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.)

October 26, 2002: It's been raining here since Monday, and the weather guys say it will continue through Thursday. We're going to need swim fins just to get the newspaper in the mornings.

We're trying to force our youngest cat, Sam, to say in the house more. He likes to wander the neighborhood and visit in other houses. We're the ones paying the annual vet bill of nearly 70 bucks, so we feel Sam should stay with us. He doesn't see it that way.

October 24, 2002: My latest moronic episode: Yesterday Judy was playing bridge in Pearland, so I decided to sneak off to Mervyn's to buy her birthday present. It was raining when I got to the mall, and the wind was blowing up a storm. When I opened the car door, the wind blew it out of my hand. I made a grab for the handle and caught it just in time. Then I grabbed my umbrella and dashed for the store. It was only when I got inside that I realized I'd left the keys in the car. There hadn't been any tell-tale "ding-ding-ding," so I hadn't left them in the steering column, but they weren't in my pocket. I also didn't have the little clicker that unlocked the door because it bork years ago. What if I'd locked the door? Well, I had. I could see the keys lying on the seat, but I couldn't get in. I went to the store and got the nice woman at the "Guest Services" counter to call Mall Security. They came and spent a half hour with a Slim Jim, but they couldn't open the door. I didn't have a cell phone, so I went into the mall and called the auto club. They sent out a guy who arrived about 40 minutes later. He tired for 20 minutes, but he couldn't open the door. He called in, and the service said they'd send another guy. He arrived about 40 minutes after that, and he couldn't open the door at first. However, he had a different device to try, and it worked. After only two or three wasted hours, I started home. What an experience.

October 22, 2002: Actually I have an excuse for not having posted for so long. Judy and I were in Austin at the Bouchercon, where I was Fan Guest of Honor and where we won the Anthony Award for "best short story," the story being "Choclolate Moose," which appeared in Death Dines at 8:30. And is that a long sentence, or what? We naturally had a great time and there were plenty of highlights. Here are a few of them, none of which I am making up:

1. Hearing John Apostolou's superb performance on the duck call in the hotel lobby.

2. Witnessing the spectacle of Bruce Taylor's abject begging as he tried to buy John's wife's duck call. She finally just gave it to him.

3. Hearing Ed Hoch's duck call from the 7th floor balcony in response to John's duck call.

4. Winning (along with Judy) the Anthony Award for best short story. We were very surprised.

5. Hearing Bob Randisi sing harmony with a country band.

6. Learning that Gary Warren Niebuhr once sang "Muskrat Love" in a boy band.

7. Being interviewed by Joe Lansdale.

8. Seeing Elmer Kelton enjoying himself so much at a mystery convention.

9. Going to Rudy's Barbecue with Scott Cupp, Judy, Thom Walls, Bryan Barrett, and Steve Mertz. At Rudy's you get your food in crates and eat if off butcher paper.

10. Being the Fan Guest of Honor and basking in the adulation of thousands.

11. Attending the shortest Bouchercon banquet in recorded history.

I guess eleven is enough or maybe one too many, but there were other highlights as well. I'd corresponded with Fender Tucker, but I'd never met him. I wanted to see the guy who was crazy enough to reprint all the works of Harry Stephen Keeler and bind the individual books in his kitchen, using an iron and a glue gun. He's also publishing The Boucher Chronicles, for which every mystery reader should be grateful.

October 16, 2002: Around 1976, I met Katherine Anne Porter. Someone asked me about that today, and I guess I might as well set my memories down somewhere. The college where I was teaching (Howard Payne University) invited her to come for a symposium and her birthday. She was born in Indian Creek Texas, which no longer really exists but which was near Brownwood, where I was teaching. Porter was around 80 at the time. When I was introduced to her in a motel room as "Dr. Crider," she said, "Oh, Dr. Crider, the pains start right at my wrist and go all the way up my arm!" I explained I wasn't that kind of doctor. Later, my wife and I sat next to her at the big birthday banquet in her honor. She wore a white wedding dress that she'd bought in Mexico when she lived there back in the '20s or '30s, and she also wore a huge emerald brooch, which my wife noticed right away. When she asked about it, Porter said that she made a bundle from Ship of Fools and "Some people buy boats. I bought emeralds." That made perfect sense to my wife. Porter had been to Texas since WWII, so she went with several faculty members (not me, unfortunately) to the cemetery where her parents were buried and had a picnic. Later two of the faculty members visted her in Maryland. We'd heard a rumor that she'd bought a wooden casket in Mexico and that she kept it in her house. I told one of the women to find out. So when Porter was asleep, they snooped in the closest. Sure enough, they found the casket, covered with a sheet. They threw back the sheet and took a picture, which I kept in the lit. book I taught from. I guess it's still there, but the book's in storage. She was invited to appear on stage for the graduation exercises and assumed that she was to hand out the diplomas. She got tired about halfway through and had to sit down, but about half the graduates got their diplomas from her instead of the president. All in all, it was an interesting weekend.

October 15, 2002: You'd think I'd do better on this thing. I can't seem to get things down every day as I'd like to.

I'm interested in the sniper situation in the D.C. area. George Bush finally mentioned the sniper yesterday after only two weeks. I guess the NRA told him it would be OK. What he said was this: "Any time anybody is randomly shooting, randomly killing, randomly taking life, it's cold-blooded murder." You can't tell me this guy's not a genius!

You have to wonder a couple of things at least: why does the sniper take the weekends off? Is he a football fan? And will he shoot someone today? This is pretty damned scary.

October 8, 2002: Judy and I saw Bubba Ho-Tep last night. It's based on a Joe Lansdale story, one that has, according to two people I talked to last week, "the nastiest opening sentence" they ever read. (For the morbidly curious, here it is: "Elvis dreamed he had his dick out, checking to see if the bump on the head
of it had filled with pus again.") The movie script is faithful to the story, which may be why it doesn't have a distributor yet. It's vulgar, hilarious, and even touching. Bruce Campbell is great is Elvis, and Ossie Davis is terrific as John F. Kennedy. I don't know who played the evil mummy. Anyway, Joe was there, and he was in fine fettle. YOu can't blame him. It must be great to sit in a theater with 499 other people who are laughing, yelling, and cheering at lines you wrote.

And another thing: You can read about an actor having a "cult following," but until you see it for yourself, it's hard to believe just what that means. Bruce Campbell is huge with a certain crowd. He did a book signing at the theater, and we got there about an hour after it started. The line was at least a block and a half long. It was still almost that long two hours later when the movie was supposed to start. He agreed to introduce the movie and then go back out to continue signing. He did about 15 minutes of stand-up before the movie and was very witty and articulate, so his book might be pretty good.

October 5, 2002: On Thursday evening, Judy and I went to the Greek Festival in Houston at the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral. It's the festival's 36th year, but our first time to attend. Mostly, we ate: pastitsio, spanakopita, tiropita, keftedes, salata, but we also saw the colorful folk dancers and toured the crowded gift shop. All in all, it was fun.

The stock market continues to plummet, and Bush continues to beat his little war drum. Now some experts are forecasting a huge October crash. I hope they're wrong. I'm getting really depressed about teh whole thing. And i still can't figure out how we got from Point A to Point B in the war situation. When did Osama bin Laden cease to be The Evil One and/or morph into Saddam Hussein. First we were going to get Osama, dead or alive. He's probably dead, but no one knows for sure, and he seems to have been pretty much forgotten, just as Afghanistan has. The job there is half done, if that, and yet Dub is all over Saddam. We have to get him. Why? No one will say anything except that he's a danger to us. Why? Well, he just is. He's never made any threats against the U.S., he certainly has given no more aid and comfort to the terrorists than Saudi Arabia has, and yet we have to kill him. Maybe this will all work out, but I know for sure I'll never vote for a Republican as long as I live. No matter how scummy the Democrats might be, they can't match this.

October 1, 2002: What the hell is up with the Turks? First they say they've caught two guys with 33 pounds of weapons-grade uranium. Then they say, well, uh, it was only 5 ounces. How do you make a mistake like that? But wait, there's more. Now they say, well, er, it wasn't even uranium. And I thought the U.S. cops were morons. Maybe the Turk cops smoke ganja.