Three more very cheap purchases from that storage locker sale:
Not a bad haul for $1.50…
Posts Tagged ‘Texas’
Library Additions: Three Paperbacks
Wednesday, September 18th, 2024Halloween Horrors: Joe R. Lansdale’s River Adventures
Wednesday, October 26th, 2022Mojo storyteller Joe R. Lansdale tells about some early adventures on the haunted banks of the Sabine river, from water moccasins to the legend of the Goat Man to spending the night in an old cemetery.
One of the times we came to the cemetery, one of our group brought a recorder. A device that would be crude by modern standards, with a spinning tape and heavy buttons that required determination and strong fingers to activate and stop.
Recorded on the tape was the heart-wrenching sound of a dying rabbit, or at least an imitation of one. The noise a dying or injured rabbit made was of the sort that could cause the backbone to shift and the contents of your stomach to curdle.
We turned out all the flashlights, and then the recording was turned on. The plaintive cry of a suffering rabbit filled the air, and as we sat there, bright eyes gradually appeared around the perimeter of the cemetery. The owners of those eyes were unseen, and I can’t honestly tell you what sort of critters they belonged to. I could imagine slinking coyotes or red wolves—or at least their dog-mixed descendants—licking their lips. Hot little eyes like golden cigarette tips burning holes through black velvet. Gradually the eyes came closer, and when we could stand it no longer, flashlights were flicked on. It was as if the owners of those eyes were made of shadows. They disappeared into the trees and undergrowth so fast, there was only a slight rustle and a sensation of having imagined it all. Our lights couldn’t find them.
Read the whole thing, as it ends up in quite a different place than it begins.
Halloween Horrors: National Museum of Funeral History in Houston
Wednesday, October 12th, 2022This should be a Halloween non-horror, as this actually looks like a pretty cool place to visit:
The museum is open seven days a week at 415 Barren Springs Dr, Houston, TX 77090.
Library Addition: First of Dorothy Scarborough’s The Wind
Monday, July 18th, 2022Scott Cupp mentioned this book many years ago, and it sounded like an interesting example of psychological horror, so I’ve kept an eye out for it, and a cheap copy finally turned up.
Scarborough, Dorothy (as Anonymous). The Wind. Harper & Brothers, 1925. First edition hardback, a Good+ copy with spine cracked, front hinge cracked, spots and abrasions to cover, slight fraying to head and heel, with small former owner plate for Violet Hayden Dowell (a Dallas author and art collector) on inside front cover, and a different ownership name written on FFE, along with “[Scarborough, Dorothy]. Tale of a women in west Texas driven insane by the incessant blowing of the wind. The novel was the basis of the 1928 film starring Lilian Gish. Bought for $36.
Halloween Horrors: The Pedophile Living In Your Daughter’s Closet
Friday, October 2nd, 2020Remember the spider man of Denver and the Japanese woman that secretly lived in a man’s cabinet for a year without him knowing?
Well, the wackiest state in the union manages to one up that one:
A Louisiana man has been arrested after a 15-year-old Florida girl’s parents found he had been living in their daughter’s bedroom closet for more than a month after he met the teen online two years ago and traveled to meet her for sex.
Jonathan Rossmoine, 36, was arrested and charged with multiple sex crimes Sunday after the child’s parents learned he had been secretly living in her bedroom at their family home in Spring Hill, Hernando County.
Rossmoine allegedly confessed to traveling from Louisiana to Florida on multiple occasions to have sex with the child, who described the 36-year-old as her boyfriend.
Police said he then moved into the girl’s room in August, where he would hide out from her parents in the closet and emerge when they left the house.
Even creepier: It’s not the first time this sort of thing has happened, a father found a 42-year old man hiding in his 12-year old daughter’s closet:
See also: Jack Vance’s Bad Ronald.
So they next time your children ask you to check their closet for monsters, remember that there are some in human form…
Nice Texas Monthly Profile of Joe R. Lansdale
Monday, February 1st, 2016In case you missed it, there’s a swell profile of Joe R. Lansdale in the latest Texas Monthly. For a writer who’s always been on the cusp of fame, he’s done pretty darn well for himself. It helps that he’s good and prolific…
(Hat tip: Bill Crider.)
Restaurant Review: Hill’s Cafe
Monday, August 10th, 2015Hill’s Cafe
700 S Congress Ave (Austin, 78745)
(512) 851-9300
Eaten at: July 25, 2015
Restroom Rating: 1.5 (Guys, when one soap dispenser is broken, and the other is off the wall and lying on the sinktop, your men’s room needs attention….)
Hill’s is one of those “Austin institutions” that has been around forever. We’ve eaten there before, and always thought they had good hamburgers and chicken fried steak.
Since Armadillocon was over in the Omni Southpark this year, and since Hill’s Cafe is evidently under new management, we decided to give them a revisit. This time around we had…hamburgers and chicken-fried steak. And I thought my chicken-fried steak was very tasty indeed, probably top 5 in Austin tasty, and I heard no complaints from the hamburger contingent. I also thought the onion rings were pretty good. (You’ll have to check with Dwight on the BBQ.)
They were out of banana pudding, and offered us some complimentary banana bread pudding instead. While I appreciate the gesture, the bread pudding just wasn’t very good, so you should probably avoid that.
Our waiter was pretty attentive, and pretty much kept up with our refills and other requests.
Overall the meal was more than satisfactory, offering up well-executed renditions of classic hearty Texas fare in filing portions at a fair price. Which makes me wonder why the place was half-deserted when we ate there.
Hill’s is never going to be a favorite with the “3 small pieces of seared fish artfully arranged with sculpted garnishes on a drizzle glazed plate for $30” crowd. But if you’re looking for good down home Texas food, Hill’s Cafe amply fits the bill.
Blue Bell Recalls ALL Products
Monday, April 20th, 2015“Brenham-based Blue Bell Creameries is pulling all of its products from the shelves after more ice cream samples tested positive for a life-threatening bacterial infection.”
The voluntary decision, announced Monday, is the latest and most sweeping development to plague the Texas business icon since a recall last month, the first in the company’s 108-year history.
It came after an “enhanced sampling program” that found half-gallon containers of Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream produced on March 17 and March 27 contained the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, company officials said.
Plus this:
“The latest tests mean the company had several positive tests for Listeria in different plants.”
Pretty hard to fathom a wide-spread outbreak in multiple plants. The only explanations I can think of:
Anyway, if you have any Blue Bell in your freezer, it’s probably safest to throw it out…
Library Additions: Chacal #1 Signed by Tom Reamy
Thursday, March 20th, 2014I just got a big box of books from a dealer holding a 70% off sale, which I’ll probably be cataloging for the next week or so. This is the item that made me start piling things in the virtual basket for immediate purchase:
Chacal No. 1. First edition magazine original, a Fine- copy with slight bumping to top of spine. Signed by contributors Tom Reamy, Howard Waldrop, Richard Corben, Tim Kirk, and publisher Arnie Fenner.
Tom Reamy was widely acclaimed as the very best SF writer in Texas, winning a John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer as well as a Nebula Award for “San Diego Lightfoot Sue.” Reamy died of a heart attack on November 4, 1977 at the horrifically young age of 42. Reamy had no books of his own published during his lifetime, and things signed by him are genuinely rare and seldom come on the market.
Chacal was Arnie Fenner’s first magazine, a big color glossy magazine featuring first-rate fantasy fiction and art. (After two issues this would be followed up by Shayol, which had more of a science fiction focus, co-edited with Fenner’s then-wife Pat Cadigan.)
Howard believes that this was almost certainly signed at the 1976 Worldcon in Kansas City, which is the only time he recalled all of them being together at the same place and time after it was published.
Price paid: $29.99.
That’s It? That’s Your Guest Lineup?
Thursday, March 13th, 2014I haven’t gone to Aggiecon for about a quarter century for reasons too detailed and annoying to get into here. But I have watched from a distance as serial administrative blunders have reduced the con to a shadow of its former self.
With that in mind, I thought you might be interested to know that Aggiecon has announced its guest lineup this year.
That’s right, a convention that used to boast such guests as Jack Williamson, Fred Pohl, Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny, Greg Bear, Joe R. Lansdale and George R. R. Martin now has a guest list of two: a guy who co-writes a podcast and an anime voice actor. I’ve had better guest lists in my living room. Hell, I’ve had better guest lists in my living room when it was just me and Howard Waldrop.
I think I’ll be missing it again this year…
Updated to add: Someone has alerted me that Aggiecon has announced more guests on their Facebook page. Still no names to conjure with, but at least there are more of them. It also suggests that they’re so organizationally dysfunctional they can’t update their own website less than a month before the con…