Bruin Fisher

A very sweet story, well worth a read. In a big comfy armchair with a mug of hot chocolate. And a friend.

I'm a sucker for flashmobs. This is a great one.

I had a mouthful of porridge when I read that.

Mmm. Yes please...

I loved this one, nicely told story of an underdog on the rise and a bully getting his comeuppance. School social order all too often is just like Gee's story.

Only in the afternoons, James - and accompanied by cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

Is Deviltry a word? I think over this side of the big pond we would say Devilry without the T.

A great piece of reader deception. Many of these ancient institutions do have weird traditions. I had to describe a tradition that was current at my old school when I was there to someone who didn't know about it - and in the telling it dawned on me that that custom, which I hadn't thought to doubt, was actually very suspect and very weird.

This is really great. I was reminded of a few scenes from The Hobbit and I was so pleased the story ended as it did. Brilliantly woven story, thanks Cynus!

I'm so pleased you liked The Green Guardian it's one of my favourites too. Thanks for the plug!

A particularly gruesome story, as befits a Halloween anthology! I don't quite know what to say about this story - very well written, with sympathetic characters despite their being, well, undead... Thanks Graeme!

I do love a story with a happy ending. At the beginning I thought he would never stop being cross about being denied his party. But what a great way to compensate him! Lovely, thanks Colin - and I'm so flattered, touched, embarrassed, blushing 'cos of Ryan's Green Guardian costume! So glad he likes the story!

A genuinely frightening story very well told. Now how am I going to sleep without nightmares???

Drumming is a great story, evocative of island life and culture. Very enjoyable.

A finely crafted story, as ever, from Cole and a great take on a well known theme. I'm sure many bullied youngsters would love to wreak their revenge in such a way. Thanks Cole!

Well I haven't contacted Amazon but on your prompting I will do. I did contact Tim Federle the author and he was apologetic and confirmed as I expected that the pricing is entirely outside his control. The more I learn about him the more I think he's a nice guy as well as a talented author. He's on YouTube quite a lot if you want to see and hear him.

Only anthropomorphic tubers enjoy it...

When I click into the 'Reply to this topic' box, as I've just done to type this, I get two toolbars above the text area. About half way along the upper one of these is a text colour icon (looks like a capital A with a Rubik's Cube in front of its lower right corner). If I click that and choose 'Automatic' from the palette that appears, then the text I type into the box will be appropriately coloured on all browsers and whatever skin you might have applied to the AD Forums site. At least I think that should work. There may even be a way to default that setting but you'd need to be clever to know about that - so I don't know.

For those of us who can't read Chris's post above, in my browser I can select the text and then copy and paste it - and here it is: ++++++++++++++++ Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." The framers of the Constitution saw this as the solution to foreign armies invading the country in the early years of the nation. Within several decades of establishing this law the country had a standing army which pretty much relegated the militia to a secondary role. State by state, the militia was used to ward off attacks by the displaced Native Americans until after the Civil War when a larger Federal military was available to secure the borders. But by then the militia concept was well ingrained in American society. At the time the constitution was written the "Arms" in widespread use were single shot muzzle loading black powder muskets and pistols. Nowhere in the wildest dreams of our forefathers did anyone conceive of the modern arms we have today. The first multi-shot weapons were developed for military use. Although there were some early singularly made revolving pistols available in Europe, the widespread manufacture of self-contained bullets and revolver style arms were military issue during the Civil War. In current terms, there is little difference between military and civilian arms as gun manufacturers churned out millions of weapons for the wars of the last century and this one. Surplus military weapons immediately found their way into the civilian market with very few limitations. I seriously doubt that Madison and Jefferson, both involved in writing this Amendment, had any idea that future development of "Arms" would create such chaos due to their simple little law. Neither could conceive of an AK-47 or an AR-15, perhaps they would have been appalled, or at least changed the wording of the law. I do ponder the current Supreme Court, and those past, where the justices claim to be strict in their interpretation of the Constitution. Laws are meant to evolve to reflect the changes in society and so not adapting the Amendments to reflect new, and perhaps dangerous, trends is an absurdity. The Second Amendment is a dinosaur as it stands and so perhaps is our sense of democracy. +++++++++++++++ My own contribution to this debate? Well, here in the UK we look in concern and puzzlement at the US and its gun laws. Regarding the argument that if you take guns off law-abiding citizens you leave the criminals as the only gun owners and free to rampage unchallenged - well, I wonder how those criminals got their guns? Presumably guns get into the criminal marketplace through a mixture of channels. If it's legal to buy them in Wal-Mart or wherever, I guess criminals can get them in the same way that honest citizens do. But what happens when they're not available freely? Then I guess the criminals do what criminals do - they steal them (or they know someone else who will steal them to order). But if the honest citizenry don't have guns to be stolen, eventually the criminal population will run out of guns as little by little these guns are taken out of circulation in police raids, arrests etc. So it won't happen immediately, in Australia or anywhere else, but inevitably if you reduce the number of guns out there enough, and for long enough, then gun crime will reduce.

I wonder if that's where I heard of it? I did do a search here before posting but didn't find it. Maybe I didn't search right...

This is a children's book, aimed at 9-14 year olds, and is getting five star reviews on Amazon from all age groups. It is exuberant, heart-warming, bursting with excitement and pathos on every page. Can't recommend it highly enough. A thirteen year old misfit, short, overweight, obsessed with musical theatre, who has one friend, a girl who encourages his theatrical aspirations, escapes from Jankberg, Pennsylvania to audition for Elliott in ET:The Musical, his first trip to New York. He is totally believable, lovable, pathetic, naive, and it doesn't go at all as planned. My one gripe (and it's a big gripe): the book is published by Simon and Schuster and available as an e-book from their website at $7.99 but only if you have a US card account and address. I bought it from Amazon.co.uk - £6.99 in paperback or £3.79 in kindle e-book format. £3.79 is about $5.80 so that's not a bad price. That's not the gripe. This is the gripe: Federle has written a sequel, Five Six Seven Nate, which has received the Lambda best fiction award. That too is available on Amazon.co.uk - £5.17 in paperback or £8.44 in kindle e-book format. £8.44 is about $12.95. WTF??? Amazon profiteering? Direct from Simon & Schuster both books are $7.99 whether you buy them on paper or as e-books. Rant over.

I'm getting more cross about this the more I think about it. Greer at one point in the interview says: "A great many women don't think that... trans-sexual M-F people look like, sound like or behave like women." So what do women look like, sound like and behave like, then, Germaine? I think I can state confidently that while there are average looks, sounds, behaviours, there is a wide spectrum of deviance from those averages which easily encompasses transgender women. So a particular transgender woman may have a rather strong jawline, or a rather deep voice, or a rather masculine walk. So do lots of women. So what. Germaine's argument is so despicable that it beggars belief that an intellectual of her standing could spout such nonsense. Rant over.

This from the BBC today: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34625512 Germaine Greer, for those who haven't heard of her, is a radical feminist and academic, famous for her seminal book 'The Female Eunuch'. She has been around for decades, often a thorn in the side of the establishment on women's issues, and generally well respected. However in my humble opinion in recent years she has seriously lost the plot. Maybe she's always held these opnions but wisely kept them to herself because she wanted to be listened to with other less objectionable opinions, and now at her advanced age she no longer cares about that so much, or maybe she's recently developed such opinions. I don't know. What I do know is that it is cruel to tell someone who has gone through so much to emerge as their true self as they see it, that they're not a 'real' woman. Shame on you, Germaine.

The following post is tongue-in-cheek, please don't take it seriously! I believe Sarah Palin has been known to refer to 'speaking American' but I would like to point out that the language is called English, because it originated in England. Its roots go back a long way further, it developed from Latin, Norse/Viking, Saxon, Norman French, various Celtic languages including Gallic and Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, and even Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Dutch and Flemish along the way. Much more recently it has been acquiring usage from America, of course. But that doesn't make it American - it's still English. I understand clever people are now predicting that English may fragment into regional languages, so there may be an Indian English, an Australian English, Indonesian English, Philippine English etc. There already signs of that happening. One thing about English is its ability to evolve. I think that's a good thing. But i think it would be a pity if Americans started calling the language American just because it's their native tongue. It would be rather galling for the Australians, Canadians etc to be told they speak American. The English can lay claim to 'owning' the language because it started there. For anyone else to claim to own it would be piracy, methinks.

Croeso y Cymru, Colin!