Sunday, September 11, 2011

A.Word.A.Day – Sept. 7, 2011: gesundheit

A Word A Day" by Anu Garg
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gesundheit

MEANING:
interjection: Used to wish good health to someone who has sneezed.

ETYMOLOGY:
From German Gesundheit (health), from gesund (healthy) + -heit (-hood). Earliest documented use: 1914.

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Borrowing the characters from another story that isn’t finished. The only people I’ve heard say “gesundheit” after someone sneezes are either Jewish or German (or both, I suppose). YMMV.

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“Mom, I told you, we’re not putting lights on the house.”

“But it’s Christmas!”

“But David’s Jewish; I’ve been over this with you—”

“Niall.” David rubbed Niall’s arm. “It’s okay. Your parents are here, we’ll have lights this once.”

“I hate doing this to you. It’s your house, too.”

“And I hate arguing with family.”

“Thanks. I owe you.” Niall smiled, then his face contorted and he sneezed.

David said, “Gesundheit!” just as Niall’s mother said “God Bless you!” and they each offered Niall a tissue. Niall hesitated, then took both.

It was going to be a long holiday.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

drabble on A.Word.A.Day – Sept. 8, 2011: bada-bing

Still catching up. Even if I do two each day, it's going to take awhile to get through all of them sitting in my inbox.


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A Word A Day by Anu Garg

bada-bing

MEANING:
interjection: Used to suggest something happening effortlessly, emphatically, or predictably, implying "Just like that!" or "Voila!"

ETYMOLOGY:
Of uncertain origin. Perhaps imitative of the sound of a drum roll and cymbal crash or a rimshot (hear it). Earliest documented use: 1965.
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Notes: The following drabble is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is entirely unplanned and coincidental. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.
Oh, and I apologize if this comes off kind of racist. But doesn't everyone make fun of Italians? ;)

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“Ya know, Vinnie, I don’ know if I’m happy or sad that it’s finally over.”

“I know, right? It’s like, we’re not gonna be famous anymore, but then we don’t got those fuckin’ cameras in our faces every second.”

“Exac’ly, like, now we can do whatever we want, even if it don’t go down so good wit’ the producers.”

“There somethin’ you been wantin’ to do, Mikey?”

“Yeah.” Mikey put his hands on the back of Vinnie’s neck and kissed him. Vinnie didn’t hesitate. He kissed him right back, and bada-bing, there were the fireworks Mikey had been waiting for.

AWAD -- "attaboy"

ETA: I forgot! Anyone reading these drabbles is welcome to post their own drabble based on that day's word, either in the comments below or on your own blog. No prizes planned currently, but maybe there will be random drawings sometime in the future.

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Going back to my attempt to kill three birds with one stone: 1) catch up on my A Word A Day emails by 2) writing a daily drabble (based on that day's word), which I then 3) post to this blog.

I've been getting further and further behind. Seriously, it would take 30 seconds to read the damn Word, its etymology, the usage examples, and the quote, but...see the name of this blog? Yeah.

I was going to use the AWADs to drabble once before, but it was a week of depressing words and I just couldn't do it. So here's to new beginnings. Plus, I'm going to start with the most recent and work my way back to those depressing ones waaay down in my inbox.
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A.Word.A.Day -- Sept. 9, 2011

attaboy

MEANING:
interjection: Used to express approval or encouragement.

ETYMOLOGY:
Alteration of "That's the boy." Earliest documented use: 1909.
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Not fiction this time, but I’ll try to keep it drabble length.

The first thing that came to mind when I thought about the interjection “attaboy” was Will Phillips, the ten-year old (twelve now) who refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance in school because he doesn’t believe that America does have liberty and justice for all. Specifically, he feels that LGBT Americans are denied certain rights that straight people have.

Ten years old. He saw what he felt was an injustice and he spoke out against it. How many kids would do the same? How many adults? Attaboy, Will.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Dragon*con 2011

Yes, Dragon*con ended two days ago and I still don't have a post up about it. You *have* seen the name of this blog, right?

I did want to mention that I met a bunch of lovely M/M writers at our promo table, and one other at the Same-Sex Fiction panel that was part of the Writers track.

At the promo table were:

Silvia Violet, who was also at the Rainbow Flag party,
Helen Pattskyn, who really needs to consider cosplaying a mermaid someday,
Pearl Love, who I sat with at the S-S Fiction panel,
Kerry Freeman, who is pretty quiet but is probably just writing books in her head,
Nessa Warin, who took the stairs ten flights up on Saturday and was barely winded,
T.C. Blue, who brought chocolates with her name on the labels (!!),
Ellen Holiday, a fellow "Cross Bones" author who put together some great flyers for a few of us, and
Shae Connor, who organized the whole thing (the promo table, not Dragon*con, although she is on staff for that) and also brought Pixy Stix, two of which are still in my backpack if the rain on the last day didn't dissolve them into a sticky mess.

The promo table also included
Kiernan Kelly and Adrienne Wilder, who were also on the Same-Sex Fiction panel where they spoke with passion and humor about our genre. I spoke briefly to another author on the panel, Kage Alan, whose books I'm looking forward to reading, since I like humor way more than angst.

Meeting all of them was probably the highlight of the con for me!