The Pecman

Good story, very well-done. I kinda winced a little bit at the "HIV test results on the nightstand" bit, but this is a tiny criticism. Very well-drawn characters, and a cut above much of what I read on the net -- a really good job. BTW, I didn't get that the title was a Leonard Cohen reference, but it's an excellent phrase. Me, I'm just a total Top 40 slut, so all I know are the hits. But I know a lotta hits.

My partner and I have two psychotic psiamese, and they exhibit every one of these traits. Very nasty, hostile cats. We've had some very affectionate Siamese over the years, but not these two. One's mean and evil, through and through, and the other is as stupid as the day is long, really brain-damaged and skittish. The latter is one I call the "Chinatown Cat," because his brother is his father, if you catch my drift. Ewwwwww....

Boy, that's a mean-spirited website. As I always say, I try to hate all operating systems equally, since I have to use Unix, DOS, Mac OSX, and various flavors of Windows. They're all pains in the ass, but in different ways. Note also that I'm almost always running Windows in the background, for those two or three programs for which I can't find equivalents in Mac OSX. But anything I want to do and be productive with, I do it on the Mac. I concede that there's a tendency for some Mac users (and the Apple ad campaigns) to be very smug and arrogant. But I don't pretend the Mac is perfect. I would say, though, that OSX is unquestionably a more stylish, more logical OS than Windows in many ways. And for me, the operating system disappears once I dive into a program. With Windows, the OS gets in my way much, much too often. Steve Jobs -- one of the most smug, arrogant people on the face of the earth -- said it best when he said (paraphrasing), "the problem with Microsoft boils down to the fact that Bill Gates has no taste." It's a mean-spirited remark, but it's essentially true. (Brown Zune MP3 players... jesus!)

Note that very few of the articles about Clarke mentioned that he was gay. According to friends of mine who seem to know these things, he had a longtime male companion in Sri Lanka with whom he lived for many years. It's true Clarke was briefly married once, about 50 years ago, but they split up after six months. Clarke's own statement on whether or not he was gay was simply, "no, merely mildly cheerful," but I think he was a private man who just didn't care to share details about his personal life. Maybe now that he's passed away, the truth will come out, and maybe we can know more about this fascinating man. I loved his fiction for many years, but a lot of his work had a very detached, unemotional feel to it -- not a criticism, but it's an apt description of his style. 2001 and Rendevous with Rama are good examples of this -- very cold, very scientific, but thoroughly well-told stories.

I think that's a very good question, and I think the best answer is, "it depends." I think you can leave some things dangling, but others you've just got to address head-on, or risk confusing the reader. In the case of this story, I was so surprised, I thought, "jesus, I better go back and re-read this, because I never saw a single moment where the (alleged) straight friend realized his friend was gay. I must've blinked and missed it." If the moment isn't there, one sentence can fix it. But to ignore it seems disingenuous. I do think there are economical ways to write where you don't have to actually come out and say something, and you can let the reader figure things out -- to a point. As an aside: on the (very entertaining) climactic episode of the Terminator TV show a few weeks ago, they had an episode where an evil humanoid robot killed a dozen armed FBI agents. I thought, "man, how are they gonna show that on a TV show! It'll cost a fortune and be incredible violent!" What happened was, they cut to the bottom of an apartment's swimming pool, and you saw all the bodies of the dead men hitting the water surface, one at a time, until the pool was almost filled with dead bodies. I thought it was brilliant, showed no bullet hits or limbs being ripped off, but you still got a great idea of the carnage. Very economical, but a cheat that worked. Writing can be done like that, too. The "is he or isn't he" question can be a terrible cliche in many stories, and I think it's good to avoid it up to a point. I think some of the best gay fiction I've ever read avoided the moment, either by having the other character say, "look, I'm sorry, but I can never love you the way you love me," and just let them know that way. I think it can be done simply and with great subtlty, or you can have the lead character tormented for weeks and months: "what if X finds out I'm gay? What if they're gay? What if somebody finds out?" It's such a pivotal question in any gay person's early life, it can't help but have a traumatizing effect. Some people get over it very early on; some never do. It's a tough choice for any writer to make as to how his characters deal with it, but it's still a choice, and I don't pretend there's any one right way to go with it.

It is a good story, but my only objection is that the other character (Robby) has no reaction when our narrator mentions the name of his ex-lover, "David." I know it's a a cliche in an "is-he-or-isn't-he" story to have the moment where the other character says, "what? David? You mean you're... gay?" but I think doing nothing with it at all is avoiding the problem. I think there's a way to do it that avoids the cliche but is still realistic. That having been said: it's a very realistic, nice story with well-drawn characters. I like Rick personally very much, and I think he's a talented writer, and is very much an asset to this site.

Absolutely terrific story. This is a Best of Nifty candidate for sure. If it keeps going like this, I think this could be Comicality's best story yet (at least of what I've read). Really, really well done.

My partner once dragged me to see Cirque DuSoleil's "Mystere" in Las Vegas after I had been awake for about 24 hours, working on a project here in LA. I sat through the whole show in a half-awake/half-asleep dream state, and the entire thing was like a "very pleasant nightmare," one I'll never forget. Absolutely enthralling performance, very much like the video posted. And a lot of very attractive, super-fit, hot people (of all ages and sexes). It might be the best Vegas show I ever saw, but maybe that's because I was so exhausted, I just sat there and absorbed 100% of it without any distractions.

My partner and I have a gay friend in the TV industry, whom we've known for about five or six years. We were shocked as hell when we received a wedding invitation about a month ago, for his marriage to a woman. I sent him a short email that basically said, "hey, good luck with that! Boy, were we surprised!" And his response was basically, "I was, too--but the heart wants what the heart wants." I just hope he knows what he's getting into. This could lead to trouble. I've only known one true bisexual guy in my whole life (one who's really 50/50), and everybody else was just "experimenting for the moment." Very dangerous in a long-term relationship.

You lost me. I'm not comparing Roddenberry to anybody -- I'm just saying he wasn't a great person. He created a great show, but had terrible flaws as a human being, that's all. I'm not mentioning Hitler, Mussolini, Bin Laden, Jesus, or Mohammad, either. Not that it matters, but Roddenberry's son, Gene Jr., is gay and is doing OK in LA. I don't think he's involved in TV, but he and his mother, Majel, have a good life. (I've met Majel several times, and she was always nice to me, so my criticism of her husband doesn't extend to her.) Read the Wikipedia article on Roddenberry for more; everything it says is very close to what I know as well.

Post the first chapter, and I'll take a look at it. I won't promise anything, but I'll at least give you my opinion of what I see and think. I can tell you this: don't apologize for anything in the intro. Give the background, make it short, and stick to the point. The intro is already 50% longer than it needs to be, IMHO.

God, what a bitch. I hope the voters of Oklahoma kick her ass out so fast, her head spins.

We're getting away from the original points about the murder. I'd like to hear what the killer says. The main question I'd always want to ask the person pulling the trigger is, "why did you think this would solve your problem? What makes you think you could get away with this? Why do you think the kid you shot deserved to die?" We'll probably never get answers to these questions, but these are some of the things that keep me awake at night. Also, an aside to TR: Gene Roddenberry was a very creative man, but not a nice human being. I have several close friends who knew him well, and he was a man filled with flaws and contradictions. Read Joel Engel's Gene Roddenberry: The Myth and the Man Behind Star Trek, which just barely touches the surface of what went on with this complex man. I know several stories they couldn't prove in the book, and let's just say that Gene was a guy who often didn't share credit easily, and could be very mean and vindictive. I loved a lot of what he did with Star Trek, but Roddenberry had terrible, terrible flaws as a person.

We occasionally run into English vs. American problems in post-production. For example, the Brits write DD/MM/YY on the slates (excuse me, the "clapper") during production. We've always been MM/DD/YY. Americans deal with scene numbers, then break each scene down into smaller pieces -- close-ups, medium shots, reaction shots, inserts, etc. -- with letters. So the master shot is scene 23, the medium shot is scene 23A, the close-up of one person is 23B, the close-up of another guy is 23C, and so on. Brits give each shot an entirely separate number, starting with #1 on the first day of production and moving forward. So one day might start with 1201, then go to 1202, 1203, 1204 and so on. But that way, you have no idea where the shot actually is supposed to happen in the script. It makes no sense to me. It's difficult to argue about topics like this because it boils down to the age-old "tradition" and personal preference. Logic doesn't necessarily apply to what different countries use. Me, I use "13 March 2008" in correspondence, but I always date files and other computer-related stuff as MM/DD/YYYY. And I'm a big stickler for 4-digit years. Don't even get me started on what the Italians do in post-production. You think the Brits are wacky -- the Italians are great at certain things (like food and fast cars), but technology isn't one of them.

Read Stephen King's The Stand. Abouy 98% of everybody on Earth dies of what is essentially a "Super Flu." Lotta statistics in there, if I remember correctly. But it's the characters and emotions that will make or break your story. The stats just give if a little verisimilitude.

And just to update this six month-old thread, HD-DVD has been dead for a couple of months, and Blu-Ray is now the winner and new champion. The real video format battle will be between Blu-Ray and "old" DVD. The studios are anxious for a new format to take over, so they can make more money as well as transitioning the whole business towards high-def. Pundits insist that ultimately, all movie & music for home use will be strictly downloads, but I'm still not satisfied with the quality of either. HD downloads, now available from Apple's iTunes Music Store, look like crap. It's barely HD, only in the broadest technical sense of the word; 720p video, compressed to hell, still looks bad. Blu-Ray discs look 10 times better, in my opinion.

Ah, there you go. I'm glad to hear it's in B.O.N. already. Definitely a memorable tale, one I've read a couple of times. I forgot to mention that it's Veddy British, which is a little difficult for an American like myself to get past. Some of the ideas and situations are very odd to me, especially looking at it across a time-frame of 40 years. But the emotional content is universal. Love, affection, and loyalty are the same in any generation, and in any time and place.

Yes, this was a very nice story. I first read this a long time ago, at six or seven years ago; it was posted in 2000 according to Nifty, but I could've sworn it appeared earlier on Usenet. There are aspects of it that are idealistic and even a little repetitious, but it's a heartfelt story and I thought it had some good aspects to it. I'd actually lean towards recommending it for B.O.N., as a matter of fact. About the only thing that makes me squeamish is the age difference of the kids. 14 and 9 is a little, ah, much. If it were two teenagers, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

What I can't understand is why they don't just advance the clock half an hour as a compromise, and just leave it alone year round. BTW, note that, contrary to legend, Benjamin Franklin did not invent or propose Daylight Savings Time. It was done in the 1900s by an Englishman named William Willett. Yet another useless factoid we didn't need to know.

I agree with the others, but I would change the title. "Zombie" is too obvious. I would go with something more oblique, more subtle. But you've definitely got me wanting to read more, which is a good thing. You know, I had an idea for a vampire/AIDS story some years ago. I wondered, if vampires exist on victim's blood, what if the blood was contaminated? What if the illness could carry on in a vampire? The idea never got further than that, but it's something that I still mull over.

Leo Laporte, longtime computer/talk radio pundit, has declared Vista to be "a bomb," at least in his recent shows. Both he and PC Magazine columnist John Dvorak are using Mac OSX Leopard. Even PC Magazine just gave Leopard the nod for "operating system of the year" in a recent issue, way ahead of Leopard. But just to be contrary, I'm working exclusively in Windows at the moment (for an audio project where the tools I'm using only work in Windows). But: I'm doing it on an Apple Mac Powerbook laptop. I think Vista is not that bad, but I have seen problems with people who try to upgrade from XP to Vista. If you buy a brand new machine with Vista pre-loaded, the problems are much more managable.

I agree with VWL above, somewhat. I think the guy can write to a point, but I agree there needs to be more meat there. I think with some editing help, and a push in the right direction, the guy could do OK.

Terrific story -- one of the best I've read so far this year. Glad to see it's on Awesomedude!