Dave Freer is far from your usual fantasy author — certainly not a normal writer of “epic” fantasy, some times known as the Big Fat Fantasy novel, or BFF.
His work has more of the feel of classic Heinlein with a dash of Gordon R. Dickson’s Dragon and the George, thrown in for humorous measure.
Dave, Monkey to his friends, is a rather interesting character all on his own.
His high fantasy novels Dragon’s Ring and the recent Dog and Dragon, which I review over at Otherwhere Gazette, are a wicked twist on the usual fantasy tropes. In fact, he used just about every standard BFF meme and then proceeded to turn them on their head.
Dragons become the main characters, rather than supporting cast or beasts of burden. They even fall in love with odd human girls.
Dr. David Freer, PhD, is an ichthyologist (fish scientist) originally from South Africa now resident in Tasmania, Australia. Somewhere along the way he’s also managed to be an army medic, gourmet chef, rock climber, commercial diver, bad fly fisherman and all around renaissance man who feeds his family mostly off of food he catches or grows himself. The sort of guy, who, if someone actually wrote him as a character people would be scream “Mary Sue.”
He’s written several novels with Eric Flint in a fairly standard practice for Baen in which they pair an up and comer with an established talent like Flint or David Drake or David Weber in order to put on a little polish and get their name out there. It usually works fairly well, although in Monkey’s case it’s his solo novels which really shine. Out from behind the shadow cast by the bigger names, Dave’s work showcases his brilliant, if slightly bent, talents.
If you love fantasy written with wry humor and with an almost child-like delight and wonder you should head over to Baen or Amazon and pick up Dragon’s Ring and Dog and Dragon.
You should also go and buy every bloody thing Dave Freer has ever written. He’s one of the most underrated talents writing today with a wicked wit and a penchant for puns.
Categories: Books and Magazines
First, I agree about Dave Freer. Always has been a good writer.
Second, David Weber is the correct spelling.
Third, Baen.com has a whole raft of e-books for downloading, many of them for free and almost always far cheaper than what Amazon charges.
I just got six books for eighteen dollars. You can even get Dog and Dragon which has not yet published for fifteen dollars for kindle, nook, iPad and practically everything else. Or you can read it on line.
Dave is not only one of my best friends, he’s one of the best authors working today, period. If there were justice in the world, he’d have to move to a bigger house, because he’d be pushed out the door by all the money he made from his books.
Dave Freer lives in Tasmania for many reasons. One of the simpler ones is that he doesn’t have much money.
I don’t think he’d change his lifestyle much if he had lots of money, but let’s test that, shall we? Go buy his books. All of them. Several copies, to give to friends who don’t read this blog.
I have $50 says that if Dave had a butler, he would have Jeeves hold his coat while he caught fish for dinner, by hand in the surf. Win or lose, I’d love to be able to settle that bet.
Regards,
Ric
Dave Freer is a terrific writer. He’s got several new short stories, and a few from the last year or so, which aren’t connected with Baen and are up on Amazon. Cassandra and Soot. Jack. The Road to Dundee. They are *gems*. What a fantastic talent!
Fantasy used to be my favorite genre, until the popularity of “epic” fantasy pushed out everything else (along with “urban” fantasy, though that entered later).
Lawrence Watt-Evans, who writes my favorite series (Ethshar it’s called) had to resort to using a ransom model to get more in the series written – letting fans pay $25 a chapter until it’s finished. Which he’s certainly not getting rich off of, but it’s stuff he wants to write, he just can’t get it published any more.
No Kindle version, no sale. Rats, sounded like a good thing.
go to http://www.baenebooks.com, you can pick up his entire catalog in any ebook format you want.
@ baen they sell the book in a kindle format
When I was young I really enjoyed fantasy from Hodgson to Howard to Moore to Tolkein to Lieber to Vance. I used to say to myself how much people who laugh at fantastic literature would like it if they ever got a real taste for it, perhaps introduced to it by films. Unfortunately, many of those works were considered unfilmable at the time either because of length or lack of special effects capabilities.
Be careful what you wish for.
For the last 2 decades, rather than quality fantasy winning over a crowd and carefully nurtured by gatekeepers, the field has been gutted by its own pandering to that new audience that seemingly has all the discriminatory powers of a trailer court poetry reading.
You either have overwritten short stories the size of Lord of the Rings full of stupid stereotypes or attempts at conspicuous artistry and idol breaking. As of today there is not one single writer in fantasy that has carried on the bright, individualistic visions and writing talent of fantasy’s beginnings up to the 80s.
A possible exception is Martin but who has fallen flat on his face in mid stride as it were and displayed all the earnest professionalism of an underpaid prostitute in dragging out his series for years on end. Fantasy has either been Jordanized or cleverized into at least temporary oblivion.
Unfortunately, only when fantasy ceases to be popular does it stand a chance of making a comeback which I hope will put a final nail in the stinking coffin of every dragon introduced in the last 20 years.
Have you actually read Dave’s work? I will agree with you on most of the Big Fat Fantasies written in the last 20 years or so, but there are exceptions. Jim Butcher being a notable example, as well as Freer.
No, I am leery of new fantasy “talent,” especially if they’re friends. If Flint, Drake and Weber, who I have read, are considered established talent then I am further put off. I started reading Drake in ’77 and his early Roman Empire short stories I really liked have not evolved into anything worthwhile for me. Those 3 are okay and might headline in the old Startling Stories but certainly couldn’t crack Astounding as a feature story writer; that is not “talent;” James H. Schmitz, a featured old school writer at Baen had talent.
Some people love fantasy; I mean really LOVE fantasy and so their discrimination filters are understandably set low as would be so in my own case. I love fantasy but don’t eat it indiscriminately and I have standards described above.
I am tired of being introduced to and wasting my time on “geniuses” like the 5th grade juvenalia and disconnected puns called the Discworld series which doesn’t even rise to the level of old Mad Magazine. Andrew J. Offut wrote crap like that an age ago called “Ardor On Aros” and it sank without a trace; today he’d be knighted.
I have only one request with recommendations: let’s have a line drawn between what we like and what we think is good and can recommend. I like lots of stuff I’d never recommend cuz it might simply appeal to my trailer side.
Jordan, Hobbs, Feist, Goodkind: it seems one giant stereotype factory made for 12 yr. olds by writers who are unclever prose stylists to say the least. Reading Goodkind has all the essence of cement and Jordan must’ve been paid by the word which he unfortunately ran out of in presenting bloated repetition with blithely drawn characters even a scorecard wouldn’t help with cuz they have no essence.
Give me some incense, tone, purple prose, a sense of authority and give off with the 1,100 word short stories written by people who need editors in the worst way. Originality isn’t in the story but the way the story is told. Once someone wakes up to the fact that Conan without Howard and Cugel without Vance are of not the slightest interest things will change. All the clever iconoclasm in the world won’t save poorly written stories. Jack Vance could write a more interesting story about buying a sandwich than the others mentioned here could with the entire panoply of dragons and naughty empires at their disposal.
First, I don’t recommend books I don’t think are worth recommending.
Second, as you haven’t read Dave’s work, perhaps you should do so before commenting on it.
Third, you’ll note I said Freer shines when he’s out of the shadow of the established “talent” Flint.
Perhaps you should read for content?
John Lwu,
Wow. How do you avoid walking into things with your nose that far in the air? I’ve seen genre snobbery, but this is award grade genre snobbery – when you haven’t even read the author who’s the subject of the article.
Although, if you think Terry Pratchett is nothing more than “disconnected puns”, I’m afraid recommending Dave Freer to you would be pointless. You wouldn’t see past the obvious surface plot to the biting satire, much less the commentary on how people and societies evolve to fit the challenges they face. The subtleties of mocking genre conventions would fly past without so much as a whistle – although from your rant, you’d be so wrapped in your own superior judgment you’d never even notice.
So yes, stay away from Dave Freer. He doesn’t deserve you.
First, I was reacting to repeated nepotism at PJM as if friends equals Heinlein so your basis for recommendation is suspect and not Freer.
I mentioned I didn’t read his work in the context of having been burnt so many times I’m tired of the effort of tackling new recommendations and the dragons, no matter how turned on its head is a clue this is more velvet paintings but by a “bent” and wacky iconoclast – “biting satire” is another clue. I did read about the student outshining the teacher bit but still, look who your comparing him to. So a rusty penny might be better than a more rusty penny. That’ll rush me to the internet
Next reason for the tirade is the idea of conservative SF and fantasy as served up at Baen. What is conservative SF, mercenaries? That seems to be pretty much it. To me conservative SF would a novel about 2050 when the U.S. is a lawless Tower of Babel thanks to unfettered immigration from the wrong places with illegal shanty towns all on strike for sewage and electricity in Calif. and Texas. There is none because conservative SF is an idea that is self-contradictory; thus the mercs.
As for my nose being in the air, it was bent up there by C.L. Moore, William Hope Hodgson, Leigh Bracket, A.E. van Vogt, Peter Hamilton and Jack McDevitt and 50 others and I can’t find even one of that ilk today in fantasy other than Martin.
That’s because originality is dead when you turn a genre into a mainstream swamp or “story” and “plot” and “allegory” as if writing is just some software to get that across and puns a great delight.
If Freer is like Pratchett, I’ll just read “Mad’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” for the 50th time and award it the Pulitzer. Another version of a nose in the air is the notion of a gatekeeper that keeps crap where it belongs. Where is a Swordsmen and Sorcerers’ Guild of America to help with that today?
Ironically here you have conservatives defending the politically correct line in conceptualized intellectual fine art that there is no real good and bad but just a perception and so my “pretensions” are awarded the same intellectual space as PC does by crying “racist” and “profiling.”
Yeah, my nose is in the air. When you can recommend a writer that can even apprentice with Jack Vance or write a single chapter like him, let me know. I got a clue for you: it sure as hell ain’t Pratchett and I’m sick of being recommended the next major talent only to read it and pull my hand over my face like Oliver Hardy just cuz it’s someone’s “colleague”.
They don’t make furniture like they used to and that’s not a generational perspective but a fact. Self-proclaimed iconoclasts aren’t iconoclasts, they’re rednecks in a long line of “rebels.” A real iconoclast will be ignored and disdained by almost all for doing the wrong thing. Or in other words, someone with a unique voice. If everyone’s a rebel then no one is and the rebel becomes the redneck and the redneck the rebel.
Just write a good book and forget about conspicuously breaking new ground and maybe we’ll have some new ground broke because the former is itself now a tiresome stereotype. Or how about a satire about the satire? I’d take a stab at Pratchett but the result would be hopelessly stupid, like doing a Van Gogh-style painting on velvet of sad clowns crying down by the river.
Save me from cutting edge because we ran out of room and hit the ceiling years ago. Just go back to fundamental prose without the ever increasing plot twists and wacky hijinx.
Wow, I don’t recall saying Dave was the equal of Heinlein, just that he had some of that feel. Once again, read for content.
Moreover, Dave would be the last one to label himself an “iconoclast.” Nor is he trying to write anything “important.” There’s something wrong, in your world apparently, about writing fun books people like to read — and pay him money for.
It may not be “important,” but Baen and it’s stable of authors have succeeded in writing a lot of books people enjoy reading — and paying money for.
How evil!
“There is none because conservative SF is an idea that is self-contradictory…”
Huh? You misunderstand one or the other of those terms.
As for the rest of it… meh. Stuff a couple onions in your belt for old time’s sake.
Sarah Hoyt – Heinlein – PJM. Yes, read for content. All the content. And context.
Okay, anyone who thinks Discworld is nothing but disconnected puns really has a problem with seeing the forest for the trees.
That couldn’t even be said of Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, which is a lot more punny than Discworld.
Anthony’s first volume of Bio of a Space Tyrant is one of the worst novels of fantastic literature I have ever read and one of the maybe 2% I read and don’t finish.
@ScottB: Buy the ebook from Baen and you can email it to your kindle. You can also download it in six (6) different formats, none with any DRM, or just read it online. Jim Baen thought that DRM in ebooks was silly; Baen’s continuing success suggests he was right.
I highly respect your opinion and will read some of Dr. Freer based on your recommendation.
But, man, “fantasy” and “Heinlein” uttered in virtually the same sentence is causing my head to spin.
“Glory Road”
“Glory Road” – damn good fantasy by Heinlein!
I’ve only read Freer’s early work, and it’s wonderful. Baen is a grand publisher for those of us who abandoned paper for ebooks years before Kindle. The best part of Freer’s stories that the huge smile on your face does not interfere with reading about the worlds he so happily creates.
I ran into Dave over at Baen’s Bar and I’ve been reading his books ever since. I often get Dave’s books for free to read as a first reader, then I go and buy them in ebook format and often in paperback format. The reason? They are that good.
I’ve just written a review about one of his Kindle books, the Leprechaun and the Bootlace and I usually write reviews for Dave’s books.
John Lwu – I’m willing to put my purse where my mouth is about how good a write Dave Freer is. You’ve admitted you have never read his books so here’s the deal. The Leprechaun and the Bootlace is $.99 from Kindle Amazon Store. Read it all the way through. If you don’t find it original, tell me how it ends and I’ll give you $2.00 back via paypal, no questions asked. You can contact me via my webpage. Then you can comment about what was written here.
Dave Freer is definitely one of the best writers out there and I thank Amazon that he’s now putting out more stories via their Kindle Store.
John Lwu, it simply amazes me that you can preach about how there is nothing new or original or good enough to read in fantasy these days when you obviously refuse to try anything. Of course, I also have trouble understanding how you can think Pratchett’s Discworld books are only puns strung together. As someone who grew up on Campbell and the others you cite, I can assure you there is much more to Pratchett than that. Of course, you have to actually think about what he’s writing and that might be your problem. Don’t know and frankly don’t care.
Perhaps instead of trying to prove to the rest of us that you know what “real” fantasy and sf is or should be, you should actually open your mind and give Dave’s books a fair trial. They might not be for you. From what you’ve said, they probably aren’t. Not because they are trite or rehashes of other books/themes/etc — they aren’t. No, they won’t be for you because I seriously doubt you can put your own prejudices aside long enough to read and enjoy the books for what they are. Of course, I’m just a neo-barb who happens to like satire and recommendations from other people because, guess what, I’ve learned that most folks recommend books not because they know the author but because they actually liked the book or because they think it is a book the person they are recommending it to will like.
You’re wrong: how do you think I’ve come across all the books I’ve read? On the sidewalk? The entire tirade comes from trying everything and anything people have some agreement as being worthwhile as regards new fantasy. I get burnt, burnt, burnt and then burnt some more. Please don’t give me any guff about not appreciating anything new. I found Martin’s “Song of Ice and Fire” by accident and was astonished at its quality. Guess my prejudices took the day off.
As for Pratchett:
“Nothing but stars, scattered across the blackness as though the Creator had smashed the windscreen of his car and hadn’t bothered to stop to sweep up the pieces. This is the gulf between universes, the chill deeps of space that contain nothing but the occasional random
molecule, a few lost comets and …
… but a circle of blackness shifts slightly, the eye reconsiders perspective, and what was apparently the awesome distance of interstellar wossname becomes a world under darkness, its stars the lights of what will charitably be called civilisation. For, as the world tumbles lazily, it is revealed as the Discworld – flat, circular, and carried through space on the back of four elephants who stand on the back of Great A’tuin, the only
turtle ever to feature on the Hertzsprung-Russell Diagram, a turtle ten thousand miles long, dusted with the frost of dead comets, meteor-pocked, albedo-eyed. No-one knows the reason for all this, but it is probably quantum. Much that is weird could happen on a world on the back of a turtle like that.”
If you consider that clever and funny, knock yourself out: he doesn’t compare very favorably to a first rate writer like Jack Vance to say the bare minimum but does compare favorably to Cracked. It’s garbage prose and “wit” like that by Pratchett that turns me off. In ’65 he’d be the forgotten back of an Ace Double. That’s because fandom has been replaced by mom and pop. When I want to read the fantasy equivalent of B.J and the Bear I’ll write.
I’ll try that book by Freer. What the hell else can I do at this point?
Hi John
I respect your right to not like an author. That’s why I haven’t said anything about your comments about other authors.
I applaud you for giving Dave a try. I really do believe he is a very original writer.
I hope you enjoy the story and as I said, if you don’t find it original, I’ll very gladly send you the $2.00.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Thanks
Oh, and “Magic, Inc.”
John Lwu,
There is so much in your rant that I simply have to take this paragraph by paragraph. I’d take it line by line if it was a little more entertaining, but for now a per-paragraph analysis will have to do. Anything I’m quoting is prefaced by “John Lwu:”. My comments are prefaced by “Me:”
John Lwu: First, I was reacting to repeated nepotism at PJM as if friends equals Heinlein so your basis for recommendation is suspect and not Freer.
Me: Dear me. Let’s start with your understanding, which is rather faulty. “Nepotism” does not mean “providing some free marketing for an acquaintance”. In fact, not all dictionaries accept undeserved promotion of close friends to undeserved positions of power as being “nepotism”. Could you possibly explain to which position of power PJM has elevated Dave Freer, and how you came to this conclusion? All I’ve seen here is a favorable review noting some Heinleinesque traits (possesion of which does not mean the author in question is the next Heinlein). The review’s objectivity could possibly be questioned, but that’s hardly nepotism.
John Lwu: I mentioned I didn’t read his work in the context of having been burnt so many times I’m tired of the effort of tackling new recommendations and the dragons, no matter how turned on its head is a clue this is more velvet paintings but by a “bent” and wacky iconoclast – “biting satire” is another clue. I did read about the student outshining the teacher bit but still, look who your comparing him to. So a rusty penny might be better than a more rusty penny. That’ll rush me to the internet
Me: Okay, so you’ve been burnt. You and me both. 90% or more of everything is crap, and the more everything there is the more crap there is. Fine. That doesn’t justify sitting back and taking pot-shots because all your darlings are dead and forgotten (most of them deservedly so, looking at the list below. Yes, I have tried to read most of them). In addition, you seem to be incapable of understanding that someone who sees and enjoys for example, “biting satire” in an author’s work might just mention that as a positive feature. If the author was saying that, then yes, you might perhaps have reason to be nervous. Now, about the student outshining the teacher, have you not considered the possibility that perhaps – just perhaps – someone who has worked with author X whom you despise might be quite different than author X? Condemning anyone because they have been “and Author Name” to an author you dislike is bigotry. You don’t know anything beyond that “and Author Name” could work amicably and meld styles with the author you dislike.
John Lwu: Next reason for the tirade is the idea of conservative SF and fantasy as served up at Baen. What is conservative SF, mercenaries? That seems to be pretty much it. To me conservative SF would a novel about 2050 when the U.S. is a lawless Tower of Babel thanks to unfettered immigration from the wrong places with illegal shanty towns all on strike for sewage and electricity in Calif. and Texas. There is none because conservative SF is an idea that is self-contradictory; thus the mercs.
Me: I’m being polite here and won’t say anything more your conflating “immigration” with “illegal immigration” or your assumption that all immigrants come from “the wrong places”. Your notion that conservative SF is self-contradictory is laughable, and your ideas of what Baen publishes are so narrow as to be totally wrong. There is more to Baen than military SF, and even military SF is more than mercenaries. Conservative SF is everything that assumes people can figure things out for themselves and usually will no matter what ‘authorities’ like your august self tell them.
John Lwu: As for my nose being in the air, it was bent up there by C.L. Moore, William Hope Hodgson, Leigh Bracket, A.E. van Vogt, Peter Hamilton and Jack McDevitt and 50 others and I can’t find even one of that ilk today in fantasy other than Martin.
Me: I’m not surprised. I’ve tried all the authors you’ve named as some point and found them all unreadable. Martin, too, as it happens. Of course, I don’t care about literary merit, per se. I care about interesting characters in situations that aren’t staged set-pieces to show off the character’s inhumanly astonishing mad skillz (spelling intentional, in case you’re wondering).
John Lwu: That’s because originality is dead when you turn a genre into a mainstream swamp or “story” and “plot” and “allegory” as if writing is just some software to get that across and puns a great delight.
Me: Perhaps you’d care to explain what you think originality actually is? And why “story” and “plot” are antithetical to genre? You’ve clearly gotten your signals backwards. If I wanted 300 pages of contemplating navel lint with beautiful intricate prose, I’d read what passes as modern “literature”. Oh, I wouldn’t mind knowing what you have against puns, either. I personally lean more towards the kind of sarcasm that leaves people thinking I’m a bitch, but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate other kinds of humor.
John Lwu: If Freer is like Pratchett, I’ll just read “Mad’s Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” for the 50th time and award it the Pulitzer. Another version of a nose in the air is the notion of a gatekeeper that keeps crap where it belongs. Where is a Swordsmen and Sorcerers’ Guild of America to help with that today?
Me: Ah, now we get to the meat of it. You appear to actually think the Pulitzer for literature awards good writing, in which case there can be no hope for you.
John Lwu: Ironically here you have conservatives defending the politically correct line in conceptualized intellectual fine art that there is no real good and bad but just a perception and so my “pretensions” are awarded the same intellectual space as PC does by crying “racist” and “profiling.”
Me: Oh, tut tut. You’re showing your biases. There is indeed good and bad, and some of the bad gets published and promoted to hell and back. Now, you have openly stated that there is precisely one author in the past 20 years who you can respect – that looks a lot like someone biased against anything and everything recent. Here’s a free hint for you: if you go in looking for flaws, you’ll find them even if they don’t exist. Human nature and all that.
John Lwu: Yeah, my nose is in the air. When you can recommend a writer that can even apprentice with Jack Vance or write a single chapter like him, let me know. I got a clue for you: it sure as hell ain’t Pratchett and I’m sick of being recommended the next major talent only to read it and pull my hand over my face like Oliver Hardy just cuz it’s someone’s “colleague”.
Me: Jack Vance? Oh please. Derivative hackery wrapped in ridiculous language, unless you mean a different Jack Vance than the one I read. Oh, and it’s “I have” or “I’ve got”, not “I got”. Also “cuz” is one of those faux-trendy usages that really doesn’t happen as much as you might think. Oh, and what precisely does Oliver Hardy have to do with being someone’s “colleague”? For someone claiming to champion good writing, a dangling preposition like that is pretty sad (You may feel free to grammar-nit me. I don’t care. I’m not the one claiming to champion all things quality. I’m also well aware that my grammar and punctuation is a mix of Australian and US standards, courtesy of being one of those “immigrants from the wrong places”).
John Lwu: They don’t make furniture like they used to and that’s not a generational perspective but a fact. Self-proclaimed iconoclasts aren’t iconoclasts, they’re rednecks in a long line of “rebels.” A real iconoclast will be ignored and disdained by almost all for doing the wrong thing. Or in other words, someone with a unique voice. If everyone’s a rebel then no one is and the rebel becomes the redneck and the redneck the rebel.
Me: No, they don’t make furniture like they used to. A lot more people can afford to buy new furniture, for starters. What this has to do with “self-proclaimed” iconoclasts is a different matter, especially since I don’t recall any author in the discussion proclaiming themselves to be iconoclasts. Others may have claimed it on their behalf – but that isn’t the same thing. Unless you think everyone in this thread who happens to like Dave Freer’s books is actually Dave Freer playing sock puppet (in which case, I strongly recommend you find a really good mental health professional. This level of delusion over books is really silly – oh, and I’m devoting time to this because I enjoy playing with people who do what you’ve done in this thread).
John Lwu: Just write a good book and forget about conspicuously breaking new ground and maybe we’ll have some new ground broke because the former is itself now a tiresome stereotype. Or how about a satire about the satire? I’d take a stab at Pratchett but the result would be hopelessly stupid, like doing a Van Gogh-style painting on velvet of sad clowns crying down by the river.
Me: “Just write a good book” is exactly what Dave Freer does. He’s written lots of them. Most got the good edited out of them by people who showed your level of perception or just couldn’t see that he’s one of those people who’ll cheerfully barbecue anyone’s sacred cow if it works for what he’s doing. As for Pratchett, it’s obvious you’d be wasting your time there. Hopefully, you’ll be long gone by the time Pratchett is on the genre pedestal beside Heinlein. We might be able to run a dynamo off your wildly rotating coffin and get a bit of cheap power out of it.
John Lwu: Save me from cutting edge because we ran out of room and hit the ceiling years ago. Just go back to fundamental prose without the ever increasing plot twists and wacky hijinx.
Me: Since I’ve seen no evidence you’d recognize fundamental prose if you saw it (I shall spare you the entirely too obvious odious pun, given your rancid hatred of all things punny), much less be willing to recognize any that does exist, you consign yourself to the role of bitter old man who hates all things modern with the kind of passion that makes him the laughing stock of all who encounter him. I hope you enjoy it. I shan’t try to persuade you otherwise, although I will mock any other nonsense you care to spout if I feel so inclined. Thank you for giving me such a wonderful opportunity to play.
Me: p.s. A little logic and consistency is a good thing. First you say you want originality, then claim originality is impossible. Which is it? Or perhaps, given your confusion, you have a different definition than the one most people use?
I would love to see the media talk to Rhode Island elected officals wiht a hidden camera. Catch these guys in the act, then proscute them. I really don’t care if they pay a pretty young girl to catch these guys get it on tape have the girl move on to another media outlet and elminate the criminal politician.