Bruin Fisher
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Posts posted by Bruin Fisher
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Any perfectly ordinary 12 hour analogue clock or watch face will do!
Bruin
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synesthesians
He's doing it again - surely this one must have something to do with sinuses?
And on this side of the big pond, we spell it 'synaesthesians'
Bruin, Bear with a sore head
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I never knew that it was one semaphore letter superimposed over another! N(uclear) and D(isarmament) placed within a circle symbolising the Earth.
Camy
--- I'd been reading the BBC article about it, too. And Holtom hoped it would be seen as a person extending their arms outwards and downwards, palms out in a gesture of despair...
Later critics said it would be better inverted to look more positive/hopeful.
Bruin
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Sadly, Maddy was wrong. I already knew this information, since my brother married the daughter of a conductor, but I double checked, and you can too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conductor_(transportation) Freight trains DO have conductors.
Well, I live and learn - thanks Trab! So a freight train conductor's job is truly one of Camy's sinecures!
Bruin
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I'm assuming you mean a non-digital style readout clock?
Yup - an old-fashioned, honest-to-goodness analogue clock face.
Bruin
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thought it would be a sinecure.
Sinecure? No fair - I'm a bear of very little brain! Isn't that catarrh medicine? Or am I thinking of Rhinoceros?
Anyway, I still don't know what colour his keks are...
Bruin
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Perhaps we need a forum for quizzes???
Here's another one: What event takes place on a clock face twenty-two times per day?
Bruin
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Wind-up? Erm ... it was. I made it up. If it had an answer it's purely by chance. Out stupid me? Never!
Well kudos to Madrigal, then for coming up with the answer!! Freight trains don't have conductors.
Here's another one: An Aer Lingus (Irish) flight from Amsterdam to Athens, carrying mostly American tourists, crashes in the Alps right on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Where did they bury the survivors?
Bruin
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'The train that is going 15 miles an hour northbound will pass the train southbound from Leeds in 2 hours 17 minutes. On each train are 27 sheep, 14 mules, one cat and a Raven. What colour are the conductor's briefs?
I reckon I can out-stupid Camy on this one - I read the train puzzle and took it for a wind-up - it never occurred to me that it had an answer, so thanks for pointing it out!
Bruin the dim
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How did you know I drove a bus?
Camy
Well, I just sort of assumed ... because you always wear the peaked cap, the black leather jacket and trousers, the wierd leather straps around your naked hairy chest, and knee-length jackboots. That's bus driver's uniform, isn't it?
Bruin gullible and innocent....
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Haha that's not a very puzzling puzzle :P.
Maddy (:
No it isn't, is it? But it works much better spoken than written....
Bruin
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Camy, do you mean like this:
Imagine you are the driver of a bus, which leaves the terminus with three passengers. It stops at fifteen points on its journey and at each point two people get off the bus. Also at each point, the same number of people get on the bus as the number of the stop (one person at the first stop, two people at the second stop etc.) until the tenth stop. At the eleventh and subsequent stops, one person gets on the bus if it's an odd-numbered stop, nobody gets on the bus if it's an even numbered stop.
After the fifteenth stop, the bus returns to the terminus. What was the name of the driver?
I'm sure you will enjoy working out this puzzle - I HAVE TOLD YOU THE ANSWER!!
Hugs
Bruin
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No probs, Trab - glad to help - I'm making new friends all the time here in this great community that is AD.
It happens to me all the time that I look at a sentence and it doesn't make sense at all. I get a sort of mental block which causes me to look at it wrong, and until someone points out another way to read it I can't get past that. So I'm with you on that one! In my case I can only claim stupidity (and senility at a pinch?!).
Bruin
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I think Camy's point was:
Even though I like Arthur Clarke's writing, AND I was unhappy he died, nevertheless TR's satire is very funny.
Of course Camy might want to pipe up and explain what he meant, but this is my take on it. Any help?
Bruin
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Even though Arthur Clarke was one of my all time favourite authors, and I was very unhappy to hear he'd died:
I still thought - gross lack of tact for my feelings aside - that it was damn funny! 
Yep, very funny, TR! and, wearing a black armband, I voted!Wake!
Camy
Trab, I don't think there's anything wrong with it.
It is a wonderfully convoluted sentence, certainly. Kudos to Camy for his mastery of complex structures. The only beef I have with it is that after the word 'died' I'd have put a comma rather than a colon. But I forgive him. Generous, I am.
Bruin in frivolous mood
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No question: FLIGHT
Actually I can already fly. It doesn't work like a bird, or an airoplane, or even like Superman. I think hard and I rise. More like Mary Poppins, I suppose.
Trouble is, so far I can only do it in my sleep....
Bruin
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Hey, this was fun.
I reckon I've got it worked out and in addition I reckon I know who cooked the meal and who's the oldest person and how the other three met. But shush my mouth, I'm bragging.
Thanks for an entertaining coffee break, Kapitano!
Bruin
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PS Dude made me write that story, btw.
Dude? He's just jealous that Clarke, sorry, sir Arthur, beat him to the post with the idea of abandoning the western world and going and living in South East Asia.
Or have I got that wrong - did the Dudester go out and join ACC - and he's only coming back because the great SF writer has died?
Bruin with cheek full of tongue.
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Pecman's got a point - I was waiting for 'that' moment in the story and it never came. But like Colin I concluded that Robby must have worked out that Rick was gay (using the new, enhanced GaydarPlus? no doubt) and that was why he'd invited him onto the boat for the weekend. The question remains about Robby's girlfriend. We know he's not in love with her so it's presumably a typical closeted gay's smokescreen affair. We can only hope he sees the folly of it before walking up the aisle with the poor girl.
So the basic issue here seems to be: to what extent should an author plug all holes in his storyline? Is it okay to leave things unsaid, aspects that the reader will have to work out for himself or even imagine for himself? Most classic literature seems to end with all the plotlines tied neatly, but there are exceptions (can't think of any but I'm sure there are some). Personally I hate a story that ends too abruptly, I want to be sure all the characters I've grown to care about are going to be okay. (If I don't care about the characters, I guess I wouldn't have read to the end...)
What do you guys think?
Bruin
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I wonder how much JP Morgan's worth?
This bear's stern's not worth chasing....
On the other hand I like to think I'm still chaste.
Bruin
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If you haven't read this yet you really should. It is an exquisite cameo, a touching tale about war and the decisions that young people must make that affect the rest of their lives. Set about a century ago it is poignant, beautiful and skilfully crafted like all of Camy's work.
A real jewel and well worth reading. Strongly recommended.
Bruin
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This is a beautiful short story, romantic and elegiac (my word-of-the-week) and strongly recommended.
It is slow-paced and gentle, right up my street, a real feel-good tale. Quite wonderful. Go read!
Bruin
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PRESS RELEASE
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I'm hearing from various sources that Bear Stearns has collapsed.
BBC News report - collapse of Bear Stearns
I wish to scotch the rumour as totally unfounded - there's nothing wrong with my stern - it is as healthy as the rest of me and fully functional.
I would also like to take this opportunity to ask the media to refrain from idle speculation such as the following from the above linked news report: "just how big is Bear Stearns?" I consider that to be my business and not an appropriate topic for public discussion.
Thank you all for respecting my wishes in this matter.
Bruin
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I read Camy's lovely trilogy and just had to jump on the bandwagon....
So here is the story from another viewpoint:
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A wave of irritation hit me forcefully and I reeled. So I knew I was in for a tour of the aisles. The woman was having trouble fitting the coin in the interlock so she could separate me from the others but I knew there was more to her irritation than the fiddly mechanism. She was with a child, a boy, and she felt protective love for him, but also anxiety. The boy's mind was full of excitement, anticipation, mischief, and I could see her point.
They were joined by another adult, a man, why was her irritation directed at him?
Humans have speech, and I'd give anything to be able to talk, but they seem to be unable to read each other's emotions at all most of the time. Now emotions I can do. I can see emotions like an aura around people, but I can't make sense of the sounds they make to each other. I wish I could, because a lot of the time I get the impression that they're saying stuff that contradicts what they're feeling. That can't be right, but it sure seems like it, sometimes.
Now, for instance, the woman looked across at the man and smiled, but her irritation level rose. She didn't want him there but she wanted him to think she did. What is it with humans?
I felt sorry for the poor woman. She's arrived irritated and it was getting worse. The fiddly coin-operated interlock that released me from the stack didn't help, of course. She had to keep a close eye on the boy, and then there was the man she wasn't being honest with ? the man who she didn't want to know that she didn't want him there. And to my shame I wasn't helping: one of my castors binds, and it makes me difficult to steer. I've been taken around by people who've started serene and happy and ended frustrated and angry. I'm sorry, I can't help it. The castor would be easy to repair, it's just a length of packing twine that's got caught in the ball race. But we don't get maintenance.
She shops like most women ? she chooses carefully, taking advantage of bargains and offers, not buying luxuries, not buying anything that's not on her list. But she zig-zags across the shop, visiting aisles several times and wearing her retinue out. The man isn't playing an active part, he's just tagging along, lagging further and further behind. He is beginning to show irritation, which rises each time they re-visit an aisle they've been to before. He would have done it differently. He would also have done a lot of impulse-buying, and would have spent much more buying expensive equivalents of cheaper staples, ignoring offers.
Then I was witness to a tableau which really had me interested. The man suddenly registered surprise and fear, and something else more difficult to define. Another man had stopped in his tracks while walking across the end of the aisle and I read sudden shock, and pain, and... love? Yes, there was lust in there too, but definitely love. And directed at the man, not the woman. The little boy was unaffected, didn't notice, but the woman saw the eye contact between the two men.
The other guy walked on and my lot continued their shopping. The man forgot his irritation, consumed now with fear and anxiety. He was checking other shoppers in each aisle warily.
There was another episode between the two adults at the checkout, and then they were out. The boy took over pushing me and I hate that. Riding me, balancing his weight over my handrail, my jammed castor bit and we lurched to one side and toppled. A lot of my chromium plate ground off against the tarmac and now I'll go rusty. Drat. I was so annoyed I almost missed the big emotional aura coming from across the roadway beside their car, where the man and the other guy he'd seen in the shop were standing very close and... both of them becoming sexually aroused, would you believe? Right there in the car park! The emotions were very complex, lust very much to the fore but a whole web of other stuff underneath. Guilt, fear, shame, deception, need, anguish, despair, longing, and it wasn't easy to separate the two men's feelings. But I reckoned the deception was all coming from the man who was with the woman, while the emotions of the other fellow were more open, clean even.
What really surprised me, though, was the woman's aura. Anger I could understand, and pain. But relief??
- by Bruin Fisher
I still thought - gross lack of tact for my feelings aside - that it was damn funny! 
Yep, very funny, TR! and, wearing a black armband, I voted!
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in Flash Fiction
Posted
No, Silly! That's called clock-watching and you never do it 'cos your life is so full and exciting....
This event happens exactly 22 times every day whether you like it or not. (Unless the clock is broken, of course - in which case it tells EXACTLY the right time twice every day).
Bruin in mischievous mood - padlock your dustbins! (garbage cans)