Paul
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Posts posted by Paul
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Dabeagle creates wonderully engaging characters*. Always a pleasure to read.
*Including the dogs, of course.
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Many thumbs up.
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Another doozie Sanitaria Springs tale from DaBeagle, and with Alec and Sasha too! What more could one want for Christmas? :smile:/>
In Dog We Trust is excellent, too, as always.
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Note that some professor, after conducting "extensive research," found that 95% of us procrastinate at some point. Now there's a discovery for you. Nobel Prize material, for sure.
I think people procrastinate for two reasons: first, because at any given point, doing some things are more interesting than doing other things (I'll take that Nobel Prize now, thank you); and secondly, because humans are hard-wired to be lazy. Think early man: going out and killing something was hard work. It was much easier to just lay around, grooming your neighbor or whatever. Then when starvation compelled you, and there was some nice, fat wildebeest wandering by, you and your buddies took off and slaughtered it. Then all that nice, high-powered, life-sustaining fat and protein sustained you for another comfortable stretch of sitting on your ass.
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After wavering along, I have stopped reading - the scene with the parents finished me off.
What the man said.
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**SPOILER** warning. I don't describe any action specifically, but the following might have spoiler consequences.
Cole handled this (in Chapter 16) very skillfully. There's always a danger of eliciting an eye-rolling "Oh, how convenient" reaction from the reader when a major plot developent arises from a coincidence, but that's certainly not the case here, as Cole laid the groundwork for it as far back as the very beginning of the story and kept it in our minds as the narrative progressed. So instead of thinking it implausible, we get caught up in the excitement of the surprise, just as Troy does.
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If this "god particle" business is correct, it kind of takes the Big Guy in the Sky down a few pegs knowing his real name is "Higgs Boson." Sounds like an Iowa pig farmer.
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Camy never disappoints.
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Not to disillusion you, but I was kind of like those kids, staring at the tube watching cartoons and things like the Hardy Boys on the Mickey Mouse Club for hours each day. I wasn't a big reader then and didn't turn into one until I was about 40.
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It seems the dynamic duo have a thing for finding trouble and ways to solve it. I see a bit of Sherlock Holmes in there too.
In my case, it rather took me back to 1956 and The Hardy Boys Mystery of the Applegate Treasure on the Mickey Mouse Club. Plus at the time (I was 10) I was strangely attracted to the Hardy Boys, though I didn't know why. Actually, I take that back. I didn't think twice about it; it seemed perfectly natural. I had yet to associate anything with the Q word, or even know there was such a thing.
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I enjoyed it immensely. Excellent sense of place and time, both present-day and historical, engaging characters and an ongoing puzzle that keeps you engrosed. A thoroughly satisfying read.
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I'm the right generation, but I never got into rock or pop music, so once I caught on to Mr. Whillicker's cunning plan (even I knew about little deuce coupe), I'd Google anything I suspected might be a lyric, and thereby got the attendant gag. But I totally missed picking up on the Brian/Mike/Dennis/Carl business, despite the fact that even I - again - know the Beach Boys' names. Plus there they were right up there in the acknowledgements.
I still find myself chuckling over "Mrs. Mopar." Snort.
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"Mrs. Mopar" Wah-hahahaaa!
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I've grown to respect the opinions of those who've praised this story here, so I'm going to give it a whirl. Well, I started already, but then I come to the sixth paragraph and I see:
The old guy wasn't phased at all.
Good thing, too, because I did not want the next line of dialog to read, "He's dead, Jim."
Going back to Nifty now to see if he works the Tribbles in somehow.
UPDATE: I read all of that's there so far, and I want to keep reading, despite the absence of Tribbles. Fascinating characters and you can't help but want to see how they deal with life and the circumstances they find themselves in in their own unique ways. The reason I like reading EleCivil, as a matter of fact.
Thanks to Wibby for pointing this one out.
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Which Ave Maria are you talking about, Camy? The Schubert or the Gounoud? I prefer the Gounoud, myself.
Cole
[butting in] Gounod was actually the arranger of that Ave Maria. J.S. Bach wrote the theme.[butting out]
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I just wanted to point out that this contest is extraordinarily unfair to us vampires.
You could redeem yourselves, however, by changing the prize from a dinner with an AD author to a dinner of an AD author.
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I have NO IDEA what -if anything- this thread is about...
You're right. We're just dicking around.
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It could be a deep-seated hatred for their child....
Coulda been worse; his mother might have married Harold Gozinya.
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What else would explain their naming their kid Richard Wacker?
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Hmm...since it also gives you the right answer along with your score, then retests with repeat words, I'm not so enthused about that. It doesn't appear to have an overall large number of words in its arsenal. It's a short, cute test but replaying a lot it sort of defuses the pt, doesn't it?
Well, I didn't find out about the missed words feature until after I'd played all 12 rounds. It doesn't come up with your score, you have to click through "more information" to get to it. So that didn't do me any good. I didn't happen to get any second chances at previously missed words in my top three rounds, but no doubt you can benefit from positive reinforcement if you get a second crack at ones you were iffy about the first time around.
Try, for instance, this one at Advanced and Fast (10 seconds an answer): http://www.wordsandtools.com/vocdemo/gzram3.html . It should give you a rough estimate of your vocabulary size and each test, should you repeat it, will be different...resetting takes time. I took it twice and no two words were repeated, though it does give you the 'right' answers with your score.Darned if I could get it to give me a new test after I took it the first time. The "new" button kept giving me the same words, just reordered slightly. I even tried deleting the cookie and re-registering, but no dice. Anyway, I got 114 out of 120 for a 18740 word vocab, however that rates.
For some very easy alternatives, try the 'thorough' vocabulary tests here from SAT, GRE, TOEFL and GMAT (100 questions, just gives you your score)Those were pretty easy. Actually, the scores are precentages; each "thorough" test consists of 40 items. I tried both versions of all 4 and came up with two 98s and six 100s. It does correct your wrong answers, BTW.
That one was positively sudorific! Out of 200, I had to skip 51, got 4 wrong for a final score of 145.
Hey, a great way to waste a whole evening. Got any more?
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Man, that WordSmart thing is addictive! Haven't felt like this since Tetris. Wound up playing it 12 times before I became querulous. Broke 900 three times. High score 945, low 547. Average 764.
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I've never had an avatar before, so I just made one. In effect, it illustrates my attitude toward life in general.
But I see it didn't work.
Ah, there we go.
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I have to agree with everything Pecman said. After following the first link, I read all his stuff on Nifty. Really a loss to us readers that he hasn't kept going.
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Man, it just keeps getting better. Some great touches, like:
Well, at least I learned that I speak like a scratched CD when I’m nervous. This is good, because I had just been thinking that I could use something new to be self-conscious about.
I know the feeling!
Or the hilarious lion exchange in the hallway. Exhilarating, actually, seeing something unfold before you like this, sort of like a jazz musician taking off on a riff and spinning something exquisite out of thin air. And all for a purpose: it makes these characters living human beings, illustrates their personal connection more immediately tangible than paragraphs of introspective self-analysis.
If this sounds like a gushing rave, so be it. I really, really like your writing.
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Nights and Days by Mihangel
in Readers Rule!
Posted
I think that religion here served more as a springboard for a more wide-ranging discussion between the two about art, culture and the varying aspects of spirituality and how they all relate to the human - and specifically their own - experience, rather than being expressions of religion per se; certainly there was nothing of religiosity about it. Neither held the conventional beliefs about gods or supreme beings.
As far as their erudition, I had no problem with bright English public schoolboys exhibiting same. Even Bertie Wooster peppered his speech with references to literature, poetry and the Bible, even if he couldn't dredge up the sources or at best, mangled them.