May 2002

The Maltese…Chicken? I read www.epicurious.com regularly. I get the newsletter. Included in this week’s recipies…The Maltese Chicken. “At the beach in Malta, the locals eat fried rabbit, rather than burgers, with fries. I’ve adapted the recipe by using chicken and sweetening the gravy with a touch of honey.”–From Bon Appetit Magazine.

Stuff. Oh, please please please… It looks like I’m going to be able to take Tai Chi classes once a week. Yatayatayatayata! Ladies and gents, the world’s first tap-dancing tai chi grand master! Bad jokes…. One of the people that I work with (over e-mail; she’s located in another state) is leaving to go back

Reviews. The Big Sleep, Red Harvest, Ghormenghast, From Hell. The Big Sleep, by Raymond Chandler. I’ll try to say something other than “Dashiell Hammett is better.” (He is.) Here goes…Chandler is better at classical plotting: the ending delivers what the beginning promises. Chandler is better at making vivid characters, sometimes garishly so. I could go

The Uncanny Adventures of Mrs. Kurtz, Part One (Continued, ep. 2) Actually, it wasn’t that long; the message cycled after three minutes. The voice was male and pitched very softly, almost in a whisper or moan: You probably aren’t familiar with my name, but it’s Jim T. Biggins, and I’m one of the national directors

Blame this one on Dale, who complains that we haven’t sent out enough jokes lately. (Also from my brother Matt) A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office wearing only underwear made of Saran Wrap. The psychiatrist says, “Well… I can clearly see your nuts.”

Rejection. Clean Sheets doesn’t want my porn. I’m offering it to them for free, and they still don’t want it. Dang. That makes two stories back home that need to go out again. Too many.

Bad Joke, my Brother. Stop me if you’ve heard this one. Just try. There are many stories related to the sinking of the “Titanic”. Some have just come to light due to the success of the recent movie. For example, most people don’t know that back in 1912, Hellman’s mayonnaise was manufactured in England. The

Oh, well. I got stuck on Beauregard again. I think he’s going to turn one of my murder victims into a love interest. Stupid git. So I’m abandoning him for a week or two. Here’s the first part of the new story, mainly written as black-humor escapism from the Really Black Humor of Beauregard: The

Writing notes, and an epitaph. I’m still working on Beauregard. I had to stop doing the first draft on the computer and move to longhand, because Ray won’t play by herself long enough to make it worthwhile. One of the things that I’m doing in the story is laying down little false leads. Beauregard does

snippet: Portrait of a Player My guess is that he went along as a boy. He lacks the natural ease with which a true philanderer sports the appearance of a gentleman. The true philanderer may be a gentleman, a lover of women, skin, sweat, sex, variety. He doesn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t a lover; he’s