TCI Caturday!

I've been too busy to read much, so please excuse the large number of Pinterest posts that have very little to do with literature lately. If you enjoy cats, then perhaps you'll enjoy:

If you love Hello Kitty, perhaps you'll enjoy this adorable pink sake set.

Get Out Of There Cat is a hilarious Tumblr blog of nothing but cats where they do not belong.

Coffee Talk #6, the one with tattoos

Nat and I had quite an interesting discussion of reality TV star/Kardashian baby daddy Scott Disick last night.

Scott Disick is one of the asshole guys who I absolutely should not think is hot, but I still think he's hot. Scott Disick is a style favorite of Writer's Retreat, a U.K. Tumblr blogger who enjoys books and men's fashion.

Now, on to Nat's weekly Coffee Talk questions, this time co-hosted by Lovely Life of Leah.

1. Let's talk about ink: Do you have tattoos? How many?? 

I have no tattoos and no immediate plans to get one - hubby is not a big fan. If I ever got a tattoo, it would be "I love words" in 14-point Times New Roman around my wrist like a bracelet. 

I've also contemplated getting a wrist tattoo that says Isaac Nathan Bloom (a tragically doomed character in From Here to Eternity) in Hebrew letters. It would look like this:

ןדששב משאישמ נךםםצ

My parents are thinking about getting their first tattoos. Dad wants the Jack Daniel's logo to go with his Jack-themed man cave. I've previously written about my mom's vampire fixation, and she's contemplating a vampire bat tattoo.

Mom's all excited because I went to the library yesterday and checked her out a copy of The Twelve by Justin Cronin. Cronin's vampires are the post-apocalyptic horror variety. 

Please excuse The Big Book of Porn in the background. I use it for research, I swear. 

2. Let's talk about hair styles: Bangs, do you have them, want them, or trying to grow them out? What about side bangs? 

No bangs at the moment.

3. Let's talk about work: Without getting specific with a company name, what do you do? What did you want to be when you grew up when you were young? 

I'm fortunate enough to get steady freelance editing work, so I edit and write full-time. I do what I've always wanted to do for a living - read, write and research.

But if anyone wants to pay me to read the kind of fiction I like to read for pleasure, just let me know.

4. Let's talk about friends: Do you find it easier or more difficult to meet new friends as an adult? Do you have what you'd consider 'blog friends'? What about IRL (in real life) friends?

Making friends is hard when you work from home; most of the time, it's just me, hubby and the cat. I'm grateful for the "blog friends" I like to stalk interact with. 

5. Let's talk about Social media: Android or iPhone? Twitter or Facebook?

I don't have a smartphone, but my laptop and I are complete social media addicts. You pretty much have to be when you have books to promote. I'm on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest...all over the place. 

https://amzn.to/467d0Kj - this is an affiliate link

A Ritual For Celebrating Monty Clift's Birthday

Montgomery Clift was born on October 17, 1920, along with his sister Ethel; this should be a bisexual national holiday. There should be a ritual for celebrating said holiday. It should go something like this. (It totally does not matter if you are a guy or a woman.)

Breakfast: Smoke half a pack of unfiltered Camels from a Tiffany cigarette holder, then work on your abs. 

Watch From Here to Eternity. Get angry at Burt Lancaster for getting top billing. 

Recite "A man don't go his own way, he's nothing" along with Prewitt. 

Cry when Maggio dies, then drink a tumbler of Scotch, neat. 

After the movie, go four rounds in the boxing ring with your trainer. Take a long shower. Admire yourself in the mirror; you are the damned prettiest thing that ever lived. 

Lunch: 12 ounces of raw steak. 

Throw a party in your apartment. Make out with the nearest girl who looks vaguely like Elizabeth Taylor. Call her Bessie Mae, assure her that if you were going to marry anything it would be her, then wrestle her to the ground and bite her shoulder. 

Single-handedly finish off that fifth of Scotch and get out your Sinatra records. 

Dinner: Snort lines of finely-crushed Seconal off the shaved chest of a blond hustler who vaguely resembles a young Marlon Brando, all the while thinking that Brando is a hammy over-actor and he's starting to get love handles. 

Make out with said blond hustler. Abandon him to discuss the work of Anton Chekhov with your friends; help them finish off a bottle of champagne, the actual French stuff. If you lapse into speaking French, no one will mind.  

Pass out face-down on the carpet; your assistant will carry you to bed.

Listen, I'm being facetious. This is what I think Old Hollywood people did in the 1950s. I'm not advocating that you abuse alcohol or other drugs. 

Evernight Birthday Blog Hop Winner + Caturday

I'm going to kill two birds with one post and announce the winner of my leg of the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop while hooking up with A Catlike Curiosity for Caturday (at the risk of being labeled a crazy cat lady).

The winner of a signed paperback copy of my Evernight Press anthology title, Indecent Encounters, as randomly selected by Random.org, is Laurie. Congratulations! I'll be e-mailing you for your mailing address. If you didn't win my prize, don't worry - you're still entered in the grand prize drawing. Good luck!

Now enjoy these frisky felines. This fancy lil guy cracks me so consistently up.

Kitten in a man's shoe.

Jack Kerouac and a cat.

Allen Ginsberg had a cat named Howl.

"Taco cat" is a palindrome.

Doing her impression of Mark Twain.

If you like bookish cats, perhaps you will enjoy The Literary Cat on Tumblr. It has featured my own lil guy, James.

Columbus Day and Lies My Teacher Told Me

Hopping by from the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop? See this post. 

October 12, as you know, is Columbus Day. I'm going to ask you all to do something, not for me but for yourselves - read Lies My Teacher Told Me:   Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. (It'll be interesting, but less immediately relevant, to you if you live outside the U.S.) It was first published in 1995, but it's about history, and I doubt very much has changed in that academic field in the intervening 17 years. Read the book and you'll discover why.

I "read" this book (listened to it on CD) probably 8-9 years ago, and two things always stick with me. One is that the U.S. Republican party has historically been the proponent of human rights in a way that seems the polar opposite of the party's current incarnation. The other is that Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America led to events so horrifying, they make Dick Cheney seem like a humanitarian. If Ann Rule had been alive in 1492, she would have been writing true crime books about Columbus.

I'm going to share excerpts from this book. I know Christopher Columbus was said to be a native of Genoa, Italy (it can't actually be proven), and is a folk hero of many Italian-Americans. I promise you, I am not trying to pick on Italy or people of Italian descent. I love you; you're pretty. (See Wednesday's post.)

BUT you don't want to associate yourselves with Columbus. He was not a good guy. This is graphic, so sensitive readers may not wish to continue.

Using materials written by Columbus himself and other first-hand sources from the fifteenth century, Loewen writes:

• "When Columbus and his men returned to Haiti in 1493, they demanded food, gold, spun cotton - whatever the Indians had that they wanted, including sex with their women. To ensure cooperation, Columbus used punishment by example. When an Indian committed even a minor offense, the Spanish cut off his ears or nose."
• Quoting a biography written by Columbus' son Ferdinand on the quashing of a rebellion against the Spanish by the Arawak people: "The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike..."
• "Spaniards hunted Indians for sport and murdered them for dog food." 
• "Haiti under the Spanish is one of the primary instances of genocide in all human history."
• "Columbus not only sent the first [American Indian] slaves across Atlantic, he probably send more slaves - about five thousand - than any other individual." When large numbers of American Indian slaves died of starvation, overwork, suicide and disease, the Spanish simply looked to African slaves to replace them. 
• "A particularly repellent aspect of the slave trade was sexual. As soon as the 1493 expedition got to the Caribbean, before it even reached Haiti, Columbus was rewarding his lieutenants with native women to rape. On Haiti, sex slaves were one more perquisite that the Spaniards enjoyed. Columbus wrote a friend in 1500, 'A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.'"

There you have it, in Columbus' own words even. He literally believed that he had the right to do whatever he pleased to people who were non-Catholic. Their refusal to accept the Spaniards' "faith" justified everything, according to the cultural ethos of the time. The sex trafficking of 9- and 10-year-old children didn't bother Columbus. Dismemberment didn't bother him. Murder didn't bother him. Genocide didn't bother him. 

So now I hope you see why if we're going to observe Columbus Day in the U.S., we might as well observe Slobodan Milosevic Day, too. Read Lies My Teacher Told Me. It's disturbing, and sometimes we should be disturbed. 

A Columbus Week Trip to Little Italy

Hopping by from the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop? See this post.

In the U.S., Monday was the national holiday observing Columbus Day, but I don't celebrate that. I'll tell you very specifically why, with the aid of a book by James Loewen, on the actual holiday, October 12th. This post is just for fun. This is where I'd normally hook up Oh, How Pinteresting!

According to a skit on the long-ago MTV sketch comedy program The State, Christopher Columbus was internationally world-famous for beating up anyone who wasn't Italian on his holiday. I would be in line for a beat-down. I don't even have a little Italian in me.

That doesn't mean I don't want some. Yeah, I totally meant that dirty. So get your little passports, 'cause we're going to Little Italy. 

Milo Ventimiglia is from a multicultural background - some Italian (Sicilian, I believe) and also some French and American Indian. Everybody loves Milo. He'll make excellent vampire bait in Kiss of the Damned, and he almost kissed semi-werewolf Jesse Eisenberg in Cursed. If only he were gay in real life - Milo V. and Zachary Quinto would be the cutest couple ever.

Zachary Quinto is Italian and Irish, which is almost as good a combination as Irish and Jewish, in this Irish-American woman's opinion. The chocolate-brown eyes? Unnf. They melt me.



This Adriatic beauty is Joe Calderone. Who is also Lady Gaga. Who is also Stephani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

This is Joe Manganiello. He plays the werewolf Alcide Herveaux on True Blood. You may remember him from last Halloween season's Werewolf Wednesday or from his gig playing a stripper named Big Dick Richie in Magic Mike. 

This one is David Giuntoli. He plays Nick Burkhardt, the Portland, Oregon, police detective on Grimm. Grimm is my replacement for Heroes, and Giuntoli is my new Milo Ventimiglia. Except that while Sylar made clock repair look creepy on Heroes, Monroe makes it look pretty normal again on Grimm - even though Monroe is a blutbad/werewolf. But a mostly-good one.

Then there was Peter Facinelli. Quoth Alexandra O'Hurley, "he was NOT meant to be a blonde," and it's true he's a complete hottie as a brunette. But he's Carlisle fucking Cullen. So I tells Alex, I says, "As a Twilight fan who likes her vampires noble, I so wanna get Carlisle in the sunlight and watch him sparkle, baby!"

I think Carlisle Cullen is my perfect fictional husband, actually. I also have this theory that Carlisle and Esme are secretly really wild in bed, wilder than Emmett and Rosalie. Same deal Molly and Arthur Weasley, 'cause the Demeter-esque mother-goddess archetype is perfectly comfortable with her sexuality.

Ambiguously Italian-American: Jim Caviezel

I called him Italian in the Epic Easter Post, going on IMDB's suggestion that his unusual surname is of an Alps Italian dialect. Wikipedia says Swiss, BUT Swiss people come in a variety of French-speaking, German-speaking and, yes, Italian-speaking ethnic varieties. The last names suggests Swiss nationality, Italian ethnicity. Does he get his ass kicked on Columbus Day? Well, no, 'cause he's a total BAMF and he'd kneecap anyone who tried.

Totally, unambiguously Irish-American on his mom's side, though. (Those "dorky" sweaters? Hella expensive imported Irish wool, and a total Celtic pride thing. He also rocks the flat tweed cap like nobody's business.) So if I can't count him for Columbus Day, we'll still have St. Patrick's Day.



These are a few of my favorite people of Italian descent. On the 12th, remember that I said nice (or at least respectfully lustful) things about them. "Respectful lust" is totally a thing.

The Weekly Dish with B&N: Halloween Costumes

Hopping by from the Evernight Publishing Birthday Blog Hop? See this post.

I haven't actually dressed up for Halloween since I worked in a school, years ago. But if I were going to dress up, here are some costume ideas:

Dia de los Muertos figure:

Goth pirate:

Vampire:

Marge Simpson:

Avenger:

Green Lantern: