Bruin Fisher

Looks like I've bungled this one. It's posted in 'Laughs and Limericks' but otherwise I guess I didn't flag this clearly as a joke. To clarify: I have no idea what the archbishop's view is of gay marriage. The joke was a play on words: man-date. Sorry to cause confusion!

The Archbishop of Canterbury has stated that he cannot support Gay Marriage without first having a mandate.

I am deeply immersed in reading the Goldendale series by Bi Janus, having seen it featured in Dude's Picks from the Past on the AD homepage. It's a great series, heart-warming and uplifting, with sympathetic characters aplenty. Highly recommended.

I just read all seven extant chapters. Wasn't sure about it for the first couple, but then I got more invested in the story and the characters, and now I'm waiting impatiently for the next chapter(s)...

Despite the tragedy it's a heartwarming story.

Getting back to labelling stories with categories... It's a thorny question. I occasionally hobnob with authors whose work is published conventionally by major publishers, Penguin etc. Many of them bellyache about the publisher's requirement that they identify their stories by category. The publishers have developed quite tight definitions for their categories. For instance you can't label your story 'Romance' unless it has an HEA (publisher speak for 'Happy Ever After'). The publishers reckon that this is because romance readers expect the stories they read to end happily and feel cheated if they get to the end and there is no walk into the sunset hand in hand. Authors however feel that this denies them the tension build-up that is an important part, for them, of storytelling. The will they/won't they uncertainty keeps the reader turning pages. On the other hand there are readers who object on various grounds to some genres, such as paranormal, or maybe bdsm. If a story that contains these elements is not clearly labelled, such a reader might begin reading and then be repulsed by the element to which they object. There appears to be no right way to go about this - but I for one am happy with the way it's done here at AD - I can trumpet my story's category if I so desire, or leave it unlabelled if I prefer that. Just my two-penn'orth. Bruin

So glad you enjoyed it, Nigel. She's a great writer.

I've never had a flu jab but having reached my present advanced age I guess I should start getting it each year. Ho hum...

Well done our Camy!

Here's a thoroughly bizarre one. It runs an hour and a quarter, but it's probably worth the time...

Sadly 19th October is a big family celebration which will require my full attention all day. I might make it next year, though...

Brilliant!

Well, I agree with Cole, it's not a piece that makes any sense so there's no point trying to squeeze sense out of it. Also I agree with Nigel, he mustn't win his case because that would set a precedent, allowing others to claim that they were turned gay, or that gay people can be turned straight. A very dangerous claim. Also I agree with Camy, he's probably hoping to wring a bit of money out of Apple, on the basis it's not worth their contesting it (but he's deluded if that's what he thinks - Apple haven't shown any reluctance to fight their corner before). Also I agree with James, it's all Cole's fault.

What strikes me as particularly whack about this story is the guy now has a boyfriend, and says his life has changed for the worse and he will never be 'normal' again! He was, obviously, gay all along and only discovered it when he tried a same-sex relationship. And he got a boyfriend out of the experiment! Okay so he has a problem about coming out to his parents, but he also has the prospect of a life with a loving partner, instead of the years of loneliness that would otherwise have been his future. He is Russian, maybe they think differently over there. He'll face a lot more abuse than he would in the West, I'm guessing. Is that what he's really complaining about? Unless it's a particularly badly written news piece, it sounds almost like he resents his boyfriend... Okay, I know I'm being a nerd, reasoning on an unreasonable story, but what can I say? I'm a nerd...

According to this BBC news item, a man claims his iPhone has turned him gay... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/newsbeat-49933003

... and this one....

Another Matthew Bourne piece, this one dated 1991. Surely this one must be the inspiration for the 'Got Talent' towel dance earlier in this thread?!

Didn't the mail order catalogues KNOW that if you pose a good looking man in his underwear looking 'manly', the result is going to be erotic, inevitably? Is it just gay men who think so, or do women think so too? I've never asked...

This is another of Matthew Bourne's early works. I believe this one is inspired by the underwear pages of mail order catalogues of bygone times. This a short version of it with four dancers. I found a different version with more dancers but the video quality is poor.

Yes indeed!! Did you and I live the same life??!

This is an open source animation from the Blender Foundation, dated 2010, when animation technology was first developing the ability to render fur and hair and suchlike.

An early, and daring, piece from the great Matthew Bourne:

This is clearly Anne Elk's Second Theorem, developed after many years of further research. Her first, as I remember it, concerned dinosaurs.

Yes. Finally I realise why we men wear underpants.... On a more serious note, it's fascinating to see in slightly slowed-down motion the flexing of musculature just below the skin, and also the movement of fatty deposits, not that the subject is troubled by too much fat, but his buttocks for instance. The human adult male has amazingly powerful thighs and strong tendons connecting muscles to bones behind the knee joint, and at the back of the ankle. It's all stunningly beautiful...