• "Chalk", the study of a sudden murder perpetrated by a madman, told in a psychotic flashback. These days, this goes straight to video.
• "Eye Witness", a short piece that's obvious from the minute it starts.
• "A Very Merry Christmas", a brutal, senseless piece about a brutal, senseless murder. Perhaps it's the point, but the tedium's not the message, marshal.
• "The Confession", another obvious bit that mirrors something I wrote twice in high school. I wrote "Vigilante" in English for fun and in Spanish because I needed something to kill (hem) four pages for composition.

• "First Offense", the first story, is a passable study of what they used to call "JD" and what we now would call a super-predator. Nowadays, too, the body count's higher in the newspapers.
• "Hot Cars", which struck me as slightly O. Henry-esque, but not quite. A light-hearted little raw deal story for a con man. Maybe not O. Henry. Maybe I am thinking E. Leonard. One of those dudes whose last name is a first name.
• "Hot", an absolutely Hemingwayesque depiction of life aboard a Navy vessel in Cuba (Gitmo, donchaknow) under a brutal, and quite killable, commanding officer.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:09 PM   0 comments

Democrats shake up their slate

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:08 PM   0 comments

Today newspaper ads from its five regional editions still account for 50 percent of the company's revenue, compared with about 30 percent from Web advertising. (The rest comes from book proceeds, a few thousand subscribers to the paper, and other businesses.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:47 PM   0 comments

When it be within my power to return a harm done to me, I consider which type of action will continue the discord and which will end it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:58 PM   0 comments

After the Terminator is destroyed, Sarah Connor is loaded into the ambulance feet-first. In real ambulances, the patient's head is closest to the front, not the back.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:29 PM   0 comments

9. Atari predates them, as do vinyl albums.

11. They have likely never played Pac Man and have never heard of Pong.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:16 PM   0 comments

1. Missouri woefully underspends on its highways if I-55 is any indicator; there was a high positive correlation between the remains of blown tires and bumps in the road.

Rest assured, Robert, that MoDOT's right now spending ludicrous amounts of money to put together a five-year plan to road maintenance, just like last year, and its well-paid consultants offer the following advice, again:


• Build more $600 million dollar bridges like the Page Avenue Extension to ferry affluent St. Charles suburban types into their jobs in St. Louis without the hassle of mass transit, which would not only bring them across the Missouri River into St. Louis, but could also bring St. Louis undesirables into the affluent areas;
  
  
• Put up more soundproofing barriers so suburbanites who bought houses next to a highway don't have to deal with the decibel consequences of the low house price;
  
  
• Hire more administrators to devise more five-year plans;
  
  
• Raise taxes some how, some way.



• Slap a couple inches of asphalt on a couple lanes of highway, which will smooth that stretch until the next day in which the temperature climbs to ninety degrees or drops below thirty degrees.



But did you happen to notice, as you passed through St. Louis, any of the state-of-the-art public/private sports facilities, such as the Kiel Savvis Center, the Trans World Edward Jones Dome, or the site of the soon-to-be-built baseball stadium? If so, the legislators and powers-that-be hope, you would soon forget the obligations of the state government ignored to provide these amenities!

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:52 PM   0 comments

Why are kids fundraising the first week of school?

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:01 PM   0 comments

1. Always have something to fall back on.
   The lights in the break room never seemed to all work at once, and it was dark one September evening at Gold's Shop Rite. I had just started my freshman year at Marquette, and I was a three month veteran of the grocery industry. The new assistant manager, a portly man named Dean, convinced Mike Fredericks, store manager, to hold a meeting for the baggers. The summer short-timers had shaken out, and seated around the crumby table in front of me a small core of baggers that would last a while. Tim, a recent refuge from some other town, new to everyone in the city and somehow lonelier than all of us; Shawn, a flame-haired future high school dropout whose hobbies were heavy metal-music and piercing himself; Robert, a recently born-again Christian with energy that seemed barely contained in his small frame; Cortney, the largest of us, a high school athlete; Earl, a thin, bespectacled black young man that would follow his family into the Marine Corps as I had not; and me, a recent homecomer from Missouri with pretentions of "Poetry." "Take pride in your work. You guys do a good job, and we want you to know what you do is important." Hard to convince seven guys at minimum wage that they were in a noble undertaking.
   
   "It will always be something to fall back on." Over the years, I have seen many retirees come back to the grocery industry to supplement whatever pensions and "old people" incomes they receive. I myself have returned to produce clerkdom to pull myself out of debt.
   
   College never afforded us that luxury. With the intensity of the new curriculums, less time is spent on the liberal arts and more is spent focussing our graduates into one field, into one narrow path through life where deviation means confusion. Much of what passes for my personal "limbo" experiences and possibly for the rest of my generation is the feeling that if we don't get a good job in one narrow bandwidth of life we have failed.
   
   Like an Existentialist Jesuit told my class, "Most of life is plan B." It helps to have a plan B, and if not specifically the grocery industry, then something to fall back on.
   
   
2. Touch the product.
   When I first became a produce clerk, Chris stood next to me, both of us clad in our green aprons. Mine was a symbol of pride; his was a uniform. We were "culling the rack," checking each display of fruits and vegetables for bad merchandise. "Touch them all; touch them, feel them, become them," he said with mock Bodhisatva wisdom and baring his teeth in the peculiar Michels smile. "Only then can you cull the rack effectively."
   
   Each morning I ran my fingers over all the waxy apple skins, among the tartly scented grapefruit, and over (and occasionally into) the dull tomatoes. When rotating the produce, I picked each peach and plum up individually and put them into place, insuring less damage than what a later produce manager would call the "dump and run." When the deliveries of new product came in, I would wheel the skids-pallets-into the cooler and hand unload them, moving first the old product out of the way and then restacking them all by hand. It gave me a sense of knowing what the product was, what it looked like, and even a sense of accomplishment when it was done.
   
   Too often I remember other, less manual jobs where I would deal with items and people I had never seen. It was far removed from me; I think sometimes other people feel the same way.
   
   "Why so many?" A purchaser asked me at a later job. She gestured a lithe arm at the four oversized skids of foamboards. Our loading dock held six skids of product comfortably, with room to move carts and ourselves. I had left the other seven skids, one a double-size with four by eight foot sheets of foamboard on it, out on the concrete loading dock.
   
   "That's what you ordered." I flipped pages on the purchase order and showed her the number of sheets she ordered. "Fourteen hundred. Four bins of three hundred and fifty."
   
   I'm sure it looked a lot simpler on the computer screen when she typed it in. Fourteen hundred is four keystrokes and a return. Fourteen hundred foamboards is one hundred and twenty eight cubic feet. Something she remembered for three months, until it was time to order it again. Something I and the others who sell it and move it every day take for granted.
   
   I am not above it. The first produce order I wrote, several years ago, was a bit large. The produce manager took a week's vacation, and I wrote the order for a Saturday load and was in the process of moving it around when I checked the order book. It was only ones and twos in the book, with an occasional four or ten, but when it was totaled, it was a two hundred piece load. Almost twice the necessary amount for an average summer weekend. Almost too much for a green green grocer to handle. But I managed, and I remembered that little ticks in the book add up to lots of cases in the cooler, lots of cases of perishables in the cooler.
   
   
3. Remember the people.
   William, third grade, liked to help me fill the rack whenever his mother shopped at the store. He told me in his many visits of his preference for comic books with Wolverine in them and his performance on recent math tests.
   
   Val, a highly educated woman with a gravelly voice always shortened my name to "Bri," her current husband's name. She was a discriminating produce buyer and knew the seasons better than I do.
   
   "Swivel-hips." Someone in the store designated the red-haired lady that because she did not pivot at the waist. She always asked for help buying good grapes for her mother and lived her life on the sixty-seven bus line. I often saw her waiting for it going one way or the other.
   
   There are more faces than names, the customers in the various stores I have worked in. Every one of them have different preferences and different experiences.
   
   "Cut these down and put them on the floor. They'll buy them." One of the in absentia owners pointed at scraps of paper to be bundled and priced. I didn't care to ask who "they" were or why "they" would want to by assortments of mismatched color papers. I doubted if he knew.
   
   Too often this happens in the retail industry. Someone remembers they have a target audience, and the abstraction takes over for individuals. It happens in other circumstances, too, when we stereotype individuals by their occupations or positions in life. A certain amount is inevitable, given the small amount of attention and time we can give to any one person, place, or idea these days, but it helps to keep the individual in mind. Not for some strange esoteric "we-are-all-brothers-and-sisters" forced-fraternity, but because we might miss out on some interesting and personal contact. Something too often missing in the flurry of modern existence.
   
   Besides, if you don't know who "they" are, you might not know that they don't need multi-colored trinkets.
   
   
4. Don't waste timing covering your arse.
   There's a lot to be done and very little time to do it in life. It's not so bad when you're in a store and you know when your shift is over. You can pace yourself to get everything you want to do and need to do done. Life doesn't afford us that luxury. We need to make the most of time. Covering yourself and hiding or obfuscating your mistakes wastes precious time.
   
   "Who threw all those greens out?" Number Two asked. My second produce manager blinked his expansive blue eyes at me from his low height.
   
   "That's a silly question. I did." There were two of us working in the department.
   
   "Why?"
   
   "They were rotting in the cooler." The smell had been driving me crazy for days. He proceeded to tell me how his gross profit margin would be affected and all the other good reasons I should not have thrown them out.
   
   He did give me every opportunity to avoid it, though. I could have answered that I didn't know, I could have made lengthier explanations and excuses. Either way I would have wasted time trying to avoid the consequences of my action. I leave the excuses and the innuendo dances to the people in the front office.
   
   I don't claim some sort of produce omniscience, either. I make mistakes, too. Like wetting leaf lettuces and cabbages from a water bottle where a ten percent bleach solution has replaced pure water. When I found out what happened, I pulled all the cabbage and leaf lettuce and threw them out. I rinsed the rack and filled it with fresh product. Time spent on making excuses, pleading innocence or ignorance, or bemoaning error could be better spent on fixing them or just going on. Some of us have to work for a living and live for a lifetime.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:58 PM   0 comments

• I am Ubermensch.
• Quizilla told me to do it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:34 PM   0 comments

Blame it on the rain
that was falling, falling
Blame it on the stars
that did shine that night

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:52 PM   0 comments

LBC broadcast close-ups of the cards: one carrying the name of Capt. Katherine V. Rose of the 142nd Corps Support Battalion from Fort Polk, La., and a Pennsylvania driver's license with the name Andrew C. Peters, 37. A call to the address on the driver's license was answered by a person who hung up.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:33 PM   0 comments

Every hotelkeeper shall keep posted in a conspicuous place in each sleeping room in his or her hotel, in type not smaller than 12-point, the rates per day for each occupant.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:43 PM   0 comments

"Simpson! Something has happened to Noggle! Send out the Died in His Cubicle postcard, and try to get his next of kin to schedule removal sometime this week. Oh, and turn up the air conditioning."

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:35 PM   0 comments

1. Laments the home without the beautiful wife.
2. Counts the hours until her return, and decides to soldier on.
3. Pours a yummy Guinness Draught.
4. Rearranges the den so that the recliner takes its deserved prominence before the television.
5. Procures a folding table to hold the remote, the aforementioned yummy Guinness Draught, and the reading material (Barron's, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, and so on).
6. Inserts The Long Goodbyeinto the PlayStation 2 DVD player.
7. Tries to struggle through the lingering close-ups and extraneous emoting Altman demands.

• Elliot Gould as Philip Marlowe. Of course, Gould's done a lot of the audiobook versions of Chandler's novels, so I am used to his narration.
• Speaking of which, Marlowe does a lot of talking-to-himself asides (when wandering out of earshot of other characters), and these asides are properly in the voice I would expect from the Chandler detective.
• As a viewer from 30 years in the future, I was interested in the contemporary settings into which Altman placed the (then) 30-year-old Marlowe. The depiction of L.A. in 1973 was interesting in itself.

• Running a Chandler plot through an Altman prism? Double plus ungood.
• Lingering about six beats too many on plot points or conversations that do not advance the script.
• Marlowe never finds out about his cat.
• The ending, in which Marlowe....well, it would never fly today as it flew then. Not in a blockbuster which appealed to the unwashed masses for whom Chandler was actually writing. It was too abrupt, as though Altman knew he'd expended two hours on irrelevant closeups and repeated renditions of the title song and had to cut something like "plot."

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:03 PM   0 comments

• When meeting your Internet pen pal for the first time in person, select a neutral, out of the way spot to meet.
  We met at a commuter lot off of Interstate 70. Somewhere out of sight will comfort your date, ensuring her that no one will see you and her together in case you're a dweeb.
  
  
• Be patient while waiting for your date.
  When you're anticipating a single woman with auburn hair in a white Ford Tempo, do not peel out of your parking spot in reverse when a white sedan bearing a woman with auburn hair and THREE CHILDREN parks in the spot RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU. Instead, gallantly remain patient and think of all the ways you can end the date very early. That way, if it turns out that this family were really meeting some guy in a monster SUV, you have not sacrificed your chance to snare a hot conservative chick on a bicycle.
  
  
• Dress appropriately.
  Remember, a black fedora is the way to say "creepy," and the added touch of a 1-inch stump of a ponytail says "but dorky."
  
  
• Listen to what she has to say.
  By "Listen to what she has to say," I mean don't say a freaking word. She'll think you're interested in her, and you don't volunteer that you're a geek who thinks a good Saturday night involves sitting around playing Ataris, drinking beer, and passing around laddie magazines.
  
  
• Show no emotion.
  Don't smile at all. Lead her to wonder why you're so mysterious, even though you're just really afraid you're going to blow it.
  
  
• She doesn't drink coffee or like cigarette smoke? Take her to the Grind!
  Nothing shows your sophistication like a European-style coffeehouse where all the au pairs have nicotine breath and the coffee is expensive.
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:15 AM   0 comments

But does it really cause headaches or, worse, seizures, lupus and multiple sclerosis?

Most experts and studies say no.

• The health benefits of blooding.
• World is round, Earth not center of universe.
• Disco rocks the house.
• No aether in space.
• They don't actually live, it was just a movie, learn and obey, citizen.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:25 AM   0 comments

Play Jurism

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:03 AM   0 comments

• Information regarding mating rituals from the male point of view, including technique modification and standardized communication approaches to use during social events.
  
  
• Aesthetically-pleasing but not norm-challenging visual depictions of anatomy one might uncover during a mating ritual.
  
  
• Deliberative investigations into the technological or plumage accoutrements to enhance one's social standing and mating potential as well as increase revenue streams for the information sources' advertisers.
  
  
• Dietary instructions and recommendations for brewed wheat products.

• FHM, the experimental information source whose properties are outlined above.
  
  
• Barron's, a control information source. This information source contains information that a more mature and slightly older member of the GwG class might find interesting if his or her interests lie in increasing material holdings to provide for the product of successful, or inadequately protected, mating rituals.
  
  
• Spin, a control information source that explores the aesthetics of contemporary aural art forms which some people call "music."
  
  
• Skeptic, a control information source that investigates and often debunks paranormal phenomena and junk science.
  
  
• Java Developer's Journal, a control information source that contains standard geek fare that feeds the 733t skillz that comprise the elaborate dance geeks do at the workplace to show dominance over coworkers.
  
  
• Harper's, a control information source that higher social order GwG, and other humans in general, or those who aspire to higher social position as alphas in the herd utilize to determine what alphas should think about the nuanced social structure of humanity, those poor bastards.
  
  

• Presenting the experiment information source in other incongruous locations, such as medical offices, church lobbies, and EEOC cubicles.
  
  
• Obscuring the cover of the experiment information source more completely, to determine whether the title of the information source and its reputation yield the expected behavior, or if the aesthetically-pleasing but not norm-challenging visual depictions of anatomy drive the behavior.
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:56 PM   0 comments

• I'll always need to attach an extra sheet as necessary when filling out those foolish job applications for advanced positions which demand your complete job history from the time you were a "sonographic model."
  
  
• Every job is a McJob now, no matter what its rank or salary.
  
  
• My latest novel manuscript, John Donnelly's Gold, has not yet made me independently wealthy to the point wherein I can sleep until ten o'clock, putter until two o'clock, nap until four o'clock, and write about the fictional human condition until one or two in the morning.
  
  
• The position into which I am going is my thirteenth job, and I should resign now before the dire consequences occur.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:12 AM   0 comments

1. I would vote for Kevin Peter Hall to replace B. Holden in Missouri;
   
   
2. I hope this curse doesn't extend to Predator 2, because that would mean Danny Glover is likely to get it and become governor of New York, and I wouldn't wish that on any state, even New York.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:21 AM   0 comments

• Myth one: The Internet is a Mecca for finding jobs.
  The holiest city of Islam, to which Muslims should make one pilgrimmage in their lifetimes if they can.
  
  
• Internet job boards can become a Delta Triangle for resumes to disappear into....
  Delta Triangle? Do you mean Devil's Triangle, a superset of the Bermuda Triangle, into which nothing has mysteriously disappeared recently?
  
  
• Debbie Harper, a veteran executive IT recruiter at Harper Hewes, Inc., likened posting your resume online to posting it on a sandwich board that reads "I need a job" and walking up and down Fifth Avenue with it hoisted over your shoulder.
  But you don't hoist a sandwich board over your shoulder like a picket sign....you wear it over your torso.
  
  
• ...soft skills—like communication—are also important.
  These "soft" skills seem to be too hard for many people in IT, including the employed ones.
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 PM   0 comments

Fisherman Curovic said some of them were pulled out of the river when Romania and Serbia started building the nearby Djerdap dam 30 years ago.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:44 PM   0 comments

• "animal" (p 168) attributed to the movie Animal House (1978) when The Muppet Show debuted, and popularized, the term earlier;
  
  
• "waldo," (p 184) defined as "Out of it, as in 'That new kid in Biology class is totally waldo--clueless to the max.' Derived from the popular Where's Waldo picture books of the 1980s...." Pardon me, sir, but Where's Waldo seems to stem from 1987 whereas I distinctly remember the perjorative term applied to me in 1985 by the punks in middle school. Oh, and Waldo was a character in the video for "Hot for Teacher" from the Van Halen album 1984, which came out strangely enough in 1984;
  
  
• "Hasta" explained in a sidebar on p 185 as "from the Spanish 'hasta luego' or 'hasta la vista,' popularized by the movie The Terminator...." Um, no, "Hasta la vista, baby," was from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991);
  
  
• Misspelling of Eddie Murphy's name as Eddy Murphy (p 195)
  
  

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:04 PM   0 comments

BROOKLYN, N.Y.--Ric Curtis used to watch from his window as dogs fought to the death in an empty lot across from his apartment.

Now the cheering gamblers and snarling pit bulls are gone and the lot has become a tiny, gated park with trees and shrubs.

The shootings, robberies and drug dealing that plagued the corner are mostly gone, too.

"When we first moved here in 1991, we put the baby to sleep on a mattress on the floor," Curtis said. "We worried about a bullet coming through the window. Now we have two daughters and they sleep in bunk beds."

In this gritty Brooklyn neighborhood called Brownsville, crime rates have fallen at a stunning rate in the last 10 years. In 1993, 74 people were murdered here. Last year, only 16 people were killed.

To New Yorkers like Curtis in the city's toughest neighborhoods, the streets seemed to get safer overnight. To others, like developer Bill Webber of the tony Upper West Side, the change was more gradual, and in some ways not as welcome.

"Of course, it's because of Giuliani," Webber said. "Sure, with my long view over 30 years here, I think the neighborhoods have become more secure.... In Times Square, the seamier elements have been driven away, like the peep shows. But some of us in New York do not think this is progress. I miss some of the grunge. If you take some of the friction out of urban life, it becomes less interesting."

He [a criminologist] came across "Hamp," a 62-year-old addict. Hamp told Curtis that NYPD's zero-tolerance policy has hit the neighborhood hard.

"They'll bust you for the least little thing," he said, standing in a trash-strewn parking lot. "They used to come out and say, 'Good morning, how you doing, Hamp?' Now they look at you like a piece of s---."

Addicts like Hamp scrape together enough money to buy their heroin through a variety of hustles. They work as prostitutes, sell small amounts of drugs, and even sell the needles they get free from needle exchange programs.

"It's been driven underground," Hamp said. "The police will no longer tolerate addicts shooting up outside in parking lots and on park benches.... Right after Giuliani initiated it, they started going after open cans of beer and loitering."

Over the past decade, Curtis said, New Yorkers have become less tolerant of criminals and more likely to call the cops.

But Cline and Crowl came to believe the New York strategy was not a perfect fit for Chicago. It would have to be customized to target street gangs--a much bigger source of crime in Chicago than in New York--and to maintain a reservoir of goodwill between Chicago police and the public.

Arthur Lurigio, head of the criminology department at Loyola University in Chicago, said Chicago would be wise not to simply copy New York's strategy.

"Chicago would have to be very selective in choosing elements of the New York model," he said. "It does not make sense to import models of policing. Order and maintenance policing--the kind they do in New York--is effective if it is not too heavy-handed and construed as harassment."

Lurigio said he would like to research whether complaints against New York cops have skyrocketed during the crackdown on crime.

"That's part of the 'New York miracle' that does not become public," he said. "I have a feeling there is an interesting story there."

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:04 PM   0 comments

S 120.00 Assault in the third degree.

A person is guilty of assault in the third degree when:
1. With intent to cause physical injury to another person, he causes such injury to such person or to a third person; or
2. He recklessly causes physical injury to another person; or
3. With criminal negligence, he causes physical injury to another person by means of a deadly weapon or a dangerous instrument.
Assault in the third degree is a class A misdemeanor.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:08 PM   0 comments

Charter Communications Inc. is considering raising the price for its high-speed Internet service and eliminating its slowest-speed service to "extract more revenue" from its markets, Chief Executive Carl E. Vogel told analysts Thursday.

"High-speed data has been a wonderful business for us," Vogel said.

It's the most profitable product as well as the one requiring the least capital expense for Charter to deploy.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:24 AM   0 comments