Bruin Fisher

I've upgraded all my machines and I've had no problems - I like it very much. Bruin

Q: What do you call a bear with a banana stuck in each ear? A: Call him what you like, he can't hear you! I never learned to play the liar, but I once tried the harp... Bruin

Believe me, I am, I am! Bruin

Tom, a collector of Victoriana, was looking for the sheet music to an old Victorian Parlour song to fill a hole in his collection. It was proving difficult to find, and he wasn't particularly hopeful when he asked at the counter of yet another music store: "Do you have, or can you get for me, the sheet music: 'Could I but express in song'?" On this occasion the assistant looked puzzled for a moment, and then went to his computer screen to check the stock list. He returned shaking his head and Tom knew he was out of luck. The assistant said: "I'm sorry, sir. Actually we do have quite a lot of music by the Hungarian composer Zoltan Kodaly, but we don't seem to be able to trace the Kodaly Buttocks Pressing Song!" Bruin in mischievous mood

It's a fantastic achievement to have brought AD to life and the Dude continues to feed and support it like a fond father. As a recent sprog, I would like to say here: I love you, Dad! Bruin

Another splendid story from the great Graeme! Written with such realism that I wonder if Graeme has actually lived it himself?! If so I hope there was no long-term damage... Strongly recommended - go read! Bruin

Seeping out of your body? What does that look like, then? Are you carrying around a rag to mop it all up as it seeps?(Back on message) Three cheers you've completed the move. The cats will settle in soon, you're re-settled (making you sound like refugees from a famine) and back online. Big relief for those of us who've been pining for you! Bruin delighted to have you back

My pet hate is the Eager Mouth. Why in a sex scene does everyone have an 'eager mouth'? And what does a mouth look like when it's eager? Eager for what? If ever I'm eager, the source of that eagerness is my brain, not my mouth or any other body part. I'm sure sometimes a participant sucks or licks something eagerly, but there are other more useful adverbs and adjectives to help the reader know what's going on and what it feels like. Bruin

A man after my own heart:Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.I used to be a procrastinator but now I just keep putting it off till tomorrow. They say it makes you go blind, and get hairy palms...HugsBruinNow get back to work and finish packing!

Thinking of you as you load your life into a van...My old man said 'Follow the van,And don't dilly-dally on the way...."Off went the van with my whole home in itI walked behind with my old Cock Linnet...HugsBruin

.... and her name? Eleanor Rigby Nobody cares.. all the lonely people - Where do they all come from? All the lonely people - where do they all belong? Camy this is beautiful and poignant. I hope it's not a reflection of your present emotional state??? Bruin

Euch! You won't find anyone to pass that baton to, after you've tried out its many uses... On a serious note, Thank you thank you thank you thank you to Des and cohorts for keeping these wonderful forums alive for us. The members are forever in your debt. Bruin

Good Point.

I find myself in the rather odd position of standing up for the principal, Eddie Walker. Only in this one aspect: he found himself faced with a dilemma: the school's new decision to set up a GSA conflicted with his personal moral code. In response, rather than go all pugilistic about it, he did the right thing - he withdrew. He accepted the rights of others to follow their morals which conflicted with his, and took the peaceable action to separate himself from the situation he found morally unacceptable. If we are to truly embrace diversity we must accept that some of that diversity will be so far removed from our own way of life that we may find we cannot work with it. In that case accepting adversity will mean withdrawing, and not whipping up the hair-trigger emotions of others into conflict by fighting it. I thought the quoted passage from Mr Walker's letter, ending that he bore no malice to anyone, remarkably conciliatory. The views quoted of some parents on the other hand.... Bruin

Firstly, welcome! I'm fairly new here myself and I'm sure, like me, you will quickly feel at home. Gay youth stories in rural environments? That's a broad range, and it would help to narrow it down a bit so I looked up the book you mention and on Jim Grimsley's site it's described this way: Dream Boy (Scribner, 1997) Set in North Carolina, this novel "centers on Nathan, a shy, bright high-school sophomore who falls in love with Roy, the farm boy next door. The danger of discovery is compounded by hints of abuse from Nathan's father, which become explicit when the man tries to molest him. Nathan escapes on a camping trip with Roy and his two friends, a jaunt that ends in horror when the friends find the secret lovers in a compromising position, and one of the boys brutally rapes Nathan. But Roy at last openly accepts the younger boy as his lover." Well I haven't read any of Jim Grimsley's work so I can't comment, but the setting, gay explorations during a camping trip, is one of those clich?s of gay fiction. The Nifty archive has a whole category for it and if that's what you're looking for you might find it there at www.nifty.org. Not sure how 'new' you are, so it might be appropriate to point out that Nifty is a vast archive of erotica, and not all of it is good by any means. If you are under the age at which it is legal for you to read such stuff in your country, Nifty is not a good place for you to be. If you are looking for good quality writing that may or may not count as erotica, you might be better to look here at AwesomeDude, or on one of the other Gay Fiction sites. If you look at the home page here you will see some suggested sites, including Gay Authors, Archerland, IOMFATS, The Hub. IOMFATS hosts the writing of Grasshopper and his lastest story, Darkfall, is an epic set in a rural environment that covers the youth of the protagonists. It was discussed recently in the forums here and was received very favourably. But it's far from being a 'romp in the woods' camping story. I do have one rather radical suggestion - if you know just the kind of story you're looking for, why not try writing one? That's how many of us got started and you never know what might come of it! Hope this helps a little - others may have better suggestions, specific recommendations. Bruin

For this info much thanks! I had the same problem and was considering switching from AVG to Avast purely because the latter is still available for free. But now I can choose which to use - as Des says, I suspect they're neck-and-neck in terms of ability. The current suite of stuff from McAfee, like Norton, slows an already slow-ish computer to a crawl. I spit upon it. Bruin

We still love you, Fairy Snowdrop!! Bruin

Yeah, but by this time in the play he's allowed initially his wife and then his ambition to turn him into a monster. It's not Shakespeare's view of life, it's Macbeth's. A sort of Shakespeare turned to the Dark Side. Life 'signifies nothing' for him because he has by now driven a coach and horses through the moral principles that he once upheld and which gave his life meaning. He's murdered for his own advancement and at his wife's instigation. The moral of the story is: never do anything your wife tells you to. It's served me very well for years....And the moral for emus is: Establish your own moral principles and then stand by them and you will be a force for good in this piebald world!HugsBruin

More coffee. That's the answer to every imponderable question.When you get to feeling there's no point to life, you're depressed. Never make a major or irreversible decision when you're depressed.Camy, you're a creative dynamo and this puts you in a privileged position - when you begin to feel that life is pointless, you can just sit down and write another of your soaring masterpieces. And it will touch the lives of countless other people, and will exist in its own right forever. Not everyone can do that - think of the salesman whose life's work is wholly ephemeral, for instance. Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller. There's a lot of other 'points' to your life too - the love you share with your loved ones, the friendship you share with your friends, the happiness you bring to other peoples' lives. But your writing - prose, poetry, musical, is a gift that gives your life extra meaning that others can only dream of.This is getting so sugary I'm making myself sick so I'll shut up now. Just remember we love you okay???Bruin

It gets wierder. His father was a cleric called Jerome Clapp, known as Pastor Clapp. When the family moved to a new town, the Pastor decided to be known as Pastor Jerome. His son was christened Jerome Clapp Jerome too. His sisters were Paulina Deodata and Blandina Dominica, and a brother, Milton Melancthon who died at the age of six. Jerome decided to change his middle name to Klapka after the young Hungarian hero General George Klapka, and told a story about Klapka having spent some time in England and stayed with the Jerome family. However that is now thought to be fiction. The things parents do to their kids! Talk about A Boy Named Sue!! Bruin The Jerome K Jerome Society website on the subject

Sometimes a story just hits you right between the eyes, and sometimes you reel not only because of the impact but also in surprise. Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) is of course well known, not only for having a silly name but also for having written the comic classic Three Men in a Boat. A quick flick through Project Gutenburg reveals that he wrote thirty works, and that Three Men in a Boat is available as an Audio Book. The Love of Ulrich Nebendahl Here is a short story that knocked me flying. Its beauty, pathos, and evocation of a foreign place and time is breathtaking. So now I have to go read all the rest of his output. Project Gutenburg is a wonderful resource. I hope you like it as much as I did! Bruin

It's my guess that this series is about a Hero in the original Greek sense - the offspring of a mortal and a god, thus a demi-god. And as the personification of heroism he is involved in every war in which valour can save the day, and gets killed heroically - and is then in the next war too. Unlike Camy, I don't like my buns sugared. You might try spreading honey on them and then licking it off, though?? Bruin in naughty mood

AD has a forum specially for discussing writing on other sites. If the guy doesn't provide a discussion forum on his site we can assume he's not sufficiently interested in other people's opinions of his work. That doesn't mean they won't have opinions, of course, and may wish to discuss them. Nothing he can do to stop them doing so in a free country. If there's no web forum they'll discuss it over a pint at the pub. If he doesn't want his work discussed he could try posting a request to that effect on his site, but it probably won't work... the only way to stop discussion of his work is not to publish it.

Cowabunga!Wot great lyrics! Splendid job.I read the lyrics, loved them, thought Billy Joel.Then I listened to your audio draft and it wasn't Billy Joel at all it was Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan. Which is of course great, but not what I was expecting.To me the lyrics are celebratory, exuberant, singing about the relationship you have with your significant other, and I think that could be reflected more in the tune? Leonard Cohen is the master of gravelly pessimism and I'd rather read your beautiful lyrics as optimistic.Can I have a go?Bruin

A great chapter, Trab. The story was beginning to get too confusing and I wasn't sure it could be pulled back into shape - but you've done it magnificently. So who's doing the next chapter? Trab? Bruin