The lovely Willow Bay, reporter-model for The Huffington Post

I mean, who could say no?

She was certainly better looking than Geoff Ruttledge MD of Wellsphere

Geoff Ruttledge, MD, of Wellsphere

He sent out thousands of cheesy emails to medical bloggers to get them to put their content on his Wellsphere medical website for free, and then they turned around and sold it. I didn’t fall for it that time around, and many other medical bloggers did not as well, but at least Willow had a more believable personal message.

I have written many posts for them, But nevertheless
I am not happy with writing for them, cuz although I usually put a version of what I wrote for them on my site, they always have a higher impact rating, and they were often late or didn’t fully feature the posts, and I think it is still just giving stuff away for free, and even though writing on my own site is free, at least it comes from me. A lot of abused people may have liked the attention, but later it makes them feel kind of creepy and used. Also, as pointed out by other blogs like Respectful Insolence by David Gorski, it is kind of demeaning to by pretending to write about “science” when you are competing for attention with the likes of whores like Jenny Block.

And in the end I like my own Arianna better than the other one. My own Arianna is of course my cat, who lines up on the kitchen counter every night waiting for her cup of milk. Here she is relaxing on the couch in corporate headquarters of the Drug Safety and Health News Blog.

Arianna Vaccarino Bremner, in her youth, relaxing with her brother Orestes

And looking up this sentimental picture reminds me of her brother, Orestes. Both of them came from the Humane Society of Dekalb County, GA, but Orestes died young. Alas. Here he is.

Orestes Bremner, you are not forgotten

I really loved that cat. He was up there with Sappho, also an all black cat, who was my main squeeze when I met Mrs. Bremner. I never had her fixed, and I think that was her undoing, as the neighborhood males were all over her and probably gave her some disease. But I never had the heart to take that pleasure away from her.

Looks like they spelled Orestes name wrong. And my address and phone number are now published on the internet. LOL!

And I just revealed our family habit of naming boys after me and girls with two last names. LOL!

When my grandfather was alive my cousins and I always got our cats from the “barn cats” in Lynden WA. Grandpa would pull a board off the side of the barn to find the nest where the kittens had been born in the hay. Since living on the East Coast all of our cats have been named with the names of Greek gods and other figures with Italian spellings. Most of them were descended from an original Siamese tabby cat mixed cat. When Mrs. Bremner first moved to the US the current cat was so upset she jumped out of a third floor window!

I guess it is not good bye to Arianna, but good bye to Orestes. So long, old pal.