"Don't forget everybody has a prince--including men."

"Prince" is an interesting error. I think that this thread is largely about the desire for a prince, someone who will carry one away. This thread parallels the passivity of the princess, of wanting someone to complete one and fix it, all of it. That passivity makes the princeess stories so disabling. Now, when I apply "princess," I'm applying that to men as well, men who do want a woman to do this and don't want a woman to do that, because that will fix it, after all, if someone else just does what needs to be done, saving us the trouble.

Hey, congrats on those books! Tres cool, my love.

I think it's cool that your renown is both narrow and broad. Relatively few people cite you, but you're cited with all due respect and around the world. This opposes Paris Hilton's fame, which is wide, but she's famous for something thin: posing. She's a professional poseur, as deep as a photo of her.

Asehpe, it's nice to have another Broadsheeter assert the essentiality of achievement and how that's not only independent of others, but one's achievement grows as the opposition grows. Every story worth telling is one of struggle, as is every life worth living.

@ Brightstar

You're a bright man. Why replay your old saw that American women bore you? Why not bring your good stuff to this game?

Hey, I never got a chance (They closed the thread.) to tell you how much I enjoyed chatting with you a couple weeks back.

@ okidokithen

"uncultured insensitive brutes"?

Are you a drama king? Are you hearing voices? I complimented Brightstar and tried to nudge him out of his loop and you hear "uncultured insensitive brutes"? Bring your good stuff, okidokithen. Leave the delusion alone.

Okay, if you quote me, then it's not about me. Got it.

@ Asehpe

I think the compact, private victories are lovely. When I fall in love again, it will be with a man who can fix a leaky toilet, bake red velvet cake, and start a fire in the rain. I want more than a pal. I want a peer. And since I'm always undertaking some new challenge, I want someone to not grow old with, but to grow with.

Okey-dokey then! Say, if you're writing to me, could you please preface with an "@ bigguns"?

@ asehpe

I just saw a guy do it. At night. In the rain. And it had been raining all day. He snapped twigs from a dead tree.

"They have to snap," he said.

And I helped!

We made a stockpile. Then we snapped branches. Then it was a lot of blowing and adding snapped twigs and branches and drying logs on top of the burning twigs. There was a lot of steam and after about 15 minutes, it burned by itself in the rain. I was impressed and now I can do it too. Another compact victory.

And one is happening right now. The dollar continues its crash. Inflation continues. People are losing their homes. Jobs are being lost. It's knocking at the door and it doesn't matter if we don't answer that knock. One way or another, it's coming into our homes.

Yep, I'm a brat.

Today, my friend, you have much more patience with the Parsons Jim than I do. Perhaps it was reading his suggestion that AKA Smith rapes girls that stripped patience from me. Or perhaps it's my slowly acquired assumption that he and his kind don't argue in good faith. Accusing AKA Smith of rape and pedophilia is beyond ad hom. It's libel and it should be considered criminal. And there is a part of me that wonders why he doesn't love men, given that he seemingly loathes women. As you recently noted, most of us have the capacity to love another of our gender. Men in prison frequently love each other and whereas some/much of that is rape, some of it is likely a substitute for their sexual preference, but how does do the Parsons Jim evidence longing for women? Parson Jim seems to only want to hurt women. He is in the perpetual role of Perpetrator of Hurt.

However, in the end, I agree with you. I shouldn't swat him. It debases me.

Mwaaah!

P.S. - Your wife is lucky.

P.P.S. - Sorry about the woman on the bus. Who knows what her history was. I suspect that that moment had to do with her history and very little to do with you.

It seems the last few strips have been your long good-bye. You're a smart man whose ideas are due consideration and it seems you're saying that your characters will see the sunny meadows no more. Will you? If not, are they sharing your fate, since they are you? Or will they live the living death of a dead man sitting (in a cell)? In their case, it's the cells that comprise fading comic strips.

Suffering feels private to me. And how can one weep cleanly when it's being filmed. Doesn't knowing that one is being watched dirty all of us, the filmed, the filmer, and the audience?

Brightstar, didn't you say you were going to behave upon resurrecting yourself?

Dmitriy and tizzyfit are examples.

Are they Palin's pals asked to patrol the Intertubes and fire off defenses of the secretive Palin who took 6 years and about as many colleges to graduate? I want someone with an elite intellect to pilot this country.