The Pecman

There's always the Wayback Machine, which purports to having copies of almost every webpage that's ever existed, going back more than 22 years... http://web.archive.org/

I read her statement: she basically said she vetoed the law because it was too broad and could be misinterpreted. This fight ain't necessarily over.

Doh, my old high school back in Florida had 3000 students, and we were just 10th grade through 12th. Now, I believe it's 9th grade through 12th and they have about 10% more students.

Looks like "Deweywriter.com" has been shut down as a domain name. I wonder what the story is there? Did Mr. (or Ms.) Dewey2K just get sick up and fed of the whole thing and split? Did they stop writing? Did they decide not to spend the money any more to keep the site up? You wonder why these things collapse and there's nobody around to take over, or at least offer the URL to somebody else who wants to use it as a forwarding link.

Then he has a moral problem with two same-sex people raising children, which is just as stupid, judgmental, and inane as a religious argument. No difference. It's just ignorance from a different point of view. I think there are incompetent parents of all different persuasions, and gay and straight are just a small part of it. The argument against your neighbor's point of view would have to include single parents -- again of all persuasions -- and also instances where one or both parents are absent for long periods, such as fathers who have to go off to war. I think the quality of the parenting is more important than the sexuality. And kuds to Graeme and Cole for preceding my thoughts! I'm amazed that anybody at this point can argue against gay marriage and against gay adoption, when it's clearly worked just fine in many countries around the world. I would rather a child have two loving parents than one abusive parent and one absent parent, or a single parent who has to work two jobs every single day and is almost never home. You can't legislate morality, and you can't legislate judgment.

Ah, Arizona is back on my vacation list.

How is this any different from the Lord of the Rings books or the Harry Potter fantasies? Those don't work well out of order, either. Even the Anne Rice Vampire Lestat books really have to be read in a specific order, lest you get very confused about an unfamiliar character wandering through. I think that's the nature of a multi-part story: you can't read them in random order. If you're at an airport, then my advice would be a) use a Kindle or iPad so you can download the books in the correct order, or b) buy a self-contained novel that has no sequels. On the other hand: each of the Sherlock Holmes stories is more or less self-contained, provided you understand who Watson, Mycroft, Inspector Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and Sherlock himself are.

While Arizona is not quite as bad as Uganda, they're also debating several laws that may limit the freedom of gay people, including giving store owners the right not to serve gay people if they don't want to. Arizona may soon be off my vacation list as well.

But... I've also dealt with people I've edited where they cling to something like this and won't change. Whddya gonna do? You know me: if somebody tells me the wording sucks or is clumsy in some way, I'll try a couple of other approaches and see if I can smooth it over. Sometimes, just reading it out loud will give me an idea that doesn't jump out on the page itself.

It was an Entertainment Weekly pick for "book of the month" or something, and sales went through the roof. I can see why. Can you imagine what it might have been like if we had had a book like this when we were 12 or 13, back in the stone ages?

Oh, yeah, those side-conversations that are all exposition can be killer dull. I hate when that happens, and I catch them doing it all the time about the halfway point in a dramatic show, where somebody says, "the criminal we've been looking for has done X, Y, and Z, and we've exhausted all the leads in areas 1, 2, and 3," and essentially restate the entire plot for anybody who just tuned in. I've even caught shows where a character says, "who is this guy again?" and they have to explain who another character we haven't seen in three episodes is.

No amount of punctuation can overcome awkward phrasing. I'd fix the latter first.

There's a great line in a current debate between a creationist and a scientist, where the moderator asks, "what would cause you to change your beliefs?" The creationist answers, "nothing," while the scientist answers, "evidence." You tell me which is the more logical answer. Who the hell can cling to believing the English translation of the Bible as being 100% accurate? To me, it's a bunch of moral fables tied together to give people some guidelines on how to live their lives. What idiots would believe it wholas bolas? It's total insanity.

I just stumbled upon a fascinating website that documents appearances by actors in what could be interpreted as gay roles, or at least questionable scenes that have popped up in American TV series over the years: http://everydayheterosexism.blogspot.com I think the guy who runs the website is a riot, and he points out some very funny coincidences or incidents where one look, one glance, completely changes the scene. A lot of this stuff goes back to the the 1960s and 1970s, and it's often very amusing to look at the photographs and go, "man, what were those people thinking?" Jeffrey Dennis, the author of the site, also has written several books on the gay subtext of characters in movies and TV shows, and I think his ideas and conclusions are often very intriguing. His personal reminiscences of growing up as a very religious midwest conservative kid in the 1970s are also eye-opening, particularly as he comes to terms with his own sexuality. He encounters a lot of guys in school who are in the "are they or aren't they?" category, and I found his exploits and frustration with teenagers who throw off mix signals were very entertaining -- and I think many of us will identify with his struggles, some of which are poignant, some of which are really hilarious. He's a damn good writer, too. Highly recommended. Just pop through the site at random and click almost any link, and you'll see some fairly interesting items here and there. And needless to say, there's some very hot (clothed) pictures of famous celebrities, young and old, that will pique your interest.

Then I'd add the words "We're in" to make a complete sentence: "We're in school together." And I'd omit the "was what he said," because I'm not sure you need to emphasize that a character said something after a quoted phrase. I think readers will understand that already.

The creationists have no explanation on how scientists have drilled down into the polar icecaps and determined that millions and millions of years went by in order to create that many layers of rock. It's insane for anybody to insist that the Earth is only 6000 years old in light of the massive evidence against it. I continue to insist, "just because the Earth is 4 billion+ years old doesn't mean God didn't create it." I think there's some common ground the creationists and the scientists should examine, because one doesn't necessarily have to exclude the other. I also say the numbers in the Bible are totally suspect anyway, since it's gone through at least 2000 years of translation to various different languages. A lot gets lost along the way.

Assholes. I'm adding Arizona to my no vacation list, right after Uganda.

I just had to deal with this for the first time, having reached a logical conclusion in Pieces of Destiny but wanting to continue the story with the same characters in a different place with Shattering Fate. What I finally opted to do is to provide one long paragraph at the beginning of the second book to recap the adventures of the previous 123,000 words: "Our story thus far." Ideally, one hopes our readers will go back and make sure they've read the first book, but I dropped in a few hints here and there (maybe too many) reminding them why and who the characters are, and why they're in the place they're in. I agree, if you try to jump into the middle of -- say -- Harry Potter, you're not going to understand who's who or what the rules are if you don't go back and read the first few books. At least in my case, I only have, at most, three or four characters who continue over from the first book, plus we're in all new locations from here on. If it was in the exact same place with the exact same characters, that might require a different approach.

Loved Groundhog Day. The guy was brilliant going back 35 years ago on SCTV as a comic actor and writer. Sad loss -- and 69 is much too young.

As to books written especially for the pre-teen market, I'd point to Tim Federle's Nate series as being amazingly good, very contemporary, and also extremely funny: If I knew an under-13-year-old kid who might question his sexuality, this is the book I'd recommend (and the sequel, Five Six Seven Nate). The kid in the book is not necessarily gay, but let's just say he loves Broadway musicals, just got a role in a major play, and seems to be, uh, somewhat fabulous.

No, no -- I've said many times that the only real rule is don't be boring. Everything else is merely a guideline, and there are always exceptions where breaking it and going in a different direction can work. The real issue is that when one of these rules are broken by Dickens or Hemingway, they can get away with it. I don't think any of us are good enough to even sharpen their pencils. I think VWL has it right, that most writers (especially new writers) break ordinary rules of grammar, spelling, structure, and common sense, and everything falls apart very quickly after that. I just re-read Edmund White's classic gay biographical work A Boy's Own Story, and was reminded of how he kind of threw the rules of structure out the window and just kind of randomly covered certain incidents from his life in a kind of non-chronological way. I think White is a brilliant writer in many ways, but I wonder if a more conventional structure might have actually benefitted this particular book. On the other hand, as I said elsewhere, you get a movie like Pulp Fiction, which almost starts at the beginning, then moves to the end, then jumps back to the middle, and yet it somehow all makes sense. Same with Godfather II, almost half of which is a flashback that takes place 50 years earlier. Perhaps if either were told in a more conventional way, they wouldn't be as entertaining. The difference there is, writers like that are brilliant, and I don't think I see many writers quite at that level on the net.

Well, it was a different time. Maybe future seasons will introduce a more sympathetic gay character. I think in Thomas' case, the guy is a shmuck first and a gay guy second, so his sexuality isn't necessarily the justification for his other issues. One does wonder how well he did on the ship to and from America. I think the biggest single laugh I had in the entire series was when Lady Mary commented to her brother, "I know everything -- I've been married." (This, in response to Lord Grantham's disbelief that she would know about what Thomas would do on board ships with sailors.)

And here's the video:

I agree -- that's a dynamic way to start a new chapter, or even begin a story: have one character saying something outrageous, or frightening, or bizarre. That'll definitely hook the reader. I just started a new chapter the other day, and the first line was, "So now the cops think I've killed four people..." and it goes on from there. I think it'll work well.

It's a clumsy phrase. I'd have to see it in context with the sentence before and the sentence afterwards to understand what it means.