September 16, 2006
Samantha took a call yesterday from a "longtime subscriber" who also reads this blog. He wouldn’t leave his name, but he wanted to register a complaint: he said he has noticed an alarming change in the blog. It seems to him I have apparently abandoned the magazine and all of a sudden it’s “all about me” and the “top secret project.”

I beg to differ. This blog has always been all about me, and yes I have been engrossed (some might say obsessed) with the Top Secret Project, but I’m still running the magazine and still doing Honkytonk Sue and still doing Classic Gunfights (by the way, Volume Three of the book series will be coming out next spring) and still doing paintings and cover illustrations and writing True West Moments and producing True West Moments (and also, by the way, Cactus Productions sent me the finished PSA and Wichita True West Moment we taped two weeks ago and we will try and get that posted, or at least up where you can view it, ASAP). And speaking of The Top Secret Project, I have planted quite a few clues as to what it’s about. Here’s a guess that came in this morning:

Flying Leap—Half A Cigar
“I got it, it's a movie, yup, thats got to be it. Yippeee!”
—J. Mitch

You’re half-right. The distinguished professor is doing a screenplay and I’m doing a graphic novel. Hopefully, they’ll have something in common.

In Texas Them Are Semi-Fightin’ Words Department
“Per an article in the September YALE ALUMNI MAGAZINE (passed on to me by a Yalie friend—my academic roots are decidedly more plebian), Fred Shapiro's forthcoming YALE BOOK OF QUOTATIONS traces the word ‘motherf*****g’ to several late 19th century court documents in Texas.

“The oldest citation for the insult in J.E. Lighter's canonical HISTORICAL DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG was 1928. Thus for the moment, until an earlier usage wells up, Texas has the honors. Another jewel in its corona.

“Per the YAM article: ‘In at least two appeals of murder convictions, the killer failed to persuade the court that the deceased, having used the m-word, had it coming to him.’

“The bar for fighting words in 19th century Texas must have been set higher than we thought.”
—Dan Buck, Washington, DC

”My mother aside, sir, get to the point”
—unknown gunfighter just prior to slapping gun leather