Congratulations and thanks, Kat - for your 250 contribution writing achievement and for keeping it friendly and real, respectively. Keep up the impressive work and don't go changing ;) 

Quote by Ishhhvv

Quote by spriteA few moments later she watched them collapse. "It's something you never forget, Rach. Something you wish you could, but every anniversary it still haunts." 

I like most of the world watched it live on TV. I remember coming from school and seeing that. Even as kids we were like..wtf! Had a confusion, "is it a movie? Or what's happening?" Then seeing it was live from news action, that feeling of disbelief. True, never got that day, still vivid. Thoughts and prayers...

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Okay on a Happy Sunday note: I never posted on this thread. So Hello everyone  

I'm Trishh. Have a good day

Morning, everyone. Just popping by for a mid-morning Sunday beverage. Pint of New Yorker beer, please. I shall raise it in honor (note US spelling) of my American friends on this 9/11 memorial weekend. 

Nice to see the decor here is still the same, seeing how everywhere else in Lush-town has undergone such radical renovation.

Hmmm - Can't see a way of attaching pics...

Quote by AngelWorthy

Thankyou ever so kindly Ensorceled. Your laziness made my OCD swing into action. I just counted 81 stories. & Yes, I have read, scored & commented on all of them to this point in time. I have no idea how well any of the stories are going. I just know that I have had more people vote on my story then comment on it. My Friday went swimmingly. It is now after 3.30am Saturday here. I must sleep.

Think I will have a Hot Chocolate to go, thanks.

Stay Safe & Have Fun Everyone. xx

Quote by Lilly
This is the current level of my insomnia:

Rumps is where Lushies go
To escape from life’s trouble
Insomnia is my current foe
Tonight I will drown it double

Jameson seems like a perfect choice
To drown my troubles should be easy
Just don’t let me have too many shots
My drunk alter ego is quite sleazy


Well it is 2:05am here in Utah and I am about to count sheep. I actually did download some insomnia music that Kimmi suggested and I am going to try falling asleep to that next.

Anyone join me in a double of Jameson? I am buying!

Quote by JustAnotherSapphic


Welcome. I'm Elyse.

I'd tell you to pull up a chair or a stool and get comfy, but you seem to have already done so. Oh, and I'd have welcomed you sooner but, well, head empty. No thoughts; only Jane.

Quote by AppleByBoom


Well, after having a sneaky peak at your profile I think I've established that you are not a newbie and I look like a right muppet for welcoming you. Oh - and look - you're a moderator as well.

Hangs head in shame...

Harley here - making an arse of herself since 1993

Is there any Kraken lying about? Please.

Quote by JamesLlewellyn


Something tasty and hopefully chilled, eh? Sounds like Kimmi in the store room!

Welcome Jake! Glad you decided to drop in! Lemme show you around.

This is Rumps to its Regulars – the absolute best bar within these four walls! I'm the de fatso coffee maker – or rather, Big Bertha's second most devoted fan, the first being Madam Curvy! – as well as the OFFICIAL unofficial greeter, and resident polar bear!

Here we have a fine selection of lickers – and of liquors as well – plus some amazing imported coffees (we get it from outside the bar), boring beers, whiney wines, and lovely lades, starting with Grace.

Our head of security is Terance, the Tarantula, who's hanging from a thread, just above your head – he keeps watch over strangers, and folks, there ain't many denizens of LushLand stranger than you, Jake. You'll fit right in.

Terance doesn't usually bother the regulars much – as long as they keep their bar tabs under five figures or so.

The most important personage here is Big Bertha – our coffee maker. She all fixed up already, but I'm sure she'd be happy to dispense some dark and aromatic goodness to you. Which can describe some of our other denizens as well, but you can add cream and sugar to hers!

You'll have to gird your own loins to meet most of the regulars, many of whom I'm sure you already know: Kat, Kimmi, Scott, Carl (who, when he's not busy with the other animals, spins most of the tunes around here), Kisten, and, of course, Bill – the Rumplator himself, who is usually sleeping it off in the back corner on that broken lounger you see there.

You've already met Lily, who is also a long-time Lushie, just newly wandered in off the street.

So, step right up! For a first-timer, you get a free, small beer, but as a friend, I can stand you something a little tastier. What's your pleasure (among the drinks that is…the ladies you'll have to negotiate yourself)!

And Ladles and Gellyspoons, this fine figure of a man is my friend Jake, with a tongue that drips honey, a vocabulary that can sweep your clothes into last week, and a disposition to match! He can sweet talk the birds from the bars, and then run them through a sex machine that leaves them gasping – for more! If you haven't read any of his stuff, then you have a real treat ahead of you!

Welcome, Jake! We're glad you're here!

Quote by KimmiBeGood

Wicked Jake!! About time you poked your sexy, Irish head in here!!

I'll buy you a drink ... which means it goes on James' tab.

Quote by AppleByBoom




I'm pretty new here, so definitely not the best person to do a welcome thing or anything but welcome anyways!

I do like your music choice!

TUNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

BB, I'll take some delicious dark roast please straight in veins. Some in a mug too would be great

Happy Sunday everyone!

Quote by WannabeWordsmith


That makes sense. Word is clever (?) enough to distinguish that an em dash isn't a character that makes up a word on its own. I expect the Lush counter simply looks for anything with a space either side (or a space on one side plus punctuation the other) and counts that as 'a word', regardless if those characters are alphanumeric or not. So yeah, taking out the preceding space will help.

The rest may well be that pesky formatting: the counter probably reads the markup under the hood, treating the opening and closing marks that tell the system to make the bold text as 'words'.

Not much we can do about the dividers. You may find that some character sequences don't get treated as words but (as it stands) I don't think it'll make any difference. The Lush word counter seems to use a simpler (likely faster) algorithm than the one in most Word processing programs. If you're running tight on words, try inserting an image as a divider, or use the horizontal rule built into the Lush editor. That should be ignored (though I've never tried it).

Edit: and if you're less than 10 words over, don't worry about it: that's tolerable in competitions, precisely because of this annoying word count issue.

Quote by KimmiBeGood
Wicked Jake ... those who know you know you always play within the comp rules. You shouldn't have to use less words than the limit just because your bold type, hyphens, dots count against you on word count.

In my mind, your piece is an easy Top Ten, so add an author note saying your actual word count is xxxx, so you won't catch flack from others if you get recognition.

Quote by WannabeWordsmith
Verity100 has done some sleuthing recently and found that formatting counts towards the word count. Since you have a bunch of bold phrases in your intro, that may account for some (or all) of the inflation.

Hyphens are a standard trick I use to cut down the word count (side-by-side = 1 word, yay) so it's probably not that. Em dashes maybe. Not sure.

The other thing is that dividers can get counted as 'words' in the lush counter but some word counters only consider alphanumeric characters as words. This one: ---- might not count, but this one: -oOo- might. Not sure about the string of tildes you use. Worth a look, maybe?

Quote by RejectReality


Unless something has changed since the last time I submitted a micro with one, proper use of an emdash ( no spaces before or after ) only counts 1 word for the two words connected by the em dash. Seems weird that it would do that, but count hyphenated words as two.

Quote by Wet_n_willing
One thing I have noticed is that Word counts hyphenated words as one while the Lush counter counts them as two. That likely wouldn't account for a discrepancy that large, but if it does the same thing when you use a dash as punctuation vs. a comma or semi-colon it might add up especially if you use it often. I use Word and mine are always a higher word count here.

Quote by kistinspencil
Did you save the Word doc as a plain text file first or just copy and paste? Word inserts all manner of crap format coding, some of which gets counted here as a word. Others are having issues with posts in Micro and Flash stories along the same lines.

Quote by AmeliaLeigh


You can send them to me *giggles* I won’t tell