Erotica, fantasy, and horror writer.
May 06
I’ve always considered Dune and its many sequels more science fantasy than science fiction. Sure, there’s starships and other planets, not to mention sandworm biology, but there’s also a Catholic-like sisterhood with sinister mind powers, swordfights, a Chosen One trope, and a feudal society with emperors, princesses, and dukes. Herbert cribbed a lot from human …
May 04
Cobalt’s axim: If you open up a graphic novel and see psychedelic mountains made of disembodied boobies, it must be French.
Apr 29
For this series so far I’ve been generating American military slang which could be used in the modern era. In previous conflicts, however, such slang existed too. Redcoats, as every school child knows (well, those who were alive during the American Bicentennial) was slang for British soldiers in the Revolutionary War, along with the less …
Apr 22
Among the more well-known of military slang words are snafu and FUBAR. Both originated in WWII. Snafu has since passed into regular language use as a noun meaning a mess, an unexpected monkey wrench thrown into one’s plans. Originally SNAFU, the letters stood for Status Nominal: All Fucked Up, a sarcastic term referring to the …
Apr 15
Military slang is obscure and puzzling even at the best of times. It’s easy for civilians to pick up terms readily bandied about by journalists like MREs (military rations) and those from TV shows and movies, like dogtag and grunt. But there’s a whole slew of others, some dependent on location, like AWACS (Airborne Early …
Apr 11
Buried Alive by Myra Friedman William Morrow & Company, 1973 [Challenge # 12 : A book where music features prominently, or about musicians.] As a singer Janis Joplin is, unfortunately, something of a museum piece now. Her icon status has faded with the decades, unlike her contemporaries Aretha Franklin and Dolly Parton, both of whom …
