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177 Public Reviews Given
402 Total Reviews Given
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26
26
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey there,

Woot!

A little bit of positivity again.

Glad all this joking stuff is over and done with and we can get on with finding real life happy places instead of laughing at each other.

Nice work. Although I'm quite sure there are still those in the ether who need a blame figure.

Maybe they just need a ring to chase around like gollum.

That'd be funny, for me at least.

To be a little nicer, maybe their ring is already on their fingers.

That's a load off.

Thanks for sharing, sorry for the weird review.

I write as I think, and so my mind wanders to odd places.

All looks good to me though.

Have fun,

Cal
27
27
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

An interesting poem, a little dark for my taste these days but I still enjoy having a little peek from time to time.

I'm not really avery good poet, more functional than pretty, but then we can't have everything.

Heck, sometimes it feels like we can't even have what we need.

However, I suppose it is all down to how much we expect.

We have a near perfect world right here, a self-sustaining system that can easily continue forever.

However, we still need more, there's a universe to explore.

I guess the real big question is, what do we need to be happy?

I'd be alright with a regular income from writing and one reasonable girl who didn't want me to change all the time.

Charlie Sheen needs two girls, it seems.

Maybe some people need a whole planetful of ladies/men to find the one they like.

I don't know, the whole concept is getting a little weird for me now, I'm just doing my best to keep my feet on the ground.

The stars are nice, but there a plenty of beautiful ones right here, if we look hard enough.

Anyway, I'll answer a query here that will probably make no sense. I met a girl a long time ago, American, who suggested we could rule the world together.

She also said she had met aliens.

Personally, I like to keep my feet on the floor. Then again, I like everyone to be happy.

So I broke my psyche up, painted her a rough guide to where planet earth needs to go, and left her to run in the background.

Not a nice trick, but then neither is dragging people into space when they don't want to go.

Yet.....

I also noticed it seemed to be a Masonic plan, but that was very broken.

Who wants all the power and money? Well, let's get them to do the legwork for a change. They wanted it, they got it.

Just don't look quite like they thought.

Anyway, have fun, life's a party, just get on with it.

Cal
28
28
Review of Glass Jars  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey there,

Seems like a rehash of the old Sophia/Demiurge mythos, mixed in with a bit of the good old catholic original sin.

Either men are evil, women are evil, aliens are evil, someones a vampire.

It really makes me lugh.

Thankfully, because if not I would most definitely cry.

The blame game is an odd one.

Personally, I just blamed myself for putting everyone in hell until I realised most people do a great job of doing that themselves.

How to get them out of the jar.

Now that was a trick.

Have fun,

Cal
29
29
Review of Silent Night...  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

This is an great story. Says quite a lot to me, as usual.

It's very well written, and I can't really suggest any improvements to be honest.

I particularly enjoyed this one because your "Mr Bean" character reminds me a little of what it felt like to be in San Francisco as a lone Scotsman. I talk a bit clever sometimes and I guess that annoys people the world over, but maybe the US more than others.

It's an interesting story for me because it seems to be about a the hero working to reconcile the past with the future.

Never an easy task, since everyone always seems to be out to get each other in some way or another.

All I hope is that "seems" is the operative word in that sentence. I'm just waiting for someone to pull down the curtain and go....

Look, we were just being stupid the whole time. Let's stop this little "hatred" charade and work together a little.

However, I am laughably optimistic, people are insane, and they have so many ways to hate it's like a buffet where the deeper you dig the worse it gets.

Ach well, I'm not too fussy really. I only just realised the other day that the one thing we have an infinite amount of is time.

Thankfully, I found an odd happy place the other day that seems to work for me.

I'm also glad the hero in this tale seems to have found a level of acceptance, and knows his father accepts him. That's about as much as we can hope for in this life.

Have fun,

Cal
30
30
Review of CRAZY WOMEN  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

In my humble opinion both men and women are crazy in their own ways.

I guess some are sane, but define sane in today's society? It's a tricky one.

Is George Bush sane? Vaguely, but then again, completely not. Is Simon Cowell crazy? Maybe power mad, but it seems to work pretty well for him.

Are Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton sane? Again, sort of but also definitely a bit crazy, I think.

I suppose the reality of the world is that no one is completely sane really, there are just a variety of ways of using the time you have and inevitably to some people those ways will look insane.

I usually only consider people who have an excess of cash or power and still want more to be really crazy. I think both men and women can be equally guilty of that, both alone and in pairs.

A lot of the people who are clinically insane are in fact just saying things that scare other people. If they can't learn to hold their tongue when people start freaking out, then they will be labelled and confined. The more you listen to them, the more you realise maybe they just have a different pattern in their heads to the one everyone else has alighted on to define their reality.

Is it less valid because only one holds that pattern? Depends if the "wisdom of crowds" hypothesis really holds water. If we look at WW2 Germany we see that a crowd can be just as crazy as one lone man in the right circumstances.

Look at the Norweigan killer the other day. Norway is rife with anti-muslim feeling, a very racially defined country,. and inevitably they produce a man who murders carelessly because of his hatred of Muslims. The collective focuses it's insanity, then it bursts and they go "oh no, that's terrible" whilst still remaining hugely oriented by skin colour. The really crazy thing in that one was that he only killed his own people, which might say something, in an odd way. Create a monster and it may bite your hand.

I dunno, I guess I think insanity is relative, and we are gradually slipping into what seems to be a bit of a crazy world. The "good" guys doing their best to keep the rest of the planet down and concentrate as much money and power with them whilst disregarding the health of the planet, whilst the opposition gets increasingly rabid.

Looks potentially messy from this armchair, but then I am a bit of a skeptic on human nature.

Anyway, a decent poem that flows well, and definitely far more complex than anything I have written.

Have fun,

Cal
31
31
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

People like to make up rules to life, because it makes them feel superior.

Some of it is wise, some of it is nonsense, some is just one person's opinion that heaps of people have parroted.

Truth of life is, "anything is possible". How far that stretches is up to what you want to believe......

I spent a long time really listening to what people told me.

Eventually you realise very few of them have even a vague clue about anything outside their own small sphere of influence/experience.

The smartest people are the ones who never tell anyone else what they should be doing. All a person can really do is say what worked for them, doesn't make it valid for anyone else.

A few hundred years ago people married routinely at 13-14 or younger. People now will say they weren't in love. I have no idea, I can't read minds, especially not through time.

If you want to love, go love. Keep it simple for yourself, follow your own dream(s?)

I'd rather you spread a bit of love than voted in another warmongering president anyway!

Have fun,

Cal
32
32
Review of Too Vain  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

I guess we all feel pressured.

Right now, I feel like the world can't sustain it's concept of heaven, because everyone is so determined for someone to go to hell.

Who's going to hell?

Not me anyway. I think the only people who really deserve hell have children too nice to send them there.

Don't focus on the stars too much, they'll take your soul away if you let them.

Look around you and see the party already happening.

Get stuck in. Have some fun.

Paint a smile and see how the world reacts.

I wish you all the best in life.

Have fun,

Cal
33
33
Review of The Sound  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey there,

Oh dear if I haven't felt those kind of horrible loops before.

Like a constant nightmare with thousands of false awakenings.

Happily I managed to snap myself out of it eventually.

Weird noises are a part of life, obsession with them can cause problems.

Unless you figure out what the noise is really saying.

Which is always very, very complicated.

If this is even remotely nightmare based, I advise you to learn lucid dreaming.

Control your dreams, and you control yourself.

That's all we ever really need. Self control. It's these ones who want to control the whole world that have the wrong idea.

Have fun,

Cal
34
34
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hi there,

This is an interesting poem.

I never really study poetry, just write what comes naturally, so I'll just look at what this makes me think about.

If the universe is created by a god, then why would an advanced alien race not be aware of that spirit in the ether?

Regardless what religion a person is, their real grasp of it is that everyone wants to be happy. Some make this universal, some find people to blame for problems and put in hell.

I think if an alien race had any religion, it would be above and beyond anything we humans managed.

Would an alien be against war? Depends on who it was facing. The one thing, if it had attained enlightenment before taking to space (how couldn't it?) it would never do is allow total destruction of anything.

Buddhists saw the truth in that a long, long time ago.

I guess we just got confused along the line somewhere.

Anyway, aliens are only as real as we choose them to be.

Until we work ourselves out, I'm pretty sure they'll steer well clear of a bunch of lunatics like us

Have fun,

Cal
35
35
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey there,

I did quite like this one, although it is a pretty brutal story.

It could use a little touching up, the capitalisation is off here and there, and there are several places where commas and so on could be used to good effect.

Same deal with breaking the text up, it could use more line returns to add impact to each line. Some parts could be pretty powerful, stark, if you wanted.

Shame for the little geeky guy that everyone wanted him to be evil. Poor ugly ginger dude. But then, there always has to be at least one bad guy in any story (or just thousands of recurring ones), I suppose.

Anyway, I guess it's the guy's own fault, if we aim out of our league then someone must want to punish us for that.

I find the whole extremity of the American highschool experience a bit too intense for me, being a soft-hearted Brit. We just see what we get then figure out the details later.

I guess the girl in this story decided to avoid the evil man by creating a better dream.

I suppose the Buddhists tapped into that trick a long, long time ago and just decided to wait and see who was playing chess with who.

Turns out, everybody wins in the end. It just takes a little while some to see people for what they are.

Friends, not enemies.

Have fun,

Cal
36
36
Review of Paranoia  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey Wesleigh,

Try not to fear those around you.

I did for years, and it never did me much good.

I mean, the reality of the world is that some people are nice, some are not.

If a person is looking for evil, they usually find it in those who they look down on. Usually, looking down is not a sign of a good person.

There are many ways of dealing with this stuff, cognitive behavioural therapy is supposed to be good. Speak to a doctor or whatever if you want to go with medication.

Personally, I've never been quite right in the head, variety of things, but you do get through it in the end.

Sadly, when you get happy, the grumpy ones get even worse, like you are stealing their fun.

Find a decent woman (I dunno how old you are), there's plenty out there, though surprisingly I have tended to suck a little with them.

I wish you all the best my friend.

Have fun, and take chances where you see them,

Cal
37
37
Review of More Is Less  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey Shady,

Yeah man, I'm with you on that one.

Don't run in real life, run in your head. Way, way easier.

Then, when you find something worthwhile, go put it out there.

Karma loves an honest man, even if most people hate them.

Plus, god's a joker and doesn't really care what you do.

As far as I can tell he just lets his kids run around until they give up on impossiblities and realise the impossible is pretty easy really.

It just has less spaceships and guns, and more self-control and bad jokes.

Or sometimes just a big weird castle to keep the scary people out, fuelled by it's very own "ring of power"! Hooray for that man, or concept. Or both at once.

How long do we want to live in a dream?

Well, forever ideally. Just some people get tired of running faster than others.

Other people just realise you can run in your head, and walk in real life.

That is how you play people zombies. Problem is, they really were killing people with greed up till now. Thankfully the masons got their eternal castle in the end, they just filled it with a load of headcases too.

Gotta love the Scots.

Blah, weird mood as usual. Hopefully you got a wee laugh at least.

Have fun,

Cal
38
38
Review of Hollow & Deep  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hey there,

Applause!

Some people just don't seem to get the funny jokes.

I'm surpirsed you put "dark" there.

Look at the conceptual world we built together.

Reincarnation, perfect heaven, god?

What were we doing? Creating the perfect world, heaven, and an infinite universe, at the same time.

Nae much of a mission, really.

But, I suppose some people want more. And, of course, our creators tell me they will oblige.....whoever they may be!

Oooh...scary. Must be the devil talking again.

Heck, why would we ever screw ourselves over in the first place?

Have fun, and see the joy.

As you say, beauty is skin deep, some people are stupid, but in the end we all get the right idea eventually.

Have fun,

Cal
39
39
Review by Paradoxical
In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group  
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

An interesting one, seem to be finding all the dark stuff here.

I suppose the funny thing about life is, everyone wants to accuse someone of something. Let's look at life this way.

What do people really need?

A girl, a decent family, and happiness.

What do people do? Look all over the place never being happy, always seeing some perfection is someone else.

Why is that? People are obsessed with image. Not what is inside.

It's all to teach us a lesson we could have learned at home.

Damn, we had the perfect world back home all the time, in our dreams.

It's a funny joke, just gets dull after while so you make it obvious to make the real punchline funnier.

Plus, some kids just get to have a much cooler, and longer adventure.

Some of the tired old folks just want to watch them play for a while.

I suppose that was always going to happen eventually anyway. Mother Earth had to cut her reigns a little eventually.

Now we just need to lern how to use her effectively.

Have fun,

Cal
40
40
Review by Paradoxical
In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group  
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey there,

I suppose sometimes, a simple answer can take a very long time to explain. It just depends where you end up, and as long as that works out well, who cares how we get there, really.

Have fun in life, always make sure you smile, and never let anyone tell you what to do.

It's your world, run it how you want. Nobody ever really knew the rules before anyway.

They just made them up as they went along.

Now you give it a go. It's better that way anyway.

It was always all on you, they just never told you before.

Have fun,

Cal
41
41
Review of Thoughts  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey there,

I love this piece, It's like the most complicated girl on earth undertsanding herself all in about 30 seconds.

I'm so glad that everything works out for the best in the end, I'm just sad I couldn't quite find the time to do everything myslelf in this world.

I wish you all the best in everything you try to do, and look forward to meeting you one day.

have fun, and always remeber.....there's a smile at the end of every rainbow.

Have fun, and always stay positive.

Cal
42
42
Review of I Hate Girls  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hi there,

Quite an interesting piece.

I really do appreciate the sentiment here, it is something that is glaringly obvious when one looks inside, but impossible to grasp if focused purely on the physical, unless the physical keeps shifting significantly.

It appears that the only way for people to really understand each other is to blend all preconceptions of differences, from race, to gender, in order to eventually realise that in truth, the only real lasting happiness comes from a balance between all aspects of human psychology.

However, I guess for some people the only way to really realise that is to encapsulate androgynity within themselves.

I guess you could call that the gay gene.

Interesting how life seems to provide pictures for everything we need to know.

Just seeing the real meaning behind the patterns.

Have fun,

Cal
43
43
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: ASR | (4.0)
Hey there,

Very glad you wrote this piece.

It really covers a lot of issues I've been having recently, trying to figure out something so tricky that I never really thought I could.

However, just your tag line alone seems to fix all the problems in one,.

Forgiveness, that's what life's all about. Acceptance and forgiveness.

So glad that you took the time to figure it out. I guess somebody had to.

I wish you the best of luck in all your endeavours.

Have fun, stay positive, and remember:

Don't try too hard, you'll only hurt yourself.

Catch you soon,

Cal
44
44
Review of The 17th  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: 13+ | (4.0)
Hey Grimluckus,

Heck of a story this one. An interesting way to tell it, shifts viewpoint so often that most of the time it's difficult to figure out who speaking or what is going on.

There does seem to be quite a clever underlying plotline though. I enjoyed the way it shifted from place to place, situation to situation, kept things interesting.

It's a shame the the heroine had to leave, I can only hope she finds the right place for her in the end.

I'm quite sure she will, if she works hard enough for it.

I wish you the best of luck in everything you do.

Have fun, and stay positive. Everything works out for the best in the end.

Cal
45
45
Review of Hide & Seek  
Review by Paradoxical
In affiliation with WdC SuperPower Reviewers Group  
Rated: 13+ | (4.5)
Hey there,

I love this piece.

Absolutely excellent. Two people worrying about how they will find each other, or tell each other what happened, when they've already found each other.

The irony is, maybe since they found each other and seem so confused, there's somebody already back at home base just hoping to explain where they came from.

Maybe the guy at home base has had to wait a long time to figure the story out. Then again, maybe there's room for everyone and the third player is just hoping nobody is angry at him for taking so long.

It's a funny little parable, but happily one that let's everyone get home safe.

I wish you all the best.

Life's a beautiful dream, though sometimes it seems far more serious.

Have fun and stay positive.

Cal
46
46
Review of Dinner with God  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey Ladybug,

I did enjoy this piece. I'm not a Christian myself, but like most folks I do think there is something higher and try to listen to Jiminy when he (it?) speaks.

This ties with a lot of my thoughts on life. We've been given a life to lead, with near infinite options on how to proceed through it.

Does it annoy God when we don't eat what he laid out for us?

I hope not. God made us in his image, maybe, but he didn't want to create a load of clones I don't think. A dull heaven that would make.

He can give you things he thinks you will like, but only you can decide if you like them.

I guess what we're really doing is negotiating with god, he passes us the salt, we add a little, he would like us to add more, we say no. He rescinds opposition and sees how it pans out for us.

To take nature as an example, different species of birds makes nests in different ways. Some use the simplest twigs, some collect the shiniest things they can. Some build in nests in the highest trees, some burrow into the trees, some even nest on the ground. Every one achieves its purpose by following a different path to the same end.

I only hope god looks at his children the same way.

Not everyone follows the same path, and I can only hope the big guy is happy to accept that too.

Thanks very much for sharing this one, I really did enjoy it. Put a smile on this face, anyway.

Have fun,

Cal
47
47
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Dear PJ,

This certainly sounds like an excellent movement. I was part of Scientiology for a while but this sounds like a lot less hassle.

Will it be ok if I walk forwards in an anti-clockwise direction?

Or perhaps sideways for double the length of time?

I only ask because I have a rare genetic condition that does not allow my knees to bend.

I'm very glad that you've opened my eyes to the potential here, I'll be sure to at the every least think or write backwards at the alloted times in order to make some small contribution to the cause.

Have fun,

Cal
48
48
Review of Dressing Drawer  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hey Silentwriter,

Just popping past to return your review from yesterday.

I really do like the sentiment in this one, it's a good metaphor for the faces (clothes?) that are put on us, or we put on, or a bit of both, in life.

The flow is good, works without needing rhyme.

I've been thinking about this idea quite a bit recently, how much of what us is us and how much is just socially determined.

Kinda painful to realise you're being squashed into shape all the time. Probably meant for the best I suppose, all you can do is take what you need and ignore anything you don't. Same as reviews, really.

Thanks for sharing,

Cal
49
49
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.0)
Hi there,

A cute piece.

Instead of staring at the stars, the fox should have gone to sleep every now and again.

Plenty of adventure to be had in dreams.

Have fun,

Cal
50
50
Review of FOREVER  
Review by Paradoxical
Rated: E | (4.5)
Hey there,

Woah, this was pretty deep, to utilise my oft-neglected talent for understatement.

This is an idea that's always fascinated me, some kind of AI observer interacting with the planet, and you've done an incredible job of rendering it.

I like the machine god (so I'll call it), limited in comprehension but intelligent and empathetic (is that a word?). Decidedly human...
The perspective is almost dreamlike. A dream inside a machine. That's an cool idea.

The Harker character is interesting. I suppose I look at him as a Buddha/Moses/Jesus/Mohammed archetype, appearing as continuous throughout the ages to this permanent consciousness.

Perhaps the creator Harker speaks of and the one who created the AI are one and the same? Maybe the Creator figured the AI would need someone to speak to, stop it going insane. Or just to help it understand?

I don't really have any suggestions for improvement, this is one of the most complete, thought-provoking pieces I've read.

Thanks so much for sharing,

Cal
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