• We’re having pork barbecue tonight made in the crockpot. What surprises me is the fact that the recipes came in a booklet supplied by Rival when we bought our first crockpot years ago. They took some care putting the recipe book together. That surprised us! Naturally, when we make this barbecue for somebody else, we don’t tell them we got the recipe from a crockpot company handout.
• I found the autobiography by Dita Kraus, A Delayed Life to be a nice supplement to the novel version of her story in The Librarian of Auschwitz. She led a very interesting life, though I think this book probably works better for those who’ve read The Librarian of Auschwitz. Interestingly enough, she says very little about the books in her account of concentration camp life.
• I need a drink. I bought a copy of L. T. Ryan’s Noble Beginnings to pad out my last Amazon order to get free shipping. And I’m exhausted because there’s more action per square inch than most books I’ve read lately. If this kind of stuff happens in the real CIA, our country’s in a lot of trouble.
• I posted a link to this New York Post article on Facebook to see if FB would raise a stink about it or ban me. Nothing happened. Hmm. Might be a trick. It was my inspiration for my recent satirical Star Chamber Bureau post. I was shocked because this kind of bureau is the last thing I would expect from a liberal administration.
•  I feel happy when I’m writing. But sometimes I finish a chapter and think “Yikes, what’s supposed to happen now?” Well, it’s always like that, but sometimes I’m sort of, er, stuck. Good news. I’m finally unstuck and moving ahead at flank speed.  Makes my day. If you’re a writer, you’ve been there.
• What doesn’t make my day is the hourly influx of articles (many on Yahoo “news”) about the Kardashians. I don’t think I really know who they are or why they’re anybody. For weeks, I thought they were part of that gang of bad guys from Star Trek’s Alpha Quadrant, the Cardassians. As you can see from this photograph, it’s really hard to tell them apart. I guess some people are famous for being famous while others are more or less fictional.

—Malcolm