December 7, 2002: Pearl Harbor Day. I was a little over four months old when the surprise attack occurred, so naturally I don't remember a thing about it. I do remember the war, though.

I love the little dances that go on when someone is fired in Washington. Of course Bush didn't appear in public yesterday to answer any questions about the firing of his two big eco guns. And of course he'd never admit that his eco policies are flawed. But if they were any good, would his top guns have been fired? Now that he has to think about re-election, maybe Dub will try to do something about the economy. Or maybe he's still hoping the war will divert attention from it.

December 6, 2002: In a brief respite from the "All Iraq, all the time" blather of the Bush administration, the Treasury Secretary and another big economic honcho announced their resignations today, one coming within an hour of the other. Ari Fleischer told the press that "they resigned, and that's all I'll ever say about that." In other words, "Move along, asshats. Nothing to see here. Move along." Another coincidence was the fact that the unemployment rate spiked up to 6%, the highest in 9 years. Of course nothing like that ever happened on the watch of that lucky S.O.B. Bill Clinton, which must gall Dub in the extreme.

December 4, 2002: We went to hear Leon Hale at the ACC Foundation's annual Christmas banquet last night. He read "The Chamber of Commerce Bull," which was pretty funny, and told a few funny stories. He got a very good reception. The silent auction and the regular auction made some money for the Foundation, too.

Very rainy and dark and gloomy today. Not the kind of day to make anyone feel good, except maybe someone longing for London in the winter.

December 3, 2002: What I don't understand today (I'm constantly in the dark, it seems) is why Dub doesn't just go ahead and bomb the hell out of Iraq. I mean, it's clear tht he's just itching to do it and that the UN inspections, no matter what they find, aren't going to stop him. So what's he waiting for?

Drudge revisited John Kerry's hair today. He's not paying as much as Drudge said at first. Gee, nothing like a newsy retraction like that to get the day off to a great start.

December 2, 2002: OK, I'm back. What? You didn't even know I was gone? Oh, well. We had a nice Thanksgiving with my daughter. We picked up Judy's mother and brought her here, and our son came in from Austin. He carved the turkey. I'm not competent in that area, so I have no idea where he learned. We took Judy's mom home on Friday, and I met with some of my high school classmates on Saturday. It's always great to see them again and to find out what's been going on in their lives.

My political comment for today has to do with John Kerry's hair. Apparently it's already become a campaign issue, and the campaign hasn't even started yet. What, I ask you, has the world come to when the fact that a guy goes to an expensive hair stylist becomes headline news. Well, it was headline news on The Drudge Report, which maybe tells us all we need to know about Drudge.

November 27, 2002: Today is my brother's birthday. Happy birthday, Bob!

Whatever happened to freedom of speech? Well, maybe other countries aren't supposed to have it. In Canada someone calls George W. Bush a moron and is forced to resign. In Britain a comic advertisement is suppressed because it makes fun of Dub. Of course it's OK to make fun of Osama bin Laden, but not of the Great Leader of the Free World. I suspect that it won't be too long before this country has no freedom of speech, either. Too bad.

November 25, 2002: On Friday afternoon, Dub apparently relaxed the pollution restrictions on industry. This really hacks me because of the serious controls the government tried to put on drivers in Houston and the eight surrounding counties by lowering the speed limit to 55. This, in spite of the fact that all evidence pointed to the fact that reducing speeds would have no effect at all, since the studies the government was using were hopelessly out of date. Another example of how the Bush Administration slaps the little guy while the Big Dogs dance on.

And we also heard about the Saudis, who got a virtual free pass in the 9/11 investigations, though it now appears that some of them were funneling money to the hijackers. Yet we're going to war with Iraq, a country that didn't support the 9/11 hijackers and has never threatened of attacked us. Can anyone explain this to me so that it makes sense?

November 24, 2020: We picked up Judy's mother on Saturday. She'll stay with us until next Friday, when we'll take her home. We'll have Thanksgiving dinner at Angela's house, and Allen will come in from Austin to join us.

Today on Meet the Press, Sen. Richard Shelby, an eight-year veteran of the Senate Intelligence Committee, warned Americans to expect another major attack from al-Qaida terrorists. So what did we accomplish in Afghanistan? We spent billions, and this is the result? Another major attack? We could have spent nothing and achieved the same result. But everyone thinks George W. is so wonderful, no one will have the guts to question this. And after the Big Brother computer starts functioning, nobody will ever question anything again. If they do, they'll just be disappeared.

November 21, 2002: I'm not exactly a whiz at getting this thing updated every day, am I? Well, who cares? Nobody reads it but me, and that's the way it should be.

My latest venture is editing. Five Star Books seems to need a few good editors, and I'm now free-lancing for them. Mostly all I do is copy-edit, which in some cases, not to name any names, is a lot harder than it should be. Some of these people could profit from a good grammar course, or they could if they'd listen and put the principles into practice.

Beautiful weather in Alvin this week, California weather. Would that it could be this way all year 'round instead of only a few days a year.

November 18, 2002: We're back from a weekend at Austin, where I was one of the featured authors at the Texas Book Festival. We went to the coffee at the Governor's Mansion on Saturday morning, but the gov wasn't there. The docents gave us a nice tour of the ground floor of the place, though, and we had a very good breakfast on the grounds. My panel was on Sunday afternoon, and it was a good one. The audience seemed to have a good time. Judy ditched the panel so she could hear Fannie Flagg and Ethan Hawke. She's seen me often, and Fannie is probably funnier than I am, while Ethan is unquestionably younger and more handsome. So I didn't blame her.

November 14, 2002: George W. Bush doesn't hold press conferences, so people aren't treated as often as they should be to his mangling of the English language. But his mangled English isn't why he doesn't hold press conferences. My suspicion is that he would appear so clueless as to amaze even his ardent supporters.

Now and then, however, Dub does say something. For example, yesterday he talked about the new Osama bin Laden tape. I didn't get to see all his remarks, since they weren't all shown on TV, but not once did I hear him utter the words "Osama bin Laden." He didn't utter even part of the name. It's as if bin Laden no longer exists for him in his little "All Saddam, all the time" world. Here we have bin Laden making actual threats, and he's a man who's attacked us already, but Dub is going after Saddam, who's never attacked or even threatened us. I still don't get it.

November 3, 2002: I'm so old that I can remember when President Bush said that Osama bin Laden was The Evil One. Now Dub doesn't hate Osama any more, or I guess that's the case, since he never even mentions him. I think that he should, and I think that he should refer to him as The (Former) Evil One. Maybe Osama will be so chapped that he'll off Saddam in order to regain his position.

November 12, 2002: Another trip to Texas A&M today to deliver some boxes to the Cushing Library. They now have plenty of stuff from me, including most of my manuscripts and galleys.

And Osama bin Laden has a new videotape out. I thought that guy was dead and that we'd won the war against al Qaida. Maybe I was mistaken. I remember that at one time Dub said bin Laden was his #1 priority, but that was before he was shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that there was a maniac dictator in Iraq. So now bin Laden is the forgotten man, and Saddam is our real enemy. I still haven't figured out how we got from the one to the other. I can't figure out why there's never any mention of bin Laden any more. I can't figure out why nobody even mentions Afghanistan. Obviously, I'm clueless. Thank God that Dub knows all the answers. I just wish he'd let the public in on them, but that doesn't seem to be in the cards.

November 11, 2002: The Supreme Court is getting older, which means that Dub could appoint as many as three justices during his second term. If that doesn't scare you, you just can't be scared. If, or I suppose when, it happens, we might as well get ready for a court a lot like the one that tried the Salem Witches 210 years ago. Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards weren't on that court, but their spirits will be hovering over the one Bush appoints, for sure.

November 9, 2002: OK, so Dub has his UN resolution, and now it's pretty clear that we'll be at war with Iraq within weeks, probably before Christmas. (Peace on Earth, Good will toward men.) But today there's a headline saying that al Qaida is planning major attacks around the world. I thought al Qaida was the enemy, but instead we're going to war with Iraq, which, as far as anyone knows has no connection with al Qaida. We were supposed to be fighting the terrorists, but I read yesterday that the war in Afghanistan is not going well and that al Qaida and Taliban fighters are adapting to U.S. tactics far better than the U.S. is adapting to theirs. But nobody even seems to remember Afghanistan these days. Certainly not George W. Bush. Why? I don't have a clue, and Dub sure isn't going to tell us. He's the Big Dog now.

November 7, 2002: What really scares me about the big Republican victory is that now George W. will get all his judicial appointees confirmed. I think we're in for The Great Repression and that civil liberties will be lessened. The funny thing is that many people who voted for the Repubs would be horrified if you told them that they were contributing to the repression of freedom. Why, they believe in freedom. They're the ones who want to keep the government out of the people's personal lives. Yeah. Right. So why do they want to tell us what we can read, what we can see at the movies, what we can watch on TV? They actually want the government to rule our lives, but of course they'd never say so.

November 5, 2002: Well, the Republicans have won a huge victory, so I suppose the stock market will zoom, Iraq will get bombed back to the stone age, and all will be right with the world. I'm completely at a loss to explain George W. Bush's appeal. He can't speak English, he's a doofus most of the time, and yet people love him. Some say it's his "character," which seems to mean that no matter how nutsy he is, at least he's not boinking interns in the Oval Office. I suppose that now his slate of judges will be appointed, and we'll see how much that changes things for the better. I suspect it will change things for the worse, but I seem to be in a minority, which is where I find myself most of the time.

The heat pump finally got fixed this morning. Just a sticky valve, so not an unbearable expense. The valve is old, so I just hope it keeps on working.

November 2, 2002: There seems to be something wrong with the heat pump. Naturally, since it's Saturday, there's no one to call about checking it. But we won't have much cold weather for a while, so that's not really a problem. Paying for whatever has to be done, now, that would be a problem. Maybe it will start working again. You never can tell.

One of the cats, Sam, has been roaming around the neighborhood too much. We're trying to get him to stay in the house more. He really doesn't like it, or at least he doesn't until he calms down. After he's run for door to door to door and howled for a while, he usually settles down to sleep. This morning he bedded down in the sink.

October 29, 2002: It's finally stopped raining. I was beginning to wonder if it ever would. Not that I'm complaining. We can use the rain, and there was no flooding to speak of here in Alvin. Some places in Houston weren't so lucky.

Maybe the rain is just another sign of the Endtimes. After all, Jackass: the Movie was #1 at the box office last weekend. Somewhere the Four Horsemen are saddling up.

Other signs: Consumer confidence is at a ten-year low. The crime and murder rate is up for the first time in two years. (How is Rush Limbaugh going to blame these things on Bill Clinton, I wonder?)

And, of course, it's been revealed that the U.S. has been secretly working on all sorts of chemical and biological weapons in possible violation of numerous treaties. Now, after we finish bombing Iraq, North Korea, and Russia, we'll have to bomb ourselves!

October 27, 2002: Sam is staying in again today. He tried to climb the dining room shutters, and it took him a while to settle down, but he eventually went to sleep in the den. He woke up while Judy was reading the paper and roamed around and howled a little. Then he went back to sleep in the den. Maybe he'll learn that he has to stay in instead of going out to rove over the neighborhood.

Now that the sniper has been caught, the papers are moving on to other sensations. I didn't see many articles this morning, and not one of those I saw told about the number of times the sniper was stopped at roadblocks during his little spree. A British paper puts the number at ten. The TV footage of the S.W.A.T. team descending on the hapless illegals who used the wrong pay phone shows the sniper's car in the background. He was there watching it all, I suppose.

Uh-oh. Looks like the Rooskies used poison gas on their own people in their big hostage crisis. Now we'll have to go to war with them. Well, not until after we get Iraq. And North Korea. Wait a minute. We're not going to war with North ("Axis of Evil") Korea. Why not? I guess because they didn't try to kill Dub's daddy. (And while we're on that topic, where's the hard evidence that Iraq or Saddam ever actually did that? Probably in the same place all the hard evidence about the Iraq/al-Qaida connection is.)