Bruin Fisher
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Posts posted by Bruin Fisher
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Wow. Two different stories, two different perspectives, one event. Viewpoint is everything. This is a salutory tale: there's always two sides to a story, and if you need to judge you need to hear both. Failing that, cultivate empathy, you're sure going to need it.
Put yourself in the other guy's shoes, it may look quite different from there.
Camy has done a masterful job of showing that, and done it with a light touch. Bravo!
Bruin
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Alright, alright --- I heard you the first time!
Bruin, giving it back
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A great story so far. A really great story so far. A brilliant story SO FAR.... so naturally I can't reasonably be expected to wait for the next instalment. Patience is not my middle name..
Bruin
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I was going to say I agree with EleCivil's answer but I can't remember what it was....
How about The Heart?
Bruin
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gum control policies
"The right to bear arms is slightly less ludicrous than the right to arm bears"
- I thought this was a famous quote by someone like Oscar Wilde or Mark Twain or ... but I looked it up on Wikiquote and everyone and his dog has said it - Robin Williams & co - but I can't find the original. Any ideas?
It's personal for me, you see.... Bruin
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Penguins are evil I say! Wallace and Gromit know!
I was wondering when someone would mention Wallace and Gromit....
There's a rule about forum threads, the length of the thread is directly proportional to the probability that someone will mention Wallace and Gromit (at least I think I've remembered that right....)!
Bruin
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?Atkins!?
The quiet of the dormitory after lights out was broken by a plaintive half-whisper. I snapped to full wakefulness.
?Atkins!? There it was again. Smith, the idiot. What's he up to now? I rolled over and wrapped my pillow around my ears.
?Atkins!? The pillow wasn't helping. I didn't know what to do. According to the luminous hands on my watch it was only a half hour since I'd helped Julian Smith into bed, and a quarter hour before that I'd helped him vomit messily in the bathroom, and a quarter hour before that I'd half carried him back to the boarding house from the school gym, which was doing duty as a discotheque for one night only. In a half-hearted attempt at trusting the boys to behave like adults, alcohol had been made available, strictly two drinks each. But the chaplain's wife was easy to fool, and those so inclined had drunk themselves silly on free booze. Hence the inebriated Smith.
?Atkins!? More insistent this time. I swung my legs out of bed, grabbed my dressing gown and padded barefoot down the central aisle of the dormitory, pulling the robe on over my pyjamas.
The room contained twenty-four beds, in two rows of twelve. Smith was six beds away from me. He'd been calling loud enough for the whole room to hear and I needed to shut him up.
He hadn't been sick again. His symmetrical triangular face with its high cheekbones and curly fair hair tight across his forehead was still clean where I'd wiped it over with a flannel. My flannel. He was looking up at me from his pillow and I could see him quite clearly because there was a full moon and a clear sky, and the dormitories were not fitted with curtains. A moonbeam fell across his face making it look even more beautiful and ethereal than usual. Did he know how I felt about him, I wondered?
?What do you want? You're waking the whole dorm.?
?Kiss me, Atkins.? Still the plaintive, whining tone.
?You're very drunk. Bloody well shut up and go to sleep.? I turned to go.
?Kiss me, Atkins!? Louder this time, insistent. Hell, what if someone heard him say that...
I turned back. ?Don't be stupid. Just go to sleep.?
?Kiss me, please? Then I'll go to sleep.?
And for the first time I considered it. It would be a first for me, but the fulfilment of a lot of half-formed fantasies. Julian Smith was not a nice guy. He was a self-centred prick. But he was so beautiful. Blond, compact, well-defined muscles, on the school swimming team. I could just touch those soft inviting lips and because he was so drunk he'd probably not remember in the morning. But I would.
I leaned inwards, but he grimaced and twisted his face away from me. ?Not there, stupid ? here!? - and he pulled the bedclothes back. His pyjama trousers were half way down his thighs and his groin was thrust forwards, pointed straight at me. His half-hard dick, pale and soft, rested against his blond pubes and beside his two small balls in their thin pink sack hanging across his thigh. I was spell-bound and my brain stopped working. He'd asked me to kiss it, so I did. Hesitantly, and gingerly, I kissed the very tip of his penis, kissed the foreskin, puckered over the end, matching it pucker for pucker with my lips. A momentary touch, then I straightened up.
?Not like that. Do it properly!? I looked at him, uncomprehending. I was totally unprepared for what happened next.
?Like this ? do it like this!? His hand reached out like a striking cobra, straight in through my dressing gown, through the fly of my pyjamas without any fumbling, and grabbed hold of the steel-like erection that I hadn't even been aware of until then. He pulled it, and me, to him and fed my cock into his mouth, right down to the root, in one go. I was engulfed, physically and emotionally. The sensations intense, extreme, beyond anything I'd experienced or imagined before. My knees went weak, my breathing became erratic, my hips began reflexively to convulse. He bobbed up and down on it a couple of times and swirled his tongue over the head, unencumbered by foreskin since mine retracts readily and easily. And I was transported to a new level of exquisite sensation. I came near to surrendering completely to the experience, to forgetting everything else in order to focus on what was happening to me.
He lay back on his pillow, and something clicked in my brain and I realised where I was and what was happening and I fled back to my bed. I curled up like a foetus under the covers and squeezed the pillow to my face, emotions churning in my mind which was now in overdrive. I had to process what had just happened and what it meant to me and if I liked it, and what that meant to me. Too much for an emotionally retarded fifteen-year-old to deal with.
?Atkins! Atkiiinns!?
Another voice, from across the dormitory, spoke loudly and clearly: ?Smith, shut up and let us sleep. Whatever it is you want Atkins to do, he's not going to do it, so shut the fuck up or I'll come over and shut you up!?
- which did the trick. Smith didn't speak again.
I lay awake for some time, thinking. I'd just come about as near as you can get to committing boarding school suicide. But I'd made some sort of decision. I was going to make my own choices, I was going to be my own person, I wasn't going to be an easy lay. And if Smith was going to race down the path to self-destruction, I wasn't going with him.
- by Bruin Fisher
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(Hope this isn't an old one)
DON'T FLY ME
It has been reported that an employee of Ansett Australia (Airlines), who happened to have the last name of Gay, got on a plane recently using the company's 'Free Flight' offer for staff. However, when Mr Gay tried to take his seat, he found it being occupied by a fare paying passenger. So, not to make a fuss, he simply chose another seat.
Unknown to Mr Gay, another Ansett flight at the airport experienced mechanical problems. The passeners on this flight were being re-routed to various other airplanes. A few were put on Mr Gay's flight and anyone who was holding a 'free' ticket was being 'bumped'. Ansett officials, armed with a list of these 'freebee' ticket holders boarded the plane, as is the practice, to remove them in favour of fare paying passengers. Of couse, our Mr Gay was not sitting in his assigned seat as you may remember. So when the Ticket Agent approached the seat where Mr Gay was supposed to be sitting, she asked a startled customer "Are you gay?" The man shyly nodded that he was, at which point she demanded: "Then you have to get off the plane."
Mr Gay, overhearing what the agent had said, tried to clear up the situation: "You've got the wrong man. I'm Gay!" This caused an angry third passenger to yell: "Hell, I'm gay too! They can't kick us all off!" Confusion reigned as more and more passeners began yelling that Ansett had no right to remove gays from their flights.
It is reported that Ansett have refused to comment on the incident.
(Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is true or not but it's a good story!!)
Bruin
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In homage to Camy, master poet:
Once you've named him you need to introduce yourself to him:
Shake hands; I'm your new friend ? your penis.
You'll soon find what fun I can benis.
When you're down and alone
When there's no-one else home
You and I can let fly with all freenis.
Bruin
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They didn't put ergot fungus in their grain, it grew there of its own accord. Anyone who ate it was subject to all sorts of hallucinations- but not the fun kind.
BTW- I love your avatar. That's one tough looking kat.
Several of the rye grasses are prone to infection with the ergot fungus, which contains the toxin ergotamine. It's the source of lysergic acid, which is used to make the hallucinogenic recreational drug LSD (Lysergic Acid Diethylamide). In the middle ages people died like flies of ergotism, food poisoning caused by milling flour from grain contaminated with ergot-bearing rye grasses.
Now, why do I know that? .... ?
Bruin
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Remember: Spring foreword; Fall back.
Colin
Hi Colin, Sherlock Holmes tells me you are American - and an author.
The Brits don't call the season Fall, they call it Autumn. And only an author would mis-spell Forward as Foreword.
Of course, I didn't need Sherlock - I knew you were an American Author anyway!!!
I think you have to be grey and balding to know that a French Letter is a Condom - I didn't realise the term had fallen out of use. So I'm grey, balding AND out of touch. Ho hum.
Bruin
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Silly me. Mind on other things....
Bruin
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Well, if we're discussing weights and measures, you can hardly get less logical than the UK, which went metric forty years ago but still measures roads in miles. If you go to a timber yard and ask for a ten foot length of 2 by 2 they look blankly at you and say we only sell in metric lengths. So you ask again - for a three metre length of 50mm by 50mm. And they get your timber and the bill says 3m of 2 by 2. Go figure.
Bruin
Edited to make 10 ft = 3M not 2M duh.
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Long live difference, I say. I love the differences:
In the UK, the Royal Mail service delivers the post.
In the USA, The US Postal Service delivers the mail.
What's that all about then?
Bruin, much amused.
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Microsoft has said it plans to cut the cost of its Windows Vista operating system sold at retail outlets. Although no exact date has yet been given, Microsoft said price cuts would be introduced in 70 countries.
One wonders why?
Hmm,, maybe, just maybe, they've caught a cold - they want the new OS version adopted universally, but the punters are ignoring it in droves. I've recently started using it on one of my machines and while I haven't found it as bad as some are claiming, I do find it obstructive and not a big improvement on XP. I really must master Linux - it just seems so much better....
Bruin
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Cool, Camy!
A lovely poem to make your heart sigh and your stomach flutter.
The addressee is a very lucky person.
Bruin
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The reader non-response to the reanimation of TR is underwhelming...
(Flinching after determined prod in ribs by himself...)
I read this epic narrative poem and was awestruck. It's a powerful story and right up my street - and it's told in verse and in dialect. Don't think I would be brave enough even to attempt such a feat, let alone pull it off so successfully. A great offering from a talented guy.
If I mention that it reminds me of the hit song 'Two Little Boys' from 1969 (in the UK) by Rolf Harris of all people, it might be taken as an insult since Rolf's song, (a revival of an old music hall song from 1903 by Harry Lauder) is lightweight fluff by comparison. but the emotional punch comes from a similar place so I mean it sincerely.
Bruin
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Fellow Travellers
Camy's new story is a wonderfully evocative story about discovery and young exploration, grounded very firmly in Home Counties England a few decades ago, and totally authentic. It tells about a young boy who could so easily have been me - and I could wish it had been me, because how different things could have been if only... But I digress.
Camy has the enviable skill of telling a story with just the right level of detail to give the reader the building materials to build a picture in his imagination, but without clogging the storytelling with dense passages of description. Wonderful.
A great story, highly recommended.
Bruin -
For what it's worth, I checked out various high end sound cards some time ago, including the Creative ones, which I rejected because they were geared towards multi-channel surround sound which I wasn't interested in, and didn't have the right professional-standard recording inputs for my purpose.
Of the various units I did try, I was disappointed with their flaky drivers, and eventually bought a Tascam US122
external interface which has proved to be totally reliable and superb quality. It's powered from the USB2 interface and can record and playback at 96KHz/24bit and is full duplex and it does everything I want - it even has phantom powering on the XLR mic inputs.
I suspect my Tascam is not what you want, though....
Bruin
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They're clever people, Sennheiser. They make some of the best headphones (and microphones) available when money is no object, and they also make remarkably affordable headphones which manage to sound very natural, not at all like the unbalanced, overblown budget models from some competitors. That's why they are recognised as reference units and are very widely used by studio engineers.
Watch closely on telly when a DJ or studio engineer is being interviewed. If he's anywhere in Europe the phones around his neck are sure to be Sennheiser or Beyer. I don't know how well respected they are in the US, and nor do I know at what price they sell on that side of the big pond. Here they're priced fairly competitively, considering their quality.
Nowadays I refuse to use anything else.
Bruin
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(Grunting with exertion, extreme effort of dragging this thread back to topic...)
Is it just me, or does anyone else find EC's writing style reminiscent of J.D.Salinger? I keep getting echoes of Catcher in the Rye.
And that's about the biggest compliment I can think of. This is a great story, can we have the next chapter NOW please??!!!
Bruin
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Honestly, if I read it and someone else wrote it I would think that it was crude and pretty much elementary, but I guess I should start somewhere. Thanks for the read.
Sorry, mate, but you're so wrong about this. It just isn't crude or elementary. Far from it. This is well crafted and powerful poetry and packs quite a punch. If this is your first offering then it's very impressive. Please post some more!!
Bruin
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Yes, it's a dark story, and yes it's not so far showing any signs of getting any lighter - but you guys are all glued to it, aren't you?!!! I'm reading every episode as soon as I can, my heart aching for these characters that I've come to love. Why? Because it's brilliantly written, so that they're all real to me. It's gruelling not because it's dark but because I care so much about these people so I'm hurting with them.
Grasshopper is a real artist and craftsman and I'm full of admiration (and envy, but I'm not admitting to that part). May his pen flow ever onwards.
Bruin
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It's already been pointed out that MS Word produced horrible html if you use it to create a web page. And, it's true that Dreamweaver is expensive and you need to learn how to use it (it's not a hugely steep learning curve for straightforward tasks but it's still a curve). A very viable alternative is to install OpenOffice - or just OpenOffice writer which is the WordProcessing package. OOWriter is easy to use, very similar in operation to Word. It produces nice clean HTML without the bloat of Word produced files. It also has the added bonus that it creates Adobe PDF files. AND IT'S FREE! I like the whole package including the database program which now has native support for MySQL and Access file formats. The equation editor is also better than the Microsoft equivalent, IMHO.
You can find out about it and download here
Jakob
Maybe it's a little late to revive this thread but I only just found it.
I can echo others' recommendation of OpenOffice - I find it great and it's free. Dreamweaver is sufficiently expensive to put it out of my reach but I've discovered Kompozer, the open source alternative and it's fantastic. Originally developed by the Mozilla team (Firefox, Thunderbird etc.) as Composer, taken over by Linspire as NVu, version 1.0 was the last version from them, released in 2005. Unofficially it has received further development under the new name Kompozer and can be found here.
As far as I can see, it gives much of the functionality of Dreamweaver for free. Can't be bad.
Bruin
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Car Park III
in Flash Fiction
Posted
Yup, what he said::: Brilliant (and not in the campy way most Brits use it these days...(?)...)
Now, we need the story from Sean's point of view. Come on, Camy, we know you can do it!!
If you do the Sean story, I'll do the supermarket trolley....
Bruin