Cole Parker

A humble 'coon. The world trembles. C

So THAT'S why I saw all those little buttery footprints the last time I visited your b/f!C

[Man, you're asking tough questions! I guess to answer that one, I'd say the science is more rigorous and tested if correcting deafness at the embryo level. Changing body types is still in its trial stages. So, the chances for screw ups are greater doing the one than the other. A physician is charged to do no harm. So I'd approve the first, disapprove the second. You can see a real world difference between the two, can you not? C

Camy: Here's a link to a Consumers' Report article on the two types. It has a link within it that talks about plasma sets, and there's a link within that article talking about lcd sets. It probably doesn't have all the info you want, but is a place to start. C http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/electro...1&HBX_PK=pi

Where's a good constitutional lawyer when you need one? C

Steven, I hope you're right! And I thought the same thing, that the Court could void the voters will if it violated the constitution. Of course, this is a vote to change the constitution, and so is a little different. But it still seems to me that your point is valid, and I can remember not too long ago an inititiative that was approved by the voters being thrown out by the Court for the reason you gave. We'll have to see. I don't know enough. A frequent failing of mine. C

James, I do agree with you. Characters should have some depth, and not everyone should be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. However, if I have my choice in the matter, I'd rather my protagonists be cute than ugly. C

Actually, I did answer that, with my opinion. Fixing deformities and abnormalites, if it can be done safely, is certainly something that everyone would agree should be done. Well, not everyone. Some deaf parents who are about to have a deaf child want the child to be deaf. I personally think that would be tragic if science can intervene and make the child able to hear, but I don't claim to know the absolute right or wrong of it. I do think if you want your daughter to be an ice skater for personal reasons and so genetically manipulate her cells when she's at that stage, that's wrong. Again, my opinion. C

Because he may want to be a tight end, and that body you chose for him doesn't really work against a 220 pound defensive end with a mean streak. Or perhaps because she turns out to be a girl who'd rather be a princess that a hundred meter sprinter. The science is good, but not perfect. They're real people. We can guide them, but we have no right to live their lives for them or predetermine what their lives and interests will be. C

Ah, James. James, James, James. Where is your romantic spirit? You would want us to write our protagonists with itchy balls, bad breath and insecurity issues? You'd like them to trip when running, run when they should stand fast, and never, ever. falter in the face of adversity? You want them to work a nine to five job, cavil in front of their boss and skip lunch if they think that'll curry favor with their superiors? You want them to have a wart on their nose and get a pimple on their chin just prior to their first date? You want them to be human. But aren't we already that? Do we really want to read about some schmoo who has the same faults we do? Wouldn't we rather read about some beguilingly handsome young man who is clever and resourceful and can think his way out of jams that would have us flummoxed, win the fair object of his dreams through his ineffable derring-do, and save the world while doing so? I would. I already inhabit the world of ordinary people accomplishing mundane tasks in prosaic ways. Isn't that why we write, so we can imagine feats we can't really accomplish ourselves? Isn't there incalcuable pleasure in doing so? I can see plain people by going to the coffee shop. I can have insipid conversations with the woman who sits next to me on the bus. I can select a magazine when I sit for an hour past the time my doctor scheduled my appointment for a prostate prod and read about someone in Malasia who trains lemurs to fetch only ripe bananas for her breakfast and be bored out of my skull. I kind of like the stereotypes your presented. I like the cute kid of fiction who has clever repartee and a winsome way about him more the kid next door who plays his rap or heavy metal too loudly and chirps his tires and toots his horn at six thirty in the morning just for the devilment of it and gives me the finger when I complain. I like the heroes who fill the stories we read. I like them better that the real people I meet, for the most part. You probaby know a better breed of cat than I do. C

Is there something wrong with any of that? Looks fine to me. I'd even suggest you wrote it. Looks exactly like your writing. Oops. I meant: Looks exactly like you're writing. You know, it is difficult to write wrong. C

Oh, I certainly agree. Powerful and moving writing. If I had a complaint, it was the figure of one story was so diminished, so changed, in the second. I never said that it wasn't realistic. In fact, what happened here is probably more likely than his spirit could remain undaunted after his tragedy. C

To me, it was depressing because of the way Robert treated his child, after having been treated poorly by his own father. I really liked Robert and felt achingly for him when Sven died. I was shocked to find how kaolinitic his feet were in the later story, to find he'd treated his own child as abysmally as he'd been treated. I was saddened to learn the figure I'd held in such esteem was so terribly human after all, and disturbed that he didn't learn some lesson from his own childhood that would have led him to do better with his own son. As much as The Farmhand lifted my spirits in that Robert overcame so much and perservered, and even when he was shattered by his great loss he was able to soldier on, it was depressing to see how he couldn't give some of that spirit back to his child, some of the love he had in abundance. His reason for not doing so, to me, was empty of the love and feelings he'd been shown to have in the former story. Just my take on it, of course. Others could have a completely differnt read on it and still be correct. I tend to feel for the child in most instances, and was dissappointed a man I so admired failed in the one responsibilty that all fathers share. C

If coercion is forcing someone's will on someone else, then tampering with genes in utero is certainly coercion. This is a terribly complex issue. It is so easy to imagine dangers to the human race resulting from these techniques. And what we're discussing here is doing so very often for reasons that are, for the most part, frivolous. You want your child to have blue eyes and blond hair, and to feel the same way about things that you do? Just tweak this gene and nudge that one, and there you be. $25,000 please, and the waiting room is just around the corner; she'll be out in a few moments. I don't think we want a race of children all looking alike, all conforming to some present-day model of lovliness, all thinking the same thoughts because those are considered correct these days. Is todays PC gene, on sale through Thursday, going to be a the same exemplar in five years as it is today? I just don't think we should be tinkering with future people because Father Knows Best. Are we really arrogant enough to believe we have the right and the inspiration and the knowledge to do that and so better mankind and our child? Yes, if there are deformities that can be corrected or prevented in the womb, it is logical to do so. Tampering with the sexuality of an unborn child is stretching the limits, to me. Trying to create Mozarts as a way of improving all our lives doesn't seem right, and seems to be circumscribing the rights of the child. I don't believe we have this right. The child should be free from this sort of medical interference. Life, the world, everything in nature is comlex, and we don't know enough and don't agree on enough to play this game. We don't own our children to the extent that we should be making these choices for them. C

That's too bad, Trab, because The Farmhand was a wonderful piece of writing and storytelling, one of the best I've seen on the net. It's too bad because some of the drama of it has been stripped away if you've read The Redemtption first. I thought the latter was also well written, but I have to agree with Fun. It didn't seem to say much, and what it did say was somewhat depressing. Perhaps it was just that after The Farmhand, I was eagerly expecting more of the same. It was still great writing. I just would have loved to see the sparkle of it's predecessor repeated. Only my opinion, of course. Others here have said it was marvelous, and I won't argue at all about that. C

The LA Times this morning reported that enough petition signatures have been collected to allow the measure of gay marriages to go on the upcoming ballot. It will be an issue to amend the California Constitution to ban marriage between two same-sex people. They also stated that the mood of the electorate has changed since this issue was voted on in Proposition 22 amost a decade ago. Then, the measure banning gay marriage collected 60% of the vote. Polls taken recently have revealed that that measure only carries about 54% favorability now. However, the other side doesn't get 46% of the vote. Support for gay marriage only has 40% of the vote, leaving 6% either undecided or unwilling to answer the poll question. This is very sad news. It took long struggles for women and blacks to become full citizens in this country in the early and middle parts of last century. Is anyone surprised that it appears it will be the same for gays? C

And 'wellbeing' is so, so subjective. Many on the edges of rationality would only to grant that blessing to people whose views of a happy life run parallel to their own. Put in the words of an earlier generation, those whose views are in lockstep with their own. One of the issues that takes so much thought today, now that we are gaining medical capabilities we've never had before, is to decide how to use them. Like so many other issues today, there will be wide divergence on the answers. We're already seeing that with stem cell research. C

And more to the point, where's the sign up list posted? C

I basically agree with you, Pecman. I was really making a different point. Yes, if you ignore rules of grammar and voice and continuity and basic stuff like that, you can end up with such a mish-mash that no one will like it. I guess I didn't make myself clear enough, because what I meant was, you can't let yourself get bogged down by trying to comply with all the rules that have been floating around here the past few days. I expect the writers here to know and follow the basic rules of writing in Engish. They do, or they wouldn't be posting here. That wasn't what I was saying, though I probably didn't emphasize it. I was more talking about the rules regarding cliches, or writing a gay story. You have to be a terribly good writer to break the basic rules. I can think of one book that sticks in my mind as an example of that being successfully done. Joseph Heller, in Catch-22, broke any and all existing rules about time-line writing. That book seemed to have been written as a normal story, and then he dropped the chapters while walking down stairs, picked them up entirely unsorted and shipped them off to the publsiher. So there was no time continuity at all, and yet the story worked. Riotously funny, too. I don't think many people could get away with that. C

I'm so glad to see you say that, Trab. We keep seeing threads here dealing with the rules that have to be followed to write anything that's good. They seem to focus on don'ts rather than do's, and if we were to allow them great moment, I think what they'd basically do is stymie our creativity. Your brief stab at following the rules is excellent in showing the effect of writing by the rules. It was a terrible piece of wriitng. It had nothing in it to engage the reader. We didn't care about this boy, or the events, and weren't in the least affected by his demise. The story was nothing. And as you say, it followed the rules. I don't think creativity, I don't think great writing, is about following rules. I think they can get in the way of writing an arresting, a gripping story. If we write trying to following them, if we check every sentence as we write it to see that we're not breaking some rule, I can't imagine ever getting anything down on paper. And if we do, it may very well read like the drab piece of boring tripe that inspired this. And before everyone jumps down my throat--Pec, are you out there?--I realize that certain conventions should in the main be followed, that there are indeed don'ts that are appropriate to follow and do's that improve ones writing. But I also don't think we can concentrate on these things while trying to create a story. I think doing so limits our creativity. Editing, rehashing, reviewing, critiquing, those are the places to discover if some rule was broken that shouldnt' have been, that something has to be fixed, and in fixing it, you just happen to be find you're now in compliance with some rule. But, even then, if the story works better leaving the rule broken, then I say, leave it broken. At the very least you'll be doing it consciously, and it'll be your decision. Cole

Perhaps I'm missing something here, but I thought the California Supreme Court made a legal ruling, not a popular judgment. They ruled that their interprataton of the state's constitution was the equal protection clause would be violated by not allowing gays to marry. This seems to be something that other states cannot effect. It has nothing to do with them, from the standpoint of what is legal in California. So staying this decision makes no sense in that context. C

Trab, I like what you say, but feel some pessimism that it will occur. Pulling together for common goals is obviously a good thing. Where we have a problem is defining common goals. We have such divisive issues today that consensus, or even compromise, seems impossible. Look at what faces us as a nation (and you too, up in the wilds of Canada.) How does one compromise on abortion? You vote to abolish it, or condone it, and there doesn't seem to be much middle ground available, no common goal that both sides will accept. Here, many voices say our borders should be closed entirely; only a few should be able to get in, they should be rigorously screeened, and we should deny entry for the masses even if there is a need for their work. Others say we need these workers to harvest our crops; without them, tons of food rots in the fields. We have a faction that passionately proclaims that our right to have guns is a necessary element of protecting our freedoms, while just as vociferous a group says crime and domestic terrorism from street gangs would be significantly quieted by eliminating guns in the population. Again, compromise doesn't interest either side in the debate. Many people feel national health care programs are socialistic, and socialism has proved to be a flawed system and has failed wherever it's been tried, and it shouldn't be started here even for this purpose; the advocates of universal heath care scream that you're throwing away people if you fail to allow them and their kids access to heath care whether or not they can pay for it, and how can we call ourselves a civilized country if we do that? Again, neither side wants to seek compromise. Yes, we all pulled together to defeat the Nazis. Maybe that's what it takes, an issue so major that we don't think about these other things, but concentrate on the one major goal ahead of us. That does leave the other problems lingering, however. We haven't solved them, just set them aside from when we can get back to them. It's very difficult these days for a large majority of our people to agree on much, and certainly not on issues that involve religion or politics or even race and money. Finding a charismatic politician who can lead us to solutions to these problems that will be accepted by most of the citizenry seems terribly unlikely to me. Which of course is very unfortunate. But I understand your disgust with politicians. Here, they say what they say more to appeal to the crowd they're talking to than to express what they really feel. They're afraid to do that because it will turn off some people who might vote for them otherwise. Their campaign promises are to curry votes, not to provide truth. And that's where they shame themselves, and us for believing them. Sorry. Guess I'm in a pessimistic mood today. C

Damn! You guys just shot down all the plot lines I was considering. Well, maybe not. C

Did you intended to say 'NATIONALISTIC' rather than racist? But I certailny agree with your point. And Trab's. If I were to book a vacation in, say, Romainia, I'd be sure to check that English was spoken by the staff, and my English wouldn't prevent me from enjoying the facility and activies. But if I booked through an agency, the literature they provided was in English, and they were recommending the site, I might even forget to check on those things; that's sort of the agency's job, I would suppose. I guess the court so supposed, too. C

I just read both The Farmhand and Redemption. Abslutely fantastic writing, especially The Farmhand. That was an incredible piece of work. Luminous, even. C