colinian
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Posts posted by colinian
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OK, back on topic!
A year ago when I was a junior in HS, about a week before Christmas break, we were given an assignment to write a story of at least 5,000 words to go with the title "A Christmas Story". I mean, that's pretty boring, kinda like "What I Did on My Vacation". So I came up with the idea to write about a kid whose name was Will Christmas and how he was hassled about his name and how that impacted his life. It didn't have anything to do with the Christmas holiday, so I was a little worried that my teacher would have a problem with it.
I started writing but part way through I couldn't figure out how it should end. I didn't like what I'd outlined for the ending but I couldn't figure out how to fix it. I complained to my mom (she's a writer), and she said that I had writer's block, and that's something that goes with the territory. She had some tips about how she overcomes it, but they didn't work for me. The rest of the kids in my creative writing class were having trouble finishing by the Friday before the break, so the teacher relented and said we could turn it in on January 3 when we returned to school.
During Christmas break I saw a special on HBO about kids who have Tourette Syndrome, a genetic condition that causes kids to have "tics" where they blink continuously or jerk their bodies or make faces, or verbalizations where they say words, sometimes swear words, at any time, like in class. They can't control these tics or verbalizations, it's like not being able to keep from sneezing or yawning. It was so sad for these kids, they had such a tough life and were hassled in school by other kids and often by their teachers, and they all seemed like really nice kids. I got kind of emotional while I watched the show, so afterward I searched for Tourette Syndrome on the Internet and found the TS Association web site and learned more about it and read the expanded stories about some of the kids in the HBO special.
As a result, I changed my story to have Will begin showing TS symptoms when he was in the 3rd grade. I wrote almost 10,000 words and was OK with how I ended the story. I turned it in, and when the teacher handed it back she'd given me an A+.
Will was a character who I really liked, but like DesDownunder asked in the first post here, I'd come to a dead-end, both with the character and the story. What I needed was inspiration, and by accident watching a program on TV is what gave me that inspiration. That's one of the things my mom suggested, just put the story on the shelf and keep it in mind as you go through the next few days or weeks. Of course, in this case I had a time constraint (2 weeks) because I had to turn in the story assignment for my class. Even without time constraints, I've found the same technique has helped me with other stories.
Colin
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Great article! Thanks for posting it, TR.
Colin
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Hey, Rick,
NOTICE!
Spoilers ahead. If you haven't read Sky's the Limit chapter 5, stop reading this post IMMEDIATELY and go read the chapter.
If you have read chapter 5, scroll on down...
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Whoa! You did the right thing in chapter 5 and didn't let Jonah or Sky get hurt. Damn, I was scared about what was going to happen, but you solved their problem and told us something important about Jonah that we didn't know, he's a real expert in Kendo karate. You gave us a hint in chapter 1, but you sure fleshed it out in chapter 5! That was some serious shit that was going down, but I was smiling all the time I was reading, thinking "Go, Jonah, smash those God damned assholes!"
The ending, with Sky head over heals in love and Jonah not knowing what he feels is great. Leaves lots of room for further exploration.
I'll be watching for chapter 6!
Colin
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That's so cute colin.
I walk in to my boyfriend and say, "Hi honey I'm homo."
To which he replies, "When's dinner?"
I LMAO
when I read what your BF says when you walk in.Colin
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This is a welcome change from when I was your age Colin. The only time I ever saw the word homosexual in the papers, it was used to describe several of the seventies most notorious serial killers.
JS
JS, here's an example from Saturday's Contra Costa Times. The article is on page A3 (that's the main section of the paper, and page A3 is the local news page), and is headlined Popular gay bar thrives with diverse clientele. The on-line article doesn't include the large pix of two middle-age looking guys dancing that was above the article titled "A Different Kind of Coming Out Party" above the pix.
I think it's very cool that my local newspaper (circulation 195,980) seems very gay-friendly.
Colin
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A friend sent this to me. It's a funny list of attributes a Friend and a Boyfriend would each have.
FRIENDS: Never ask for food.
BOYFRIENDS: Are the reason you have no food.
FRIENDS: Will say "hello".
BOYFRIENDS: Will give you a big hug and a kiss.
FRIENDS: Call your parents Mr. and Mrs.
BOYFRIENDS: Call your parents mom and dad.
FRIENDS: Have never seen you cry.
BOYFRIENDS: Cry with you.
FRIENDS: Will eat at your dinner table and leave.
BOYFRIENDS: Will spend hours there, talking, laughing and just being together.
FRIENDS: Borrow your stuff for a few days then give it back.
BOYFRIENDS: Keep your stuff so long they forget it's yours.
FRIENDS: Know a few things about you.
BOYFRIENDS: Could write a book with direct quotes from you.
FRIENDS: Will leave you behind if that's what the crowd is doing.
BOYFRIENDS: Will stick with you then take you somewhere that's a lot more fun.
FRIENDS: Would knock on your door.
BOYFRIENDS: Will walk right in and say, "I'm home!"
FRIENDS: Are for a while.
BOYFRIENDS: Are for life.
FRIENDS: Will ignore this.
BOYFRIENDS: Will forward this.
Colin
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C'mon guys, I really need some feedback here! Good, bad, ugly, let me know. Please, huh, pretty please?
Thanks,
Rick D.
Rick,
Sky's the Limit is a great story!
I have it bookmarked and check back regularly to see if you've added a new chapter. Your two boys are great, I'd like to be their friend! And you've done a good job defining Jonah's dad, too.WARNING: Spoilers ahead! If you haven't read all 4 chapters of Sky's the Limit STOP HERE!
I'm glad we finally met Sky's dad. I'm sure there's going to be a lot more about both dads in future chapters.
Adam and Steve, the two adult gay guys they met on the beach and went back to their house, shouldn't have let them drink beer! These kids are only 15 and 16. It also shows that kids my age sometimes aren't thinking clearly: 1) They shouldn't have gone to Adam and Steve's house, bad move! 2) They shouldn't have had any beer, especially Jonah who'd never had any alcoholic drink before.
Your cliff-hanger at the end of chapter 4 has me all worried that you're going to have either Sky or Jonah or both badly injured. PLEASE don't! I like those two guys, and I don't want them hurt! I know it can't be majorly serious because of the cliff-hanger beginning of chapter 1, but I don't like bad things to happen to characters I really like. And jeez, you really like those cliff-hangers, don't you, Rick!
So, stop messing around posting on AD and GA and get more chapters of Sky's the Limit written and available for us to read!!!
Colin
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...The sad part is that if it were anyone but the vp's daughter, no one would give two hoots in hell about it.
I applaud Mary Cheney and Heather Poe for having the courage to start a family. I hope their relationship lasts a lifetime and that they will provide a stable and loving home to their child.
Just my two cents worth.
My local paper, the Contra Costa Times, didn't carry the story. They have a tendency to only print stories about gay people that are newsworthy and positive.
A short story in the Los Angeles Times had the headline Cheney daughter, partner expecting and read:
IMO, if it was considered news, the story should have read like the one in the L.A. Times.Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, is pregnant, the Washington Post reported. The paper said that Cheney, 37, and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, were expecting the baby in late spring. Poe, 45, a former park ranger, is renovating their Great Falls home.Colin
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Gay Rights Group Slams Cheney After Announcement of Daughter's Pregnancy
Family Pride: VP Has Done 'Irreparable Harm' to Gay Community
Dec. 6, 2005 ? STATEMENT BY JENNIFER CHRISLER OF FAMILY PRIDE:
The front page of the Washington Post's Web site announced today that Mary Cheney, Vice President Dick Cheney's gay daughter, is pregnant. Mary and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are described as "ecstatic" about the arrival of their first child, due in late spring.
The news of Mary Cheney's pregnancy exemplifies, once again, how the best interests of children are denied when lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens are treated unfairly and accorded different and unequal rights and responsibilities than other parents. As Mary and Heather enter into the life-changing roles of parents, they will quickly face the reality that no matter how loved their child will be ? by its mothers and its grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins and close family-friends ? he or she will never have the same protections that other children born to heterosexual couples enjoy. Mary and Heather currently live in Virginia. Unless they move to a handful of less restrictive states, Heather will never be able to have a legal relationship with her child.
The tragedy here is that this climate of hostility toward the LGBT community has only worsened during the administration of which Vice President Cheney ? or Grandfather Cheney in this context ? has been second-in-command. Vice President Cheney has been complicit in the largest full-scale attack on the LGBT community in modern history. He, his president, and his political party, have repeatedly targeted the LGBT community and LGBT families for scapegoating as part of their calculated political strategy and have attacked at all levels the rights and protections his own daughter will need to ensure a strong, healthy, legally protected family.
Grandfather Cheney will no doubt face a lifetime of sleepless nights as he reflects on the irreparable harm he and his administration have done to the millions of American gay and lesbian parents and their children.
Copyright ? 2006 ABCNews Internet Ventures
Colin
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I use RegSupreme from Macecraft Software (www.macecraft.com/regsupreme/). It's only $12.95 (download), and there's a full-featured 30-day trial you can download to see if you like it. It will do a backup before scanning your registry, and I found it does a great job of getting rid of the garbage that can accumulate in the registry. You run it, let it clean, then run it again, and continue to do so until it doesn't find anything else. For a really screwed up registry it might take 3 or 4 or even 5 passes.
I've never had it crash a PC, and I've used it on friends' PCs that are really screwed up.
Oh, and I find that it speeds up my PC, so I tend to run it about once every month or two.
They have a pro version, it's $16.95. My dad uses it and the tech guys at his company do also, but for me the regular version is good enough.
Colin
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...crank out the chapters faster!
Hey, Elecivil, can I add my vote in favor of Pacman's last comment? Pleeeeeeeeeeease don't keep us frustrated for weeks and weeks and weeks while we wait for our next Laika fix!
Colin
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I like to edit, and have done some for one writer. I divide editing into a several separate areas.
First:
Spelling, grammar, tense, person, word usage, punctuation.
I'm brutal about bad word usage ("their" instead of "they're" for example), mixed person, spelling (but see below), tense, and punctuation have to be fixed. A story filled with mistakes becomes irritating to read. Grammar is a bit different. In dialog and first-person narration, grammar needs to be flexible so people, especially kids, sound real. Word usage and spelling have to be flexible; use of slang, dialect, IM abbreviations, "creative spelling" ('cuz for because, "anyways") may be OK in dialog and first-person narration if not overdone.
Second:
Plot consistency.
Things like mixing up or changing characters' names, driving from Atlanta to Jacksonville in 30 minutes, and other inconsistencies need to be identified.
Third:
Plot and characters.
It's not the editor's story, it's the author's story. Editors can point out what they think is wrong with the plot or characters, but it's up to the author to accept or ignore the suggestions.
These are my opinions. Other editors may take a different approach, and that's great. Just like each author is unique, each editor is unique.
Did this help?
Colin
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Thanks everyone! I really appreciate the Happy Birthday wishes.
Colin
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A father passing by his son's bedroom was astonished to see the bed nicely made up and everything neat and tidy. Then he saw an envelope propped up prominently on the pillow. It was addressed, "Dad". With the worst premonition, he opened the envelope and read the letter with trembling hands:
Dear Dad,
It is with great regret and sorrow that I'm writing you. I had to move in with my new friend because I wanted to avoid a scene with you and Mom. I've been finding real passion with John...he is so nice. I knew you would not approve of him because of all his piercings, tattoos, tight motorcycle clothes...and because he is so much older than I am. John says that we are going to be very happy. He owns a trailer in the woods and has a stack of firewood - enough for the whole winter.
John has opened my eyes to the fact that marijuana doesn't really hurt anyone. We'll be growing it and trading it with the other people in the commune for all the cocaine and ecstasy we want. In the meantime, we'll pray that science will find a cure for herpes so John can get better; he sure deserves it! Don't worry Dad, I'm 15 years old now and I know how to take care of myself. Someday, I'm sure we'll be back to visit.
Your son, Chad
P.S. Dad, none of the above is true. I'm over at Tommy's house. I just wanted to remind you that there are other things in life than the report card that's in my desk drawer.
Jeez, if I wrote this and sent it to my dad I'd either be locked in my room for the rest of what would be my drastically shortened natural life, or I'd have to lie to him and tell him that it was just a project in my Communications Studies class and hope he believed me!
It is very funny. Thanks for sharing! I copied and printed it and showed it to my dad, and he LHAO! I asked him what he'd think if he'd gotten that from me. He just gave me one of those "Dad looks"!
Colin
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Yeah, that's her -- Shirley. You know, I generally am against violence against even bad people, but I think I'll make an exception for her. Shirley deserves to burn in the deepst pits of sulfur someday. Good god, what a nut!
Here's what I'd tell them:
The devil loves and preserves people who hate. You, Fred Phelps Roper and Shirley Phelps Roper, and all of your vile anti-Christ anti-Christian followers, are pawns of the devil, and will burn in hell for eternity. REPENT!
Colin
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The Saturday, November 11th Pearls Before Swine comic strip is fully LOL funny! And IMO can't be interpreted any way as other than gay! My cousin Chris agrees with me. When I read it this morning I almost wet my pants I was laughing so hard!
Because it's copyrighted, here's the link to see this strip:
http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/archiv...s-20061111.html
Colin
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The struggle of two gay teens who endured hazing at the hands of classmates -- and were arrested for it -- and who still had the courage to speak out and fight for lasting change is detailed in "We Belong." Contest, enter your vote!
Great video. I voted for it, but it's in 3rd place, so more votes are needed!
I'm so glad I live in an area, and go to a HS school, in a HS district, that will not tolerate discrimination, or bullying, or bashing, for any reason -- including sexual orientation. And it works. So what C.J. says at the end of the video, about homophobia being something that's learned, and that can be unlearned by teaching acceptance, is right on. I know, because it works where I go to school.
Colin
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This election is nothing short of a political earthquake. We'll be feeling the aftershocks for weeks, months and years ahead.
As I'm typing Bush is holding a press conference announcing that the Donald Rumsfeld, the embattled SecDef, is stepping down.
Former CIA Chief Robert M. Gates will be nominated for the position of Defense Secretary by Bush. The story is here.
Of course, not everything was positive yesterday. Anti-gay marriage ammendments, some of which also eliminated state domestic partner laws, were passed in a number of states; only Arizona defeated the anty-gay marriage referendum on their ballot. More details are here.
Colin
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Getting rid of Norton is a pain but not impossible . You will need to download their removal tool which is difficult to find. Try this link which seems to be current at the moment:
http://service1.symantec.com/SUPPORT/tsgen...v=&osv_lvl=
NOTE: the above link will expand when you paste it so don't worry.
Copy and paste it into you browser. When the page loads follow the instructions for your operating system and version, download and execute the appropriate file(s). One trick is to disable Norton before using these tools.
I found I had to run the removal tool seven, Yes, 7 times before Norton finally was off my system.
Isn't computing fun?
When I was helping Arnold (my friend with the NAV problems) here's what happened. He was running NAV 2005. When he had to pay for the next year, he decided to upgrade to NAV 2006 at the same time His mom took care of the credit card stuff, and he downloaded NAV 2006. There was nothing that told him to uninstall NAV 2005. He did the install, and it failed near the end. He phoned Symantec and they had him step through a bunch of stuff that didn't uninstall NAV and made a WinXP restart take about 5 minutes. That's when he phoned me. When I got there we tried a normal uninstall, using the Start menu item in the Norton folder. The uninstall crashed after about 10 minutes. We downloaded the removal tool, and it wouldn't run, with an error message about the installation was corrupt and the rmoval tool could not continue. We phoned Symantec and they went though a whole bunch of steps, none of which worked. That's when I told Arnold that we should just delete the files and folders (we got the list of files and folders from the Symantec web site) and clean up the registry.
Hi Colinian,see my post above. about getting rid of Norton too.
I must say how wonderful it is to see (in you signature panel) that you have stated that to be tolerated is not enough. Tolerance is a tool of the devil. Acceptance is the freedom to be who we are. Good for you!
Thanks!
Colin
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Mac is a pain but there's now an actual Uninstall tool which makes it a snap. No idea on a PC.
It can be a horrible PITA. The big problem is when the Norton AV uninstaller won't uninstall. Symantec recommends that you reinstall NAV and then uninstall it. A friend of mind was having NAV take over his PC, so we tried to uninstall it and nogo. We tried the install-then-uninstall and nogo. We followed Symantec's manual uninstall instructions and nogo. We finally went into safe mode and manually deleted all of the NAV and Symantec folders. But we still had all the NAV crap in the registry. I downloaded MaceCraft RegSupreme (it has a full-featured free trial period) to clean out the registry (it took 4 passes) and the PC had no NAV/Symantec remnants and had no performance problems in Windows XP. He downloaded the free version of AVG and has been using it ever since. That was about 6 months ago.
Colin
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Wanda Sykes is her name.
Thanks, WBM!
Colin
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Since I first read the article on the CC Times web site, they've added an audio slideshow with the two women describing how they intended to adopt one child and ended up adopting three.
It's a great story, and they mention how they want to marry but cannot (yet!) in California.Here's the link to the story: Girl gets adoptive mom's kidney; click on the link to the Audio Slideshow under the photo. This is something they couldn't put in the printed newspaper!
Colin
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Very nice. Touching, and a bit of a miracle. They don't say anywhere the parents are a lesbian couple though (unless I'm blind as a bat and missed it), not that that makes any difference.
The problem with most newspaper web sites (at least the San Francisco Chronicle and the Contra Costa Times web sites) is that they don't often include photos. There were four photos (one in color on the front page of the paper) with the printed article that didn't get onto the web site. The caption on one of them shows the two women with their three adopted kids. Here's the caption under this photo:
KIM RUIZ, left, known in the family as Mommy, and Terri Buckman, knows as Mama, adopted Sasha, on Ruiz's lap, Gillian and Andre from a Russian orphanage. Ruiz gave Gillian, center, a kidney.The only reference in the article is where it says: "We've been so accepted as an untraditional family with three young ones. They don't even know us."
However, the word "lesbian" doesn't appear anywhere in the article. That doesn't bother me. In fact, I think it's great. The article treats Kim and Terri just like any other couple with three adopted kids, as a normal couple. That, IMO, is so cool. That, IMO, is acceptance.
Colin
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We hear so many negative stories about GBLT people -- or negative things that are happening to them -- in the press these days, it's nice to read something that's 100% positive.
There's a story in today's Contra Costa Times about a lesbian couple in Clayton, California (not far from where I live) who adopted a little girl who only had one kidney at birth. Last year at Christmas her kidney failed. The two women were checked for compatibility, with little expectation either would be a match. One of the two mom's not only was a match, she was an excellent match. The transplant went well, and the story looks back on the adoption, transplant, and how the little girl and her family are doing. In particular, the story describes the outpouring of support from the people in Clayton, which shows that there are communities in the U.S. that don't care about people's orientation!
Here's the link to the story: Girl gets adoptive mom's kidney
Colin
Scan to donate
Sky's the Limit - Chapter 6
in Readers Rule!
Posted
Another great chapter. Not a lot of action, but a lot of tenderness. We also learned more about both dads. And the relationship between Jonah and Sky has developed to a new level. Nice to have a breather after chapter 5!
Colin