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Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
Hello Thunderdome,

A while back I registered on these forums to compete in your little contest, and while I’d like to say I learned a lot and am grateful for the critiques--that writing in your contest helped me grow and blossom as a writer and all that flowery poo poo--well...I can’t say that. Why? Because even though most of my stories were good, I only ever got dogpiled and shat on because I didn’t conform to your arbitrary standard and circle-jerking set themes. What’s her name blood queen wrote a story about a girl who plays on a magical harp but is confused and in dreamland and somehow I’m supposed to care. Seriously, who cares about poo poo stories like that? Oh, she won with that story? For the 17th time? Right, because it’s Thunderdome. It’s the place where the same people always win with the same tired stories. It’s the place where taking risks is punished, a place where trying to combine elements from Joyce and King and Hemingway all into one story--making a loving iceberg of stream of consciousness horror and seeing where it takes you--is shat upon and earns you a dishonorable mention or a loss.

The fact is, those of you sitting on the blood throne of the little dying forum’s tiny little thread are going to park your asses there while people like me move on. That’s right, I’m a published author. How many of you can say that? How many of you jerk each other off 800 words at a time but have never seen your work published outside of the SA paywall? How many of you have earned real money from your writing? I have, and only after I stopped caring about what the Thunderdome inner-circlejerk thought did I really grow as an author.


My work is published in this collection. If you're interested: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...YVMTQC3JTDRNCP6

My name is Cassius Caab, author of Dr. Scienticius’s Method, which was published in the January 2015 issue of Beyond Science Fiction. I’m not really here to “stick it to” those who dismissed my abilities, but I’m here for those of you who are frustrated that you never earn an HM, that the story you spent days on and that all of your friends couldn’t get enough of wasn’t good enough for some uptight bitch (or bastard) with an MFA in the field of Who Gives a gently caress. Write with your heart and take risks. Do something creative, and don’t be afraid to be scathing or controversial or crass. All of the greatest authors--Kafka, Joyce, loving Nabokov--weren’t afraid of what some no-nothing critic thought. They wrote what was in their gut, and maybe it was mixed with bile and stomach acid and half-digested borsch; but that’s what is real and so that’s what they wrote!

How To Write From Your Gut

Alright, so I’ve got your attention, now what? You’re wondering how you’re supposed to write without your precious critique, without scraping and begging for a handout from the inner-circle? Do what I do, get out of your chair and take in a deep breath. Hold it in. Can’t hold it? Keep holding! Don’t breathe! You’ve got a red-hot coal in your chest now and your lungs are going to burst...good! Hold a while longer. Boom! You’re gasping for breath and something is coursing through those veins. Seize that feeling, it’s your blood pumping and reminding you that you’re alive. Ask yourself what you want right then. When I wrote Dr. Scienticius’s Method I was sick of all the bullshit within society and I just wanted to break free from it. I looked outside, and it was dark, and I imagined I was a wolf just running free through the grass in a steppe somewhere. Hunting and killing and loving. Licking the dew from the grass when I was thirsty and couldn’t find a stream--those are the kind of details I thought of and I felt them raw. Then I wrote it, and I thought, “What is stopping me from doing this?” Science and the societal prison bars it built. So I got the feeling from my gut, which was that I wanted to let go and live a life through just my senses, but there’s all this cold and uncaring science getting in my way. Science isn’t going anywhere, but maybe, in some other world or future it could free us? That’s the world I imagined, but I didn’t just imagine it--I felt it, lived it.

This is why Dayne Edmondson published this piece and why he wouldn’t want to publish so much of the “winners” from various weeks of the Thunderdome. It’s what’s holding everyone here back. Maybe some other people have left the Thunderdome and realized this on their own, and maybe they didn’t want to come back. Well, I know a lot of you who keep losing, Paladinus, Someguy TT, Benny the Snake...your stuff has heart, and if you use my method you can hone it into a sword of the finest steel. But you need to find your own forge, and you need to stop scraping and begging for scraps in this thread. Winning here only means you followed the script, didn’t forget your lines, and you did “good enough” to get a gig on some soap commercial or maybe as an extra on CSI: Minot, North Dakota, but you ain’t geting cast by Lars von Trier or David Lynch by just reading your lines and having high cheek bones.

How To Experiment: Why Each New Story You Write Should be a Hand-Grenade in the Pond

Every time you write a new story, you should feel scared. You should hear yourself mumbling, “But...I’ve never done that before!” Rather than give you vague and generalized advice, let’s dive in and see on which stories I threw the largest proverbial stick of dynamite into the metaphorical tranquil pond that is the staleness of the Thunderdome.

Week 84 and 85: The Baptist parts I and II.

Scroll down to my section on PC Writing...this deserves its own section

Week 89: The Last Birthday Party

In this piece I took an insane risk, and in my opinion it paid off. Writing is just words on a page, but in this piece--that was basically like Danielewski on acid--I turn even that basic element on its head. Yeah, it’s still words on a page, but the words are changing colors and the page itself isn’t even static. I got disqualified for my efforts.

Week 90: Dr. Scienticius’s Method

Right, this one got published, but whichever unpublished amateurs judged it didn’t even give it an HM. As I stated earlier, I wrote this straight from my gut while basically turning the scientific method upside down and giving it a swirlie. The framing device here is also pretty out there, and I even break the fourth wall with a play on my real life name. This was basically my first stab at writing fantasy, so not only did I tackle a unique framing device, I did it while writing in an unfamiliar genre.

Week 95: Life Lessons

This one was a response to the tepid tripe that usually wins. In real life you don’t always transform from a grotesque insect to a beautiful lepidoptera, a lot of times you gently caress up, and it sends you into a nosedive, and since you’re nosediving you can’t see straight, so you gently caress up some more. Finally you’re about to hit the ground and have one last chance to pull up, but instead you just accelerate.

Week 97: When Judas saved Jesus

Another DM. I guess the irony of the Thunderdome’s Judas figure writing about a twist on the accepted fable was lost on the judges. Anyway, I imagined there was this real, physical path somewhere in Palestine, and it was this hellish ordeal full of suffering and temptation. Imagine if hell were real, and a strip of it existed here on earth. Then, imagine if anyone who dared walk down this path and make it to the other side would go straight to Heaven, no strings attached and no questions asked. Now imagine that this path was created because of Judas. That’s what I did with this story, as crazy as it is.

Week 113: Vector

After my wife won full custody of the kids--after cheating on me--I was in a bad place (and remember, write from your gut!) and wrote this. I thought of my cheating wife and that scumbag she left me for dying of the bubonic plague. So yeah, I zoomed way in to both diseased flesh and soul, and I shined a loving fluorescent light on it. All the character flaws of both myself and my wife were lit bare in this piece, and maybe in my fury I made some typing mistakes, but this was raw and it was real. I think losing for this piece, which was like saying that my suffering just deserved a LOSS was probably the biggest tipping point that lead me away from the Dome, and toward success as a published author.

Week 114: Cassius

In this largely autobiographical piece, I channel a bit of Joyce, but it’s mostly all me. I’ve served, I’ve loved a wife and kids, I’ve felt pain and lust and longing, and in this piece you feel it all 100% unfiltered right from my axons and neurons to the page. Ever wonder what it’s like to be in your mid 40’s and see a girl that makes you feel like you’re eighteen again? Ever wonder what it feels like to know that you’re too old and there ain’t no fountain of youth and there never will be? Read this piece, which most of you probably didn’t because the judges overlooked it and couldn’t see it for what it was. It was too big of a splash in the pond.

gently caress PC Writing: The Real World is Cruel and Your Writing Should Show It

I got a lot of flak here because my story, The Baptist I and The Baptist II was loving “problematic.” So the guy grabs the kid’s dick? You ever read the news about the Catholic Church? Ever heard of Joseph Smith? You think the Mormon Church or other hosed up cults are all “different, and that’s okay?” gently caress that. Then everyone said these stories were somehow racist. Guess what, the Mormon church thought being black was some kind of disease up until 1978! Yes, the year of our Lord nineteen seventy-eight. These two stories reflected that, but the PC patrol here couldn’t see past my word choice or who the gently caress knows what. In the real world there are terrible things like Mormons and famine and children fighting in wars. I’ve got goddamn Jehova’s Witnesses clawing at my door every Saturday morning--poor souls who think selling brochures or bibles will give them ten-thousand ‘get into heaven’ points. Their existence is sad and they’ve been conned, and they’ll go on to con others, and if I write about how Jehova’s Witnesses loving whitewash black families--sever them from their roots and estrange them from their culture--then suddenly I’m a racist? Get real.

In Summary

I can write circles around all of you. If you want to respond to this and poo poo on me, don’t bother doing so unless you link me to something you’ve had published. I’m not going to bother arguing with you if you don’t have credentials.

With all that said, I want to put my money where my mouth is, so I’m in for this week!

Cache Cab fucked around with this message at 02:23 on Apr 23, 2015

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Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
Cities Fall Yet Rivers Still Flow 960 Words.

Rivers hung upside down. They carried him tied tight to a wooden pole. The one in front had nice and thick back hair full of dirt and sweat and fleas. The fleas jumped as the men jostled through thick, winding forest, but Rivers finally found one tired and heavy with blood. He stared at the flea until it filled his vision, and then he spoke to it. Ever since he'd got ‘nocced his words didn’t come out right, but the fleas always understood.

“gently caress!” The hairy man spun around and dropped the pole.

Rivers crashed down with the pole, first his head, then his feet.

“Shee, Trey!” I’ma kill ya dog! Fulla fuckin’ fleas!”

Trey got up in the hairy man’s face. “Ya’int gonna.”

“Ya’am,” the hairy man said, “gonna eat ‘em cock en all.”

They’d have the milky white bubos all over their groins and neck by sundown. By morning they’d be drowning in their own sweat and pus, floating in and out of flea-kissed fever dreams. Rivers could just walk away.

“gently caress off, Range, ya’int eatin’ muh dog se’en we gotta fat en fresh autie all skewered up.”

Range leaned over Rivers, his sweat dripped into Rivers' brow and stung his eye.

“Autie, you mumble a buncha shee en then I get bit? I’ma eat ya cock se’en I can’t eat Trey’s dog’s cock.”

Rivers wanted to flap his arms, but the ropes held them tight to the pole, so he hummed and tilted back and forth.

“Maybe’ll suck ya cock a‘fore ya eat ‘is!” Trey said, laughing.

They hoisted him back up and walked toward their camp.

--

Range and Trey coughed up phlegm even as they gathered kindle. Each cough hacked up thousands of blooming bugs right out of their throats and all over the tents and rusted pots. Rivers saw each and every bug real clear, saw them sucked past bloody lips and up into broken noses. They were all gonna get real sick. All but Rivers, who was all nocced and autied up. Only problem was he was still strung up on the skewer, ready to get roasted and ate.

He had to talk his way off the pole and out of the ropes, but talking was something auties didn't do so good.

“Waaaa!” Rivers grunted. “Waaaazzz!”

“Shut the gently caress--” Range started to yell, but a cough cut him off. He gasped for breath, and Rivers could hear the gurgles as Ranged sucked in, then he saw the blood that Range hacked up as he coughed and coughed.

“Wizz! Wizz!” Rivers rocked back and forth. “Wizzaar--Wizz wizz!” He couldn’t get the word out. It was so clear in his mind, but all his wiring was messed up and he couldn’t just tell them he was a wizard. If they thought he could help, even if it was a tiny glimmer of hope, they’d probably untie him.

Trey chuckled; he wasn’t looking too sick yet. “Autie’s gotta wiz! Lez see what e’s packin.” Trey grabbed Rivers' crotch. “E’s got uh fat dick.” Trey unzipped his fly and pulled out Rivers' cock. Another of them whistled as he took a look.

gently caress them, gently caress all of them, Rivers thought. He roared it out at them, but all he heard come out was “F-uhh. Fuhhh. Fuckkkk!”

Trey’s friend sauntered over. “Big dick autie wantsa gently caress? Ya wanna first or can I?” He asked Trey.

“Ya can gently caress, I wannim ta suck ma’off,” Trey said. He took out a knife and cut Rivers from the skewer.

Rivers hit the ground and, hands free, flapped them in front of him as he rocked back and forth. He hummed loud and cast a new spell. The first time he’d needed the slower onset to infect the whole camp, but now he just needed Trey dead fast.

Rivers focused on their throats, saw a bunch of bored bugs and bacteria with nothing to do, and spoke to them.

“Raaaa! Urrrrr! Thraa gaa sssuhhh!” Was all anyone heard, except the bugs. They heard and obeyed Rivers clear like always. Trey had one hand on River’s dick, but as the bugs carried out River’s orders, he let go and fell to the ground.

An animal sound exploded in Trey’s throat as vomit and blood erupted from his mouth. It hit Rivers in the stomach, it felt like scalding oatmeal and rotting blueberries. The sickness caked his belly and pubic hair as it dripped down, and Trey emptied out his stomach onto the forest floor, acid and all, in rhythmic aftershocks that splashed back onto Trey’s face. After his last cough, both Rivers and Trey were pink and red and milky with his death vomit, but Rivers was still alive and Trey wasn't.

The other one's eyes just bulged, and he must have realized that Rivers was a wizard you didn't gently caress with, so his dick wasn't hard no more and he just ran right off.

Everyone else was really sick from Rivers’ first spell, so he just walked out of the camp, past dozens of dying men. They didn’t have the energy left to stop him walking off, let alone to string him up again and cook him.

He walked toward the ruins of the old city, left to decay by the ‘tism and ravaged by the few that weren’t nocced. Other autties had become wizards like him, and he knew somewhere out there was one opposite of him. A wizard who could cure the ‘tism. Science had died and another noc would never come. Even if somewhere in some deep lab there were scientists slaving away at another big noc, Rivers wouldn’t trust ‘em. Rivers only trusted people like himself. He only trusted wizards.

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
I shall be critting this piece for the critique requirement this week. I am doing it in the manner of bolding my suggestions, as several other people in this thread have done, so that I can't be yelled out for doing something wrongly.

Chairchucker posted:

That Was a Pretty Wizard, Wasn’t It? 487 words

Wendy the Wizard Woodpecker perched on Leroy the Log. She cocked her head to one side, as if to say “Get a load of that dumb cat trying to stalk me.”

Leroy stoically made no discernible movement, as if to say “Yeah, cats sure are dumb.” Logs cannot think, and I think I will have a hard time liking this story with a thinking log [b/]

The cat slowly stalked forward, its tail sticking conspicuously I don't know this word. out of the underbrush like a periscope, except a way more noticeable one, and one without the ability to see at all. Wendy ignored it and went back to working on some really cool holes that she was making in Leroy. Leroy didn’t mind, it was all good, man. She could tell by his cool demeanour. The cat reached the failed attempt at a Miniature Hadron Collider that Wendy had attempted to fashion out of a stump last June. It didn’t collide Hadrons very well, but it seemed to serve a useful purpose anyway. I do not understand anything in this paragraph.

As the cat passed by the Miniature Hadron Collider, a piece of it (the Collider, not the cat) peeled back, scooping up the cat and flinging it back from whence it had come. Why is it doing this? Wendy bobbed her head and Leroy did nothing in laughter I am not familiar with the phrase 'nothing in laughter.' at how dumb the cat was.

Very dumb. That’s how. [b]That is how what? I think you forgot to finish this sentence.


After a few minutes, during which Wendy had made some really neat holes in Leroy – and Leroy now looked pretty fly for a whitewood log, let me tell you – they noticed the unmistakeable tail of the cat (the one that was super dumb) returning, albeit from a different route that did not go anywhere near the Miniature Hadron Collider.

Wendy bobbed her head like “This dumb cat is a glutton for punhttp://www.bankofamerica.comhttp://www.bankofamerica.comhttp://www.bankofamerica.comishment, eh?” and Leroy stayed still and looked fly like “I know, right?”

Wendy went back to making holes in Leroy, but, like, really cool ones, and almost before she realised it, the dumb cat’s dumb tail was right in front of her.

The cat pounced from the thick underbrush, teeth and claws all out, ready to do war, but its teeth and claws found air as Wendy flapped just out of reach. Before the cat finished its leap over the log, Wendy’s eyes narrowed and energy flowed from her beak to the cat’s body. The cat paused in midair, seeming to swell just a little bit, and then split into, like, a billion pieces, which rained down around them, some of them landing on Leroy, although Wendy managed to dodge them all.

“Gross, dude,” Leroy’s complete lack of movement seehttp://www.bankofamerica.comhttp://www.bankofamerica.comhttp://www.bankofamerica.comgoogle.combank of america website is down?http://www.bankofamerica.commed to say.

“Sorry, that’s my bad,” flapped Wendy. “I really meant to just leave that dumb cat in midair or something, but whatevs, this works too.”

And then Wendy returned to pecking cool holes in Leroy, and Leroy went back to looking cool. And the dumb cat eventually decomposed and went into the ground as nutrients for Leroy, so it all worked out all right, really.

To be honest I do not get this story. Thankfully it was very short, and enabled me to qualify for this week without too much extra effort, as I think it is unfair to impose additional restrictions on us after we have already submitted a story. That is a bait and switch and it is illegal. Thank you.

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
I wish to be in this week, if that's ok with the thunderdome illuminati. I don't know why I bother, since they will just call me names anyway. Oh well.

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
The Termolenator
1500 /1500 words

My father is tripping on LSD, splashing around in a kiddie pool wearing arm floaties, when the President steps up to the podium.

“Dad! The President’s speech is on!” I call from inside the apartment we share. Cracks in the plaster run the length of every wall, a side effect from the “settling” that New York City has been experiencing. Each time the Earth groans and shakes, the city falls a few inches.

“You mean the guy who ignores all the warnings I’ve been trying to give him?” asks my father.

I roll my eyes at him.

“My fellow Americans,” the president starts. “Our scientists have worked tirelessly to study the settling phenomenon. They have discovered a large abyss beneath New York. We do not know how deep it goes, but because of global warming, the thin crust over the abyss has started to collapse.”

My father stands dripping wet in the doorway. “Bullshit,” he says. “Global warming’s fake. It’s the mole people.”

“Not again with that, please Dad,” I say.

My father already can’t hold down a job or have a steady relationship. He went missing for a few days back in ‘69. We found him in a manhole that somebody had forgotten to cover. Now I’ve got to support his crazy rear end when I should be focusing on my boxing career.

The ground rumbles, cutting off the power. It’s stronger than the previous quakes.

“The mole people are attacking!” He runs into the living room and to his old Army trunk.

“God dammit, dad, there’s no such thing as--”

The ground lurches. I make my way over to our government-installed handles that are fastened to the walls. I give mine a sturdy shake, and grip it tight.

My father tucks something from the crate into his pants and runs to his handle. He grabs it, but it comes off the wall. “I think my screws are a little loose.”

Before I can say anything, the ground gives out underneath us. It doesn’t stop. We are free falling amongst the bottles and empty pizza boxes that had been stacked around our living room. I see my boxing gloves and reach out for them.

“This isn’t the time to be playing your little games,” my father shouts. “We have to disguise ourselves!” my father yells over the noise.

I look out the window to see the blue skies and clouds replaced by a looming shadow. The rim of the crater blocks the sun. The entire city falls.

“Disguise ourselves?” I say. “From gravity?”

“No! From the mole people!” My dad pushes off the floating couch and flies out the front door. I can see him hanging on to the grass as his feet trail behind him toward the surface. He rips out large sections of the lawn and smears the wet dirt on his body. “Trust me, son.”

I expect us to smash into the bottom of the abyss at any second, but to my surprise the city suddenly lurches and I slam into the ground. The sound of screeching metal and snapping rocks forces me to cover my ears, but within a few seconds the city grinds to a halt. I stand up and run outside.

My father is still smearing dirty over his skin. “They can’t see good, only smell,” he says. “You have to smell like a mole!”

I don’t say anything, and wonder if I can find his meds our mess of an apartment.

He looks at me with sad, tripping-the-gently caress-out puppy-dog eyes. “Please, for me?”

“Fine,” I said, “as long as you stay with me and promise not to wander off.” Last thing I need today is to have him fall to his death through another manhole. I sit down next to him on the lawn and grab a handful of dirt. There are worms wriggling around in it, and I close my eyes and stick out my tongue when I rub it on my leg. “Yuck!”

My disgust is interrupted by the thumping of helicopter blades overhead.

“We’re saved!” I shout, but my dad shakes his head.

“Smear faster!” he says. “Don’t look up!”

One of our neighbors runs out of his house, waving his arms at the helicopter. “Help! I’m alive!” he screams.

Out of the ground moves three brown streaks. They tackle the man to the ground, and gnaw his face off. He screams as blood pools on the sidewalk. The helicopter turns and through the window I see a mole person. I shake my head and smear the dirt on even faster.

After they finish feeding, the moles stand up and notice us. My first instinct is to run back into the house and grab my gloves. They’re fast, but I think I could make it and knock them out. I sit up on my knees and get ready to make a break for it.

My father grabs my arm. “No,” he whispers. “Let me handle this. I’ve learned their customs.”

I sit back down. The moles sniff the air and scamper over to us. They surround us, three hulking bodies of matted hair, long claws, and milky eyes.

My father stands up and nods to them. “Sup?” he says.

I cringe, sure they’ll eat us. They smell like dirt and death, and still have entrails hanging from their jaws. But instead of eating us, the moles nod back to my father. “You smell like human,” says the lead mole.

“Yes, I ate many humans today.”

“Good,” says the lead mole. “We will finish eating all the humans down here, and then attack the surface.”

The lead mole has the thickest, longest whiskers, and stands a head taller than the other mole people. His blood-soaked fur is shinier and more luxurious than the others. On his waist he wears a belt with a sheathed knife with a handle made of human bone. They scamper back down the holes they came from.

“Dad, I’m--”

He cuts me off. “You don’t have to say anything. I already know.” He inspects me and nods. “You disguise yourself well. But we must get to the control room.”

“Shouldn’t we just wait for help?” I ask.

“We have to help ourselves. All of New York is caught in an anti-gravity beam. If we disrupt the beam, the failsafe will reverse the polarity, raise the city back to the surface.”

My father runs out into the street and grabs a manhole cover. His muscular arms flex and the floaties burst. He tosses the cover to the side. He doesn’t seem crazy in this moment, but in his element. “Follow me,” he says in an authoritative tone, and disappears down the hole.

I chase after him. The hole is dark and I hear dripping sewage. There has to be another way.

Planes from above the rim swoop into the crater and fire on a mole-person helicopter, which explodes. I cheer, but my celebration is cut short by snub-nosed fighters streaming out of the walls of the crater. They fall in formation behind the planes and shoot them down one by one. Fiery debris rains over the city. Nobody can save us now.

I drop into the hole and follow my father. We go deeper into the sewer system than I ever thought was possible. The human construction fades and the pipes give way to hardened mole tunnels.

Eventually we crawl on our stomachs to the end of a tunnel. It overlooks a dim room filled with an array of control panels. Mole engineers scamper around, reading measurements and adjusting dials. In the center of the room a bright blue beam pulsates and shoots through the roof.

My dad digs a block of C4 out of his pants. “I will throw this onto the beam, and then ignite it with this remote.”

As soon as he says it, the remote is knocked from his hand by a large, furry paw. It shatters on the rocks. The lead mole stands over us, his fur blowing in the breeze created by the anti-gravity beam. “I thought I smelled primate bitches,” he says.

I look to my dad. “I love you,” I say.

“I love you too, son.” He pulls boxing tape out of his pocket. “I thought you might need this.”

I wipe a tear from my eye and wrap my knuckles in the tape. I turn back to the lead mole. “Looks like you just dug your own grave, molether fucker.” I throw a punch that connects with his jaw.

I trade blows with the lead mole, but he’s stronger.

He pins me to the ground. “Any last words?”

Past the mole man, I see my dad sneak up to the beam with the C4.

“Yeah, gently caress you.”

An explosion rocks the room behind us and the beam goes out. In the chaos, I grab the bone knife and stab it into the mole man’s heart.

The city rises to the surface, and I start my long climb back home.

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
If somebody could give me a critique I would appreciate it, only please make sure to say things in plain English, because most of the time I cannot understand what the person is trying to say. Keep in mind that I did not go to college and have very little understanding in terms of writing jargon, and I don't know why things have made you confused. Its your brain I can't make you understand something even when I wrote it clearly. Just tell me your favorite parts of my story or maybe if there is a section that you do not like, but in all honesty I probably can't delete it out before I send it to publishers because that will make the story even more confusing for people who already understand it and like it.

Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
Sorry to bother the thread again, but how do I get another avatar? My last one was not very pleasant and I feel like it misrepresented my views about child rearing, but it at least made it easy to find my posts in threads. I like to be able to scroll through a thread quickly and find my last post so that I can continue reading the rest of the thread from that point. Without an avatar, it is very hard to find my last post because I have to read all the names. I have looked in my settings but I do not see anything. At the top of the page there is a link to pay for premium avatars, but I just want a basic one with an icon. Thank you.

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Cache Cab
Feb 21, 2014
This is bullshit, how is anybody supposed to write for this contest when there's literally no time to sign up on the weekends? Some of us have families and jobs that take up our time on the week days.

Guess I'm out this week.

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