Cole Parker

Leave it to Trab to change the focus of the thread back to the vulgar!<g> C

I think we can put to rest the suspicion that Camy's real identity has been ferreted out. He may well be named Myron, but there's no way he lives in Wisconsin. I have him pegged as more of a Nova Scotian. C

Like it or not, this is someone's opinion! 1 . The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country. 2. The Washington Post is read by people who think they run the country. 3. The New York Times is read by people who think they should run the country and who are very good at crossword puzzles . 4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand The New York Times. They do, however, like their statistics shown in pie charts. 5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country -- if they could find the time - and if they didn't have to leave Southern California to do it. 6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country and did a far superior job of it, thank you very much. 7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train. 8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated. 9. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country but need the baseball scores. 10. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country . . . Or that anyone is running it; but if so, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority feminist atheist dwarfs who also happen to be illegal aliens from any another country or galaxy, provided of course, that they are not Republicans. 11. The National Enquirer is read by people trapped in line at the grocery store. 12. The New Orleans Times-Picayune is read by people who have recently caught a fish and need something in which to wrap it.

"I can't believe anyone wasted the time to study this especially enough to find typos. I just had a bout of silliness -- when I should have been writing, mind you." -- Wibby If you think I actually studied that to find typos, you're out of your mind. I was being funny. All right? Jeeeeze! So maybe the humor doesn't translate into Latin, if that's what it was. Or into jibberish, which is more likely. C

I hate to quibble, but if you're going to present us with a treatise like this, you'll have to pay more attention. 'Accumsan' is misspelled; it only has one 'c.' And you can't use 'pellentesque' and 'est nisi' together like that; plural nouns and singular verbs don't cohabit. Try to get it together, guy. Cole

Please, Des! That hurts! Premature extraction? Punishing us with puns?I think we need Ele//C's Nova Cane to beat you with.C

Blush! C

Thanks, guys. I really do appreciate the very kind words. Let me address the narrator's language. I accept all criticisms. I always have that problem, and I always take pains to at least make it plausible. In the instant case, not only did I make it clear he's done very little but read for the past two years, I stressed the point by listing the book he was currently reading. I would guess most people reading stories at this site would at least have a passing acquaintance to John Barth. He writes weighty literature. Any kid who reads his books for pleasure could certainly have and use the language that is in this story. The only really advanced word he uses, if I remember correctly, is "sedulous." One reason I included the Barth book I did is because that word appears in that book. Is anyone going to realize this? Of course not. It's simply an idiosyncrasy of mine, having kids speak like I wish kids did speak. I'm not around kids enough to be able to write in their argot. The ones I am around speak proper English to adults, and so I don't get to hear their peculiar vernacular well enough to reproduce it. And if I did manage to write as the very precocious ones speak, none of us my age would understand it! But I'm probaby sounding too defensive, and I don't mean to. I recognize this as a weakness, but do the best I can with it. I'm delighted people are reading and enjoying the story. Cole

Reagan was also bad for funding for the Arts. But he was also instrumental in getting the country out of the general malaise Carter had allowed us to fall into through a regrettable lack of leadership. Reagan had pluses and minuses. Bush, on the other hand, seems to have zero pluses and a whole lot of minues, including a lot of dead American kids who have sacrificed for no discernable reason, as far as I can see. He has an awful lot to answer for. C

I read or heard or somehow learned that very small snakes can be more deadly than very large ones. It seems babies aren't sufficiently wise in the ways of venom, and when they strike, they pump out their full allotment. Mature snakes tend to ration it. So, Pecman, I think it's great for all of us, and you, that that tiny critter slithered away rather than toward. C

If I have to choose between spam on my beloved AD, or the raccoon spending at extra ten seconds signing in every time, I'll choose to let the raccoon let his fingers do the walking. Sorry, you furry creature you. C

No reputable headhunter works that way. That's a fact. So we've already established he isn't reputable. The company he's working for might be, we don't know that yet, but he's not. You can take that to the bank.Some jobs only require warm bodies. Telemarketing is one. Phone sex practioneers is one, but you have to at least be able to speak well and have some imagination to be good at that. Still, that's a possibility.But in all likelihood, this was a scheme where the suckers, oops, I meant applicants, pay money to get into whatever the scheme is. Anything from Art School (We've seen the drawings you've sent in and our experts all agree, YOU'VE GOT TALENT! Congratulations! Sign here for our 36 week course, by mail.) to door to door selling where you pay for the product and they "support" your sales efforts by encouraging you when you need it, to reviewing videos, giving them your comments and suggestions, then you get to buy the video. Get to. Yeah.Reputable companies don't do this shit. Whether they wear ties or not.C

I discovered this ad today, and still am not sure I believe it. You can take a look yourself at: www.shaveeverywhere.com It's an interactive ad. By clickiing on the razor in the lower corner after you've seen the initial video, you can bring up additional footage. Be sure to activate the Music Video before leaving. There is some actual product endorsement in this, but it's not offensive within the context of what's happening. I'm certainly not endorsing the product, merely looking at what to me is a remarkable advertisement, one I find difficult to believe a major company would stand behind. I loved this, the tone, the actor, the whole enchilada. Anyone have any thoughts on this? Other than the fact they need to do one directed more towards the gay segment of the population? Cole

Ah, to gambol my way through my future. What a way to go! C

Thanks for the reassurance. Joking about it can be a "feeling out" stage, and is frightening. Think more thoughts about that shagging stuff you mentioned. That out to put your mind in the right place.Cole

I've noticed another change in the way things work in the last week or so. It used to be that however the view new posts control worked, it was immediate. When I'd look at something using that control, then use the control again, what I'd just reviewed no longer showed up as a new post. Now, it remains on the list. This is no real problem, no biggie, but it is a change. I have to remember which items I've read now, whereas the system did it for me before. c

That's great, Des! I love it! C

That poem is unsettling on a number of levels. Cole

The dates are very useful. Cole

You're experiencing what almost all of us go through. At some point we have to mature to the point where we can make out own decisions regardless of the effect they have on others. You keep saying you don't care what your parents feel, but you obviously do. Most of us care what our parents feel. It goes with the territory of being sons. However, that caring needs to be compartmentalized. It cannot be the factor that ultimately sways your decision making. Doing what you know is best for you doesn't mean you don't care that it may be disturbing people close to you. It means you understand the relative importance of your decisions. It means you've grown up.Breaking away from your parents' influence seems to be harder for young people of Asian descent than kids in the U.S., if I can make that generalization. I happen to know many kids with Asian parents. They are brought up to respect their parents and do what they're told, which is obviously a good thing to a point. It becomes burdensome, however, when the parents will not relinquish the control they have enjoyed while their child was growing up.Your culture demands you follow the path your parents have cleared for you, and that makes it tough. That you're planning to confront them is a momentous thing for you to do, and I applaud your courage to do this. Bravo.You might want to tell them that if they love you as much as you think they do, they must realize that you will not reach your ultimate potential if you are not allowed, at the age you have now attained, to made decisions for yourself, to follow your own dreams. The love they have had for you in the past has been focused on you reaching the point in your life you've now successfully reached. You should both be ready for a change in the relationship. If they really do love you, they must now allow you the freedom you need for future growth.This is very hard for Asian parents. But in the U.S., this is what families do.I wish you luck with this. Please know you have the support of everyone here.Cole

Sorry, I missed all that. I was trying to scratch my left elbow with my left hand. And that led to trying to touch either ear with either elbow. Don't you guys bother to try it, it's just a waste of time.C

Using colloquialisms to color speech patterns is not only acceptable practice, it's a widely used practice by all levels of writers. If you want your dialogue to sound authentic, you should write like people talk. If you write dialogue in perfect English, your characters don't sound real. "Could of" is extremely common. So are phrases like "try and do something" rather than "try to do something" and "could care less" instead of "couldn't care less." There are hundreds of these. A formal narrative shouldn't contain them, but dialogue and personal thoughts can and, in my mind should, without any problem whatsoever. Thus speaketh me!<g> C

David: I could imagine a couple reasons for you using the "that guy" description of Todd when Bo was thinking of him. If it was intentional usage on your part and there is a valid reason for it, that suffices for me. I don't know who Bo is at this point, or what his work is. I can come up with a couple ideas, but generally when reading something like this, I suspend guesses until I have a bit more to work on, so haven't done a lot of pondering on that. I'm a bit surprised if your point was that we should have a pretty good idea of Bo's occupation from what you've written. I could make a guess, and it might even be right, but I havne't spent much time considering it, and I doubt others have either.

Thanks, guys, for deleting my stuff for me. Although it appeared to still be there. As they say, give a hungry guy a fish, he'll have dinner; teach him to fish, he'll never be hungry again. Or better expressed words to that effect. It would be more useful if someone would tell me how to delete something entirely. I tend to hit the Post New Comment button and see nothing happen, so think I didn't hit it correctly and hit it again, and eventaully two messages show up. It's probably easy to get rid of one--hell, you guys all seem to know how to do it!--but I haven't figured it out yet.And I'm pretty sure we shouldn't be interrupting EC's blog for this!!!!C