by Sue Horner | Nov 30, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Leave it to the British to give an award for Bad Sex in Fiction! The 18th annual (dis)honour, given out last night, went to Rowan Somerville for his novel The Shape of Her. Somerville won over the judges with phrases such as the one describing an act of lovemaking as...
by Sue Horner | Nov 25, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Yesterday, a headline in a prominent newspaper boldly proclaimed that the Saudi king was handing over the reigns while he was in the U.S. for treatment. Since a king only has one reign, and he holds it whether he’s in the U.S. or not, I thought at first maybe...
by Sue Horner | Nov 22, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
The author of one of my textbooks must be a friend of the magniloquent (see below) Conrad Black, or maybe a contributor to the harder levels of FreeRice.com. I say that because the text is sprinkled with so many obscure, unusual, “look how smart I am” kinds of words....
by Sue Horner | Nov 19, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Nobody believes a corporate announcement* that an executive has left to “pursue other opportunities,” so why do companies continue to pretend that they don’t fire people? Sometimes the person’s “contract has not been renewed” or he...
by Sue Horner | Nov 16, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Hobbyists, or people who express their personal musings online as a hobby, make up the “backbone” (64%) of the blogging world, according to Technorati’s 2010 State of the blogosphere, which covered 7,200 bloggers. Self-employeds, like me, make up the...
by Sue Horner | Nov 8, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
Two things jumped out at me about the 2009 IABC/Canada online salary survey*: 1. “Nationally speaking, men do appear to make more on average than women.” According to the survey, the mean (essentially the average) yearly salary / median (the middle-most value when the...
by Sue Horner | Nov 1, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
(<— Real dog, fake squirrel) Quite a while ago, an association I belong to created some new marketing material. Prominent on what really was a good-looking piece was a stock photo of a group of people, basically standing in for those of us who are actual...
by Sue Horner | Oct 19, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I had been mulling over writing here about the times I was surprised, pleased and even floored to discover someone had (secretly) been reading this blog, and I had no idea because they never commented. Just last week, a new IABC contact mentioned that something I had...
by Sue Horner | Oct 12, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
I have borrowed shamelessly from the ever-thoughtful Patti Digh (“What would I be doing today if I only had 37 days to live?”) for the title of this post. It references her own (sorry, no longer online) about National Coming Out Day, first celebrated in...
by Sue Horner | Oct 10, 2010 | The Red Jacket Diaries blog
It being Canadian Thanksgiving weekend, I am grateful for many things: love, friendship, family, work, health and happiness. But you know what else I truly appreciate? Those creative folks at Sesame Street. Yes, they have done it again, with a clever and funny parody...