FreeThinker

Excellent story with a great plot twist. Cole reminds me of O. Henry when he surprises you. Another great Cole Parker story. I love the way he gets into the heads of his young characters and how all his characters are such good and decent people. I think they probably reflect the character of the author.

Darn! I was just getting ready to post this and found Camy beat me to it. It is pretty cool! I read on Wikipedia some time back that the BBC used Bowie's original version as the theme music for their coverage of Apollo 11. Chris Hadfield is ​pretty cool. He just took a space walk and fixed the ammonia-coolent leak on the space station, too. Fortunately, he didn't have to worry about HAL opening the pod-bay door.

This fourteen year-old, Jacob Barnett, may be smarter than Einstein and may, someday, disprove the Theory of Relativity. Proof that those on the Autism Spectrum can become amazing people. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/11/jacob-barnett-autistic-14-year-old-nobel-prize_n_3254920.html

This pretty much sums it up. http://www.flixxy.com/the-paperless-future-emma.htm#.UYKM3bWThJK

I think Mike Nesmith was one of the founding exec's at MTV. Also Micky Dolenz was a kid actor in a TV show in the fifties called Circus Kid. My favorite was Peter Tork. Even at nine years old, I thought he was cute! I loved his long, golden blond hair!!!! The Monkees were a sixties American TV ripoff of the early Beatles movies. My favorite of their songs is Pleasant Valley Sunday. Listen to the lyrics-- a great commentary on burgeoning sixties suburbia and the world of the middle class then. .

In the recent highly stimulating thread regarding Justin Bieber and his self-absorbed and tactless thoughts about Anne Franke, Camy posted a video of a moderately cute, moderately clever, and moderately entertaining English teenager named Charlie McDonnell, who creates a weekly Youtube video commenting on his moderately interesting life and thoughts. Not having much of a life myself, I have become addicted to watching it (partially because English Adolescent Accents do it for me). One particularly cute, clever, and entertaining video featured him trying to speak with an American accent, which, being American, I found hilarious. If you actually do have a life, I wouldn't skip watching Game of Thrones or Homeland or that dreadful show about the fat, tattooed pawn shop guys for it, but you might make time at some point to waste five minutes or so watching him. He's "wicked" and "brilliant." http://www.youtube.com/charlie http://charliemcdonnell.com/

I use Gmail and at the top of my Gmail page, based on the content of my email messages, Google, in their great wisdom, has placed an ad for Exlibris, the self-publishing company. Does it not seem strange to appeal to writers with the phrase, "Done Writing A Book?" "Shee-yit! I done wrote me a book, y'all!" Perhaps a publisher- or a ubiquitous search engine- could find someone from the current generation who knows something, anything, about grammar and good writing to write a tag line for authors that sounds a bit more literate than, "Done writing a book?" "Do you have a completed manuscript?" perhaps? Or am I just being me again?

I don't know how many more of these stories I can take. A Peruvian father with the appropriate name of Hitler Nunez was allegedly tired of neighbors making jokes about his gay, HIV-positive son and doused him with gasoline. Perhaps Hitler Nunez would feel more comfortable at the Westboro Baptist Church. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/17/hitler-baneo-nunez-peru-gay-son-attack-_n_3103224.html

Maria Tallchief, one of the great prima ballerinas of the Twentieth Century, has passed away at the age of eighty-eight. My grandmother was a personal friend of the Tallchief family and knew Maria and her sister, Marjorie, also a ballerina. Maria trained at the School of American Ballet and danced with the Ballet Russe and the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine. She was one of the first Native Americans to achieve acclaim in ballet. A statue in her honor and four other great Oklahoma ballerinas, Marjorie Tallchief, Yvonne Chouteau, Rosella Hightower, and Mocelyne Larkin (founder of Tulsa Ballet). stands in front of the Tulsa Historical Society. http://newsok.com/no...article/3785651

"By Jove, I say! That storm's coming from... well, the opposite direction of east!" "Keep calm and carry on, dear. The kettles on the boil."

I have begun reading a wonderful story in the Young Friends Section of Nifty called The Bonds of Brotherhood. It is well-written with a good story-line and very detailed in descriptions of scene and the thinking of the characters. In many ways, it reminds me of a Cole Parker story in that it is populated with decent, good-hearted characters, though I must advise there is some sexuality that is presented in a tasteful way that furthers the plot. I have reached Chapter Seven of the twenty that have been posted so far and his posting schedule tends to vary between two to three days and a week, with long chapters. Warning, the story begins with a bullying scene. I strongly recommend the story based on the seven chapters I have read so far. I might add that Chapter 7 has an especially moving scene regarding patriotism and honor. I was moved to tears several times. http://www.nifty.org...of-brotherhood/

I'll never be able to listen to the song again. It's too painful because its a metaphor to me for the love that truly cannot speak its name and the love, in my case, for what might have been. A kind and decent man afraid to show an interest in me because it might be misconstrued, even before the current hysteria, a love that could not be expressed until decades later and at the end of his life, when a chance encounter with a story on the Internet and the exchange of emails brought the truth to light. Even writing this post makes me cry. Thank you for your kind words.

Last December, I received an email from a gentleman who had been reading Dance of the Wicked Boys on Awesome Dude. He told me how much he enjoyed the story and went on to describe how painful and yet encouraging it was to see how young gay people today have so much more freedom to express themselves and their sexuality. He described how he was unable to do so, growing up in Oklahoma during the forties and that, even though my stories are set twenty to thirty years after his own childhood and adolescence, he felt he could live vicariously through my characters. We developed a nice email friendship, over the course of which, we discovered who we were. Peter was a childhood friend of my father's whom I knew from several visits during my childhood when we would spend the weekends or holidays with my grandparents. Indeed, it was Peter, who worked in bookstores for much of his adult life, who gave me The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh. It was Peter who started the family habit of referring to me as "Christopher Robin." Peter told me how, when he was in junior and senior high, my father was one of the few who treated him with dignity and respect as so many others taunted and bullied him for being sensitive and artistic. When my father died, Peter wrote a poem for the family, a tribute to my father's decency and kindness. I had not seen Peter since my grandfather died. He had moved away and felt uncomfortable keeping in touch because my mother didn't care for him. I did not know until we began correspondence that he was gay. Nor did I know that he had such a love for the joy and exuberance of boyhood. He had a particular fondness for me, but was limited in his contact with me because he didn't want to arouse suspicion. And, so, for decades, he repressed his feelings until the rise of the Internet and the arrival of Nifty and Awesome Dude. In his last email to me, Peter said that the saddest song he had ever heard was Puff the Magic Dragon because it expresses so eloquently the loss of those who love that joy and exuberance of boyhood and then see it dissolve away with the maturity and adulthood of their beloved. Last night, I received an email from Peter's companion informing me that Peter passed away in his sleep Friday night, just a couple of days before his eighty-second birthday. And so, and you will forgive the mixed metaphor, Christopher Robin wishes Puff the Magic Dragon a safe journey. I wish I had been permitted to be his young friend for longer.

I'd take England over Oklahoma in a heartbeat! Ah... to stand on the cliffs of Dover, or walk along a country lane, to visit a small, village church, or stroll through Oxford or Cambridge. To stand in awe in a magnificent English cathedral or hear an English boys choir... We have a gun show here this weekend and my hotel is full of those people. I'd happily take a cold, wet day in England in exchange! And, Merkin, thank you for the Robert Browning! How appropriate!

We fought a Civil War over this issue a hundred and fifty years ago. The First Amendment PROHIBITS an established religion in the United States. The U.S. Constitution takes precedence over state constitutions, no matter what a southern legislature thinks. The South lost. Get over it. Move on.

I think that pro-gun people need to calm down and accept that: a- no one wants to disarm you. You can have your handguns to protect yourselves. The Muslim Kenyan Socialist BLACK man in the White House is not going to cut your penis off and take your gun. b. We advocate background checks. More than 90% of Americans support background checks. Will it completely end massacres? No, and we know that. But, Adam Lanza's mother wouldn't t have had an arsenal in her house along with an emotionally disturbed son. c. There is only one reason to have magazines with thirty rounds and that is to kill, not for protection and defense, but to kill and attack. There is NO legitimate need for a thirty round magazine unless conservative, southern, right-wingers are indulging their favorite wet-dream fantasy of rising up against the Fed's and reliving the 1860's. d. It is argued that the Second Amendment is absolute and NO restrictions on the right to bear arms is permitted. HOWEVER, we DO recognize limits to Freedom of Speech. We don't permit yelling "Fire" in a theater. Because of the anti-communist right-wing hysteria of the Red Scare of the 1920's and again in the 40's and 50's, we don't permit advocating the armed overthrow of the Government (remember that, righties). AND, we don't permit photographic child pornography. So, should we use the right-wing logic (there's an oxymoron) and apply that to Freedom of Speech? Are we permitted to publicly advocate support of terrorists? Freedom to bear arms is "absolute," supposedly. So is Freedom of Speech? Clearly not. Reasonable restrictions CAN and SHOULD be placed on freedoms. Why do so many police chiefs and police officers (at least outside the South) support rational and reasonable restrictions on gun ownership? The NRA response to all this is that we don't have enough guns. In a nation of 320 million people, we have 350 million guns. Is that not enough? We have a higher per capita number of guns than any other nation on earth, but we have more gun deaths per capita than any other country, including Somalia and Afghanistan! More guns! We need more guns and more profits for the gun manufacturers, which is who Wayne LaPierre REALLY represents. And, lets not forget the words of the Tea Party candidate for the Senate from Nevada in 2010, Sharron Angle, that if they can't get their way at the ballot box, conservatives should "consider their Second Amendment options." We all know what that means. Or the right-wing candidate for the House from Florida who said that if "ballots don't work, bullets will." We know what the right-wing really thinks in this country. And, the last thing I want to see when I go into a restaurant is a bad guy shoot a gun and then sixteen other people suddenly standing up and start firing and police officers storming in and not knowing who's a bad guy and who isn't. No one wants to take your handguns. No one wants to take away your hunting rifles. No one wants to emasculate you. We just want to reduce the number of gun deaths, just like those dreadful "dictatorships" like Britain, Canada, and Australia.

Lug- LOLOL! Thank you everyone. I keep forgetting that there's this wonderful new thing called the Internets or the Interwebs or whatever it was that W used to call it and I can actually look these things up, although I am quite impressed with Cole Parker's grasp of the groovy. I may turn to him first in the future when I need the younger generations explained to me! :-) And, thanks Nick and Steven. I am bookmarking the Urban Dictionary on my browser.

The defense attorney described his client's act as "criminally stupid." I think the judge's sentence of 3 and a half years was "criminally stupid." I am absolutely horrified by what this poor guy had to go through, bullied and forced to move and then taunted at a party before being doused with tanning oil and set afire. What kind of human being does something like this and what kind of human being is this judge? Horrendous.

What does it mean when a young person today says, "Word." Just, "Word." They are not referring to the program, but something I don't understand, but want to. I feel so dreadfully out of it. (By the way, the title of this post should read "Translate from Millennial TO Boomer. Sorry. I suppose, being a writer, I should consider occasionally proofreading my comments before hitting the POST button).

I don't deny Orson Scott Card the right to write, nor do I deny DC Comics the right to hire whomever they choose to write for them. But, if DC actively chooses a writer they know to be an ignorant bigot to represent them, then readers have the right to refuse to buy their product and employees have the right to quit rather than be forced to work with said ignorant bigot. This is not censorship. This is capitalism and democracy. Card's not going to starve from lack of readers. There are plenty of publishers who will sell his work. I enjoyed Ender's Game and would like to see the movie, but I didn't know Card's views at the time and I will probably not pay to see the movie. I accept that not everyone in America would like to read the stories I write. I don't consider it censorship. I consider it freedom. DC has the freedom to hire Card, and Americans have the freedom to tell them to drop dead.

Maybe that's why there are so many great British writers. The weather's always too miserable to do anything else!

I have found, in speaking with my radical right family and others here in Okieland, that the fastest way to piss off a fundamentalist Republican is to ask, "What would Jesus do?" Nothing angers a fundamentalist more than facing his or her own hypocrisy.

This is the first decent weekend of Spring. Seventy degrees, clear skies, and a lawn and flower beds demanding attention. I don't have an excuse to sit on my butt all afternoon and write gay adolescent romances. Bah.

Thanks Steven for the tag from The Twilight Zone, That's an excellent example, which reminded me of another tag which some of us in high school used in 74 and 75. A guy would be walking down the hallway and, out of the clear blue, suddenly grab someone by the collar and scream, "Soylent Green is people!"

I just realized I might have sounded Ameri-centric in part of my last post and I wanted to explain that the reason I asked that question is that I have a German friend who reads my work before I post. He writes better English than most Americans and spent a year in America as a foreign-exchange student in the nineties. Yet, he still has questions about some of the more confusing or obscure Americanisms I use. Should I explain them in the story, work the explanations in somehow in an unobtrusive way, or not use them?