[KURT VONNEGUT DIED TODAY]

The most important thing I learned on Tralfamadore was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist. The Tralfamadorians can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are, and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.

-Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

So it goes.

[Renunciation]

[Renunciation]

If all that?s said is only truth,

How nobler named than Liar be?

If every act heroic called,

What better cause than villainy?

Pray, come name me Charlatan!

?If such a name be needed

For better named untruthful than

Memorized, repeated.

May every word to leave these lips

Leave little but impressions

That every saunt?ring syllable

Led only low intentions.

Let all words spoken honestly

Lie caught between the teeth

And so be heard not publicly

Lest named, thus bound, to be.

[Judas' Poem]

That's awesome. Short and to-the-point, but with great rhythm. The Pontious Pilate line especially gives it a punchline-rap feel.

[Terminal naivet?, Parental Division]

When I was younger, there was a woman in my church named Gayland Dick. She went by "Gay". No joke. When I first heard it, I did a double-take and looked around to see if the person who called her that was going to get in trouble for using such language in a church.

And I once had a boss named Richard Stiff (who ALWAYS goes by Richard).

Man, it would have been awesome if they would have gotten married, and then decided to hyphenate their last names. Gay Stiff-Dick would have had the best name ever.

[Bonding Energy by Ryan Miller]

The last chapter's up! And it's great!

Once again, perfect ballance between light and dark. I don't want to spoil anything in this topic, though, so you should all go read it.

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

Thanks Ubik, Camy, Blue, James, and Oliver!

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

Casabianca

The boy stood on the burning deck

Whence all but he had fled;

The flame that lit the battle's wreck

Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,

As born to rule the storm;

A creature of heroic blood,

A proud, though childlike form.

The flames roll'd on...he would not go

Without his father's word;

That father, faint in death below,

His voice no longer heard.

He call'd aloud..."Say, father,say

If yet my task is done!"

He knew not that the chieftain lay

Unconscious of his son.

"Speak, father!" once again he cried

"If I may yet be gone!"

And but the booming shots replied,

And fast the flames roll'd on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,

And in his waving hair,

And looked from that lone post of death,

In still yet brave despair;

And shouted but one more aloud,

"My father, must I stay?"

While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud

The wreathing fires made way,

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,

They caught the flag on high,

And stream'd above the gallant child,

Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound...

The boy-oh! where was he?

Ask of the winds that far around

With fragments strewed the sea.

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,

That well had borne their part;

But the noblest thing which perished there

Was that young faithful heart.

Casabianca

Love's the boy stood on the burning deck

trying to recite "The boy stood on

the burning deck". Love's the son

stood stammering elocution

while the poor ship in flames went down.

Love's the obstinate boy, the ship,

even the swimming sailors, who

would like a schoolroom platform, too

or an excuse to stay

on deck. And love's the burning boy.

Just in case anybody was curious about the title.

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

I finished chapter 13 today. I just need to do a final run-through/edit and then I'll send it in.

Man, this one took a long time to write. This wasn't like other chapters, where I just couldn't write anything for a long period of time, either. I was working on this one all the way through. But, I like what I ended up with, so it was worth it. I'd do the final edit now, but I'm dead tired, and I'd probably screw it up. So, I'll probably send it in tomorrow (at night, because I work all day).

Hi-ho.

[Vista - Good, bad or meh]

That's pretty much killed MS for me too.

Seconded. Er...thirded? The DRM stuff is just too extreme for me. I never had a big problem with Microsoft before, but after hearing about that...well, XP (which I'm currently running) is going to be the last MS OS for me.

[New Story: PIECES OF DESTINY]

This is great - I love time travel stories. I'll definitely be following this.

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

*sigh*

It's been almost two months since the last chapter. It's not finals month and I know you aren't engrossed in the current chapter of Ragnarok, so what's the hold-up?

I know, I know...should have finished this one by now. Working on it, though.

I tried really hard to get it finished while I was still on break, but it just wasn't happening.

As long as he hasn't gone over to the Dark Side and started matching all those mismatched socks....

Don't even suggest it, man. Matching your socks is the first step to matching your shoes, which is only steps away from matching the rest of your outfit. It's a slippery slope.

[Masturbation]

Heh, funny topic.

Okay...I can only think of two that are unusual, and they were both a pretty long time ago.

-Six years old, middle of the playground during recess. Don't know if it counts as being "caught", since I started and finished right there in front of everybody without a second thought about it. I didn't really know what I was doing, and had no idea that doing it in public was frowned upon.

-Ten years old, in the church library, behind a children's book (about a mouse who steals cheese and feels guilty about it until he confesses his sins...funny how things like that stay with you), while everyone else was downstairs singing hymns.

[Celebrations Across the Calendar]

Why the rush to post?

Well, for my first story, Leaves and Lunatics, I had to type it all at a public computer, and I didn't have anywhere to save it. So, I'd spend a few weeks planning out what I wanted to do with the chapter, then marathon-write it in one sitting and send it in to The Dude and Nifty, without any real editing (and MAN, it shows. Tons of errors, and plenty of those "I-can't-believe-I-wrote-that" parts that I look back on now and cringe). It was the only way I could write at the time.

When I did this, I got a lot of feedback, chapter-by-chapter. People would e-mail me and say things like "I really like the way you worded this" or "This part's awful - don't do that again". That helped me to improve a lot. Most of that good feedback came from people here at AD, by the way - you guys rock.

My overall style changed so much over the course of that story (or at least between the ones I wrote for Nifty, pre-AD, and the ones I wrote after posting here). Because of the serialization, I could sort of re-invent myself with every new chapter until I finally found the a style that I wanted to keep. I knew, somewhere around chapter 8, that once I finished that story, I could do another one, and that I could make it better. I used the rest of the story to experiment, basically - seeing what worked, what didn't, on a chapter-by-chapter basis (It's really episodic and sitcom-ish - a new problem introduced and then solved each chapter). If I had written it all at once before showing it to anybody, that wouldn't have happened - I would have stuck with my first style the entire time.

When I started to write Laika, writing it all at once before starting to post never occurred to me. So many other authors followed the write-and-post model that I thought that that was just how internet novels were always done, and never gave it a second thought.

I'm thinking of writing big chunks of my next story before posting, though. Just to see what that's like.

[Celebrations Across the Calendar]

If there's a list of Cole Parker fans starting, mark me down.

Celebrations is great! I just got around to reading (most of) them today. I usually don't read short stories - more of a novel/serial fan - but these were all fun to read.

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

http://www.peer.org/news/news_id.php?row_id=801

HOW OLD IS THE GRAND CANYON? PARK SERVICE WON?T SAY ? Orders to Cater to Creationists Makes National Park Agnostic on Geology

Washington, DC ? Grand Canyon National Park is not permitted to give an official estimate of the geologic age of its principal feature, due to pressure from Bush administration appointees. Despite promising a prompt review of its approval for a book claiming the Grand Canyon was created by Noah's flood rather than by geologic forces, more than three years later no review has ever been done and the book remains on sale at the park, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

?In order to avoid offending religious fundamentalists, our National Park Service is under orders to suspend its belief in geology,? stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. ?It is disconcerting that the official position of a national park as to the geologic age of the Grand Canyon is ?no comment.??

In a letter released today, PEER urged the new Director of the National Park Service (NPS), Mary Bomar, to end the stalling tactics, remove the book from sale at the park and allow park interpretive rangers to honestly answer questions from the public about the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. PEER is also asking Director Bomar to approve a pamphlet, suppressed since 2002 by Bush appointees, providing guidance for rangers and other interpretive staff in making distinctions between science and religion when speaking to park visitors about geologic issues.

In August 2003, Park Superintendent Joe Alston attempted to block the sale at park bookstores of Grand Canyon: A Different View by Tom Vail, a book claiming the Canyon developed on a biblical rather than an evolutionary time scale. NPS Headquarters, however, intervened and overruled Alston. To quiet the resulting furor, NPS Chief of Communications David Barna told reporters and members of Congress that there would be a high-level policy review of the issue.

According to a recent NPS response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by PEER, no such review was ever requested, let alone conducted or completed.

Park officials have defended the decision to approve the sale of Grand Canyon: A Different View, claiming that park bookstores are like libraries, where the broadest range of views are displayed. In fact, however, both law and park policies make it clear that the park bookstores are more like schoolrooms rather than libraries. As such, materials are only to reflect the highest quality science and are supposed to closely support approved interpretive themes. Moreover, unlike a library the approval process is very selective. Records released to PEER show that during 2003, Grand Canyon officials rejected 22 books and other products for bookstore placement while approving only one new sale item ? the creationist book.

Ironically, in 2005, two years after the Grand Canyon creationist controversy erupted, NPS approved a new directive on ?Interpretation and Education (Director?s Order #6) which reinforces the posture that materials on the ?history of the Earth must be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] Interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.?

?As one park geologist said, this is equivalent of Yellowstone National Park selling a book entitled Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan,? Ruch added, pointing to the fact that previous NPS leadership ignored strong protests from both its own scientists and leading geological societies against the agency approval of the creationist book. ?We sincerely hope that the new Director of the Park Service now has the autonomy to do her job.?

I don't know whether to laugh or cry...

Ah, what the hell. I'll laugh.

[RAGNAROK]

Awesome! Glad to hear it, Ubik.

[My effing shirt]

Oh for goodness sake WBMS, just keep sloshing bleach on it here and there, and make a fashion statement. Hell, but off the sleeves, unevenly, and really show the world what you think of us.

Hey, I've got a shirt like that.

[Bonding Energy by Ryan Miller]

And I don't write things like, ?you're about to get served,? or ?Let?s do this.? It?s Opportunity Cost, not Agent Cody Banks.

Maybe if you took more influence from the works of Frankie Muniz, you'd get more feedback. Granted, most of it would be along the lines of "What the hell happened to your style?", but it would be feedback.

[Bonding Energy by Ryan Miller]

Hey, this is the second chapter in a row where someone tells Kyle that they play DDR to keep their ass in shape. This is starting to become a major theme. Man v. Man, Man v. Himself, Man v. Nature, Ass v. DDR. Heeey...that gives me an idea. Possible climax of Op Cost:

Stone: All right, here's how it'll go down. I'll let you have William...IF you can beat me.

Kyle: Beat you? At what?

*Stone pulls sheet off of large DDR machine*

Kyle: You, too?

Stone: What? Keeps my ass-

Kyle: Oh, god! Don't say it.

Stone: Whatever. Kid, I admire your guts, but you're about to get served.

Kyle: ...Let's do this.

...Well, you did ask for speculation.

And I just noticed that nobody's mentioned my cameo appearance at the end of chapter 11.

[Finger-painting]

[Finger-painting]

Though you?re gone I sometimes trace

Your steps across the sidewalk

To our painted handprints on the back

Of a neighborhood watch signpost

And old anarchy hearts drawn

By twelve-year-old fingertips

Declaring ?love is freedom?

And beneath in slanted script

The addendum ?Freedom is dead?

So transitive properties imply

That all we feel is posthumous

And so be it, then, let us lie!

Let us leave behind only tears

That we may salt the Earth,

And let this city simmer with knowledge

That once we stood here, both,

Once we stood with painted palms

Pressed against this freezing metal

And declared ?Let us be dead!?

Left these locks to be dismantled

Just blustery autumnal arrogance

With peace to calm your violent eyes

Left wide with passionate precision

Locked upon a gate left drawn

To rest assured the class division

Locked away from twisting blues

The rescue efforts all delayed

So be it, then, ?Let them take our hearts

Before we let their pulse be staid!?

But ?Deviant? they named you

And they ran you out of town

Then ?Devious? I named myself

And wore it as a crown

And took your place as head escape

For some still sought denial

Constructed new communities

Let shatter, just for style.

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

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!

I'll try my best, but no promises. It's final exam/project season, now.

He doesn't, and it's really obnoxious. How can you antagonize someone who doesn't respond to antagonism? You could shoot a puppy--right in front of him--and he would laugh hysterically and ask to have the next turn with the gun.

Not true. My antagonistic immunity only applies to actions taken against me, personally. I'd definitely take offense if you shot a puppy/kitten/cockroach/etc. I'd laugh and ask for a turn if you took a shot at me. See the difference?

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

Hey, listen, don't take that necessarily as a criticism.

Haha, don't worry about it - I didn't take offense or anything. I just thought it was cool that you brought up the same issue that I'd been thinking about.

[LAIKA by Elecivil]

Thanks, Oliver, Des, and Pecman.

BTW, to Elecivil: I don't think the Russian scientists turned off Laika's life-support. I think the poor creature burned up in the atmosphere when the capsule came back to earth. Wikipedia says that the dog died from "stress and overheating," but I think it was more than that.

Yeah, technically, they didn't turn off the life-support systems, they just didn't have the life-support technology needed to keep her alive - the temperature and humidity in the cabin kept increasing, and she was dead just a few hours after the launch. Sputnik II orbited the Earth something like 2500 times, but she was only alive for the first 4.

In training for it, the scientists kept putting her in smaller and smaller cages until she was used to being confined.

If I have one criticism (and it's extremely minor), it's that the dialog is sometimes a little too snappy, like most of the characters are in on the same joke. I have the exact same problem with Aaron Sorkin's otherwise-superb writing on West Wing and Studio 60, where every character is so hip and articulate, it gets a little too coincidental after awhile.

Yeah, I agree. At first, I planned to use that as an indication of the characters' relationships - the ones who had known each other for a long time, like the band members, or people with a certain connection, like Brandon and Nick, being able to banter really smoothly. Tuned to each other's wavelengths, kind of. But then other pairings, like Nick and Dixie, or Brandon and the twins, don't really have any memorable banter. And then when Brandon and Alex were together, the longest dialogues between them were when they were fighting - very little communication between them, otherwise.

Problem is, I have so few scenes with characters that don't "click" with each other (or when I do, they're in the room with other characters that do "click") that it comes off as every character bordering on "too witty", like you said. I'm glad I tried it, but I definitely see how I could have pulled it off a bit better.

[English Language Sites]

Not as big as I'd imagined, dammit, I tried the WordSmart Challenge three times and could not get higher than 880.

Hey, better than I did. I couldn't get higher than 680-someting.

PS. I did get an 800 (perfect score) on the verbal SAT, though, and I'll bet most of the AD Authors and Editors did, too. True?

Never took the SAT - my college wanted the ACT, which doesn't have a verbal section. I did do well on the writing part, though. I don't know the exact number, but I think it was close to perfect, because I remember my college advisor looking at my record and saying "You scored that high in writing? Why are you studying here?"

[And Dream My Dreams of You by Jay B]

Hey, I just got around to reading this, and I like it a lot! Looking forward to more.

-EC