Gee Whillickers

No Cole, it's fine. It's cold up here; we need the extra letters to wrap around ourselves to keep warm while reading on those cold winter nights. By the way, it's behaviour, not behavior.

Heheh, that was clever. Well done.

Our bills have always been different colours. I hate it when I'm in the States and have to spend that extra second or two to figure out the denomination of a bill when I pull it out of my wallet. With the colours, it's immediately obvious what bill you have: blue is a five, purple is a ten, green is a twenty, pink is a fifty and brown is a hundred. The new bills are pretty cool though. Lots more anti-counterfieting features of course, and the bills are made of some kind of plastic polymer. It's amazing, almost impossible to tear or rip and can be folded again and again without creasing. Lots of areas of the bill are see-through (not really that new - been done for more than a decade in many places) to stop photo-copying of bills, and holograms all over the place.

We are in the middle of a provincial election here. The current provincial government is conservative, and has been for the past four decades. It's the nature of this province, despite the attempts of many people to make some changes in this. So this election campaign, it seems people are looking for a change, to kick out the incumbent party. So what do the polls show? A huge lead for a new party, one that's even more right wing than the current one!! I am crying and distraught, believe me. It's horrible what's happening here.

That's just awesome, and good on that fellow and the Reddit community for making this happen for this lad.

The Royal Canadian Mint has been taking centre stage in the world for a while now, especially with coin production. Some of the commemorative and special occasion coins are very, very well done, including quarters with pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness, red maple leafs, and various other colours that are somehow embedded into the coin and don't seem to fade ever. They apparently are contracted by a few different countries to do their coinage too, due to their state of the art equipment and ideas. Our new bills are pretty cool too.

These darn kids today, acting all brave and calm and in control, making good decisions and staying clear headed in an emergency. Why, when I was kid, we lived by the motto, "When in Panic Or In Doubt, Run In Circles, Scream and Shout." A school bus driver had a heart attack while driving a bunch of middle school kids to school. One boy, sitting three or so rows back, figured out what was happening, took control of the bus, and safely steered the bus to the side of the road and to a stop before it hit a church. Another boy, also realizing what was happening, administered CPR to the driver. Other kids dialed 911 to procure emergency services. Here's the story, and the video courtesy of the bus's onboard camera: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505263_162-57411668/caught-on-tape-7th-grader-saves-bus-from-crash/?tag=pop;stories

The problem is that Microsoft makes their file formats weird on purpose. That's the whole point. They've done the exact same thing with everything they've touched. The whole point is to make it very hard for other programs to open and save them correctly in this weird and undocumented format, thus forcing all the users to use nothing but Microsoft products. While I understand their lawyer's and marketing people's point, I still hate it with a passion. That's why OpenOffice and its brethren came alone. A fully open and fully documented file format, so you can open and save to your heart's content with whatever software you prefer, rather than the software that makes one company the most money. Of course, battling against ver​y established installed base is a supremely uphill battle, thus the reverse engineering that makes it possible, at least most of the time, to save in Office file formats. As a result of Microsoft's corporate bullheadedness, I choose to avoid using their products whenever possible, only succumbing when absolutely necessary. So I use LibreOffice. Of course, since I'm running Linux, using MS Office isn't an option anyway unless I wanted to run it through Wine, and I don't.

Is that the censored version, though? Or the original?

I must echo what's been already said. I found this site a few years ago almost by accident, then voraciously read through a huge number of the stories here. It wasn't until much later that I joined the forums and made my own first tentative attempts to post my thanks and thoughts, as well as taking a huge risk and, with heart hammering wildly, posted my first flash fiction here, wondering about the reception I'd get from it, and almost dreading to check in to the thread the next day to see what people said, or indeed if anyone would say anything at all. Well, the response I received was overwhelmingly encouraging, and that led to more. Thanks for giving us all a place to read, and write. Happy Birthday Awesomedude! Now, I'm finding there to be a distinct lack of chocolate birthday cake in the vicinity. Something needs to be done about that. And I'm looking for the game of Pin the Tail on the Donkey.

Thanks for posting this Dabeagle. I too saw this today and was planning on posting it here. I am pleased the mother in the story was able to change her mind, and am pleased she intends to try and help others see what she didn't see until confronted with it on a very personal level. However, this is what concerns me. So many out there either can not or will not change their minds unless and until they are absolutely forced to, due to a choice between their faulty belief system or losing a loved one. Sometimes not even then. That doesn't mean we can't keep trying and that doesn't mean I'm not hoping for her to have success though. We need to keep trying, we must. Especially, as Rick says above, we need to ensure the leaders of the churches these people attend are not spouting intolerance and hate. That, as always, is where it starts and ends, at least for those people who choose to let others do their thinking for them.

Dialect is real tough to get right. I've read stories where the author gets it right, but it's rare. Nine out of ten times it simply makes the story unreadable. The tenth time is golden though, and I truly admire those writers who can pull it off. The real trick for writers is giving each character a different voice without using strange misspellings and punctuation. That's hard. Giving each character those speech patterns, habitual comments, turns of phrase, etc, that we all have without relenting to strange spellings and abbreviations. Done well, this seriously limits the problems we've discussed above, since it's obvious who's doing the talking by how they're talking. But this is tough. Very tough. On a somewhat related note, keeping the story tight and focused is another problem. I find it so easy to wander off on tangents I find interesting but that won't necessarily move the plot along or accomplish any serious character development. When I do this, I always try and remind myself what that profoundly great author said, "So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads." -- Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss). And then there's adverbs, which get a bad rap. They exist. They serve a purpose. But like onomatopoeia, limited use in the right circumstance is great. Overuse is ugly. Another rule of thumb, "Adverbs are guilty until proven innocent." -- Howard Ogden. Sorry for going off on a a bit of a tangent. Now back to your regularly scheduled forum discussion.

I too have been frustrated with a lot of stories in the past few years, both online and printed, with problems in this area. Sometimes it's really tough to figure out who said what, and sometimes at key moments in a story it's beyond frustrating. It takes me right out of the story while I look back and re-read and carefully parse things to try and figure out what's going on. It's not a fun way to read at all. I also very much dislike those people, as in Chris' example above, who try and reinvent the way it works for whatever reason. I find it annoying and distracting, and completely useless. We have a good system. No need to re-make it. I try and do what I find I like the best when reading. I suspect a lot of us do that. There's nothing wrong with "John said" or "he said". Mostly we read those without them even registering. But yes, too many, one after the other, can be distracting due to repetition. There are a lot of good tips in this thread. Including the limited use of synonyms to "said", use of other tags to indicate who's doing the talking, such as: John dipped his finger into the water, "No, it's still too cold. Wait five more minutes." In two person back-and-forth dialogue it's a good idea not to go more than four paragraphs without some kind of indicator, lest the reader get lost. Also don't forget about the proper use of punctuation. A paragraph of dialogue that ends without an ending quotation mark means that the same speaker is continuing to speak in the next paragraph. Like this: John said, "The water is perfect now. Let's strip off and jump in. You know, we should have done this a long time ago. I just love hot tubs. "By the way, did you know ancient Romans practically built their culture around these things? It's true. A huge part of their social lives centered around bathing." Jack nodded, "Yes, I know. I'm the one with a history degree here, remember?" In the second paragraph you know John is continuing to talk because of the lack of a quotation mark at the end of the first paragraph, but you still need the opening quotation mark at the beginning of the next paragraph to indicate that it's dialogue.

There are so many facets to this, and watching the story unfold is a lesson in spin and marketing (The Zimmerman defense appears awfully porous and interestingly timed at this point). But I want to touch on one aspect of this that I'm hearing a lot more of in the past few days, mostly from US media but elsewhere too. And that's guns. I must admit, I don't understand, at all, the american thinking about guns. About the divisiveness of this issue, the slogans and the side-taking. I find it confusing. And odd. And puzzling. I suspect it's a matter of different history and culture. Maybe some of you can help enlighten me. I'm awfully liberal in my thinking. If I were an American I would be Democrat or, equally likely, some other left wing party except other parties have no power at all under the US system. However, I've shot guns since I was ten or eleven years old. I've owned guns. I don't happen to own any now, not counting a small CO2 target practice pistol, but that's not because of a political stance. I know even many of my fellow Canadians have a different viewpoint on this than I do, but to me it's never been a particularly political decision. Guns fall into the same category as knives. Or axes. Or even cars. A technological tool that can be used for many purposes, including hurting other human beings. Now, I'm not naive. I'm well aware of the issues of "primary purpose" and protection and the difference between offensive and defensive weapons and likliehood of the need for other uses in an urban environment, etc, etc. But I'm missing something. Just because a person is an American Democrat, it seems to me, why should that preclude them from feeling it is wise or moral to own a gun? There's lots of good reasons for not owning a gun, including having kids, general safety, the chances of it being used against you, the chances of it contributing to false security, the "increased rather than decreased risk" factor when guns are involved in a confrontation, etc. But these are logical issues, rational decisions based on a given person's comfort and familiarity with a tool rather than a political stance. I don't own any dynamite either. Not because I'm against dynamite, but because I'd probably blow myself sky-high out of stupidity. If I had a need for it, I'd get myself trained up, learn how to deal with it safely, then head out to the dynamite store. So my fellow North American continent occupants, help enlighten me. What the heck is it with you guys and guns?

You know, it's funny. I first began to learn about this important little fact when I was in elementary school. One day we had some kind of guest speaker in class. I don't remember the details at all, I can't remember who he was, where he was from, even the topic of discussion. But I remember something he said, probably because he repeated it and was so deadly serious when he said it. He said, "Don't believe the news. If it's in the news, it's distorted. Or even an outright lie. Be skeptical. Find other sources." After he left, I then remember the teacher, seemingly embarrassed, kind of minimize and sugar-coat that message. She basically said he was exaggerating and that the news is accurate. Then she changed the subject. I didn't give it much more thought until I was in high school, and was present, out of random chance, at an event that was covered that night by the news. I was astounded. Completely gobsmacked. They got it so very, very wrong. They so obviously emphasized all the things that would appeal to a salivating public and utterly ignored other factors, to the point where their editing and emphasis virtually completely changed a couple of people's apparent points of view. I remembered that elementary school speaker on that day. Then it happened again. Maybe fifteen years ago now. I won't go into detail, but I was working in a job and in a field that semi-regularly was covered by the media. This time I wasn't just a witness, I was completely involved in the series of events. Once again, I was astounded. The grandstanding, the BS, the emphasizing of insignificant things they thought would garner ratings at the expense of fact. Then the real kicker: the reporter read a quote on the TV news that night from one of the people involved. I was standing next to him when he was being interviewed, and I heard every word. He didn't say that quote. At all. Not even close. It was totally and completely fabricated. It wasn't even anything he would ever say, it was just a stupid overly-dramatic pithy statement that the reporter obviously thought would sound cool to end his story with. I learned my lesson, and it really sunk in. If it's in the mainstream news, it's not news. It's somebody's agenda. It may not have even the slightest similarity to what actually occurred at the event they are reporting on.

Perhaps "TV Guide" is at the upper limit of her reading comprehension.

I'm sad to hear that this happened, but glad to hear nobody was hurt and the damage wasn't more severe. I hope they catch whoever did it.

I agree, and I'm not sure anyone who isn't passionate about their likes and dislikes, and willing and able to empathize strongly, could be either a reader or a writer. After all, isn't that what it's all about? Putting ourselves into another's point of view, sharing their fears, frustrations, anger, disappointments, and joy. Understanding the process that we all go through as we struggle to understand ourselves and what is blocking us from getting to the next step.

Every time I hear of a nutcase using the banana as evidence of creation, I can't help laugh uproariously at the irony. Because the banana, as found in our supermarkets, is the perfect evidence of careful genetic selection. Wild bananas look absolutely nothing like what we're used to and are almost inedible. Years and years of careful selection and breeding has led us to the banana we have today. Pretty much the opposite of what Cameron and his ilk are professing. Here's what a wild banana looks like, before we came along and changed it: BTW, while on the subject, a couple of interesting points about the banana we eat now: They are all clones. Every one of them. Every single banana from every banana plant is essentially the exact same plant. Which, unfortunately, lends them to be seriously at risk of disease or insect infestation. Since they all share the exact same genetics, a disease that kills one can kill them all, then we have no more bananas, at least of this variety. Another interesting note: This already happened. The bananas widely available and sold in the 1950's were a different variety. Most people say they were a better, more flavorful variety. But they too were all identical genetically, and a worldwide blight wiped them out. So the plantations had to settle for the next best thing, and that's what we eat today.

Methinks Peter's problems go a teensy bit deeper than a bad day. Nice writing, Merkin. Excellent flash.

Someone's head is going to roll. I wonder if the school knew what message the band was going to potray beforehand. Was this the school's fault, the band's fault, or a combination?

Yeah, it is silly. Personally, I'd prefer we stay on Daylight all the time, with the long summer evenings. Various places still don't go on DST, like the province of Saskatchewan (though there are still certain areas within Saskatchewan that do observe it). This makes traveling from either Alberta or Manitoba to Saskatchewan very interesting, since sometimes you change your watch and sometimes you don't when you cross the timezone line, depending on what time of the year it is. I remember reading about some weird situation where a town doesn't observe DST, but is completely enclosed inside a Reservation that does, which is completely inside an area that doesn't, but the rest of the state it is in does. I have no idea how they'd keep that straight.

Haha, I wish. We all take French in school in elementary, and then by Junior High it's optional. Lots of kids are in French Immersion though. For those of us not in or very near Quebec after the limited classes in school our exposure is pretty much reading the French on the back of the cereal box while eating our breakfast. Still, it's around you, and you can't help picking up a few things. I watched the French version too, and was struggling. I made out a bit of it but missed most of it, and was very glad for the subtitles.

Yes, that yearly spring ritual where we all collectively agree to get up an hour earlier every day. And pretend what we're actually doing is creating more daylight at the other end of the day.

Most likely the effect will be temporary issues with satellite TV reception, long distance calls, and maybe internet. Worst scenario is frying all the sats, and several major urban power grids. This event isn't a direct hit though, so that's unlikely as I understand it. It might be the warning needed though, the sun has seasons, and it is entering a season of very high liklihood of these events for the next few years, for the first time since the electronic age. If we don't make sure our stuff is shielded, this is gonna be expensive and very problematic.