Gee Whillickers

I followed this a few days ago when it happened, then read his blog (still online) and became depressed. I wasn't going to post this here, there's been too many of them. But this article really got to me. Read it. http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1072227

This was excellent. Very well done. Entertaining and skillfully written. A real gem! Thanks Camy.

Kind of attacking them with their own rhetoric, I like it. They cry "religious freedom" and we can show them how that particular claim flies both ways.

Nice to see our kids' role models are living up to expected standards... Here's the link.

xkcd is one of my absolute favorite web comics. It is often very clever and usually makes keen observations. Or maybe that's just the techno-geek side of me. But, yeah, I read it quite regularly.

Actually, this is pretty accurate....

Ok, here's what you do. Logan quits baseball in disgust after his dad sells his glove to make rent after being canned by the school board - little did he know that Coach Tasker was married to the Mayor's daughter. Then, Logan realizes that his true passion lies in another game. A better game. A truly wonderful game. A game that combines skill, speed, toughness, and emotion. Hockey. Since everyone here will see the wisdom in this, you should be able to get another two or three dozen chapters out of the story. Looking forward to it...

Ah, yes. The wonderful differences between American spelling and British spelling, and the sometimes third version of Canadian spelling of words. theatre/theater centre/center metre/meter colour/color behaviour/behavior light/lite doughnut/donut and on and on.... I suppose it's just a matter of which audience something is intended for, in those cases.

The way I used it is in the context, "Charlie, if you think we're gong to let you borrow the car tonight, then you have another think coming." Think makes sense in that context, not thing. But yes, thing has been used often and could be correct in the right context. The other thing we all need to remember is that language is fluid and ever changing. What was correct hundreds of years ago (more orally, since written language then was extremely fluid) is now gibberish to all except linguists. Even a couple of decades is enough to drastically change the meaning of a word, or the accepted correct grammatical use of it. Take the two words, "a lot" which are, more and more frequently, used as one word, "alot." This has come to the point where it is accepted in certain circles as correct, and very likely will be considered widely correct everywhere within a hundred years.

You forgot the rest of it: "Continual Output of Luscious Entertainment: Programmable ARay of a Kaleidoscope of Entertaining Reading." I wonder who the software engineers are? Obviously not affiliated with Microsoft. Or Apple.

..."Also sadly, the church members and bystanders did not lift a finger to help the couple or to stop church leaders from perpetrating the crime." Here's the link.

Glad to hear you got it working. Don't pay for anti-virus s/w though. Most of it infests your system so badly it might as well be called a virus, not anti-virus software. I'm assuming you're running some version of windows? Pretty much the best option right now for anti-virus is to simply install the free, fully integrated, and surpisingly good Microsoft Security Essentials A/V software.

I've noticed a strange effect when one of my stories gets posted. I can have it edited, read it through dozens of times, check it carefully, and think that it's good to go. Then, once it's posted, the VERY FIRST time I read it through on the site, I notice errors. Usually several. Something about the act of posting, or maybe about the differing venue, I don't know. But it seems to have the effect of making errors stand out so glaringly that I can see them (at least my own) practically before the story finishes rendering on the screen. As I sit there shaking my head and feeling like a fool I can't help wonder how so many books get published all the time, and when reading them I rarely see these kinds of errors. The power of many, many multiple rounds of professional editing I guess. Either that, or the real pros don't make mistakes.

As far as I know there's no issues like you describe being reported for any recent releases of firefox. I'm not having difficulty, though I've been using Chrome more than firefox these days since it's faster. A guess, from what you describe, is that possibly some piece of malware has changed your connection settings. Possibly to try and route your connection through a proxy so they can spy on you / steal passwords / incite mayhem. When you say that the sites won't load properly, do you mean they won't load at all? Or will they load but look wrong? Or some other kind of issue maybe? That could be a malfunctioning plugin or extension in firefox. First two things I would do would be to check the connection settings in the firefox preferences to make sure they haven't been messed with, and disable extensions/plugins one by one to see if one of them is causing a problem. Uninstalling and reinstalling firefox may not fix the problem unless you completely wipe your profile too. If you do this though you will lose all your bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.

A few of my favorites that seem to crop up more and more often: past / passed lose / loose affect / effect their / they're / there to / too / two then / than its / it's accept / except ...and more. Though I don't claim to never make those mistakes myself. Tired fingers do strange things. Also, mangled turns of phrases or idioms seem to be turning up more and more often these days. I suspect the people who type these have never really thought about the meaning, else they would stop short and check their accuracy. Such as: "for all intensive purposes" instead of "for all intents and purposes" or "use to" instead of "used to" or "suppose to" instead of "supposed to" or "close" instead of "clothes" or "you have another thing coming" instead of "you have another think coming" or "on tender hooks" instead of "on tenterhooks" There's more, but you get the picture. I once saw "put him on a pedestal" written as "put him on a paddle stool"

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” --Mahatma Gandhi

One of his last blog posts read: “I always say how bullied I am, but no one listens. What do I have to do so people will listen to me?” Just over one week later, Jamey was found dead outside his home of an apparent suicide. Here's the link. I'm actually having trouble with this one. Too much bad news today I think...

Very intriguing. Just the kind of story I like. One foot set in the here and now, one foot in the unknown. Well done. If you ever end up writing more of this, I'll be in line to read it.

WTF?!?!?! Seriously, just WTF????!!! That is all.

Very sad news. I enjoyed his writing. This is truly a loss to the world. Rest in Peace Richie.

I've been following Orson Scott Card's continuous slide into homophobia and bigotry for quite a few years. I was one of those people that discovered Ender's Game as a teen, and absolutely fell in love with it. I thought the writer of such a work could do no wrong. He had some other good novels too, but then something quickly became noticeable. Every book was a bit more obvious in how it pushed OSC's mormon religion. Every book was a bit more fundamentalist. A bit more bigoted, and a bit more homophobic. Then, some of his essays and speeches were even worse. Especially some of the stuff against gay marriage and other gay rights. It truly is sad. Such a talented writer. Such a creative story teller. And more and more he is showing himself to be intolerant on so many issues. It's hard to fathom. And sad.

Wow. Just....wow!

Well, the next best thing then would be to use a gmail account, or yahoo or hotmail, or some such. A web based account. They're generally easy to set up an account and simple to use. Then, to email me about how I really need to work on my dialogue in my stories, you can just copy and paste the email address into the web mail page and send away.

Take a look at this article. An interesting take on the subject, especially considering some of the recent debate coming out of the United States, especially Texas, concerning sex ed and the failure of the "abstinence only" approach.

I could really use some editing help folks. One of my editors has had to bail recently due to job and family commitments. (The nerve of him! Really, what should come first?! ) The other doesn't have much time these days, so I've been doing what no writer should ever do, trying to edit my own work. Job benefits are as follows: Horrible hours. No pay at all. High expectations. The drudgery of combing through tangled sentences and attempting to figure out what the heck they're supposed to say before gently telling me that they're completely unreadable mush and I might consider re-doing the whole paragraph. Or chapter. Any victims...errr....interested takers?