Fiction Queries

I googled this but can't understand head or tails so I hope someone can help.

I'm writing several disability fics and need some info. First can an incomplete paraplegic still have an erection and jaculate?
Second can he/she have a normal bowel and bladder function?

I read somewhere about bone overgrowth in amputated limbs aspecially with war amputees. So can it be operated or does it come back and can it get so worse that the person can't wear a prostatic?

Someone who is born with arthrogryposis sometimes has clubfeet too specially when it effects the lower limbs and also that when operated on it can still come back, can that person still walk or is he/she confined to a wheelchair?

I know this is a lot but all the English medical terms are just a lot of well you know, so please if anyone can give me an answer, plain english please. *hugs* Thanks a bunches.

A male character is writing love letters to another male, and is including love poems in the letters. So far only W.B.Yeat's poetry has been used, but I'd like to include more poets/poems. The poems need not not be homo-erotic or even especially erotic in content - just well-written love poetry without too many gender-specific terms.

The setting in in the UK in the late '80s.

I've tried googling "love poetry/poems" and "erotic poetry/poems" and am getting nowhere with these broad search terms.

Any suggestions on poets or poems (preferably well-known and writing in English), appropriate search terms or useful web-sites?

NB. I feel brain-dead - I ought to know this one - but my brain has gone to visit someone else for a while, or is at an alternate universe or something!

Also - have looked at some John Donne and Thomas Wyatt poems but rejected because of gender-terms ie. use of "she".


ETA: Thanks all - I've found a selection of poems, from Rilke, Neruda, Whitman, Elizabeth Barret Browning and others.

Does anyone happen to know what a handgun tastes like?

...

No, really.

Could someone tell me, or show me where I can find out, what the typical cost for emergency surgery (and etc) would be for a bullet wound in someone's shoulder?

This story is set in an American hospital.

I'm hoping there's someone Scottish or who knows Scottish people around.

Along the lines of Geordies call people pet, people from the Stoke area use duck etc, what would a Scottish person use as a pet name/nickname for someone they were talking to?

I've updated the resources post with links to :

Roman clothing
Women's rights/suffrage (mainly in the United States)
Encyclopaedia of world history
English-German dictionary
Gazetteer of N America
Life on the streets/fringes of society
Emily Post
Time magazine archive
Vaudeville and entertainment 1870-1920
Guide to sunrise/sunset/moonrise/moonset/moon phases for any day you choose
Quotations
Brewer's Phrase and Fable
Refdesk.com
What various animal penises look like
Roget's thesaurus
Civil war slang
Magnificent 7 gun guide

I've discovered this wonderful site which accesses a range of resources for those interested in pirate (buccaneer) history:
- want to calculate how long it would take to get from one Caribbean port to another?
- want to figure out how your pirate's victims were dressed? 

Then go to http://www.kipar.org/index.html The Salacious Historian's Lair!  Click on "Piratical Resources" and then "Writer's Resources".

Could some-one tell me if rivers/streams freeze in Northern England in winter? 
If they do not freeze, or they more sluggish or more rapid in winter? 
If they do freeze, when does the freezing occur ie. early, mid or late winter?  And is the freezing a solid sheet over the water, or chunks of ice?
Thanks.

I may as well make the first question post :D

I'm writing Magnificent Seven fanfiction. I'm pretty certain that the series is set before statehood (so around 1875) but I'm not sure when this scene is set exactly.

Anyway Mary Travis is dancing around in my brain complaining about women's rights and my google fu is totally failing me.

What I know -

Colorado became a state in 1876.
Colorado gave women the vote in 1893.
Up until at least the 1860s (dependent on state) married women basically didn't exist in the eyes of the law - they couldn't sign legal documents, they had no control over the disposal, leasing, or collecting of rents on their own property, their husband could basically do what he wanted with it.
By 1900 every state in the Union had in some way amended married women's property rights so that she had at least some rights over her own property. (And that's pretty much what every site I've seen has said or some variation on it, it gives a date by which every state had done something but doesn't say when or what specifically each state did.)

What I don't know -

When Colorado passed an act relating to married women's property rights and exactly what rights it gave them.
I'm assuming that there couldn't be any Colorado specific laws before 1876 but I'll admit to being British and not quite understanding how state v federal laws worked, especially in the 19th century, so if I'm wrong please explain.
Equally I'm assuming it must have been before 1893 since voting rights in the period generally had some relation to property rights.

So some time between 1876 and 1893 Colorado passed an act of indeterminate scope giving women rights of some kind over their property, but I don't know what.

NB yes I realise Mary is a widow and technically most of this wouldn't apply to her anyway, but she's talking about women in general, not herself specifically.

List of useful resources by subject. The links here reflect things I've come across or been linked to, so they're not comprehensive. Your comments will help make it bigger and better so please comment with any links you have, no matter how weird or obscure.

Warning Some of the links below are for adults only, use your common sense and do not follow any links which are not appropriate to your age. Most of the category 'Sex' are adults only and *not* worksafe. The same goes for Minotaur's site.

Last Updated - 13/07/08

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