Bruin Fisher

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....

No it isn't, is it? But it works much better spoken than written.... Bruin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Choices 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

To Robby with Love 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

PRESS RELEASE ============ 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

I read Camy's lovely trilogy and just had to jump on the bandwagon.... So here is the story from another viewpoint: ******************************** 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

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

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

Alright, alright --- I heard you the first time! Bruin, giving it back

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

I was going to say I agree with EleCivil's answer but I can't remember what it was.... How about The Heart? Bruin

"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 The Right to Arm Bears

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

?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

(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

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