Cool sibling Monday

Well, Tuesday for those of you on the opposite side of the world.

My brother and I both write, although we write totally different stuff. He is mostly a sci-fi/horror/mystery writer, and has been published in several anthologies. My work has chiefly been nonfiction (I used to be a reporter and I am still a freelance writer/editor), along with a children's book that I'm trying to hawk. (Any ideas?)

Anyhow, I've been nagging him forever to get a web site, and voila! Tonight it went live.

I forgot all about the picture above, which, judging from the fireplace, was taken at my late great aunt Marie's house one of the summers we visited her. Which means I took it, or she did, and amazingly, the three of us didn't collapse into fits of giggles before we got a photo.

I'm not sure he'd want to share the more graphic bits of his fiction with her, but I am sure she would be (or is, depending on your frame of mind) proud of him.

I certainly am!

So check out his site. He has some of his work posted so you can read it.

Fall

I was sick as a dog today, but my adorable kitties were right here cuddling with me - and Mr. RK went out and got me an array of goodies, so I suppose I am spoiled.

That's the only thing I don't like about fall - I always manage to get sick at least once - oh wait, and I hate the days getting shorter.

Other than that, I love fall, and October is my favorite month. I love having tea and cocoa (not together), the smell of bonfires (it may be yard trimmings but don't rain on my parade!), walks over leaves that turned colors and crunch under my feet.

The kitties re-fluff and look even bigger than they do the rest of the year. It would be kind of funny if humans fluffed up in cooler weather, too, wouldn't it? Not that it's something I'd like to see...

We are going down to California to visit my family later this week, for my dad's 60th birthday. I don't know if fall will have arrived there by then or not - they call us each year on Thanksgiving and gloat about having an outdoor bbq - but it will be fun to see everyone. I can't wait to go into North Beach in San Francisco - it's my favorite time of year to go to that city, too.

Well, this is about as fluffy and sappy of a post as I've ever written, so I suppose I should close with something more Riot Kittyish...

I gave a speech last night at a dinner/fundraising hosted by one of my organization's local chapters. If it wasn't bad enough that the band was an awful (and I mean awful) 70s cover band - complete with out-of-tune guitars and a lame lead singer - those motherfuckers were talking to each other, right behind me, when I was on stage giving my speech.

So at one point I turned around and hissed, "Will you knock it off?"

They did.

I am going to make a great grumpy old lady!

Jargon

I've been at my current job about a year and a half now, and among other things, it has taken that long to catch up on some - not all - of the acronyms and jargon associated with a health nonprofit.

Among them:
DHS
OHP
SSI and SSD
DMAP
AMH

etc.

I wish people would just choose a language - any language! - to speak when sending out information and information requests. Take this real sentence from an e-mail from a government agency we partner with:

This RFI enables COPR to help the NIH obtain broader public input on the overall need for health information as well as on information-seeking behaviors of the various NIH consumer audiences.

Um, what?

I realized last night, when I took a friend who also works for our organization out for her b.day, that I'm already becoming guilty of doing this myself, if only in conversation.

I said, "So the good thing is now that he'll have a case worker, he'll hopefully get on OHP and SSI or SSD..."

Blah. If I ever write like that, just shoot me.

TTFN! (Ta ta for now!)

Just top 1 Tuesday

My arms are too tired to do a Top 10 Tuesday (sorry, Joey!) but I'll bet this will top anything I could have come up with, in terms of laughs...and we can always use laughs, can't we?

The outfit alone sent me into fits of giggles.

Meme

Several of you - including Scarlet, who gave me these words for my meme, as well as Joey, Grannie Annie and Fireblossom, among others (and if I forgot you, don't be mad, it's tired me here) - have posted about this meme. Someone gives you five words and you muse about them...or something like that.

Here are my five:

Aphrodisiac
Words are my biggest aphrodisiac. That and a British accent (before I met Mr. RK, anyway.)

Aroma
Scents have always been linked to memories for me. No matter how long it has been since I have seen or thought of someone, if I smell a lotion, cologne, perfume, or other scent that I have associated with them, memories will come back.

Inspiration
The people who have been the biggest inspiration in my life, I just realized, have all been social activists of one kind or another: social workers, nonprofit workers, pastors.

Beauty
Beauty really is on the inside. People with ugly personalities become really ugly to me.

Speaking of beauty, I finished a friend's manuscript last night, and a line from the last page really grabbed me and made me read it again:

Life is not perfect, but there are perfect moments, complete in themselves, requiring nothing more, for more would be too much, and less would be too little.

Paz
I will fight like a mama bear if I think someone I love is being treated unfairly, but I am a peaceful person at heart (this means "peace" in Spanish.) I fantasize about world peace. I wish we could somehow eliminate greed, because I think we'd eliminate about 99% of the world's problems that way.

No one in Edison, NJ is getting any.

Why else would they try two years in a row to ban a sex toy convention?

What is it with hyperconservatives going after devices that just happen to be marketing to females? Hmm? Alabama has been waging a court battle over this for over a decade.

But mind you - violence is OK.

I have never understood it, but this seems to be the prevailing attitude of some of the right-wingers in the U.S. Movies that show people getting cut up into little pieces? No problem! Two adults consensually enjoying themselves in bed? Gasp! We CAN'T stand for that!

When I was growing up, my parents were careful not to expose us to inappropriate movies, music, etc., but they were always most concerned that we not think violence was acceptable.

I'd love to see some of these right-wing idiots take a real stand against something - poverty; domestic violence; corporate greed. But no - it's easier to sound off about vibrators!

I suppose none of them have tried any of the products they're trying to ban, else they'd be changing their tune very quickly.

Put that in your pipe and fuck it, Edison, N.J.

Language and its evolution

A quote from Liza of Lambeth, W. Somerset Maugham's first novel:

"Grind away, old cock!"

Now mind you, the sentence above was uttered by a female character to a musician - but she was asking him to play the organ grinder.

Makes you wonder how the English language has evolved, and why.

Speaking of which, I am getting a terrible reputation for language (LOL) - I got this late b.day gag gift from Darth Weasel and his wife:
Tomorrow is my boss's b.day, and in his card, I wrote, "It is great to work for someone I respect, who cares so much about our mission - and who doesn't mind that I say "fuck."

Here is his cake - cross your fingers that he doesn't find out about the surprise party until the first guest walks in!