A Sparkling Seasonal Line-Up!

posted by Christine Wells

How did December get here so fast? Never fear, we have a fabulous program lined up to warm the cockles of your heart this holiday season!

First up, on 2 December, Suz and Jo Davis take us on a field trip to Station Five to chat with Jo's incredible firefighters. A most... educational excursion, ladies! And there are some fabulous prizes to be won!

Then, on December 3, Silhouette author Bonnie Vanak makes her first appearance in the Lair. Our in-depth reporter, Nancy, interviews Bonnie about her fabulous shifter romances.

On December 6, warn the cabana boys because it's Party Time as our very own New York Times bestseller, Kate Carlisle launches her second Silhouette Desire, SWEET SURRENDER, BABY SURPRISE! RT Book Reviews says it's "Sweepingly romantic and startlingly sexy" and The Romance Reviews calls it "A tender romance with mass appeal." Wow!

Join us for something a little different on December 7 when Dorie Graham chats with Nancy about creative intelligence. I'm really looking forward to that, as "creative intelligence" sometimes seems like an oxymoron when applied to yours truly!

And Deck the Halls, because December 13 rings in our third annual 12 days of Christmas, with fun giveaways and more!

But that's not all, because on December 16 the lovely Anna Campbell will chat with debut author Elizabeth Essex about her sizzling new release, The Pursuit of Pleasure!

And now, just for a bit of Aussie flavour, let me leave you with a Christmas carol they sing at my son's kindergarten:

Christmas where the gum trees grow
There is no frost and there is no snow
Christmas in Australia's hot
Cold and frosty's what it's not
When the bloom on the Jacaranda tree is here
Christmas time is near!

Home Depot to the Rescue

Where is the great climax?

Where is the wild, shoot 'em up ending that punctuates a life here on Earth. When do I get my opportunity to go out in a blaze of glory? Or will I just fade away and become nothing from nothing? Is that the take? Is that what happens? I finished watching 'Carlilto's Way' with Al Pacino and even though I can't stand Brian DePalma movies, I loved this one. I remember when they were filming the ending of it in Grand Central Station. I was like 23 years old, working upstairs in the Pan Am building and coming to work, using those very same bank of escalators. They must have been filming all night because when I got there they were packing all of their camera shit up. I remember that. It's an old movie.

Well, truth be told, I loved it because Al Pacino gets the opportunity to square off with the fuckers who are making his life miserable. Fuckers who are in the way of him reaching the woman of his dreams and a beautiful future in Nassau, Paradise Island, that he fought so hard for. The entire movie is about this plan, his plan, Carlito's Way. And everything you can think of became an obstacle to that. Even close friends. Fucking life right?

WRONG! We don't get the satis- faction that Carlito does, in a frantic gunfight on an escalator with four Mafia hit men, using our wits just one more time to get to the women we love. We don't get that. We don't get the climactic ending. All we get is the same, boring hum of life. A droll crunching of dried leaves underfoot, the dull sound of your breathing, air rushing in and out of your lungs. We have an existence that drags us by the nose wherever it wants us to go.

Life lives us. We don't live life. Simple as that. We don't get to solve all of our problems, or have them overcome us in one, white hot minute. That's what I want. My White Hot Minute. Don't you? Don't you want a defining moment that will change everything for you? For better or for worse?  Don't you want that high speed car chase through the city that ends with either you or your pursuers going up in a ball of flame and auto parts? Don't you wish for that back-alley fight where your adversary produces a stilleto and the both of you  grapple with it, with only one walking out alive. Don't you want that White Hot gunfight on the escalators in Grand Central, using your wits to deal death and destruction to your enemies?

I would love it. My enemies are like smoke though. They are like spirits in the material world. I rarely see them, but they announce their presence to me always. Through the mail. With their threatening letters and demands that frankly, I am growing weary of. Case in fucking point. Just a few days ago I had to fill out a questionnaire to stay on public assistance. So I did. Two days later I get this letter. "In order to remain eligible for Cash Assistance (CA), you are being referred to the Disability Services Program (DSP). This is a mandatory eligibility appointment. You must report to and cooperate with this mandatory assessment appointment as a condition of eligibility for Cash Assistance. Failure to report for and comply with this appointment without good cause may result in the reduction or loss of your cash assistance benefits."

Okay, so you think I'm bitching about this meeting, huh? You think I bitching because I had JUST sent off a questionnaire for this very same thing. Huh? Nope, wrong on both counts. I'm bitching because my appointment was scheduled for 11:00am...YESTERDAY. Now I have no problem going to these things...I really don't. But I do find it hard to go back in time to make these fucking appointments. Do you think that such a reason is 'good cause' to them? I mean, if I had a time machine....hmmm, what would I do? Actually, if I had a time machine, I would go back to 1999 and go home, to my comfortable house, and find my wife cooking in the kitchen and take her by the hand and lead her to bed and screw her eyes into spinning marbles, and then tell her I'm sorry for the future. That I loved her, but I could not help myself.

Fuck going back in time for a meeting with public service. You have to think big in this world. You really do. So, now here is where I want My White Hot Minute. I would like these faceless fuckers to come to my door, armed with guns and knives, and me here with my sparse cutlery set, and let's make things happen. Hey, they can come twenty deep, I don't give a fuck! I'll make a break for it, use the stairwells, the elevator, the other apartments to fuck them all up, in My White Hot Minute of blood and gore. Who gives a fuck who survives or not. Not even if it's not me. It will settle scores and life will either be better or worse. Well, worse, meaning over.

But no. I'm denied My White Hot Minute. I'm left to squirm and struggle against the increasing pressure of the under shoe of New York Governance. I had a friend say to me, "You have it good, man. You don't work, you don't have to deal with anyone. You can do what you want. You're fucking semi-retired." Hey, let me give this to you clear and simple. YOU DON'T WANT MY LIFE. You want NOTHING to do with my life. You want to keep your job, you want to have money, and you want to hold a woman close to you in the dark. Dude. Don't begrudge me the fact that I'm surviving by the skin of my teeth. It may look like fun, but kid yourself not. Many people kill themselves before they fall to the level that I am at. Many do. Sometimes I don't believe it myself, but it's clear to me. This is my fucked up life.

And it's truly fucked up. So don't envy something that you would find to be your greatest horror later. Don't look down on me. Don't say that 'I have it made'. Because I don't. I really don't. I'll bet you right now, that you don't even think about Your White Hot Minute. That's no solution for you. None at all. Then you can't realize what it's like to live my life, wishing for it, hoping for it.

An end. One way or another. Just an end.

Hobobob

Daydreaming

My lovelies, our babysitter called in sick today, so Toby and I are hanging out but I wanted to say hello! Hope you have a lovely afternoon and see you tomorrow. xoxo

P.S. Five daydreamy posts for a rainy afternoon: Paris, canoeing, Iceland, the ocean, smooches.

(Photo by Aya Brackett)

TUXY TUESDAY WITH DOMINO: INSIDE AND OUT

Since the weather has turned cold, Domino likes to cozy up on the couch. Unfortunately, her eyes are closed against the bright flash of the camera, but otherwise it makes for a very sultry pose.

Domino is thinking about her boyfriend, Milo, who injured his paw and is feeling poorly.  She's purring very hard for him to heal quickly.

Recently, Domino and Milo were hatted by Sam and Andy's mom.  Milo is a "Mouse-Get-Here" and Domino is his lady.  There is a "Mouse-Get-Here" button you can get by asking Sam and Andy's mom, if you want to join the Club.  Domino's button is on our sidebar if you want to see what it looks like.

We hope the swashbuckling Milo is as right as rain very soon.  Maybe he injured his paw on one of those buckles -- you just never know!

And now for some random shots of Domino, here, there and everywhere.

Polka dots are one of her fafurites ...

... except when you put mouse ears on her!  I know she's a "Mouse-Get-Here", but this is ridiculous!

Isn't she lovely with a backdrop of green?

Even sitting on cement, she can be quite serene.

When winter comes, she weathers the cold.

Nothing stops her from leaving the fold.

And finally, today, Domino takes off.  She's boogeying over to comfort Milo and kiss his paw all better.

We hope you enjoyed this eclectic mix of Domino, both inside and out!

The Prickly Hand Against the Cheek

I've got a mother- fucking itch that I can't scratch enuff!!!

It's driving me fucking crazy. I can't do anything but scratch it, dig my nails into it. I don't want to watch television, don't want to eat, I don't want to go out, I don't want to do shit but scratch that itch. Dig in, dig in, like a damn dog with a flea circus on its back. What the fuck is this itch? WRITING! I swear, I sit in front of this computer all day now, writing, writing, researching, researching, surfing, surfing, writing email, writing email, just going bucking fucking wild with my boat captain hands. I have a cleaver here. If this shit keep driving me crazy I'm going to remove my appendages at the wrists.

Either that or the bitches will just fall off! Shit, I wrote from 4:00 this morning to about 10:30am. Then I felt tired and sore, so I stretched across my bed, and I was out like a light. At 11:00am I got up again, this time to watch Al Pacino in 'Carlito's Way' and could only do five minutes. Five minutes of the best part, you know, the part where Penelope Ann Miller's character, Gail is dancing topless in a strip club. One of the hottest motherfuckers on the goddamn planet! She has the roundest, fullest pair that you have ever seen! They look like saucers on her chest and...well, that's for another post. I could barely sit through it. My itch rose up seconds before the scene and I was going crazy. If felt like a heroin addiction. It felt like when I felt the need for a drink.

My keyboard was calling to me. Shouting to me to put my fingers on her 101 key body. She begged to feel my soft caresses on her cold black body. Touch me in all the right places, Hobobob," she moaned. Fuck Penelope, I turned  off the movie and got to typing. And once again, I'm typing at 90 miles an hour, correcting my errors constantly because I can't get the words out of my head fast enough. Maybe I should dictate my posts from this point on. No...dictation is not writing, and the joy I'm feeling now comes from tickling the keyboard and watching the thoughts in my head turn to words on the screen.

So, I write and I surf and I have to admit, the Internet will fuck you up if you stay on it as long as I do. If you walk ALL of it's hallowed halls, you'll find some fucked up closets that will change your outlook for the rest of your life. Yeah, I shit you not. When I was a young Internaut, I used to turn my head away from web pages that disturbed me. Now I don't, except for web pages with bugs on them. I can't abide bugs. When I see them, in real life or photographs, I freak. I don't care, even butterflies. I can't handle them. They make my fucking skin crawl all the fuck over the place.

So...oh, changing your life. Yeah. I'll give you a piece of my old history from 30 years ago. I was eighteen, living in Burbank, renting a new car every weekend, hanging out at the clubs that allowed us to hang out in and we had these two motorcycle Hell's Angel's dudes that lived right next to us who were too cool for words. We would pay them to get cases of beer and bottles of booze for us (since the legal age for drinking back then was 21) and they would do it without a problem. Oh yeah, we always let them in on the score, but they were always cool that way.

Well, we were always driving around Hollywood, and we used to pass by all the great clubs, like the 'Palomino', which was just down the street from us. A real red-neck place... and I wanted to go there so bad, but one of my Motorcycle friends, several years my senior, warned me that they were 'tight knit' over there and didn't take well to outsiders. Especially outsiders from New York. Okay, not a place I wanted to be found at.

And then, there was a club called, 'Filthy McNasty's". This one raised our interest  because MEN were not allowed in until AFTER 11:30pm. Yep. After. It was strictly a girls joint from opening till then. They would also have tons of bachelorette parties in there and for the life of me, even as perverted as I was back then (shit, one of our buddies got a part-time job in a nearby porn shop. The bunch of us, over a dozen, used it as a club house, a place for parties, and a base of operations) I could not imagine why the fuck men weren't allowed to go in there. I mean, don't women want to meet men? So why exclude them then? It must have been some kind of butch joint. And from that point on, thirty years ago, the issue was settled.

Until this week. One thing that bothers me is that when it comes to sex, women get all the slack. All of it. Men get shit. I mean, even when it comes down to sexual abuse. You talk to guys and tell them about an older man having sex with a sixteen year old girl and they'll bitch and curse. "If that was my daughter, I'd go find that motherfucker and kill his ass." Everyone at the table will agree. But when that very same shit happens to a boy, well you get, "Shit, I wished that shit happened to me when I was his age. How did he get so lucky?" What kind of shit is that?

I happen to have a sore spot when it comes to sexually abusing children, BOY or girl. I feel rage when I hear it, and more rage, if that's even possible, when men and women both excuse it happening to a young man, but not a young woman. That's bullshit. Oh...the Internet changing my mind from a 30 year experience with clubs. I almost forgot! I just wanted to make a point how women get all the slack when it comes to sex. Women get laid, well that's good, men get laid, and their 'lucky'. Why the fuck aren't women lucky? Because men want to give dick to every woman they see, that's why. Women have so many offers for dick the moment she gets up in the morning until she goes to bed at night that it's enough to drive them crazy. Men, on the other-hand, rarely get a pussy offer, and I guess when we do, we are lucky.

It's a strange mind game, because if we look at the population of penises, we are talking about an organ outnumbered by women damn near three to one. And yet, a woman will get more offers for dick in a day than a man will get for pussy. Go figure. This should be shocking to you men out there, but I'm sure it's not. I'm certain that you don't even acknowledge it. Alright, how about this mind bender, or maybe MindFuck, straight from one of the dark closets of the Internet (okay, a bit of a warning here, if you're reading me at work, you might want to NOT click on this link until you are home, away from the kiddies). What is the fuck up with this shit?

Yeah, women at a bachelor- ette party, drinking, clapping, watching a male stripper, and then at the end, he prances around in between the tables and the women play with his johnson. Some actually swallowing the brajole! Now, I think back here, when I got married and my friends took me out to a bachelor party. Well it was actually in my favorite Mexican restaurant. Now my soon to be wife back then warned me not to get too fresh and do something that I would regret later, so I was careful. I was a wild child at the time, so anything was possible. At the Mexican restaurant there was a waitress called Rachel (oh yeah, I remember her name. She was just that hot) and she would serve shots of Tequila and lemon juice with 7up and slam them down on the tableside causing them to foam before you gulped them down. So she earned the name: "The Slammer Chick." She also wore a thin white undershirt, and two bandoliers with shot glasses in them instead of bullets. They would push her ample tits together until they looked like two honeydew mellons trying to pop out of a grocery bag. And hot pants that looked like they were painted on her hard, round ass.

We used to bring all of our friends to see the Slammer Chick, and she grew to love us and our wild antics. Well, little did I know that they PAID the Slammer Chick to fuck with me. Okay, let me correct that. NOT fuck me, to fuck WITH me. A big difference there. But she was rubbing her hard tits in my face when hitting me with a slammer, sit on my lap, stroke my tools. All kinds of fucked up shit that I both enjoyed and was horrified over that one of my buds would get drunk and tell their woman, who would certainly tell my new wife. Let's just put it this way, there was a lot more sexual tension at my party than fun.

But my soon to be wife had one too. What the fuck? She didn't seem as tense as me returning to the crib afterward. What was she doing? Blowing some dancing cock while I'm sweating bullets trying not to put my grubby hands on the Slammer Chick? Yeah, when women go out, they go out to party like they're in fucking Vegas or something, and they can be in Newark New Jersey. Men are light years behind women when it comes to a good time. We think we have them beat, but trust me guys, we don't. The video above is just another dirty little secret to them. I'll get some shit for revealing it, but that's what I do. I'm not original. I find it, I post it. This is some brutal shit, isn't it?

When I was a teen, I used to think that a fun night was getting drunk with my friends, catcalling women and driving fast. When I got home I would fall drunkenly into bed and laugh at the good time that I had that night. Women, on the other hand, consider fucking a complete stranger fun. Can you imagine that shit? Or blowing some friend of theirs just to see his reaction. That's fun. How about kissing and crawling naked into bed with each other. Hard to imagine? That's a fun night out. Makes me want to be a gansta. A good time for them is planting two in some stool pigeon's skull, throwing the body in the trunk of a car, and dumping him in the swamp off the Jersey Turnpike.

No I'm really serious, I'm going to take up a new hobby. Stamp collecting. That's fun. Oh wait. That costs money also...gotta skip that one. Maybe girl watching. That's free.

Hobobob

From the Library: Music from the Golden Era

Today on gullar sahir we'll be playing music from the interbellum period, roughly between 1920 and 1940 (with a tiny overlap at either end), and it's quite amazing how musical styles developed and changed during this period. Jazz is a huge influence of course, but the actual content of the songs varies dramatically. There are deep, meaningful and ingeniously written ballads from the likes of Howard Arlen; and the often humorous – and also beautifully-written – songs by Noel Coward, to big-band swing and dance numbers, on to extraordinary collegiate songs and classic fluffy oeuvres like The Sun Has Got His Hat On and Leslie Sarony's Down On Jollity Farm. We're playing an original recording by Bert Ambrose and His Orchestra of the latter, which, interestingly, is almost entirely instrumental and includes just one out of the three or so verses. The Bonzo Dog Band version is much more complete – but still misses out the verse about the fox… oh well, we had better play Sarony's original too, then!

The programme today includes mainly, but not exclusively, original recordings. In addition there are modern interpretations of songs of the period – and once again, these cover several different styles. At one end there are modern jazz musicians and singers, often developing and improvising around the songs in ways that would not have been common at the time – listen out for some of the Howard Arlen songs in today's repertoire, for example – while at the other we have recordings like the extraordinary Max Raabe and the Palast Orchester playing on a live recording in New York's Carnegie Hall, where the performances are surely almost identical to what would have been heard at the time these numbers were first performed.

If you tend towards the view that "they don't write songs like they used to", you'll love the music we have for you today. And if you like what you hear, don't forget that we have an entire stream devoted to music of the 20s-40s (plus some additional material) – and that's the gullar sahir Dieselpunk channel on http://dieselpunk.radioriel.org. There is perhaps even more controversy about what constitutes Dieselpunk music as there is about Steampunk – but we do hope you enjoy it anyway.

Today's programme is presented by Elrik Merlin and produced by gullar sahir in conjunction with our friends at the Alexandrian Free Library Consortium of Second Life. You can listen to the programme in-world now at http://main.radioriel.org, or simply click here to start your player, if your browser is configured to do so. Listeners in the United States are encouraged to tune in using this link: http://loudcity.com/stations/radio-riel/tune_in

For more information on the Alexandrian Free Library, current exhibits and the work of Consortium members in general, please visit the Alexandrian Free Library website, or one of their branches in-world.

Whoohooo - It's Party Time!!

by Tawny

I'm so ready to celebrate the holidays!! I love this time of year. All of it- the baking, the crafts, the gift wrapping, the pretty lights and the fabulous music. I'm a sucker for a holiday movie and a sap over anything wrapped by a kid. I adore the whispered secrets and have been known to get teary eyed over watching my kids decorating cookies with my husband's questionable help.

And this year, I'm celebrating a little bit extra. I am so excited to have a holiday story out, it's like that extra sparkle of tinsel on the tree for me.


A BABE IN TOYLAND Excerpt:

He could barely see her through the crowd. Bikers were shoulder to shoulder with what looked like bankers from the S&L on the corner. Mixed in were a few gals with huge hair that he suspected worked at the beauty salon in the mall.

“What the hell...” He stared, slack jawed, as Rita waved her hand, all game-show-hostess like, over the array of vividly colored items spread across the tailgate of his truck.

“What the hell are these?” she clarified, stepping around two blondes to greet him.

Even knowing he was no better than one of Pavlov’s pups, Tyler’s gaze swept over her face, now pinup girl exotic. Her hair, still in a ponytail, but she’d done something to make it look like all fifties-movie-star flirty. She was still in the same jeans she’d worn earlier, but she’d replaced her red puffy jacket with a black studded leather one.

Tyler’s mouth watered.

“These are toys,” she said. It took him five seconds and the direction of her pointing finger to remember the question.

“Toys.”

“Sex toys.”

“I realize they’re sex toys. Why are they here? Now? On my truck?” He stared, fixated, on a foot long, neon green monstrosity with a head—an actual face—of a dinosaur.

Her laugh was all it took to rip his gaze from the freakish dildo and back to her face. She ran her tongue over her upper teeth, to hide a smirk, he was sure.

“I see you’re interested in the T-Sex. The dinosaur of dildos,” she explained, sounding like a TV commercial hawking a new model car. “Guaranteed to make your woman roar with pleasure.”

“What...”

“What am I doing with them? Selling them, of course,” she said, indicating the little slips of paper she’d tucked underneath each toy. He squinted, seeing she’d not only written up descriptions, but detailed sex and position suggestions along with the asking price.

Tyler was grateful the icy wind was there to cool his cheeks before the heat became apparent.

Didn’t matter, though. Rita, probably having a special radar for that kind of thing, chuckled.

She leaned forward and gave his cheek a soft pat. The smooth touch of her fingers making him want to grab her wrist and nibble his way up her arm.

“Don’t worry, big boy,” she purred. “You can have first dibs. I’ll even give you a good-driver discount.”

The only thing that kept Tyler from grabbing her by that tiny waist, tossing her in the bed of the truck and showing her just exactly how good he could drive was the six-and-a-half-foot biker in studded leather who’d tapped her on the shoulder and asked the price of a set of candy cane styled nipple rings.

And that, my friends, is the beginning of true love :-)

To celebrate the release of A BABE IN TOYLAND and IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE MISTLETOE, and because the holiday season just screams for a little extra fun - I'm having a contest trio. One contest on my website, one contest on my Facebook page and another for my newsletter. You can check them out --and enter any and all if you'd like --on my blog December first. But... that's not enough, is it? How about we kick it up even more and I'll give away three copies of IT MUST HAVE BEEN THE MISTLETOE to three commenters today! To win, all you have to do is check out NAUGHTY IS NICE, my free read over on eHarlequin, and tell me in the comments which character is your favorite :-)

Monday Night World Music - Mellow, Downtempo, Fusion - 6-8:30PM SLT

I don't know about you, but my real life is about to get very, very hairy - I have a huge deadline in one month. And so the one thing I need more than anything else at the end of a day is relaxing, calming music.

Tonight's Monday Night World Music fits the bill. Soothing beats, downtempo grooves, and mellow fusions from around the world are the order of the day. Let the beautiful melodies wash over you and sway to the gentle beats as the stress of the day recedes ...

Come hang out with us and enjoy the softer side of world music tonight from 6-8:30PM SLT. You can join Carter in world at Madhu's Cafe Indien, or listen in on gullar sahir's main stream. Hope to see you there!

Fabric hair tie

Since Toby arrived on the scene, I've worn a ponytail almost every day. So, in an effort to jazz things up, I was happy to come across this idea of using a piece of fabric instead of a hair tie. Simple and pretty, don't you think?

Giant clothes pin

What a rad installation in Belgium!

(Via The Debonaire, via Milk)

MANCAT MONDAY WITH DYLAN AND DANTE: BABY, IT'S COLD OUTSIDE!

Yes, it finally happened!  The white stuff has covered the ground and it seems like it wants to stay, which means that the temPURRature, too, has fallen.  The mancats seem undaunted by it and go about their regular business as if nothing was any different.  Or do they?

Dante's scouting about for any signs of his furry furiend.

And just thinking about the little devil, seems to have made him magically appear!

"Hey, Furnando!  How's it going?"

"It's bin awhile since I saw yoo.  I fawt we cud have a liddle chat.  Whaddya fink about da wedder?"

Furnando just wants more nuts, so Dante goes to fetch some for him.

Meanwhile, Dylan decides to check things out.  Everything has a new scent to it now that the snow has fallen.

It's a little chilly to be sure, but ...

... not too cold for a picnic.  And what goes better with peanuts than a little toe jam for extra flavour?

Who are we trying to kid?  Dylan just can't take it any more.

"IT'S COLD OUT HERE, I'M FREEZIN' MY NUTS OFF!"

Then Dante, who was trying to be so mancatly, chimes in.

"AN' MINE IS TURNIN' INTO PAWPSICLES!!!  LET US IN!"

So, luckily there was room at the 'in' and mama opened the door and saved the day.  Even grown mancats can act like little babies who need their mama's help.  Sheesh!  It's just a little snow -- you'd think the world was coming to an end.

THE END