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Subject: {ASSM} {REVIEW} Celestial Reviews 366 Sept 9
Date: Wed, 6 Sep 2000 23:10:03 -0400
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Celestial Reviews 366 -" Sept 9, 2000
Note: I'm back again!
As many of you know, I took a "vacation" to publish my novel. I wish I could
tell you that I have met with success, but that's not the case -" not yet,
anyway. It has been an interesting but frustrating experience. I contacted
about ten agents, all of whom declined even to look at the manuscript. The
two people (non-agents, unrelated to publishers) who looked at the entire
novel liked it very much and gave me some extremely useful feedback. So my pre
sent status is that I have an even better, still unpublished novel.
Second note: I missed writing these reviews and am eager to resume. However,
I am going to change my modus operandi just a little.
First, I am going to be a little more willing to toss out bad stories without
reviewing them. In the past, my viewpoint was that I had a right to review
whatever I wanted to review; and so I occasionally posted a review that an
author viewed as a preemptive attack. I still think anyone has a right to
review anything that is posted to this newsgroup, but I have never intended
to offend anyone. I'll still give occasional unsolicited reviews -" simply
because the First Amendment says I can and because common sense says I
should; but if you want your story reviewed, you'll increase your chances
greatly by emailing me a copy and asking for a review.
In the past once I read a story, I would review it, even if I hated it. In
the future, I intend to take that attitude only if the author or someone else
asks me to review a story. In other words, if an author sends me a story or
asks for a review, I'll write the review even if I dislike the story. In
addition, if there's public debate about a topic or story, I may discuss it
in Celestial Reviews. Otherwise, I am not inclined to give advice to people
who don't want it.
The preceding paragraphs suggest that there will be a tendency for the
stories that I review to be ones that I like, and the result might tend to
be too many high ratings. I'll try to counter this tendency by giving really
high ratings more sparingly. What this means is that a story that might have
received straight 10's a year ago might receive lower ratings now. This will
make some of the new ratings non-comparable to the older ratings; but the
alternative is to have way too many 10's, and that wouldn't be good.
I'm going to stick with the guest reviewers. I have enjoyed working with
them, and I think I have provided a useful service by prodding them to write
occasional reviews and posting them in one place. If a particular reviewer
bothers you, you really oughta have the sophistication to skip or ignore that
person's reviews. If you are a guest reviewer and want me to send you some
stories again, please contact me. Even if you have never been a guest
reviewer but would like to give it a try, please contact me.
I'm going to retain my introductory jokes. I know some people don't like
these, but those people can exercise their freedom by screwing themselves
instead of reading my jokes. When I post the jokes, people send me some good
ones -" many of which I don't publish; but at least I have a continuing source
of things that make me laugh.
Finally, I'm going to try to be more regular in my Celestial Grammar notes. I
have a publisher who wants me to write an underground grammar book, and
writing the grammar column in Celestial Reviews may prod me to finish that
project. If you have grammar questions or suggestions, please send them to me.
Third note: I am trying to expand my computer literacy. One perk of using AOL
is that they give me a free web site. I have set up my web site as simply as
possible -" using a package called 1-2-3 Publish. This limits me to three
passages of limited length, plus some links. My plan right now is to post
each new issue of my Celestial Reviews there, and to have a link to my older
reviews in ASSTR. I'll also post a few other things there. Right now, the
other two things are the first two chapters of my novel. So, if I manage to
figure out the address, and if I manage to post everything there that I want
to post at that site, you can go there and find these things.
My web page address is http://hometown.aol.com/celeste801/myhomepage/index.htm
l
Meanwhile, I'll keep posting the reviews as usual to a.s.s.m. and a.s.s.d.
THIS WEEK'S JOKE: A little girl was leading her dog through the park when an
old man stopped her, saying, "That's sure a pretty dress you're wearing."
The little girl smiled, "Thank you, Sir. My mama bought it for me. This is my
dog Porky."
The old man chuckled, "I'll bet a nickel I can guess why you called him that."
She shook her head, "I'll bet you can't."
He laughed, "You called him Porky because he's so fat."
She shook her head. "No Sir, we call him that because he fucks pigs."
=====================
Celestial Reviews Index:
=====================
"Double Take" by Admiral Cartwright (twin incest) 8, 9, 8
"Trail Magic" by Wiseguy (outdoor sex) 9.5, 9.5, 9.5
"Seducing Tina" by Left Side Signals 8.5, 8, 8.5
"Missy, JD, and the Night" by The Mysterious Mr. Lee Organization (first time
teen ff sex) 8, 8, 8
=====================
Here are the Reviews:
=====================
"Double Take" by Admiral Cartwright (admcartwright@starfleet.hotmail.com).
The author says this story is a variation of Erich Kaestner's Das Doppelte
Lottchen, but it is easier to recognize Walt Disney's hand than Kaestner's in
this madcap adventure. Imagine this: twin twelve-year-old girls -" one has
lived only with the mother, and the other has known only the father. The
twins meet at summer camp, notice their similarities, and realize that they
are twins when they discover themselves having simultaneous orgasms
accompanied by a sort of harmonic vibration during masturbation.
The author is somewhat vague about the exact nature of what happens when the
twins masturbate together. Even when they work out on different sides of the
Pond, an orgasm in London leads to a sympathetic vibration in Texas. When
they're together, the earth moves, so to speak. I interpret this as a special
case of harmonic theory, which I learned about back in high school. Harmonics
play an important role in everyday life. For example, harmonic vibrations
sometimes cause cars to shimmy at high speeds. The harmonic series is a
mathematical definition, generally used when talking about frequencies. The
harmonic series is important in musical applications because most instruments
(including guitar) produce sounds that contain harmonic frequencies. My
theory is that the girls hit upon something here that the nuns managed to
suppress back in high school physics. This sort of information explains why
rocket scientists are so damned good at sex. But I digress.
As Disney would suggest, the two girls trade parents. That is, at the end of
their vacation {i.e., holiday} at Camp Keweenaw, Sandi goes to London and
Sarah goes to Texas to meet her pa {i.e., father}.
Sarah-as-Sandra, of course, discovers that her father loves his little girl
more deeply than she had suspected. As in most Disney variations on this
theme, the girl is eager to get to know her parent more biblically.
So you might suspect that Sandi-as-Sarah goes off to England and does the
wild thing with Mum. Wrong! What kind of perverted story do you think this
is? 'Tis her grandfather whom she shags.
And of course, the girls plot to bring Mum and Pa back together. Otherwise,
one or the other would lose access to Daddy's cock, and grandpa doesn't taste
near as good. To accomplish the reunifuckation, they have to enlist the
assistance of the other woman who caused Mum and Pa to break up for some
really bad reasons. As is always the case with Disney stories (which support
family values), the parents are really meant for each other, and they realize
this during the ensuing orgy.
The harmonic vibrations were interesting, but distracting. I kept wondering
what applications there might be of the Doppler effect to the undulations of
sex.
The best accidental pun in the story was this one: "It wasn't long before he
came." Well, it was longer before he came than after he came!
As usual, upon my return from a hiatus I am trying to start a new life and
stop giving every fucking story I review a set of tens. Taken as a serious
attempt at an interesting romance (as serious as " Das Doppelte Lottchen,"
that is), this story is weak. I mean, even given the suspension of huge
amounts of disbelief, normal people don't act this way without screwing up
one another's lives. Likewise, as a testimony to hedonism the story is
simplistic compared to, say, the "Trinity Trilogy" or to the adventures of
the Allen sisters.
So I decided to treat the story as a parody of the vaguely serious identical
twin motif in "Parent Trap." From this perspective, it's a fun story, but not
a great parody in the tradition of Shelby Bush. I think maybe the story would
be a little better if the sexcapades didn't appear to be piled on quite so
heavily with sometimes inadequate logic.
I'm also trying to stiffen my requirements for the Venus (technical quality)
rating. I'm going to dock this story a point not because there are egregious
errors, but rather because the transitions are sometimes week. That is,
although the story was generally clear, I sometimes felt that I was being
jerked around in an uncomfortable manner.
Ratings for "Double Take"
Athena (plot & character): 8
Venus (technical quality): 9
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
"Trail Magic" by Wiseguy (wiseguy35@hotmail.com).
Leo and Bridget are taking a 50-mile hike along the Appalachian Trail, during
which Leo hopes to get some nookie, while deciding whether he wants to
initiate cohabitation with Bridget. His plans are interrupted by an
interloper named Gretel.
The story is simple, pleasant, and sexy -" first a twosome, then a threesome,
then -" well, you read it and find out.
Sex in the outdoors is a real turn-on for me. Sex in the RAINY outdoors is a
bonus. The author does a real nice job.
Ratings for "Trail Magic"
Athena (plot & character): 9.5
Venus (technical quality): 9.5
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 9.5
"Seducing Tina" by Left Side Signals.
Dr. Barstow has long admired Tina, his administrative assistant. One day -" a
day on which the poor young lady is just plain hot to trot - she gets stood
up by her husband. That's the bad news. The good news is that one day when
the poor young lady is just plain hot to trot, she gets stood up by her
husband. So Dr. Barstow fills in <wink>. It's really pretty hot stuff.
As part of my policy of discussing grammar and style, I have selected some
examples from this story. I'll discuss these below, under CELESTIAL GRAMMAR.
At this point, I'll simply note that these flaws do distract from the flow of
the story, but not so much as to put a serious damper on matters at hand.
Once Dr. Barstow gets Tina into the sack, the sex is quite nice.
Ratings for "Seducing Tina"
Athena (plot & character): 8.5
Venus (technical quality): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8.5
"Missy, JD, and the Night" by The Mysterious Mr. Lee Organization
(TheMrLee@hotmail.com).
What we have here is a teenage lesbian seduction with a strong dose of
romance. The girls get together to watch Thelma and Louise on video. One of
them has some prurient interest in the other, and the other is not all that
hard to convince. The sex is dreamlike and, well, sexy.
Ratings for "Missy, JD, and the Night"
Athena (plot & character): 8
Venus (technical quality): 8
Celeste (appeal to reviewer): 8
CELESTIAL GRAMMAR:
Effective parallelism and subordination can contribute to a good story. The
author of "Seducing Tina" made some mistakes that can be instructive.
One tool for showing parallelism is by joining two independent sentences
together. You can do this in two ways:
(1) Use a semicolon to join the sentences.
We made love for an hour; then we had lunch and came back
for more.
(2) Use a comma plus a coordinating conjunction to join the sentences.
{Coordinating conjunctions include, AND, OR, BUT, and FOR.}
We made love for an hour, and then we had lunch and came
back for more.
It's almost that simple, but there's one final detail. If either of the
independent clauses (the originally separate sentences) contains internal
punctuation, then the comma in rule (2) becomes a semicolon.
We made love for an hour; and then we had lunch and came
back for more, while her husband watched us through
binoculars from the balcony where I had stationed him.
Here's an example of where the author of "Seducing Tina" missed the mark:
It was usually a mixed-gender group, some married but
mostly not, and Matt often behaved like one of the single
people, sitting in the center of the group batting ideas around
and leaving Tina isolated on the periphery, serving the drinks
and snacks.
The above sentence clearly needs a semicolon to separate the two main
clauses. In addition, the second clause needs some commas to separate the
items in the list of "sitting, batting, and leaving." Finally, I would revise
the second clause to get rid of the final participle (serving). The problem
with "serving" is that it (1) gives the appearance of being parallel to the
other participles, when in fact it is not and (2) it gives the impression
that the writer is just chaining ideas together, without any concern for
subordinating one idea to another. Here's how I would rewrite the sentence:
It was usually a mixed-gender group, some married but
mostly not; and Matt often behaved like one of the single
people, sitting in the center of the group, batting ideas around,
and leaving Tina isolated on the periphery, where she served
the drinks and snacks.
There's little seriously wrong with the author's way of stating this
sentence, and I could be coming across as a snob by suggesting that my way is
better. The advantage of my way is that it gives the reader a little more help
in seeing which ideas belong together. It would certainly be possible to
"improve" this passage by stating the ideas in completely different ways, but
I have no urge to go there right now.
So then we have this sequence:
Picking up the new lecture notes, I pulled my swivel chair over
to the outside door. With my feet planted on either side of the
jamb, I leaned back to check them over, but, paging through, I
gave them little more than a cursory review; I was still thinking
about Tina.
I personally would have said, "I leaned back to check the notes"; but maybe I
would be showing paranoia over the possibility that my reader might think it
was my feet that I was checking. I also think there should be a object to the
preposition "through"; but in an age when we "come with" -" and possibly even
"cum with" -" sans object of the preposition, maybe this usage is OK.
However, the main problem is that the second sentence needs better use of
semicolons. I would rewrite it as follows:
With my feet planted on either side of the jamb, I leaned back to
check the notes; but, paging through them, I gave them little
more than a cursory review. I was still thinking about Tina.
Finally, I think this author overuses the present ( -"ing) participle. It would
sometimes be better to say something more specific. In the previous example I
changed "serving" to "where she served"; and I think this led to more precise
expression. In this case, I would get rid of one more participle:
With my feet planted on either side of the jamb, I leaned back to
check the notes; but as I paged through them, I gave them little
more than a cursory review. I was still thinking about Tina.
Authors should not sweat this sort of thing while writing the first draft -"
or even the second, third, or twentieth draft. But sometime before or during
the FINAL draft these imperfections and mannerisms need to be considered.
Focusing on them may seem burdensome; and if it's a real pain in the ass, get
a proofreader to do it for you. But many authors discover that by focusing on
these details they are able to say more precisely exactly what they wanted to
say. That sort of thing leads to real improvements in the final product.
The following two sentences (already corrected) demonstrate when you need a
semicolon and when you don't:
I could feel her nipples like little stones pushing into my chest
through our clothing, and her pubic bone was just above my
own. Then she pulled her face away from my shoulder, her
expression serious but her eyes twinkling at me from a distance
of only a few inches; and she reached up to put her hands on my
shoulders.
The first setence contains two clauses with no interior punctuation.
Therefore, all we need is a common plus "and" to join them. The second
contains two clauses, but with interior punctuation. Hence, it needs a
semicolon.
Finally there's this sentence:
Her nipples were a dusky brownish-pink, prominent against her
pale skin, and I was startled to see a tattoo, a delicate rose, on
the upper slope of her firm left breast.
Actually, all the preceding sentence needs is a semicolon. I'd also throw in
a pair of dashes around "a delicate rose." However, the main reason I cited
this sentence was to put an interesting picture into your dirty little mind.
Her nipples were a dusky brownish-pink, prominent against her
pale skin; and I was startled to see a tattoo - a delicate rose - on
the upper slope of her firm left breast.
As the Bard said, "A rose by any other firm left breast would still be a
rose."
Note that "so" is not a coordinating conjunction. Therefore, when it joins
two sentences, it goes by rule (1), not rule (2). That is, if you join two
sentences with "so," then you need a semicolon.
He was almost ready to come; so he pulled his cock out of
her and squirted his jism all over her body.
But note that "so" can serve purposes other than joining two sentences. In
such cases, it is normally preceded by a simple comma.
He pulled his cock out of her, so that he could squirt his cum
all over her body.
Final exam. Is this sentence OK?
Before I could say I didn't think that was possible, Tina lowered
her mouth over the head of my cock and proceeded to lave it
with her flashing tongue, cleansing it of the remains of her
exquisite blow-job and stimulating it to a freshened stiffness.
Answer: It's fine as-is. However, if the author inserted the word "she"
before "proceeded," then he would need a semicolon:
Before I could say I didn't think that was possible, Tina lowered
her mouth over the head of my cock; and she proceeded to lave
it with her flashing tongue, cleansing it of the remains of her
exquisite blow-job and stimulating it to a freshened stiffness.>>
Either way is fine with me.
<end>
--
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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