well, Jerry,

At least I got a logo.

Rhoda

I must try this also:

Well that didn't work!

Been awhile since I tried this, so forgive me if it fails, but the picture of my "little dog" should be displayed above (Since we are doing doggy pics)

Jerry

Cassandra - there was one girl back in Jr. High I remember who wore pajamas to school one or twice each week. At first we thought it was because she was always late (which was her story, but then found that she just liked them. I like pajamas too. :) My brother doesn't though - he sleeps in the clothes he's wearing (including his wallet with the chain on it).

Jack - I'm going to do extra chores around the house and try and butter up my mom to letting me go. It sounds like I don't want to miss this! :)

Rachel - Looking foreward to seeing you. :) Chocolate-smeared smile for Sebastian.

*smiles*
Allein

phew, gone for 3-4 days and look at all the stuff I've missed. Oh well, the classes I pay $20,000 for are a little bit more important right now. Sorry guys :)

Life's moving pretty normal here though. Nothing interesting has really happened aside from me almost having a small coronary cause someone was trying to be nice and nearly cost me a good grade.

On the subject of PJs- people here regularly wear their Pj's to class... well, they used to. As the Graphic Design classes get a little more refined, people have started dressing nicer. But I still remember drawing 1 where people could stumble in wearing flannel pajama pants and a old t-shirt. Those were the days. :)

HI!! That's to everyone that came back and anyone I happened to miss in conversation. I'll look through the archives late tonight.

cya

Cassandra

im gonna be expanding my vocabulary
gonna see what tomorrows word is......
cenotaph: monument honouring soldiers who die in a war

jeez got to use that 3 times in conversations
hmmmm

back onto the subject of chilvary and being chilvarous...
heres something I have done twice, but hopefully never again
I was at night school and it was breaktime, i opened the door for someone and ended up holding the door for about thirty people...
The second time that happened was at the local cinema, except this time it was for about 50 odd...
I guess I must've looked like an idiot

JACK: Happy Anniversary! (and, thank you.)

TINA: Welcome home! We've missed you ((hug)).

RANDALL: Good to see you.

RACHEL: Thanks. :)

MARK: (((()))) (that's an echo)...we miss you!

Okay...off to finish chapter 12 - the height of the climax. Very difficult part for me to write. (Which is why I'm posting here at 5am instead of writing- haha).

No church tonight (is it bad to say, "YAY!!" when I have so much to do to get ready for the move on Saturday?)

...laughing...

Hallee

Allein: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. One of the dangers of using the same page as a template for the next social is missing bumping the date up. Yes, it is Saturday, May 19, 2001, and not May 20, 2000. And, yes, you do indeed have a cute doggie. Since we are sharing pet pictures, I will think about coming up with a picture of our two dogs, Cayote and Warlock and our remaining cat Sabaath. Hmmm, can we catch a mystical theme in the naming category.

Rachel: look forward to see you at the social as well. I will probably be running around like a chicken with his head cut off. Especially if we elect to go diving and get crabs fresh that morning. I suspect we may pick them up a day ahead of time. Or, go with our original notion of picking up some Copper River Salmon. Then, again, maybe we can do both. We will see as we get closer to the time.

And, yes, if people are noticing, I have archived. This time, by dropping it back one day I was left with 25k. Not too bad.

Oh, and just to note one item, we are fast coming up on the fifth anniversary of the Notebook. Check out the first Archive and see how far we have come. Just wonder who Larry Green, MA, is, was, and his strange post that started everything off. Take care everyone.

GEZZ!!!! I want to read the rest of the start/stop post about he girl with the foot deal going on! Give er over. I want the info (grins and merry laughter)

Allein - I talked to Dan again today. He seems to be into the idea of meeting a couple of people he has been hearing about for the past few years(smiles). Sebastian sends a wet, milk soaked little smile your way.

Take care all,

Rachel

Debra: i read that stephen kings book, took me ages to get through it....INSPIRATIONAL
another great book on writing is So you want to write? both extremely good

hi everyone:

LITTER: I came upon this in my travels and thought you might like a look-see. I would imagine you already know all of this stuff, but you might not have seen this site. Hope it is interesting to you. :-)

http://www.swrb.com/newslett/actualnls/ScotConf.htm

Jack - In the webpage about the party you said it was on Saturday May 20th but May 20th is a Sunday. So, is it on Saturday the 19th or Sunday the 20th?

Tina - I'm dying to see that movie - tell me how it is, okay? :)
*smiles*
Allein

Hello notebookers!

Finally back, and there’s so much to read! Doubt I’ll get through it tonight ‘cause we’re going to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon in 45 minutes.

Christi, thanks! I had fun with it.

Ben, I’m chuckling about the cake! Reminds me of the time my brother and I made my dad an angel food cake…. I told him that you don’t grease the pan, but I was 12 and he was 18 so he knew better… it was flat, and didn’t taste good to boot. 

Thanks Rosemary!

Hey, Allein! Your shortie is new in the story! I’ll have to visit your website and read some more. Yay!

Oh, I made it to Thursday and now I have to go. Be back later.

T.J.

JERRY: Thanks for the feedback. :-) That is my favorite title so far! I sure can't come up with anything. I stink at titles.

Shortie night theme is MERCY! Tomorrow night! Be here or be ummmm...somewhere else, I guess.

See ya laters, alligators.

Everyone - I've added chapter 22 of Mali and Azol to the writings section of my webpage if anyone is interested.

Rachel - Maybe if you're going I could persuade my mom to let me go. She's not sure because she doesn't know Jack and at first I didn't know if anyone I knew besides him would be there, but now it appears other people will be going, I might show myself with a delicious batch of homemade chocolate chip cookies. :) That's my comfort food. I may have to leave early, but I hope to come. I'd like to get together again too sometime. *kisses* to Sebastian from me and *doggie licks* to him from Pepper.
*smiles*
Allein

PS: I have a cute doggie:

Hello!

Had to take a break and read through the very numerous posts tonight. As someone who stayed away from this site for a year, I feel qualified to say that there are a lot more folks now, than back then. (EDITOR!!!)

A lot! :-)

I've been researching human chromosomes, specifically related to mutations and adnormalities. You know, one learns a lot when researching for a book. I had no idea how fragile a grasp I held on normalcy. (GRIN) Well as normal as most on WN. Maybe, quite a bit more normal than a few! (BIG GRIN) But, right in line with most Texans!!! :-)

In explaining, nay, detailing how my heroine has certain paranormal abilities I am learning all about DNA, cells and all 46 chromosomes. (46? 44? 43? Krap, back to the grind) ANNNNNNNNNNNND it's a wonder that human life has advanced so far. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm? I sometimes wonder if we are advancing by natural selection or retreating. God has us moving forward, under HIS guidance, but I wonder. Seems just when we advance, technology draws us back.

"Just when I thought I was out, Bill Gates drew me back in!"

Hey, gotta go. Just wanted to drop by and keep by name active. Infamous?

Goodnight Fredo, sleep well

Randall

Mary - just read your story - very good, how about "Do us part?"

Jerry

Thanks a lot for the suggestions everyone! I'm off to do a bit of research now *waits for the excitement to ebb* Wish me luck *dashes off to go to work*

I dated a girl that had a foot fetush. until she foud out I didn't hav

Heather - I once went out with a guy who had a major thing for feet (grins and laughter). He loved my feet and I loved having my feet treated so very, very nicely!

Teekay - I can relate to the whole getting behind on the NB thing. I have been trying to keep up. I really, really have been trying. There is just so much to do these days!

Hallee - I also move a lot. I'm not sure why, I just do. I don't always need a reason to move. I just get the itch and go. I have been having the move itch just lately. It has been a year in once place, I'm about ready to move along. I however, do not plan to do that this time, so now we are nesting like crazy. My husband also gets these urges to move. I wonder what it is with us? The only thing that is common with my homes is that all of them are very close to nature and bodies of water. I have a thing for the water. Good luck with your move. I hope it will be fun for you and that it goes off without incident (hugs)!

Jack - I talked to Dan about your gathering. He likes the idea of a day trip. I really think that I may be able to make it down this year.

Allein - If I go, I hope you will come! I would really like to get to see you again. It is so hard to connect.

Fairy Godmother - Sweet little baby kisses to you from Sebastian.

Sasquatch - Hi you Yeti you (smiles)!

Ciao for now,

Rachel

Kitty - Lumpia is a Filipino food. It's like an eggroll but smaller, thinner and, to me, a little crunchier. You can make them by getting eggroll wrappers and filling them with whatever you want (beef, pork, chicken, or veggies - I've even had cream cheese lumpia). Roll them fairly thin and then deep fry them until they're golden and crispy. Or you can go to a Filipino restaurant and they'll more than likely have them. :)
*smiles*
Allein

Just wanted to thank everyone who read my story! I read it over today and picked up on a few missing commas and other little things. If anyone has any suggestions on changes, or anything like that to say I would be grateful. It is awfully short (1020 words), but I am trying to figure out what to do with it. I don't care to lenthen it if I don't have to.

:-)

Well folks, not quite believing that we are approaching archive stage in six days, but thinks have started to get big again. Not going to do it now, but will archive some time today and probably all the way back to nothing.

Oh, in answer the querie about whether a computer would be on during the social. YES!!!! :-) . Also, I will probably fire up the chat room. Although it will only hold 10 simultaneous people, we can at least give it a try. Take care everyone.

jon creature i sasquatch am not trying to frighten only feel this unease. the birds and other creatures are not at rest also. perhaps it is too many spring green with fish. indigestion ha ha. still, i must go

sasquatch,
Why are you speaking of bad things for persons? Living in an area which was destroyed once by an earthquake (many persons died) I pray you not to frighten me, please. Tonight I'll not sleep for fear. Bad sasquatch... (smile and a pinch on your big nose).

Mary: I'm glad you posted your story at the Workbook for everyone. It's a gripping read. Very vivid and cinematic. Gave me chills and a feeling of sinking dread. Haven't felt that since I read Too late the Phalerope. Terrific job.

On another topic, thanks for the tip about the post card. Sounds reasonable and not designed to annoy or inconvienince who ever opens the envelope with the ms.

Heather and Mary: My daughter is at school in Toronto. I have been known to take a weekend in the city to lavish her with maternal attention. Depending on when and if she decides to go back next fall, I might be able to meet with y'all.

Allein and Viv: What is Lumpia?

Christi: I think I like paper trails. If I ever multi-subbed and accepted the offer of one house, I would want to make sure that the other houses were informed by letter that the ms was withdrawn for consideration (and that is how I would put it). That way, if I got another call, I could whip out my copy and with polite regret inform them that the book had been withdrawn and I had done my best to keep them informed. If their slush pile is truly a chaotic mountain of unsolicited ms and/or they don't read their mail, not my problem.

Kitty

i sasquatch am uneasy. feel perhaps ground will move again soon. can not help much but speak to the One. i must go

Jerry:

I think that's it. Although, my drive in called it the snackbar. Yes, I remember now, thanks, the speaker thing.

That was a close one with the tornado. It might have come across where your car was. You never know.

In my case, it's me who is always worried about safety. Here in the Norteast there are several ways to get to anywhere. So I won't let him take the highway at night. I'm always worried that if we beak down in the dark it would be to hard for me to keep track of four kids in those dngerous conditions. I'd rather break down on the highway in the day or break down on the side of the road at night. You know the side road.

Debra

I think the jingle went: "Let's all go to the loby; Let's all go to the loby; Let's all go to the loby and have ourselves a treat.

That was usually followed by the blurb about please be carefull when you leave the theater and place the speaker back on the post. Don't let this happen to you. (a cartoon car drives away and the speaker breaks the window it was hanging on).

By the way, I had the privilage of attending the very last picture show at the Rainbow Drive-In here in our hometown. I can't recall the movie, but I do remember the storm clouds that were building in the west, you could see the lightning flashes over the top of the screen. When the gust front hit, I decided that safety was more important then the movie and left, catching hell from my wife who was engrossed in the movie. We were home about ten munites when I got a call from the Chief of Police (I was on the PD then) asking that I come out and help access the damage at the drive-in. A small tornado struck blowing the screen down damaging many of the cars who stayed for the ending Thankfully nobody was seriously injured, just some cuts and bruises. That was the last time my wife ever gave me hell for being careful when it comes to bad weather.

Jerry

Just for the record I never switched pj's when I got home. To think of that now. Wow!

It's weird because it is such a cool memory. I wonder what would be the lesser of the two evils. If I were to start taking my kids to the drive in. I could just change their beds the next day. Then I wouldn't take away from the good.

Who knows.

Debra

Mary:

I know whatyou mean. NOt only playing in your pajamas but socializing in your pajamas. Of course, now a days, I'm sure knowing what little I know of you as a mother, you would and I would make our kids change into different pj's when they got home. So what would be the point. Of course the reason is that thwy would have outside dirt on them and that is gross in a bed.

Debra

DEBRA: I absolutely agree with memories being in layers. Take Stephen King's book, "Gerald's Game". The whole story is about the way the woman peels back the layers of memories clear back to her childhood to come up with a way to escape. My first layer of drive-in memories are really not the jingles though. HA!

My first layer is playing on the playground underneath the screen in my pajamas when I was little. To play outside in your pajamas? Well THAT was a big deal.

Mary Lou:


Absolutely not. Don't worry about me being sensitive. I'm not. Tell me whatever is the truth.

Heather:


Yes, let's. I remember the dancing hot dogs too. I'm trying to remember those jingles for a number of reasons, but the big one is because I think my memory is in layers. If I remember those jingles then I can get to the memories under that. Well, that's what I think. You know how smells and music does that? Why can't we think of other things that might do it too? I'm trying to find that out.

Debra

YIKE Mary!

That was absolutely scary! I was glued to the page. Glad you posted that. Thanks Viv

Wow, great stories one and all. Couldn't come up with a title Mary.
Ben

Allien: Living just a little north of the border, we used to go to Point Roberts on long weekend Sundays, before we had the Sunday drinking laws changed because of Expo. Girls always used to come up here from Blaine and Bellingham because the age is 19. There were never any problems. I still don't think there are. The only thing that's changed now, is of you're pissed and try to cross the border, the guards can call the cops and you do the ol' breathalizer dealie. But things used to rock when I was a boy--oh so many years gone by.

Taff: Losing something is normal. Hell, who hasn't. But everyone's right when they say the second version is always better. Robert L. Stevenson rewrote Jekll and Hyde because he thought it was too violent. He was finished, and actually through it in the fire so it wouldn't influence him. He rewrote it right from the beginning. Now that's harsh.

Banky: I've been writing forever it seems. I used to write as a kid during summer holidays to help stave off boredom. I used to draw a lot, and for a while I was thinking I could be another Howrd Pyle, but the drawing kind of slipped by the wayside, and now I just doodle, drawing little cartoons. I like writing better. A picture's worth a thousand words. I like to get lost in my writing. I like inventing characters and situations--playing God if you want--putting them into situations where you have to think your way out. I may never be published and hit pay dirt, but I don't care. It's something I enjoy, and if I didn't do it, I'd go nuts--although most of my friends already think I am. They don't understand how anyone in his right mind can get up at 4:00 am, or stay up 'til 4:00 am, like tonight probably--writing something that only he will read. But they don't believe in me. I don't care though, because I do, and that's all that matters.

Mary: I'm going to read your story right now. I'll even think of a title if I can.

Nightie
Ben

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