for your condolences and kind thoughts. Your tender messages have helped ease their pain a bit, and for that, I thank you all as well.

Catherine Linda Michel

Appears to have become the most viewed story on this site, according to Popular Content, with well over 32,000 hits.

I know Karen J joked about having hit on it 28,000 times on a slow night, but as long as she read it each time - it's one of my better efforts - I don't mind.

Angharad.

A friend sent me an email which says:

You don’t dare miss this amazing Video Clip . . . but, first, read this properly, all the way through…

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent," Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears, and she won the top prize of about  £75,000.

Good Evening ALL,

I am in need of an editor or two. I have two stories actively being worked on, one a Serial Comdex...(eight chapters, 3-5 more) and the other a much shorter story, "Between Christmas and Hell."

What I'm looking for in an editor:
1) Someone who will smack my nose with a newspaper and say no no no! Bad Writer
In other words someone who isn't afraid to make suggestions or tell me I'm wrong!
And then won't get bent out of shape if I don't always take their suggestions.

I've been out on disaster relief twice before; to Honduras after Hurricane Mitch. Of course that was 12 years ago, and I've had a broken back since. Still, I get around OK, and I'm only 63. I't thinkin I'd leave the Hijab and skirts at home. I am still a very good electrician and for me it comes down to my personal freedoms as opposed to a clear need. I'm thinking I'll make a couple calls tomorrow to see what develops. It would be a financial stretch for me, but I just feel driven.

Gwen

My best friend Tina's, Granddaughter died suddenly, at the age of three months. I don't know how long the process and everything is going to take, but my place is with her right now. Forgive me, and please say a prayer for little Tehya (Tay-uh)

Cathy.

Since I've gotten a new computer, I've had problems accessing BC with both Firefox and Explorer (up to date versions).

The only thing that has changed is that I'm running Windows 7 now instead of XP. All other sites I try to access work normally.

The error messages I receive are either "Problem accessing page cannot connect to server" or "DNS Lookup Error" once I refresh about a dozen times I get through, but it's getting old real quick. Anyone else having a problem or know of a solution?

(This is where you run away, screaming.)

I posted this in February of 2009. Since then, only one writer has taken up the challenge. In a thoughtful, emotionally charged short piece, Grover wrote exactly what I was looking for. A beautifully written story that embodied my hopes for this universe.

new chapter of WHY ME? posted here. http://tanyastales.yolasite.com/wip--why-me.php

Tanya

It's not what you're thinking!

Hi everybody. I have been reading BigCloset TopShelf for awhile, and occasionally commenting on some of the stories for a shorter while. So I decided to tell anybody that is interested about this silly person that is me.

First, to avoid just repeating stuff that I have written elsewhere, here is the link to a tiny website that I set up back in 2003 through my ISP: http://mysite.verizon.net/vze7yom8/index.html

"I See You" is one of the lines in James Cameron's movie Avatar. While it doesn't have any TG in it, there are transformations both physical and spiritual. Gwen's recent admission that she'd seen the movie 3 times in 3D no less has made me admit that I've seen it twice, once in Imax 3D and once in only 3D. It is one heck of a visual treat, but for a story that many seem to put down for being simple and had already been done, it has made me cry. Twice. I knew that scene was coming but I still was reaching for those napkins I kept handy just in case.

It seems that forced marriage is becoming an increasing issue for gay Muslims. An interesting report from the Beeb.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8446458.stm

Whereas the Guardian reported on legalisation of gay marriage in Portugal, despite it being a Roman Catholic country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/portugal

An in China, of all places, a gay pageant.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jan/10/china-gay-pageant

Ok, for a while now, I have been feeling very unsettled. I've had thoughts of doing everything from moving to New Zealand to reverting back to Male. It has all felt really weird.

So, over Christmas, in spite of the fact that I'm Muslim, I put Handel's "Messiah" in my sterio and played it a couple times. I just love it. Well, three times since then, the sterio has started playing it all by its self. Once I came home to find it playing. The remote is infrared, so I did not think anything like a cell phone or play station could cause it, but I didn't worry about it too much.

How to count...

by Puddin'

As a writer, you're meant to put words on blank paper. Accountants, on the other hand, are paid to put arabic numbers on paper with lines on it, which makes all the difference. Arabic numbers are not words, they're symbols, which don't actually translate all that well into real words. There are a whole set of rules that are absolutely mandatory when writers write using numbers, mostly to avoid confusion, but also to avoid looking like a rank amateur. The two instantly diagnostic symptoms of amateur writing are bad spelling, and the inappropriate use of arabic numerals.

The first thing a writer has to know about arabic numbers is that they're not precise, even though they look like they ought to be, and it's usually important for a writer to get the words right all the time. If you write: "Sam said, ‘It's 7:00,’" what the heck did Sam actually say? "Seven?" "Seven o'clock?" "Sevenish?" "Seven on the dot?" "Seven exactly?" "Seven AM?" "Seven PM?"" "Seven in the early evening?" "Seven in the morning?" "Oh seven hundred military time?" Those bare arabic symbols say nothing at all beyond what an accountant might dream of, and leaving important details as an exercise for the reader is rarely a good idea.

Every professional writing venue has what's called a "style guide" which details many of the rules associated with putting words on paper for that particular venue. Newspapers have style guides, as do magazines, as do book publishers, as do many web sites. This article addresses only the use of numbers, and offers explanations, which is rather more than most style guides do, since the typical response to submissions which don't follow the rules is to toss them into the trash.

Number Styles

Rule One — Spell out every isolated single-digit whole number. Arabic numerals should be used for large numbers, exact times, exact amounts, and certain other specific situations, but the exact point at which numbers become “large” varies. Some venues treat ten as a large number, but see rule two.

Correct Examples: The two of us went to town. I have 10,763 unique clips in my paperclip collection.