[Spontaneous erections]

*Off Topic*

In my 'house' at school there were four showers; two individual ones, and a double one that had the nickname: 'the benders shower'. consequently no one would ever go in there out of choice - unless ordered to by a prefect. It was one of my biggest fears, being told to go in there AND then having an erection. *shudders*

Sex drive varies a lot, and fades the older you get. Some people are very highly sexed, whilst others aren't. I really wouldn't worry about it, Trab. As Blue says, "If you get hard at all, then it's working the way it's designed to work."

Camy, I think what you wrote was "On Topic" sooo...

In my HS you only have to take PE (or gym or whatever you want to call it) in 9th and 10th grades. In 11th and 12 grades PE classes are elective. Needless to say, I did NOT take PE after 10th grade. One of the reasons is that I was scared s***less that I'd get hard (i.e, a spontaneous erection) in the shower or when dressing perving the other guys. Never happened, thank God! For me, fear was a welcome deflater in PE.

Colin

[Spontaneous erections]

Mine also definitely has a mind of its own. I'm cut, with occurrence often at the most embarrassing times. WHY does it have to happen when I have to walk up to the board to solve a math problem? With nothing that would initiate the occurrence? And I can't even enjoy the occurrence!!

Colin

[Can no longer remain logged in]

I had this problem at another Invision site after an upgrade. From memory, the problem was caching, but from what you've said that isn't going to be your problem since you've said you've already cleared your cache. I'll see if I can track the details down....

I'm not having this or any of the other problems you've mentioned. It is keeping my login between reboots of my machine, as well as opening and closing browser windows. I'm running on XP using FireFox 2.0 (on this computer).

I'm using IE7 on WinXP Pro Media Center Edition v5.1. The drop-down menus all work fine.

Also, I like the new look of the posting page.

Colin

[Soy turning America's boys gay - World Net Daily]

Mark Moreford's columns are online (no registration needed) at http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/morford/archive/. The way the SF Chronicle describes his columns is very funny:

Mark Morford is a columnist for sfgate.com and the San Francisco Chronicle. He also teaches yoga, subscribes to magazines, admires trees, detests shrill alarmism (including his own), sleeps naked. He has not seen your blog, but is sure it's amazing. He never wears sneakers. He writes about politics, pop culture, sex, music, design, a wry and punch-drunk universe, vibrators, scotch, media, spirituality and small European cars. And sometimes, parrots. Email him here.

Colin

[Jumping The Shark in Gay Fiction]

My pal Nick Archer just forwarded to me his latest version of this piece, which I think is both humorous and informative. Any of you who are writers out there will undoubtedly find it useful. Be warned that Nick pulls no punches, but bear in mind this is just one man's opinion (though I personally agree with 99% of what he says -- despite the fact that I've personally violated two or three of his rules myself!).

Jumping The Shark in Gay Fiction

By Nick Archer

...

? The Names-We-Wish-We-Had. Our parents gave us boring names ? like David and John ? so we?ll give our characters the names we wish our parents had named us. Justin. Tyler. Trevor. Cody. Brad and Chad. Brice or Bryce. Roland. Tobias (Tobi for short.) Precious names -- names that are cute for a 3-year-old little boy but awkward for anyone older -- like Casey or Corey. Biblical names like Isaiah, Noah or Jonah. Names that are derived from professions (and are very popular among the Southern landed gentry) like Hunter, Trapper, Carter or Tanner. Common names with cutesy spellings like Tayler, Brien, Khile. Stop it!

...

c) 2003, 2007 Nick Archer

I have to disagree with Nick Archer on the first part of the names thing. At my HS there are more kids with names like Justin, Tyler, Trevor, Cody, Codey (), Casey, Corey, Colin (), Noah, Jonah, Carter, etc. than David or John or Jim or Bob. So don't blame authors for using those kinds of names! It's what parents are using to name their kids.

BTW, I agree with his "Common names with cutesy spellings" complaint. But there's a kid at school who's named Bryen, so IMO we're dealing with out-of-control parents here! There's even a kid named Bo, and that's his real first name, not a nickname. His name's in the sports section all the time because he's a football and basketball star.

Otherwise Mr. Archer makes a lot of good points. Some of which I violate, even some that I violate habitually.

Whatever.

Colin

[New Story: PIECES OF DESTINY]

Interesting start to the story, and the 1864 setting reads very realistic. I'm a big SF fan, but for some reason I've never liked "gay" SF stories. This is an exception, where the SF has so far been used as a way into the story. Good job! I'll be checking for future chapters as they are posted.

Colin

[Amazon.com Recommendations Understand Area Woman Better Than Husband]

I thought it would be fun to list amazon.com recommendations. Here are mine; I think some of them are right on, some are very funny, and some very bizarre. I've marked the ones I own in blue, all but one of them I bought from amazon.com and have an *. You'd think if they can come up with a list of my favorites, they'd be able to find things I bought from them and not put those on the list.

1. English Rebel Songs 1381-1984 [iMPORT] *

~ Chumbawamba

2. Getting It

by Alex Sanchez

3. 10 Years of Hits [iMPORT]

~ Ronan Keating

4. Outfield Menace

by Mark A. Roeder

5. Wicked Angels (Southern Tier Editions)

by Eric Jourdan, Thomas J. D. Armbrecht (Translator)

6. The ABC's of Anarchism [EP] *

~ Chumbawamba

7. Magellan 730387 12v Cigarette Lighter Adapter Cable for the eXplorist Series

by Magellan

8. Myst Uru: Complete Chronicles *

by UBI Soft

9. GPS Mapping

by Rich Owings

10. In Lust We Trust [iMPORT]

~ Ark

11. What We Did Last Summer

DVD ~ Robbie Williams

12. The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

13. The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

by William Strunk Jr., et al.

14. A Portrait of Andrew

by J.P. Bowie

15. A Self-Portrait

by J.P. Bowie

16. A Portrait of Emily

by J.P. Bowie

17. First Draft In 30 Days: A Novel Writer's System for Building a Complete and Cohesive Manuscript

by Karen Wiesner

18. A Portrait of Olivia

by J.P. Bowie

19. A Day Without Rain

~ Enya

20. Cracking the AP Calculus AB and BC Exams, 2006-2007 Edition (College Test Prep) *

by David S. Kahn, Princeton Review

21. The Man in the White Suit

DVD ~ Alec Guinness

22. From Now On [iMPORT]

~ Will Young

23. The League of Gentlemen - Christmas Special

DVD ~ Corrie Greenop

24. Canon Powershot S2 IS 5MP Digital Camera with 12x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

by Canon

25. You're Beautiful [CD-SINGLE] [EXPLICIT LYRICS] [iMPORT]

~ James Blunt

26. Twenty Epics

by Susan Groppi, David Moles

27. Mahabharata (1989) (2pc)

DVD ~ Erika Alexander

28. Philosophy for Kids : 40 Fun Questions That Help You Wonder ... About Everything!

by David A. White

29. Unwritten [iMPORT] *

~ Natasha Bedingfield

30. The Catcher in the Rye

by J.D. Salinger (Scenario)

Colin

[Soy turning America's boys gay - World Net Daily]

We get the SF Chronicle and I read the story. It's very funny. I like Mark Morford's columns, they are sarcastic and funny and edgy.

Colin

[Fighting Writer's Block]

Hey, they taught us in Journalism class, "who, what, WHEN, where, why, how," as the six questions. Maybe they're teaching things differently today.

But I'm not writing Journalism articles! The WHEN isn't as important in the stories that I write. My timeline is usually not date-specific, it's more like 'here's when the story started, this event is important and it happened when school was out' etc. etc. In my story Escaping Katrina the dates were important, when Hurricane Katrina struck, when people were evacuated to Houston, and so on, so I included them in my timeline and that timeline was based on real dates.

Be wary of over-outlining your story. I think it's possible to get too anal about this stuff, and it winds up taking a lot of the fun and discovery out of the writing itself. I think having a very basic outline (like with just one or two sentences per chapter) works fine.

That's what I do, and they usually aren't full sentences, either!

I don't bother to update the outline, because in my case, things start snowballing so fast, the chapters go far beyond what I had originally come up with for the outline. I keep the original outline just to jog my memory when I realize, "hey! I forgot to mention such-and-such in the story." I do agree that making a timeline is important, and I do update those constantly. I'm crazed enough that when I say a certain date happens on a given day in the story, it's actually correct on the calendar. (I have a little program on my desktop that lets me check this; I've already had to use it several times on my current story, part of which takes place in 1864 and 1865, so keeping that straight has been a challenge.)

Yeah, that can happen. I think this can be a powerful technique, and can improve the story, or at least take it to places you didn't originally imagine. I haven't had this become a drawback yet, but I have yet to have to throw an entire chapter out and start over because it went to a weird place.

I find that for a long story I like to update the outline as I go, especially when things develop that vary from what I had in the outline. I keep the original, and add an update. That way I can see how the story is changing. Later on I stop updating the outline when it starts interfering with my writing.

I don't write a story in predefined chapters. I write it as a single document. Then I go back and break it up into chapters. I'm not tied to having my chapters all the same length. I break them up where it makes sense and where they aren't too short.

Then I go back and edit and in some chapters do some rewriting, maybe creating two chapters out of a long one or combining two short chapters into one. Then I go back and edit again, mainly for consistency.

If the story is a single "chapter" I create a short outline (more of a story synopsis), a timeline, and character outline.

Colin

[Reading - Complete matters!]

1. I'll read them depending on who the author is.

2. I'll read a story from a new author if the theme intrigues me or if others recommend it. If I like it, I'll add the author's story site to Stories to Read in my Favorites.

Colin

[Login disappears while on AD]

Thanks, Colin. That sounds like it's reporting the status incorrectly, and that you're actually still logged in during a session in the forums.

That's techno-babble for, "the forum software and the browser are having a confused argument, but you're still logged in."

Since that's what it's doing, try hitting "Back" and then "Refresh" to see if that magically fixes the login issue.

Yes, I've had other forum software complain that I'm suddenly not logged in. It's a strange feeling when you see, "Users browsing this topic: 0," for instance. Yes, I've seen that before.

It's aggravating, and vaguely unsettling to the old ego, I know.

-- Bottom Line: Let us know when you get a chance, but don't sweat it.

OK, will do.

Colin

[Fighting Writer's Block]

That's a tough situation. I have a couple of close friends who are writers, and occasionally I'll talk "story" with them, and go over a couple of points I'm mulling over. They're the first to slap me upside the head and go, "hey! That makes no sense!"

Once I see that, I can come up with a solution. But even great writers have stories they abandon and throw back into the trunk. To me, my spare time is so valuable (and so rare), I have no choice but to be very careful about using it. I do two things to avoid dead ends:

1) I try to make a time-line for the story so that I can see exactly when and where key events happen

2) I make a list of story points, like a bullet list, of things that have to happen in order to get from Point A to Point B.

I think there's a risk with #2 to "over-outline" a novel to the point where it's no longer fun to write. I almost had that happen with Jagged Angel, and I resolved never to do that again. With the new story, I just have about a two-page synopsis, and I have a vague idea of what has to happen in each chapter. But I already have the ending in my head, so the dead end shouldn't happen.

If you don't already know the ending, then I would suggest this:

make 3x5 index cards of the highlights of the novel so far ("Joe gets shot," "Joe meets Larry," "Larry wins the Lotto"), and pin them all up on the wall. When you can see the key plot details, all at one time, then I bet you'll have a better chance at figuring out the next step.

That, plus having a group of writer/friends who can suggest solutions. In my case, the friends don't necessarily come up with the right idea, but often they'll force me to re-examine a scene, and I come up with an entirely new way of doing it that's better than what I did originally, and also (to me) better than what they suggested.

As long as the story is improved, I don't care where the idea comes from, provided it's original and entertaining.

I write an outline for each story. The outline starts with five questions: Who, What, Where, Why, and How, and the answers to each. I outline the start and close of the story, a timeline describing what happens when. Then I try to write one or more starting paragraphs, and flesh out the close. I include a character outline, describing each character and their motivation and their relationships with other chacters. This ends up being the most important part of the outline. The outline is a living document, as things change as I'm actually writing the story I try to update the outline. Except for my character outline, eventually I stop updating when it starts distracting me from writing. I use an Excel spreadsheet for my outline because it's easy to modify.

That's when I have run into a problem. Sometimes a story takes on a life of it's own. Events and characters seem to invent themselves and stick themselves into a story.

Usually that's a good thing. I wrote a story about hurricane Katrina, Escaping Katrina, where a very minor character became a major character despite my outline. This character, Patrice, is probably my favorite non-protagonist character.

A couple of times that was a bad thing, and I ended up writing myself into a dead end. Going back to the outline didn't work because I'd deviated too much from the outline, and the outline and my inspiration weren't in sync any more. That's when I needed inspiration. In one story, it was a TV show that gave me what I needed and I was able to insert a new idea into the story and finish it. I haven't solved the second one because the story has a major external influence that's out of my control.

Thank God that I've only had the dead-end problem twice. I sure hope I never run into this trap in the future!

Colin

[DVDs]

Right off hand I can think of L.I.E....

L.I.E.

Man, that is a VERY creepy movie made in 2000 about a heavy-duty pedophile played by Brian Cox, and Paul Dano is a young teen he's trying to seduce. I saw it on HBO when I was 15, and it was disturbing. I had nightmares about it for a while after I saw it. Paul Dano played the teen in Little Miss Sunshine. He was 23 when he made LMS, so he was about 17 in L.I.E. but looks a lot younger (he sure looks a lot younger than 23 in LMS).

I don't think that the Brian Cox pedophile character in L.I.E. was written or played as a human being who deserved respect and understanding. He wasn't like I think of pedophiles, at least the ones who get the headlines by grabbing kids off the street. Brian Cox was so excellent in the role of a pedophile who attracted kids with drugs and booze and sex, and once he'd snared them used them to bring other kids in, then he intimidated them to keep them from stopping or telling. All the kids he was having sex with were from dysfunctional families. I wonder if there's a relationship between kids attracted to pedophiles and coming from dysfunctional families.

Anyway, L.I.E. is so realistic, and so scary, that while I was watching it I wanted to stop watching but didn't want to stop watching, all at the same time. I think what made it more scary for me is that I was alone in the house and it was at night. I don't like movies that are scary, like horror movies and slasher movies, so I don't watch them. But L.I.E. was scary in a different way, much more personal and realistic since it was about kids my age being preyed upon by this creepy guy. I guess I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure. One thing I'm positive about is that I'll never watch it again, ever. Even now thinking and writing about it creeps me out.

Colin

[Login disappears while on AD]

OK, I have a clue. I didn't have a chance to clear my AD cookies, I'd just posted the post immediately above this one. I went back out to the forum home page using my Back button. It showed that I wasn't logged in. I went to this forum page using my Forward button, and it showed that I was logged in. I did a refresh and it still showed that I was logged in. I went back out to the forum home page using my Back button and it showed that I wasn't logged in. I did a refresh and it then showed that I was logged in. I went back out to the forum home page and it again showed that I wasn't logged in. Could that "wasn't logged in" state become sticky and leave me logged out when I go to some other page?

I don't have time to do a test right now, I have to help my dad with something. I'll try it later, after we get back from dinner.

Colin

[Login disappears while on AD]

Colin,

Try clearing just the cookies for AD, see if that helps, and let us know, please.

I haven't had that happen at AD or other forums that use the same forum software. However, I have had it happen at forums that use other software before.

~Blue

OK, I'll give that a try and let you know if it still happens. If you don't get a post from me on this topic within a couple of weeks, assume that it stopped; we're approaching first semester finals week and I'm up to my armpits in studying and finishing projects and snap quizzes and tests (why, oh why, do we still have to have tests this close to finals? IDK!), so I probably won't be visiting forums as much as usual. I'll only post if it happens again after clearing AD cookies.

Colin

[School 'prefect' in story?]

J.K. Rowling touches on it several times in the Potter books, and I can tell you from an American perspective, it does kinda make us do a double-take. "Head what?"

The kids in the various houses at Hogwarts are always being chastised by various "head boys" here and there, and it seems to be taken pretty seriously there. Bizarre as the concept may be, it hasn't stopped Rowling from selling a few hundred million books.

Begs the question: does he give or receive?

Back on topic, in my town the intermediate schools (grades 6 through 8) have hall monitors who are students, usually 8th graders. Elementary schools and high schools do not have hall monitors.

Colin

[Fighting Writer's Block]

...From what I've read, the two major causes of Writer's Block are:

a) Outside influences make it difficult to produce the concentration required for writing.

b) The story just doesn't want to continue. This is often because the writer is trying to make the characters do something illogical or out of character. Once this is recognised and addressed, the story starts flowing again...

I think there's a third major cause of Writer's Block, at least there is for me. I'll be writing a story, and if it's a long story I might have a lot of chapters written (and posted, even), and suddenly I find that I've written myself into a dead end. There's no way to extricate the story from where it is, and it's obviously not finished, but I don't have a clue about how to get it re-started. This has happened to me twice. Once I solved the problem by seeing something on TV that gave me an inspiration. The second time, well, I'm still there, with a lot of external reasons, 'nuff said!

Colin

[Login disappears while on AD]

I've never noticed this myself. Is this in the same browser window? And which browser are you using?

I mostly use IE 7 (it's faster on my PC than Firefox and I go to a lot of sites that use ActiveX controls), but I've tried Firefox and it happens using it as well. Could my ISP be doing some sort of instant disconnect that's causing AD to think I've disconnected and time me out?

Colin

[Login disappears while on AD]

I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but what the heck, I'm here and it just happened to me so here's where I'll post this.

I'll log in to AD, and even make posts (so I KNOW I'm logged in), I'll go to another AD forum (like I'll start in "News and Views" then go to "Blue's Closet" and I'll notice that I'm not logged in any more. This sometimes happens within a few minutes, like maybe 5 or 10. It seems strange, that doesn't happen to me on Codey's World or GA. Any technical reason this is happening?

Colin

[Bush administration says we're not allowed to know how old the Grand Canyon is.]

Someone's been interfering with their braincell again haven't they?

Come on, Des, you know that couldn't happen! For interference to work there has to be at least one braincell, and there are none, nothing, zero, zilch, nada, ничего!

Colin

[Gays and Lesbians Gain New Rights in California]

There was an article in the December 29 issue of the San Francisco Chronicle that describes how the state is supporting gays and lesbians with 8 new laws that take effect on January 1, 2007. One of the laws requires couples of any sex who are registered domestic partners to file their state income tax as married filing jointly or married filing separately. The married filing jointly has big tax advantages, the same as for married couples. Married filing separately is actually not a good choice, because according to my dad taxes are higher for people filing this way than if the two filed as married filing jointly or even if each filed as single. But to file as single they'd have to terminate their domestic partnership registration. The other laws that go into effect give most of the rights of married couples to registered domestic partners.

The only things missing now are the right to commit to each other in a marriage ceremony, and sexual orientation protection by businesss and professions. The California Supreme Court has agreed to review whether gay marriage is protected in the California Constitution. A bill has been introduced to update the Business and Professional Code to add sexual orientation protection.

You can read the article here. You don't have to register to read stories on the SF Chronicle web site.

California Family Code 297 defines the domestic partnership law. "Domestic partners are two adults who have chosen to share one another's lives in an intimate and committed relationship of mutual caring... Both persons have to be at least 18 years of age."

You can read California Family Code section 297 here.

California is a very welcoming place for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender residents. Cool!

Colin

[Happy New Year]

Here's a New Years Eve and New Years Day greeting from the Golden State of California and the beautiful Bay Area to everyone on Awesome Dude!

Have a totally GREAT 2007!

Colin

[Telemarketers]

James, that's is hilarious. Curb service with twinks.

For what it's worth, we don't have Mormons come to the door here though. We only get elderly female Witnesses. It's strange that they haven't realized I'm just not about to find God that way, despite the 1/2 dozen fresh eggs they bring weekly. There really IS some benefit to being polite. :)

The Witnesses bring you eggs?? That is wonderful! At my house they are mid-20's looking guys all dressed up in dark suits with white shirts and ties, carrying bibles. When I answer the door and it's a group of them (always at least 2 but usually 3 guys), in a quiet voice I tell them that I'm Jesus incarnate and that I'm very busy and please come back next century, then I bless them and close the door. They go away.

They still haven't come up with a comeback, which is funny because I started saying that last year (2005) after we got back from our family summer vacation to L.A. and my granddad told me that's what he says. I'm pretty sure their training includes how to respond to just about anything people say to them.

Colin

[Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays!]

To everyone on Awesomedude,

M E R R Y

C H R I S T M A S

A N D

H A P P Y

N E W

Y E A R !

Colin

[If These Don't Make You Smile]

They all made me . Most of them made me .

Colin