Celestial Reviews 35 - Nov 8, 1995

Note:  I am posting a Celestial Summary today.  This is a list of all 
the stories I have reviewed, along with an extremely brief summary and 
my rating of each story.  I am posting this today. and I'll post it 
again on November 15.  Between these two dates authors may wish to 
repost stories that appear in this Summary.  That will enable readers 
to find stories that they may wish to read.  I also plan to repost on 
Saturday November 11 all of the Celestial Reviews that I have written 
up till now.  I'll repost these on alt.sex.stories.d (not on 
alt.sex.stories).  Those of you who have requested copies can download 
them at this time.  This is the last time I'll do this; it's simply 
getting too difficult to repost so many stories.  If someone has a 
better idea, I'll be happy to cooperate.

Second Note:  I sincerely appreciate the e-mail I receive from readers.  
Please understand that I would like to respond individually and in 
detail to everyone who writes to me, but my time limitations often 
prohibit this.  I hope you will accept my column as my response to your 
communications.  It seems to me that people are enjoying my writing, 
and that makes me feel good.

   - Celeste

      "Dress" by Deirdre (blackmail & sexual potpourri) 9
      "Drop" by Deirdre (sex on the rebound) 8
      "Easy" by Deirdre (voyeurism and anal sex) 9
      "The Fourth Ring" by Hunter Jackson (wife watching) 10
      "Kachina" by Sue (sex in the great outdoors) 10

"Dress" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi).  Sacre vache! (as the 
French say) - when I looked at the alphabet soup after this story's 
title, I was a bit startled.  TG, mf, cd, blackmail, dom, (bond), (mm).  
As I understood it, I was in for a transgender story that involved 
male-female sex, cross-dressing, blackmail, dominance, and bondage, 
with a male-male finale.  I wondered if they had forgotten about the 
two nuns who had just fucked with a German shepherd when they walked 
into a bar.  Actually, this part about the nuns isn't very realistic; 
the second nun almost certainly would have ducked after she saw the 
first nun walk into the bar.

Anyway, after that description I thought I had a pretty good idea what 
I was in for. When I discovered in the first 100 words or so that the 
man's wife used to be interested in a guy who was a cross-dresser and 
that the wife's sister-in-law was a flirtatious sex maniac, I knew I 
had the story pretty well sized up.  Another hundred words, and I had 
guessed the ending - or so I thought!  To make a long story short - I 
blew it.  For one thing, I didn't know about the anal sex at night in 
the middle of the football field.  This is a clever, but strange story; 
but I suppose that's what the word deirdre in the title line is an 
abbreviation for.  (Rating: 9)

"Drop" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi).  A woman has been rudely 
dumped by her boyfriend, and the woman's son tries to console her.  
After venting her rage against he boyfriend and his new flame, the 
mother convinces the son to go with her to a vacation resort.  I 
thought I was getting good at predicting Deirdre's endings, but I blew 
this one badly.  Since I don't want to ruin the possibility of your 
being surprised, I won't tell you any more.  (Rating: 8)

"Easy" by Deirdre (an65862@anon.penet.fi).  A man's wife surprises him 
by asking him to shove his cock up her ass.  Then she surprises him 
further by the ease with which he is able to make the backdoor entry.  
This leads him to be suspicious that she's not exactly new at this 
approach.  The wife admits that she and her college roommate used to do 
it with a dildo; and as luck would have it, this same woman is coming 
to visit this very weekend.  Tune in form ore fun.  (Rating: 7)

"The Fourth Ring" by Hunter Jackson (FDDH53D@prodigy.com).  Sometimes 
when I read these stories I talk back to the protagonists (inside my 
head, of course).  I say things like, if you have a wife with the 
hottest little ass and cunt in town who is longing to be fucked but 
you're too dumb to notice it, you deserve whatever happens to you.  And 
if you're stupid enough to make a bet with a super stud that he can't 
lay your wife - and if you do this not one but three times - then you 
deserve to be relegated to a role in life of licking the cum out of her 
cunt after she comes home late at night after fucking him.  And if 
you're still unwilling to admit defeat and demand proof, then you 
deserve to be stashed in the bathroom while the two of them are fucking 
their brains out in the bedroom right where you can see them.  If you 
can't get a personality that would demand a little attention from your 
wife, then you don't deserve her.  Those are some of the things that I 
might have said to myself while I read this story.  The title refers to 
how many times the phone would ring if the guy managed to really stick 
it to the guy's wife.  (Rating: 10)

"Kachina" by Sue (SueNH@AOL.com).  This is a story about a young woman 
who travels by water and by hiking and mountain climbing to a beautiful 
place in the remote wilderness and masturbates there before bedding 
down for the night in a cave.  (Sue adds a few details that make it 
more interesting than my preceding sentence.)  In the middle of the 
night she is visited by a Kachina - an ancestral Anasazi spirit-god 
that had come back to life.  Hey!  What can I say?  You're going to 
read the descriptions of the previous four stories, and then tell me 
that this one is unrealistic just because a beautiful blonde woman has 
passionate sex with a man old enough to be her ancestor who comes alive 
from a painting on a cave wall?  Believe what you will.  I say, if 
Peter Pan can have Tinkerbell and if the Greeks can have Zeus and 
Aphrodite, then Sue can have her Kachina!

Sue does an excellent job of integrating the sexual activity with the 
surroundings and even with a sensitivity to the ancient Native American 
heritage.  This was a very good story.  (Rating: 10)

TIP OF THE WEEK:  In each issue of Celestial Reviews I present one of 
the guidelines from Celestial Grammar, which I have posted on alt 
sex.stories.d. and which I'll continue to develop and revise from time 
to time.  My theory is that if all of these tips were followed, about 
95% of the really distracting errors in a.s.s. stories would be 
eliminated.  (The other 5% will eventually be covered in Advanced 
Celestial Grammar.)  I was going to name this part of the column TIP OF 
THE {something sexual}, but I thought the innuendo might detract from 
the sober serious business at hand.  Here is this week's Tip:

SEMICOLONS

We're going to do semicolons one more time.  I have revised the 
guidelines to clarify a few points.  Some readers have pointed out that 
numerous students might be using these Tips to enhance their 
performance in English class or on term papers.  More power to them!  
But (the theory goes), some of these people might be in classes taught 
by teachers who do not read a.s.s. and who follow more arcane rules of 
grammar. 

I am certain that the information I have supplied here is accurate.  I 
have verified its authenticity; and I am confident that students 
following my guidelines will not get lower scores on professionally 
developed, standardized tests.  However, I cannot guarantee that there 
are no teachers whose own tests or grading practices follow different 
standards.  Specifically, some teachers are likely to follow only Rules 
1 and 2 below and to consider Rules 3 and 4 to be erroneous.  This is a 
regressive and silly notion that flies in the face of contemporary 
understandings of grammar.  (I am not saying that people who personally 
ignore the last two rules are regressive and silly - only that it is 
improper to insist that others ignore these rules as well.  If 
individual writers follow just the first two rules, their writing will 
be fine.)  The point is that you should define your goals.  If you want 
to write well, follow all four of these rules.  If your goal is to get 
a good grade from a teacher who doesn't know these rules, then follow 
that teacher's rules - even though the rules that I am stating here are 
almost certainly parallel to those stated in that teacher's grammar 
book, if it has been published within the last 25 years.  Enough!  On 
to the guidelines:

The semicolon can be viewed as a combination of a super-comma and a 
half-period.  (That's why it's a period written above a comma.)  That 
is, it can serve as a half-period by joining two sentences into one (as 
in the first two rules below); and it can serve as a super-comma by 
replacing a comma in situations where a comma itself won't quite do the 
job (as in Rules 3 and 4).  Here are specific rules:

1.  Use a semicolon to join two clauses when these two clauses are NOT 
joined by a coordinating conjunction.  (When they are joined by a 
coordinating conjunction, use a comma - except in the case of Rule 4 
below.)  The coordinating conjunctions are "and," "but", "or," and 
"for."

The following are all correct - at least grammatically, although the 
order may be reversed socially:

      I licked her pussy.  Then she sucked my cock.
      I licked her pussy, and then she sucked my cock.
      I licked her pussy; then she sucked my cock.

In the actual context of a story, the sentences would convey a slightly 
different meaning.  For example, the third sentence suggests that the 
two activities were more intimately connected than the first (because 
the author put the two ideas in a single sentence). 

2.  Use a semicolon to join two clauses when these two clauses are 
joined by a conjunctive adverb.  (When they are joined by "and" plus a 
conjunctive adverb, use a comma - except in the case of Rule 3 below.)  
Conjunctive adverbs include words like "therefore," "however," "thus," 
and "furthermore."  {Note: If you have trouble recognizing conjunctive 
adverbs, you can ignore this rule and simply apply Rule 1; you will 
almost always be correct anyway.}  Example:

      I licked her pussy; therefore she sucked my cock.

3.  Even when main clauses are joined by a coordinating conjunction, 
use a semicolon (instead of a comma) to join them if the clauses are 
very long and complex or if they contain commas.

This rule is the one about which readers have been giving me grief.  
I'm simply going to state one more time that this is the rule as it is 
currently taught in high school and college courses and as it is 
applied by most major publishers throughout the United States.  Some 
people would say that the semicolon followed by a coordinating 
conjunction is redundant.  It would be better, they say, to just drop 
the conjunction and use the semicolon alone, since that serves the 
purpose more efficiently.  If you're really hung up on Occam's razor, 
fine; do it that way.  These same writers would probably never begin a 
sentence with a coordinating conjunction; that rule is no longer 
taught, and good writers often begin sentences with "and."  My point is 
that the semicolon alone is correct; but so is the semicolon followed 
by a coordinating conjunction when one or the other of the clauses 
contains internal punctuation or is long and complex (like this one).  
Examples:

      Occam's Razor is the principle, first formally stated by William 
of Occam, that the most efficient way is always the best way; but Occam 
never had sex with me. 

       "While she continued to drive him crazy by fondling his balls 
with her free hand, she began to suck on his cock, until he came in a 
wild explosion of excitement; and then he began to turn his own 
attention to her clitoris, which he had neglected until then."

Using a comma instead of a semicolon in these example would be 
confusing, because each half of the sentence already contains commas.  
In the second example, a good author might instead just insert a period 
and omit the "and," especially if she is concerned about skipping a 
period.

4.  Use a semicolon to separate items in a series if these items are 
long or contain commas.  Examples:

     "In one evening Sharon had sex with Sue; her dog, Ralph; the night 
watchman, Bill; and Ray, her ex-husband." {Using commas instead of the 
semicolons wold result in a confusing sentence, where we might think Sharan 
had an even more active night: "In one evening Sharon had sex with Sue, her 
dog, Ralph, the night watchman, Bill, and Ray, her ex-husband."}

     "So far this week Bob has sodomized the Bobsie twins, Rachel and and 
Randy; fucked Millie, Alice, Patrice, and Carolyn in the hayloft; had oral sex 
with Jane, Janet, Julio, and Billie Joe; and watched his sister have nearly 
simultaneous sex with seven guys from the local gym. {Try reading this 
sentence with commas in the place of the semicolons - and then remember that 
there are still four days left in the week!}

I myself still think writers do not need all four of these rules.  For 
over twenty years I have survived quite well using a semicolon when a 
comma won't quite do the job and when I don't really want the full stop 
indicated by a period.  Even if you or your teacher insists on knowing 
and using the four rules stated earlier, the logic stated in the 
preceding sentence will make it easier to remember and apply these more 
specific rules.

That's it!  No more about semicolons until at least 1996.