lol -- I see we discovered the brunching shuttlecocks...

Roaches are overrated. Mammals are still on board -- next up are the Rodents. Beady little eyes, sharp teeth, nekkid tails, and just the right amount of adaptability... Stuart Little is an advance wave. No, really! Why, several of my cellmates have been explaining this in great lengths to me. (Most of the smaller ones are afraid the capybara will hear about their work over here and claim it for their own...) Of course, ultimately, anything that does sneak past us as supreme will have to develop the proper brain capacity, develop proper dexterity for tool use, gain that strange and unique quality that makes for willingness to self experiment... become us, more or less (apologies to RAH) ... and into the thickening night and dreaded dusk does my world go...

Ding Dong.... Chiming in. I'm pretty partial to keeping "short stories" whole, myself. The trick is, as noted, keeping them arranged properly. Formatting issues suck. My workaround has generally developed out to be WordPad when using Windows. Notepad on steriods, really. The HTML trick is also very workable, but you do have to be careful. For folks looking to try that route without having to get FP or some such, I recommend "arachnophilia" (http://www.arachnoid.com/arachnophilia/). And this despite the, um, rather extreme views of it's author in comparison to mine. lol. It's free, and really easy to use.

The concept behind the bleak journey is essentially this sort of thing, though a bit more structured. A "freeform" gallery which would, I think, "require" a tale to go with an image would be stunning. The best art seems to transcend a single form and branch out beyond the confines of a simple capture. But then, I'm crazy, so what the heck do I know? lol There are a great many images in the galleries already that do include some sort of vignette or piece, and of course there are the "graphic novel" formats (such as that of the Comics corner), but many of the writers I've met in person tend to like an occasional illustration in their works to "spice it up a bit", and a lot of the time images are used to inspire and develop out themes and ideas in a story, even though they may never see the light of day beyond the writers space. This idea is really building up to a critical mass now, I think, and the support for something like this might be greater than many realize. Those of us who enjoy doing this type of stuff tend to do a lot of it and to post frequently.

Agreed! With whole heart and entire soul! While it can sometimes be fitting, the use of a single word in poetry -- or prose, for that matter -- as a stand alone requires either a form that demands it specifically or, more usually, a weight of symbolism and depth of force that is built up before or after it, to give it meaning and depth beyond the conventional; otherwise it becomes an exercise that leaves the reader bereft of usefulness for the poem, and that, beyond all else, is a crime. What good is a poem whose value exists only for the writer? (A far sight less than the already low value placed on them already!) To share verse requires that the writer remember not merely their own experience, but that that effort they put so greatly into their craft has a value to others beyond their experience, and that they are the vessels of interpretation. While there is nothing wrong with writing poetry just for yourself, there are far too many "would be's" who's work is unreadable because they fail to understand their craft wholly, and what it is to be a poet. Which may be why I write so little shared poetry. But then, I have always looked on the craft of writing as something which is meant to be shared, and if it cannot be, then it is merely exercise of the mind (a noble endeavor on its own, but not necessarily one to inflict on an world filled with those most vile of creatures: the uneducated critic). Conjure, evoke, explain, and confer, but do it in a manner that gives the reader an accurate image. A single word can have far too many connotations in it within English for it to truly be of value without weight equal at least to a number of words equal to its length in letters. Hee hee. Don't ya just love arbitrary rules?

Hey, how did my last interview get in here? lol

You can kill a soul. Been done for thousands of years, and much is made of doing such within folklore. That the art is lost to us now shows, perhaps, little more than our own inability to percieve it properly. I mean, really -- my soul was slain ages and ages ago. Why else would I have lost all reason? Best of the bunch, dear -- excellent choice in words, rhthym is wonderfully deceptive, and the physical beauty of the words themselves is just so...

Dreams are the pandering of the id for the ego to awaken...

Faith is not hard to come by, nor is religion faith encumbered. Religion is faith made simpler, for those without time for contemplation and the need to live the life it celebrates. We are lazy creatures as a lot, even in this. Faith is a wispy, gentle thing, stirred within as all the "higher" ideals must be. The force of cruelty and capricious chance, the weight of learning and the mockery of the devil's own advocate, these things distract us, bewitch us, bemuse us, and as we learn more and peer deeper into that well we find that they are the reflections on the water. Deeper we go into those murky depths, until, in the end, we reach that point where we began, and faith then is guarded. Hard to come by? No. For proof, ask a newborn of it's parents. Trite, perhaps, and certainly cliche -- but all cliche's exist because they are percieved to have truth within them -- otherwise the would never have been used enough to have become such... The final three lines lack the aural familiarity of the first five. The breath isn't that deep or long. A line perhaps is missing to complete it. I'm not a poet, though, and I do know it.

She surveyed the island causticaly, her eyes huge with rage and disbelief, a small part of her wondering how things could get so, so Those goons were toppling her rig! That wouldn't do -- no sir, not at all. "Set me down there." She pointed to a slightly open patch of ground just south of the Goon squad that lumbered around the teetering rig. The pilot turned to her with a look of horror. "No, offense, ma'am, but those goons would just as soon do the same to a woman as pretty as you." Olive smiled her best smile, the one that had cost ten thou andtaken three weeks to learn effectively, and batted her eyes. He blushed, looked away a second, and then found himself staring down the barrel of a very large gun. "Honey, those goons haven't a clue what I am, so why don't you keep a hold of your life and your job and set this chopper down where I told you to." He dropped her down, and she stepped out of the chopper, a huge scowl on her face and the mauser in her hand. As her feet touched the soil, she bellowed, a trick she'd learned ages ago that had come in especially useful when she was still foolish and in love with that dolt of a sailor. "Who's in charge here?!" The goons stopped bashing, and looked around at each other, their faces slack and eyes puzzled, then almost as one they grinned strangely and somehow formed a circle of pointing fingers about a dirty, raggeddy, obviously environmentalistic recluse witha single eye, thick arms, a powerful ches, er, chin, and, and Olive's face sagged. Not nearly as much as it had once, but still somewhat obvious (the bone grafts hadn't been done yet). That pipe. The old nutso's mouth popped openm as well, followed by his eyes springing forth from their sockets to bounce up and down in front of her for a fraction of a second before rebounding back into his head, starts alighting the air around him like an angelic halo of lust. "P-p-popeye?" "Oyliv?" He growled. Just then a milling Goon milled a bit too hard, and the club struck her on her now very pretty little head, and she fell into darkness, her heart fluttering for some reason. She dreamed of him, of that horrible man who somehow stirred things inside her she refused to believe were possible any longer. Mostly because she'd paid for them to be surgically removed. In fact, she'd paid quite a lot to have them removed. She grimaced, and realized her dreams had ended not only when she felt the grimace, but also becuase of the smell in the air. A smell she had hated and despised, a smell that only one thug had ever had the obesity to wear -- B. Luto. She opened her eyes, to find herself bound and and lying beside him, the ropes strategically placed by the goons to show off what she had worked so hard to achieve. Their eyes met. "You! I should have known you'd have somethign to do with this! You cad! You miserable, yellow bellied, sad sack, corrupt, two timing, lecherous, toad! I'm gonna .." "You'll do nothing!" hissed a new voice. SHe looked over, and beheld Peter Goon for the first time. "You!" "Me." "How dare you take me prisoner!" Olive boiled over, causing all the extensions in her hair to frizz... ---

very nifty, baument! thank you!

Oh dear! I am neither an old woman nor a young girl, not a wise woman, nor a fool to be I'm living a life, and it remains to see that what will be, simply is. hee hee sorry, my poetry is simple and, in this case, rather silly my prose prosaic, my life well lived. It seems to me, in all the above, to be something I share With the old and the young, the wise and the weary Losing my sight, my touch, my hearing Yet my mind keeps a going and going and going while the doctor's they probe, and stick me unfeeling but that's ok, you see, I'm crazed mentally kaput, unhinged, and ynsaen

But the one doesn't know that's a singularity, and thus is, in and of itself, an entire universe of possibilities. sophism. And Eclaire said I'd never see the day.... sigh.... lol

nitpickin... It is Schroedinger's cat -- the cat that walks through walls because it fails to know it is there (or boxes, in the case of his cat. Pictures were rumored, but I've never shred the nega--- er, um, well, box in any case.) Goodel Escher Bach. Always hated math, never very good at doing it, but philosphy and I are another matter...

lol!!! So you've been playing with components again. Shame shame. Excellent capture of the both the idea and the problem.