What was begun as an online journal of the books I read evolved...or maybe it devolved...to also feature behind the scenes goings-on at All About Romance from my perspective (mostly based on my personal feelings - okay, it's a personal pity party); topics I've gone over ad nauseum in commentary at AAR, including the nature of reviews and online behavior; and my non-cyber life (including family and items in pop culture that capture my interest, which is just about everything).

Please do not violate my trust. I restricted certain AAR-related and personal entries for a reason...to keep them as private as possible. Now that my blog is read-only, to access restricted entries you must already have a password; if you do, hold onto it so that you can continue to read restricted entries.

This blog is not part of All About Romance. I ask that you keep comments or questions regarding restricted blog content off of AAR.

Below you'll find the blogs I visit, broken out in my own odd little system of categories.

October 2006



Lip Service to the Global Economy

Tuesday, 31 October 2006 12:41 P GMT-05
Almost since the beginning, AAR has been an Amazon.com associate.  Indeed, for the first several years, it provided a majority of the revenues needed to fund the site. Eventually we became "associates" of Amazon in Canada and the UK as
Category: Personal/Political
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Elizabeth Bathory

Monday, 30 October 2006 1:34 P GMT-05
This time of year there are plenty of spooky creature documentaries on television, and last night I happened to watch the first hour or so of a two-hour documentary on The History Channel called Vampire Secrets, which will air again (click the link f
Category: Entertainment
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Abducted At The Altar (Harlequin Historical Series)

Saturday, 28 October 2006 7:29 P GMT-05
Review of Abducted At The Altar (Harlequin Historical Series)
Category: Reading

The Politics of Deafness

Wednesday, 25 October 2006 4:23 P GMT-05
I first became aware of the politics of deafness in 1988 when I. King Jordan was named the first deaf president of Gallaudet University following student, alumni, and faculty protests. It wasn't until a decade later that I realized those po
Category: Personal/Political
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New Tricks

Tuesday, 24 October 2006 12:26 P GMT-05
My daughter is taking a web-mastering class this semester, and over the weekend she told me she'd learned how to scroll text. Turns out it doesn't require a script...just some html code. She'd learned how to scroll horizontally, so I Googled and fo
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Mini-Poll Update...E-Books

Monday, 23 October 2006 12:21 P GMT-05
An update on the mini-poll situation ...after checking with our pollsters, it appears that while more ballots are coming in for Mainstream Sexy and Erotic Romance titles, E-Book ballots remain few and far between.  I know that a number of you re
Category: AAR

Annette Bening's Boobs...updated

Monday, 23 October 2006 11:45 A GMT-05
Annette Bening, wonderful actress of The Grifters and American Beauty, is featured in this week's Newsweek. The two-page photo in the magazine - and btw, discovering that Warren Beatty is almost 70 really knocked me out! - is quite bizarre, and m
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Mainstream Sexy vs Erotic Romance (and E-Books)?

Saturday, 21 October 2006 11:45 A GMT-05
Compared to the first two sets of "mini-polls" we conducted at AAR over the last two weeks, the current set is causing a lot of confusion among readers, and far fewer ballots than expected have been submitted. So I just made a couple
Category: AAR
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Anne Stuart interview

Friday, 20 October 2006 12:59 P GMT-05
Sandy Coleman is AAR's point person for author interviews at AAR, and every once in a while she will ask me to do the monthly Writer's Corner interview.  Knowing that I'd read Anne Stuart's Cold as Ice, that its release date is n
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Improvements!

Thursday, 19 October 2006 3:40 P GMT-05
Months ago, after we conducted a site-wide user survey at AAR, I went to Comprotex, the company that designed our look and created our fabulous reviews database , with a wish list of improvements to be made to the database. We were interrupted
Category: AAR
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Heroism

Wednesday, 18 October 2006 5:02 P GMT-05
The new issue of Time magazine features an interview with Clint Eastwood, whose Flags of Our Fathers - about the planting of the American flag (and its aftermath on those who participated in that "photo op" - an American flag was planted ea
Category: Entertainment
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Poll Results: Top Ten Heroes, Heroines, & Couples

Monday, 16 October 2006 11:52 A GMT-05
Below are my ballots for Top Ten Heroes, Top Ten Heroines, and Top Ten Couples as submitted in AAR's recent polling, in ranked order. With the exception of Roarke and Eve and Roarke as a couple, my lists do not match AAR's readers, and
Category: Reading
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Poll Results: Comfort Read Authors & Titles

Saturday, 14 October 2006 6:47 A GMT-05
After dutifully completing each of the two sets of AAR mini-polls conducted thus far, I've asked our pollsters to email me copies of my ballots. I thought I would paste the results of that first set of polls today, and the second set in a few day
Category: Reading

Idiot!!

Thursday, 12 October 2006 11:32 A GMT-05
Okay, it's absolutely ludicrous to call his opponent a "pornographer" because she published a romance novel with the now-defunct Kismet line in 1990.  But what really illustrates Fred Head's idiocy apart from the rest is this:
Category: Personal/Political
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Bill Moyers on Net Neutrality

Tuesday, 10 October 2006 10:49 A GMT-05
I encourage you all to watch Bill Moyers On America on the topic of Net Neutrality.  This PBS show is part of a series done by Moyers, and while I've not seen it myself, there is not nearly enough discussion on this subject, which affec
Category: Internet

Finished Holiday in Death

Saturday, 7 October 2006 9:50 A GMT-05
I finished Holiday in Death a couple of days ago, and enjoyed it...it was a B read for me, and I look forward to watching the pull between McNab and Peabody develop.  I didn't automatically grab for Conspiracy in Death, so for now my J.D. Ro
Category: Reading
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J.D. Robb, interrupted by Linda Howard

Tuesday, 3 October 2006 7:56 P GMT-05
In my last blog entry I wrote about falling in love with J.D. Robb's In Death series, and in the new At the Back Fence , I write about how reading that book inspired the terrific glom I'm currently into. In the column I wrote that I'd rea
Category: Reading
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