The Pecman

It's amazing what some ultra-conservative lawmakers want to waste their time with. Virginia state senator Tom Garrett is trying to introduce an emergency bill banning oral sex involving teenagers (even those above the age of consent) because it's a "crime against nature." Interestingly, regular heterosexual sex is not being banned. The curious thing is that, ironically, you could have a situation where two 17-year-olds could marry, but if they engage in oral sex, they could both be under arrest. Story at this link: http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/gop-senator-pushing-emergency-bill-to-make-oral-sex-between-high-school-students-a-felony/politics/2014/01/09/81446#.Us-ZnWRDuic

One caveat: not all religion is bad. I'd re-define this as religious fundamentalists, all of whom I think are intolerant and bigoted right out of the box. And I'd say this is true for Christians, Catholics, Mormons, Muslims, Hindus, and many other faiths. The moderates can generally be reasonable, particularly in having respect for different lifestyles. It's the fundies who screw it up for everybody, and unfortunately, they make more noise than anybody else.

One paragraph as an afterword at the end of the story would've been fine, and is the traditional way all novelists handle technical and foreign language terms.

Check out 11-year-old Aidan Fisher at a live November 2013 concert for Steel Panther: This kid can really rock. Those are perfect 1980s Van Halen riffs he's doing, particularly the ones about a minute into the clip. Very, very talented kid. More in this Yahoo news story: http://shine.yahoo.com/author-blog-posts/step-aside-eddie-van-halen-11-old-guitar-212300189.html

It's good, but I could've done without the footnotes.

This guy Hoskins is one sharp cookie.

Some Jay Leno jokes write themselves.

Great show. I wanna see what happens with Thomas, the closeted under-butler...

And the link is here: http://www.awesomedude.com/nigel_gordon/Joining_the_Movement.htm

Given what Michael would have to have given up in order to keep singing that solo (and keep his voice high), I think he made the right choice.

Bah, I don't encrypt anything. I just keep good track of it. The problem with encryption schemes is it's one more issue to deal with if the drive gets corrupted. I'd rather leave the files as-is so that the recovery software I have can deal with a conventional structure and known file types. There's nothing I deal with in my life that's so secret I can't just leave it on my regular computer inside my house. If some dastardly villain gets that far in my life, there's far worse they could do beyond looking at my hard drive. I'm not paranoid about stuff this trivial. I don't have a problem with writers who make backup copies and keep another copy in the Cloud. There's a zillion services out there, and those are fairly safe. At least this way, if the bomb went off, your work would still exist "somewhere" out there, provided you survive to get back to it at some point.

That works! I read the story Dabeagle mentioned and to me it's much too much about the mundane lives of British schoolboys, almost zero sex, and no nitty-gritty about the emotional involvement and real-world details about what would happen in a case like this. Too superficial to me. It needs more guts and more energy.

Same logo to me, unless I dozed off and didn't notice. Cat's still there.

I can't believe they left out Key West, Florida! All kinds of gay bars and hotels down there. West Hollywood is not the gay enclave it used to be. A lot of the bars and hang-outs from the 1980s are gone, and the neighborhoods are a vast mixture of different cultures, particularly immigrant Russians that have moved into the area. The apartment building my partner and I were in started off as about 50% gay in the late 1970s, and by the time we moved out around 1985, it was 60% Russians and maybe 10% gay and 30% "miscellaneous."

I think it's funnier (and lighter) if it was about 16-year-olds in high school... and more interesting to me. I think Entertaining Mr. Sloane is much too grim, plus the characters are all adults and the lead is a psychopath, which takes the fun and light-heartedness out of it. But Joe Orton is a fairly serious writer. I'd see something much more interesting... maybe even a bisexual kid who doesn't have a problem sleeping with the brother and sister. My take would be, the two boys would be at a British boys school, they start an affair, things get hot and heavy, then they come home for the summer and the one boy visits, then has a fling with the sister. Hilarity ensues. Yeah, it could be interesting if done the right way. Maybe the boy tries to break it off, but the sister blackmails him and threatens to out both him and the brother if he doesn't do her bidding.

I have a massive music collection -- literally over 10,000 CDs and more records and tapes than I can count -- and I've archived a vast amount of them to hard drive. I figure, if the next quake hits, I can't take the CDs with me when we're running out of the collapsing house, but I can grab a couple of hard drives. So it's nice to know that, assuming we'll eventually have power and things will go back to normal, I can rescue most (but not all) of my music. I decided some years back I don't care what the music comes from as long as it sounds good. So lossless files on a music server works fine to me. The ease of having hundreds of thousands of songs at my fingertips is very seductive. I can pull up any song in less than five seconds, vs. having to wander over to the shelf, scan hundreds of CD titles, find the one I want, take it out, put it in the player, and cue up the song. Instant gratification trumps everything. But... I'm a big believer in backups, and I do have 3 copies of every drive.

This real-life situation is too funny and very modern. I dunno if this has ever been done, but I think this has terrific story potential for somebody. I present the original question and answer from Slate's Dear Prudence advice column: ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear Prudence, My wife and I have two wonderful children, "Rebekah" and "Robbie." They have always been close and share many of the same friends. Both are living at home while attending a local college. Rebekah is very popular and has many platonic male friends, but she has developed a real crush on a young man in her class, "Jason.” Recently, my wife and I returned home after a night out, and I went to check on Robbie who has a room in the basement. I was startled to find him and Jason lying on his bed, kissing and undressing each other. I was not seen and left quietly. My wife told me that Rebekah was asleep in her bedroom upstairs, and I muttered to my wife that Robbie was home. A few days later I returned home early to the sounds of two men having sex in the basement. I got into my car and took a long drive. When I got back, Rebekah had just arrived and she and Robbie and Jason were in the kitchen fixing a snack. I love my son and will always support him, but there are several issues. First, my wife will be unhappy to learn our son is gay. Robbie is an adult and it's not my place to tell her, but she will eventually find out. Also, we do not tolerate sexual activity in the house, regardless of sexual orientation, so there can't be a double standard with Robbie. I will have to tell him, and he will know that I know. Most important, I fear Rebekah will be hurt, and I don't want this development to damage the close relationship she and her brother have always had. What should I do? —Confused Dad Dear Confused, How the world has changed when it’s possible that Jason could one day be your son-in-law, despite his total lack of interest in your daughter. Anyone who’s ever had both a basement and teenagers should know that the most innocent walk down those steps could mean stumbling upon scenes of naked writhing. I don’t know what kind of marriage you have, but most husbands having seen their son in flagrante with another, male or female, would be moved to say to their fellow parent something like, “Honey, Robbie is home, and I have some news about how he’s entertaining his guest.” It is your place to tell your wife, and I think the two of you need to let Robbie know that you know. For help in dealing with all this, contact PFLAG, which gives invaluable support to parents with gay children. As for your decree that your college-age children not engage in sexual relations in your home, you’re saving a boatload of money by not having them live at college. But if they were in a dorm, you would have no control over their sexual escapades. Your kids are actually young adults, and I think you need to rethink this rule. Finally, let’s hope Rebekah is sturdy enough not to be crushed when she finds out why her crush never made a move, and that she will be accepting on discovering she’s simply not his type. It’s probably been quite confusing for her to see that Jason loves hanging out at her home, but all his lingering glances appear to be directed to Robbie. Alternately, perhaps Rebekah knows exactly what’s up, and she’s agreed to engage in a cover story to keep her parents from the truth. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a great story idea with a lot of potential. I think it would be a better idea if kept light-hearted and funny, because there's a lot of opportunity for misunderstandings, hurt feelings, screaming arguments, and interesting encounters.

There was a time I would've pooh-poohed you, but I gotta say, paper never crashes. And you figure if there's a big fire, hell, both paper and hard drives will burn!

Adobe is an evil company. I particularly hate their updaters, which run outside the normal operating system.

Paper is good! Whenever I'm working on a new story, I always print up each chapter as I finish and do my editing on paper. Once I'm finished, I go back to the word processor and make the changes as necessary. Then I toss the paper copy into a box. At the end, I usually have one printed copy of the novel. One hopes that, even in the event of nuclear disaster, I'd still be able to scan the paper and get most of the novel back.

Wheels within wheels is a good way of putting it. I've encouraged the author to drop by here and share his strategy with us. Me, I think the story has to move along at a much faster pace. I would point to many, many other published authors as being better examples of maintaining a tight pace while still devoting enough time to mood and description. But for all my nitpicks, the story is compelling and interesting, and I look forward to future installments.

Got it. Added to the list.

Lotsa drives. I try to operate on Peter Krogh's 3-2-1 Backup Rule: 3 copies of your data, stored on 2 separate kinds of media, with 1 stored off-site (out of your house). I still get screwed every so often by losing a file here or there, but not too frequently. Heck, I misplace more CDs than that in my collection, year to year. As the old saying goes: if you don't own at least 3 copies of your data, you don't own your data.

Mooks?

It's funny you would say that, Cole. I just sent the author an email about a day ago saying, "ya know, if there's one thing I would change about the story, it's that I would up the pace a bit and get to the point much faster." So great minds think alike. I think what's there is very good -- I just think it needs some careful editing and compression to move the story along much faster. But the core idea is good, and the characters are well-drawn and interesting.