Musings from Brian J. Noggle: August 2004

Who Won The Olympics?

Who got the most medals at the Olympics? Why, the European Union, of course:

EURO chief Romano Prodi last night hailed Britain’s haul of Olympic gold as a triumph — for the European Union.

And he warned our athletes will have to fly the EU flag as well as the Union Jack at Beijing in 2008.

That would mean 800m and 1500m champion Kelly Holmes and boxing sensation Amir Khan would be battling for Brussels as much as Britain.

Mr Prodi turned the Athens games into a political football, boasting that our bag of 30 medals helped the EU trounce America and China.

Why stop there? Why not go all out and say:

The West defeated the East, the Islamic Crescent, and Africa!

It's true. Check out these medal totals, which I gleaned from the official Olympic site:

Culture	Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Country Total
The West	United States	35	39	29	103
	Russia	27	27	38	92
	Australia	17	16	16	49
	Germany	14	16	18	48
	France	11	9	13	33
	Italy	10	11	11	32
	Great Britain	9	9	12	30
	Cuba	9	7	11	27
	Ukraine	9	5	9	23
	Hungary	8	6	3	17
	Romania	8	5	6	19
	Greece	6	6	4	16
	Norway	5	0	1	6
	Netherlands	4	9	9	22
	Brazil	4	3	3	10
	Sweden	4	1	2	7
	Spain	3	11	5	19
	Canada	3	6	3	12
	Turkey	3	3	4	10
	Poland	3	2	5	10
	New Zealand	3	2	0	5
	Belarus	2	6	7	15
	Austria	2	4	1	7
	Slovakia	2	2	2	6
	Georgia	2	2	0	4
	Bulgaria	2	1	9	12
	Jamaica	2	1	2	5
	Denmark	2	0	6	8
	Argentina	2	0	4	6
	Chile	2	0	1	3
	Czech Republic	1	3	4	8
	South Africa	1	3	2	6
	Croatia	1	2	2	5
	Lithuania	1	2	0	3
	Switzerland	1	1	3	5
	Belgium	1	0	2	3
	Bahamas	1	0	1	2
	Israel	1	0	1	2
	Dominican Rep	1	0	0	1
	Ireland	1	0	0	1
	Latvia	0	4	0	4
	Mexico	0	3	1	4
	Portugal	0	2	1	3
	Finland	0	2	0	2
	Serbia/Montenegro	0	2	0	2
	Slovenia	0	1	3	4
	Estonia	0	1	2	3
	Paraguay	0	1	0	1
	Venezuela	0	0	2	2
	Colombia	0	0	1	1
	Trinidad/Tobago	0	0	1	1
	Totals	223	236	260	719

The East	China	32	17	14	63
	Japan	16	9	12	37
	Korea	9	12	9	30
	Chinese Taipei	2	2	1	5
	DPR Korea	0	4	1	5
	Hong Kong	0	1	0	1
	India	0	1	0	1
	Mongolia	0	0	1	1
	Thailand	3	1	4	8
	Totals	62	47	42	151

Islam	Kazakhstan	1	4	3	8
	Egypt	1	1	3	5
	Azerbaijan	1	0	4	5
	U Arab Emirates	1	0	0	1
	Indonesia	1	1	2	4
	I. R. Iran	2	2	2	6
	Syrian Arab Rep	0	0	1	1
	Uzbekistan	2	1	2	5
	Totals	9	9	17	35

Africa	Eritrea	0	0	1	1
	Cameroon	1	0	0	1
	Zimbabwe	1	1	1	3
	Kenya	1	4	2	7
	Ethiopia	2	3	2	7
	Morocco	2	1	0	3
	Nigeria	0	0	2	2
	Totals	7	9	8	24

Oh, yeah, we trounced those other cultures, ainna? The West! Birthplace of democracy, Enlightenment (nirvana notwithstanding), capitalism, and sports which require expensive equipment and training to excel.

What, Mr Prodi, you think it's unsophisticated to extrapolate that far? Then shut your soon-to-be even-more-irrelevant yap and allow your Worthless Pact satellite countries to enjoy a bit of harmless nationalism on the fields of sport and recognize the Olympics for what they are: games.

Of course, as such, I suppose it's only natural that a EUcrat would see the Olympics as nothing but a continuation of EU diplomacy by other means.

(Link seen originally on blogoSFERICS.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:17 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, VII

Bill Frist brags about the new Medicare drug benefit, throwing red meat to his tribe, the Socialist Seniors of America, and then says the Republicans are a party for smaller government.

I keep expecting a cut to a concerned Geordi La Forge in engineering, brainstorming to how he can refactor the Rhetoricon Crystals to prevent the impending space-time rip caused by the paradox.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:08 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, VI

VodkaPundit can only liquor himself up enough to live blog a single speech? Pah.

I am the hardest drinking man in blogbusiness!

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:45 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, V

The blogger pin-up Erika Herald talks about faith-based initiatives.

I am all in favor of them. Instead of government-funded programs, not as government-funded programs. They're effective because they have extensive contact with the people they serve, and because people serve to salve their souls, not to maintain six figure salaries and to keep themselves in conference-in-exotic-locale tans.

Detective McDonald is warming to his speech and is doing well, too.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:39 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, IV

Who the heck is Dana Glover?

What, was Danny busy?

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:30 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, III

George P. Bush, one of the little brown ones, does well enough. Diversity in the GOP? Hell, there's diversity in the Bush family, for crying out loud.

When he cuts to Spanish at the end, it reminds me of watching Star Trek: The Motion Picture dubbed in Spanish during a high school Spanish class. A stream of Spanish dialog until someone refers to a character by name, when the original actor's voice breaks in with the very American pronunciation, "Spock."

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:24 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, II

Cut away to the Bush twins, facing each other, leaning closer....

Oh, yes.

Now, if their grandmother would get out from between them. She's ruining the effect.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:23 PM 0 comments

Pachy Blogging, Day II, I

Elizabeth Dole goes into the wilderness and returns with some meat for her tribe.

How family values is Liddy? Her husband was senator from Kansas, and now she's senator from North Carolina. Ladies and gentlemen, the Doles slept in separate beds in separate states. Either that, or Liddy is a carpetbagger.

But she's our carpetbagger, so that makes it all right?

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:22 PM 0 comments

Memo to the DNC

Next time you send me a complimentary, personalized photo of the Johnsey twins, please remember to include the supplemental dartboard.

Thanks.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:46 PM 0 comments

So-Called Watch

An attorney has sued over use of so-called as an adjective modifying his profession and his practice thereof:

Elderly Schenectady (NY) lawyer Romolo Versaci has filed a $100,000 defamation suit against Diane C. Richie, an unemployed social worker and widow with two children. Versaci claims -- and Richie admits -- that she called him a "so-called attorney" on a SchenectadyNY.info message board. ...

I wonder if I can get in on some of the action.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:41 PM 0 comments

The New T-Shirt

Order yours now

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:30 AM 0 comments

So-Called Watch

Where did these guys learn how to write?

"America today has used all its force, as well as the help of others, to fight Islam under the so-called war on terror, which is nothing but a vicious crusade against Muslims," the statement said.

Oh, we can guess.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:49 AM 0 comments

Althouse Doesn't Care for Rubes in Paradise Either

Ann Althouse doesn't care for the Rubes in Paradise theme I touched on I mentioned last night--except she's talking about the extra condescending, non-Republican sponsored asides provided by media commentators.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:38 AM 0 comments

Pachyblogging X

McCain rocks. My wife is done with her Dance Dance Revolution on the den television for the night. I am watching Giuliani on cable. T1 passes in a pinch, but it's not cable television yet.

Good night.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:22 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging IX

The mission was necessary, achieveable, and noble.

Was?

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:21 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging VIII

Boo to you, Michael Moore.

I would like to point out that I personally supported McCain before Bush in 2000. I think he's crazy enough to carried the war to the terrorists in 2001 and beyond. Also, McCain as president, there would have been no McCain-Feingold. There, I said it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:16 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging VII

John McCain, who cannot comb his own hair from hanging and torture in POW camps in North Vietnam, says this is the challenge of our generation.

His, and ours. It's the continuing challenge of all American generations.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:05 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging VI

Lindsey Graham? I never would have guessed from his vocals on "Big Love" that he had a southern accent.

United America? I daresay not. We are the United States of America, you politico. We shall not dissolve the electoral college, nor will we let the majority of Americans rule this country.

I thought they said you were from North Carolina. Sounds like a Washingtonian sentiment to me.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:58 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging V

Spare me the Rubes in Paradise interviews with people from the rest of the country who're in NYC for the first time.

I've never been to NYC, and I'm no worse for wear. No less sophisticated, no less educated, and Hillary Clinton is not one of my senators.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:51 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging IV

Sometimes a Cocoon allusion just feels right.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:48 PM 0 comments

Pachyderm Blogging III

This is opening night of the festival? Kerik, police officers, fire department union members in Milwaukee, Zainab Al-Suwaij, and then the crescendo of McCain and Giuliani?

Who said the GOP had no star power? If this is foreplay, I am a dead man!

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:38 PM 0 comments

I Got Your Live Blogging Right Here

Sitting in the den with a laptop as you curse your wireless connection? Pah! You're a piker.

Me, I'm sitting in my office. I've deployed the T1 for its ultimate purpose: streaming media. I've got the eMac fired up and running the CSPAN live feed while I sit here and blog on my primary Windows machine.

Face it. You are a poor geek. Bow to me!

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 PM 0 comments

Pachyblogging II

I like
Coverage on CSPAN
Texas hard rock bands
Devious Karl Rove plans
And twins.

Leaders who are Dicks
Hot conservative chicks
Moving Reagan pics
And those twins.

(I think I shall have to learn to appreciate the comfort of the sofa this evening with my less-than-latent fixation.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:06 PM 0 comments

Pachyblogging

That giant blue elephant on the video screen behind the podium would be a whole lot better in 3D, ainna?

Whoa! Look out for that trunk!

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:13 PM 0 comments

Pay The Surcharge, Chicken

The corporate world proves B.F Skinner right once again. Our local Pizza Hut charges seventy-five cents for deliveries now, a cost it just appends to the top of your coupon and the tax. It doesn't break out the cost nor publicize it anywhere, but you're probably paying it.

Thanks to the phone companies, wireless companies, and all other companies who have accustomed consumers to surcharges, bogus taxes, and costs of businesses so that the advertised price represents purely the profit, and everything else is extra.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:00 PM 0 comments

Mail Call

Another Monday, another 5 unsolicited credit card offers, including 3 separate campaigns from Citibank. Gentlemen, it is my distinct pleasure to return your business reply envelopes with the terms of your offer, but not application. I consider it my small part to keep first class postal rates down and to raise your cost per customer acquisition for these campaigns.
A plea for money from George Bush. Look, George, I've given money, we're probably going to give up time and lawnspace for the campaign, but if you want more cash, you're going to have to send a picture of your daughters.

For this gambit to be effective, make sure that's addressed to Mr. Brian and not Mrs. Heather (or, as she might be again known shortly after reading this post, Miss HLI, in which case I won't have any money to give anyway).
An offer for AOL 9.0 Optimized, which proclaims right on the box, Block Spam and Web Pop-Ups. As someone who's logged into AOL 9.0 on a dial-up recently, I certainly notice the oversight that new customers won't: Web Pop-Ups doesn't say a damn thing about the six or ten AOL offers that display whenever you try to log in or log out. Those? Still in there.

An overly expensive dial-up ISP that delivers its own ads to enhance my (slow) browsing experience? Throwing this out unopened is too good for this small box.

- posted by Brian J. @ 2:29 PM 0 comments

Cheer Up, You're Still Going to Die

A man, diagnosed with HIV in 1996, discovers it was an error. Relieved? Happy? Thrilled with his reprieve? What are you thinking?

Earlier this month, Malone, 59, was summoned to his doctor's office. He listened as the doctor delivered the stunning news: He is HIV negative. The doctor acknowledged the error, writing in a letter dated Aug. 4: "As his primary care provider, I take full responsibility."

"He told me, 'We made a very big mistake. We did not do our job,' " said Malone, who is gay and has lost friends to AIDS. "I said, 'You mean to tell me that all you have to say is you are sorry? Sorry that I lived for all this time believing I was going to die?' "

How about "Sorry" and "You can keep the free parting gifts" which included:

His rent was paid in part by a county health program. Project Open Hand delivered free meals. A nurse visited him at home every two weeks.

Undoubtedly, he's more relieved than the story presents, but then the article goes into a riff about:

His misdiagnosis is rare but undisputed and shows the far-reaching damage wrought by medical mistakes and the potential for flaws in burdened health care systems.

Who's responsible? Well, since Malone's a vet, it's an example of government efficiency in health care:

Officials at the Oakland Department of Veterans Affairs' outpatient clinic where he was treated admit the mistake and have launched an investigation into what went wrong and how the error was perpetuated year after year. VA officials were taken by surprise by the Aug. 4 letter in which the doctor accepted blame and admitted the error. Malone's physician, Dr. Richard Karp, was not available to comment as the case is under investigation.

Karen Pridmore, a spokeswoman for VA's Northern California Health Care System, which has eight clinics and a medical center and serves more than 65, 000 patients, said Malone had arrived at the clinic in 1996 with lab results from an outside testing firm in Southern California. Those results showed he was HIV positive. The VA did its own confirmatory HIV test on Malone and found he was negative.

Will this albeit anecdotal evidence silence calls for socialized medicine, which I don't doubt the San Francisco Chronicle supports?

Of course not. Undoubtedly, they would have the rest of the government do it better, by....Well....Erm....

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:31 AM 0 comments

Et Tu, American Greetings?

A family member bought this card for the punchline, but didn't realize that she wasn't part of the niche market this card serves.

The cover:

Click for full size

Weapons of Mass Destruction. Money.

The inside:

Click for full size

Two things you won't find inside this birthday card.

Okay, I can see some humor in that, well, more an attempt at humor, but something. And then there's the back:

Click for full size

A caricature of George W. Bush, saying "Trust me, they're there."

So what's your point, "American" Greetings?

I suppose they're trying to cater to a hip urban crowd who's swallowed the load that Iraq didn't have weapons of mass destruction because those that have been found were just about destruction, not about destroying Catholic worship cermonies.

I've never paid much attention to greeting card manufacturers, but I know that the maker's name is listed right above the price, and I'll buy my 149 cards from Hallmark now, thanks.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:22 PM 4 comments

Book Review: You Don't Know Jack: The Book (1998)

I'd hate to reflect on what subtle secrets slip out about my character when the reader of this humble web log discovers that the last two books I have read stem from video games. However, if the reader overlooks the obvious mental deficiencies of such a reviewer....wait, you're already here.

Okay, this book represents a quiz book, ten "games" of ten questions each. It's based on the video game series which featured, as far as I understand it, a host named Jack who was a cynical, smart-mouthed character, much like the ironic characters iconified in the television show Seinfeld. This particular book was laid out like someone eviscerated a copy of Wired magazine, with hip fonts, bright colors, and 128 snarky pages to cover 100 questions.

But if you can pick it up for less than a buck at a yard sale, go for it. It'll help you sharpen up for those unexpected trivia nights where you're confronted with Hugh Hewitt, James Lileks, and Michael Nedved on a team without Michael Savage to handicap them.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:30 PM 0 comments

Book Review: The Dig by Alan Dean Foster (1996)

Alan Dean Foster has done the novelizations for many movies, including the Alien series and Outland. So what's the next challenge for an author like that? How about a video game novelization?

The Dig comes from the video game of the same name which ran right nicely on Windows 3.11 or Windows 95 boxes. Still, the storyline follows an archetype I like: a strange interstellar artifact shows humans that a greater intelligence exists. 2001, Ringworld, Rendezvous with Rama used the same conceit (although I think the Commodore 64 game Rendezvous with Rama came after the book).

When a strange asteroid falls into a slowly decaying orbit, NASA and the EU send up a shuttle mission to nuke the asteroid into a stable orbit. Once the astronauts successfully stabilize the asteroid, the commander, a scientist, and a journalist visit the surface for a moment of study and sample gathering. They discover what appear to be manufactured components on the surface and when they explore further, the asteroid activates and transports the trio to a far off planet, where they're confronted with a number of puzzles, locations to explore, and objects to manipulate.

It's not that bad, actually; certainly, since I know it's built from a game, I know to look at it in that context, and I spent a lot of time (well, a couple of brain cycles) thinking about its impact, but the novel's an interesting, enjoyable read, and I didn't spend almost a decade reading almost 2000 pages to find out that the ultimate point is that it's all an idle experiment of God's (curse you, ACC!)

In a related note, the synergy worked. After buying this book at a reduced price second-hand, I've won an auction for this game on eBay (for $2.00) for this game. Now, I'll retrofit one of my older PCs with the appropriate operating system and I'll enjoy the adventure of Boston Low (voiced by T2's Robert Patrick). Unfortunately, the media blitz worked almost ten years too late, in a post-shuttle, post 1990s world where the social structures and international cooperation illusions are ancient alien artifacts of their own.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:43 PM 0 comments

Mischaracterization

According to Jeff Gordon's Tipsheet, Michael Vick said this in Maxim magazine (the interview's not available online):

"Yeah, some people think blacks can't make good QBs. It's that Rush Limbaugh (stuff). But it doesn't matter – black, white, or purple – all I wanted was a chance to prove them wrong."

But that's not what Rush said:

"I think what we've had here is a little social concern in the NFL. The media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well,'' Limbaugh said. "There is a little hope invested in McNabb, and he got a lot of credit for the performance of this team that he didn't deserve. The defense carried this team."

Let's break it down. Limbaugh said:

The media wants black quarterbacks to do well.
They hope McNabb will do well, so they gave him more credit than he deserves.
The Philadelphia Eagles defense contributes more to the team's success than McNabb.

Rush Limbaugh did not say that blacks cannot make good quarterbacks. But since he's Rush Limbaugh, other people can put whatever racist words they want into his mouth, and everyone should simply nod and cluck, I guess.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:20 PM 2 comments

The Anti-Lileks Speaks

As a rule, I don't read Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch because I find him droll, uninformed, and pointless. But I couldn't resist today's offering because it deals with my industry: Computer field leaves veterans out in the cold:

Twenty-five or so years ago, a lot of really smart, forward-thinking people studied computer science. These were people who recognized that computers were going to change the way the world does business. But revolutions have a way of turning on their own, and this one has been no exception. Many of those smart, forward-thinking people are now out of work, increasingly desperate, their careers in shambles.

Cue the violins.

One is a woman with a master's degree in information management. She has been out of work for almost three years. She gave up job hunting last summer because it's just too depressing. She told me she sent out more than 300 resumes and got only a handful of interviews. She is approaching 50.

"Older workers are finding themselves shut out of the I.T. market," she told me.

Must be ageism. Except:

I got some insight from a fellow I visited this week. He, too, is out of work, but he is still looking. He graduated from college about 20 years ago. Early on, the job market was terrific. Everybody needed computer people. A few years ago, though, there was a seismic shift in the job market. Everybody still needed information technology, but instead of hiring the I.T. workers as permanent employees, businesses hired them as contract employees. They were hired for specific projects. Remember the Y2K panic? Those were good days for computer people. Still, the shift to contract work was ominous for two reasons.

First, you couldn't settle in with a company. You had to be constantly rehired, and each time you had to be rehired, you were competing with younger people, competitors who were not only willing to work for less but whose knowledge was more current.

For instance, the fellow I visited this week told me the computer language of his day was COBOL. Apparently, that is as out of date as Sanskrit. Oh sure, he has gone to night school and tried to learn the hot new languages like Java and JavaScript, but companies want people with work experience in the new skills - exceptions made for recent grads - and how can you get experience if you can't get hired?

Not a lot of work out there for blacksmiths these days, either, but undoubtedly that's an upcoming Bill McClellan column.

The second problem with contract work is outsourcing. So many computer jobs go to India these days. Recently, we were having a problem with a computer at home, and my wife called for help. She spoke with a young man in New Delhi.

I mentioned outsourcing to the fellow I visited, and he said it isn't just outsourcing. American companies bring Indian workers to this country, he said.

This was clearly a difficult subject for him. He's an educated man, and he did not want to appear xenophobic. I don't blame the Indians for taking advantage of opportunity, he said. But still, it's difficult to know that our jobs are going to foreigners, and we can't find work, he said. All the big companies are doing it, he said.

Those violins crescendo.

The fellow I visited has worked for a number of the big companies here - Angelica, Anheuser-Busch, BJC - and he's had a pretty good run of it. In his last job, which lasted five years, he made $70,000 a year, and he got benefits, too, because he works through a consulting firm, kind of a high-end Manpower place. But now he's out of work. He's got house payments and a child in high school. He doesn't know what he's going to do.

Come on, McClellan, you're not spinning any fresh cobwebs here. You know, if you're going to try to make it through a career in the IT industry, you're going to have to keep your skills up to date, mostly on your own, as you zig-zag through a number of positions. Contract work does suck, but within those contracts, you have to take whatever opportunity you have to expand your skill set on your own. Or just don't do contract work for a consulting company.

If you're a good worker, smart and skilled, you should have a network of people who'll keep you up on job opportunities and shouldn't have trouble finding work. Unfortunately, whenever I read these people, I see a parade of Dilbertian Wallies, looking for jobs where they can punch the clock and collect exhorbitant paychecks for forty years and then retire with a pension, or at least a healthy 401K, and that's just not going to happen any more.

You've got to fend for yourself, and keep yourself fresh. Hop jobs, don't incur too much debt, and don't plan on your income remaining the same or growing perpetually. Start your own company if you have to. COBOL Commandoes. You'd certainly have that niche market covered.

Or you could become a newspaper columnist for the Post-Dispatch. Apparently, there you can stagnate and keep getting paid for it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:32 PM 0 comments

Tell Us About What You've Done with What You Have

I cannot fathom why John Kerry chose this Vince Lombardi in Green Bay:

In arguing for different budget priorities than Bush's tax cuts, Kerry quoted legendary Green Bay Packers football coach Vince Lombardi as saying: "Who you are depends on what you do with what you have."

Help me while I try to keep the universe from imploding from the sheer paradox.

John Kerry, personally, has parlayed his wealthy birth and finishing school life into marriage to not one, but two wealthy women and a lifestyle which the common man cannot even dream of with any detail.
John Kerry, politically, belongs to the party better served by the quote "Who you are depends on what you do with what the government leaves you of what you had, or what you do with what the government gives you of what it has taken from those who had it."

Kerry should have instead quoted, "Winning isn't everything, winning is the only thing."

- posted by Brian J. @ 2:03 PM 0 comments

So-Called Watch

Adam Entous of Reuters shows Matthew Hoye or Phil Hirshkorn the true power of this fully-operational battle idiom:

Democrat John Kerry will dispatch two fellow Vietnam veterans to President Bush's secluded Texas ranch on Wednesday to press him to condemn television advertisements accusing Kerry of lying about his wartime service.

The move comes one day after it was disclosed that a top lawyer for Bush's re-election campaign has been providing legal advice to the group behind the ads, the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.

You see how it casts aspersions on the group's name even though it's allegedly only modifying the name?

A piece of dirty trick writing art!

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:48 AM 0 comments

Hijinks Not Yet a Felony, But Raise Revenue for City

So today's "Child drives off in car" story is brought to you from East St. Louis, Illinois:

A 5-year-old East St. Louis boy slid into the driver's seat of his uncle's Cadillac Sunday afternoon, put on his seatbelt, turned the key and drove off.

But he didn't go far. Four blocks later -- with his mother in pursuit in her car -- the boy crashed the car into a fence.

He was not injured but police gave the boy tickets for driving without a license and without insurance.

Hey, no harm done, and the police raise some revenue for the local coffers, which we metro resident know are pretty thin on the East Side, although these days we're no longer hearing reports of thieves stealing radios from police cars and the police being unable to replace them. Good on ya, ESL. It's due to creative financing like ticketing a boy for driving without a license and without insurance. Unfortunately, he buckled up and did not reach an interstate, where driving too long in the left lane is a revenue-stream offense in Illinois.

But wait! The ESL tins are more creative than you would think!

Lenzie Stewart, chief of detectives, said the uncle had turned off the car when he came over to visit the boy's mom, Kia Haynes, in the 700 block of Post Place. But he left the keys in the ignition.

"Mother came out, saw him driving down the street, jumped in her car and pursued him and had him pull over to the side. When he did, he hit the fence," Stewart said.

Haynes called police after the crash and took responsibility for what happened. As a result, she was ticketed for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Stewart said.

She called the police herself and said this harmless madcap adventure was her fault, and the helpful ESL tins helped their city meet their payroll by giving her an extra ticket for it.

I am too laid back to be in law enforcement or the legislature.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:48 PM 0 comments

In Defense of the Electoral College

Key Monk defends the electoral college system with better reasoning and eloquence that I have.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:03 PM 0 comments

The Chosen Language

Slashdot links to this piece: Top Reasons Why People Think Java Un-Cool - Debunked.

Oddly enough, those ten reasons tend to include things like "Java is so easy to use" and "Java is mainstream" and "Java's not geeky enough." Mmm-hmmm.

Funny how the reasons that Java has been considered uncool are also its marketing strengths. Speaking as a QA person and a developer who's worked in several Java shops, I'd posit its uncoolness on its non-robust interface APIs which lead to clunky, good-for-1984 user interfaces which, oddly enough, did not play nicely with the dominant operating system. If you're a Java geek, working from a Linux command line, any window (or frame or panel) looks usable, but a functionary sitting at a desktop trying to do his or her job as easily and as quickly as possible, without handy stack traces, would probably disagree.

What's my point? Java's okay for middleware, but its interfaces have not been cool and as far as I have seen haven't yet gotten cool.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:48 PM 0 comments

The Obvious Joke

CNN Headline: Report: Raptors euthanized in error

Obvious punchline: Perhaps they mistook them for the Bucks.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:33 PM 0 comments

Coming Soon: The Australian Tupperware Ban

After all, Tupperware parties can lead to mayhem.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:17 PM 0 comments

Another American Failure in the Gulf

Foolish American imperialists cannot make the air conditioners stay on in Bahrain.

It's a quagmire!

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:00 PM 0 comments

Was That a Rhetorical Question?

Also from the same Steinberg column discussed below:

How the Republicans could have imagined there would be any upside in questioning John Kerry's Vietnam record is a mystery. Doesn't it all boil down to this: Kerry went to war and President Bush didn't? Frankly, if Kerry had responded to combat by flinging away his gun and hiding in tears under a tarp on his swift boat, it wouldn't erase the overarching fact that he put himself in harm's way for his country, while Bush hid behind the privilege that was to eventually deposit him, blinking and amazed, into the White House.

Not unless you're purposefully trying to oversimplify the matter.

Oh, I guess that's what he's trying to do by removing the context of each's service.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:35 PM 2 comments

Steinberg Lost

In his latest column, Steinberg muses:

Why is Barack Obama an African American?

He presents himself that way, based on his father being a Kenyan immigrant. But his mother was a white woman from Kansas. Why couldn't he just as easily decide he is a white man? Why does the black half trump the white half?

The answer has nothing to do with appearances, or affirmative action, or cultural pride, nothing to do with exotic Africa proving a more appealing back story than the bland wheat fields of Kansas. It doesn't have anything to do with Obama specifically -- anyone with a black parent and a white parent is thought of as black. Why is that?

The answer is: because of our unconscious reflection of 19th century racist attitudes, where one drop of "corrupting'' blood -- be it black or Jewish or whatever -- is enough to put you into a certain racial camp. Obama's great-grandfather could be black, and that would be enough to make him black. It is indeed the logic of plantation owners, accepted unthinkingly by a society that would otherwise reject it. A form of reasoning, I might add, all-too-gladly taken up by some activists, eager to pump their numbers and prestige. Thus Obama -- and Halle Berry, and Tiger Woods and anyone else of mixed parentage -- doesn't get a say in how their heritage is viewed. The choice is already made for them.

Mind you, I'm not blaming Obama. He didn't invent this. But I do think it is worth noting that we are using a very old scorecard when it comes to race, and as our society moves into the blended, multiethnic mix it is certain to become, we're eventually going to have to come up with something new, and finally set aside the whole idea of "blood," the biblical notion of viewing people through the prism of their parents and their parents' parents, and instead see them for who they actually are. Finally judging them not, as Dr. King said, by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

He helpfully muddies African-American, which would denote origin, with black, which descibes skin color and is sometimes associated with origin, race, or ethnic heritage.

Blackness is more meaningless than any hyphenation which ends in -American because the second at least indicates that the noun modified by the adjective had the good taste to join those of us born here.

So, to recap: Is Barack Obama black? Look at him. Is he African-American? Second generation, so only by heritage. Is he a good man? Seems okay in character, but somewhat wrong on his philosophy.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:27 PM 0 comments

Be There, Do That

Buy the t-shirt:

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:21 PM 0 comments

Lileks on Lake

James Lileks follows in my footsteps and watches the movie This Gun for Hire.

Veronica Lake was sompthin, ainna?

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:53 PM 0 comments

My Time is Coming

All six of you daily readers knew it before I did, but this blog will take me to success. Why, just today I received this recognition in my Hotmail Junk E-Mail folder:

Dear Webmaster,

I am writing to you because I am exchanging links with some of the best
business related websites on the web, and I want to exchange reciprocal
links between your site http://stlbrianj.blogspot.com/ and my site.
http://www.

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is a leader in its industry. We
have thousands of people visit our website each day looking for franchising and
small business information in their desired category. This will provide
a valuable resource for each of our readers and will be instrumental in
building traffic for both of our sites. I look forward to hearing from you soon
so that we can both
begin to enjoy the benefits of the exchange.

Sincerely,

Angela Tidwell

PS- If you are interested in Pursuing a Link Exchange with our site Please feel
free to use the information below.Also please send me your information as well
as the exact location of my link and I will have your link placed and confirmed
within 48 Hours. If you're not interested and wish to not be contacted again
please just let me know and I will promptly remove you from my contacts.
TITLE:Franchise
URL:http://www.

.com
DESCRIPTION:

has one of the best franchise directories
and most comprehensive franchise listings in the business.

If I only roll over and play stupid, I could be a meaningless classified ad in the back of an online version of a free-pickup magazine destined to fold after a single ill-conceived issue. Man, I am lucky to have this opportunity!

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:04 PM 0 comments

What's Wrong With This Story?

AFP, which stands for "Agents of France Posse", reports Blair refuses to accept US award, by which they mean the Congressional Medal of Honor:

BRITISH Prime Minister Tony Blair is refusing to fly to the US to receive a medal bestowed on him by the nation for his support over last year's Iraq war, a London newspaper reported today.

US President George W. Bush has put huge pressure on his closest ally to pick up the Congressional Medal of Honour in person, the

said, quoting a senior British government source.

Well, that senior source can (how would a silver-tongued sub-Continental bureacrats understand it?) SMEG OFF. Tony Blair cannot recieve a Congressional Medal of Honor. Period. Source this to the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, whose word I would trust over some government functionary leaking to the French any day:

The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in action against an enemy force which can be bestowed upon an individual serving in the Armed Services of the United States. Generally presented to its recipient by the President of the United States of America in the name of Congress, it is often called the Congressional Medal of Honor.

The only way he could get it would be if he really were a bona fide US operative. Is that what they're "admitting" here?

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:53 PM 0 comments

So-Called Watch

Reader Cagey sends in this example of so-called on CNN: Bush adviser quits after appearing in swift boat ad:

As a so-called 527 group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is barred from coordinating efforts with an election campaign.

Unfortunately, the authors of this enlightened piece do not actually misuse so-called correctly. Matthew Hoye or Phil Hirshkorn (Hi, fellows! I know you're going to Google yourselves sometime!) uses so-called as a synonym for what is known as or also known as, which shortcuts the true power of the idiotm.

No, fellows, to properly use so-called to denigrate the noun it modifies, to diminish and sneer with journalistic "sophistication" by using this term, you should have written:

As a 527 group, Swift Boat so-called Veterans for so-called Truth is barred from coordinating efforts with a so-called election campaign.

Behold the true power!

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

Overheard in the Den

During the Olympics women's swimming events:

Beautiful Wife

Husband

Beautiful Wife

Husband

I blame John Cole.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:06 PM 0 comments

Book Review: In the Clearing by Robert Frost (1962)

I bought this book at a yard sale some years ago, and I've decided recently to add a volume of poetry to my mix of books on my nightstand (after my experience with the book of Leonard Cohen's selected poems). So I read this book.

It's only 100 pages of primary material, and doesn't represent a collection of material showing a poet's evolution. Hence, I could enjoy it and the poems within it much more easily and much more viscerally than I could something with footnotes or 40 page introductions indicating why the poet was good.

Oddly enough, Robert Frost published this book in 1962, which is within the span of years contained within the four volumes in the Leonard Cohen selection (1956-1968). Cohen's material seems much more contemporary and Frost's more archaic, but the lack of "sophistication" belies some powerful poetry.

Frost rhymes almost exclusively, and any serious poet who attended college gets that beaten out of them pretty effectively (and unserious poets rarely bother). So a contemporary reader, even I, can find himself or herself pooh-poohing the rhymes as unsophisticated. Sometimes, they are; he rhymes US with Russ (for Russian) at one point. I gave that up early in college, and prefer to work a little harder to make rhymes work.

But if you spend too much time carping about the rhymes and the simplicity of the language of the poems, you miss out on Frost's ability to nail a phrase or line that captures something of human experience that you'll want to quote and that his simplistic poems often have deeper meanings below the surface that you can fathom without a copy of the Oxford English Dictionary and certain material related to the Kabbalah.

So read more Frost. I knew once that it was good (high school, before I became more "educated" in my poetry tastes) and now again.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:59 PM 0 comments

The Benefits of a Classical Education

I love it when I get an allusion made by some author, whether it's Robert B. Parker or Varifrank, who quotes:

It's not like John Kerry hasn't tried to run for President before, and got nowhere, not even out of the early democrat primaries. He's been

for some time, and he's a not exactly a stunning member of the Senate, he barely makes any kind of presence.

That's Sir Walter Scott. I can almost quote the complete couplet.

Just don't tell my mother-in-law, the former English teacher whom I impressed at our first meeting by reciting "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", that I know this particular quote because, in the movie Groundhog Day, Andie MacDowell's character Rita recites it to Bill Murray's character Phil Conners and she attributes it. Knowning how I know what I know often spoils the illusion.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:32 PM 0 comments

Free Slogan

For Franzio's boxed wine:

It's as close as you're going to get to having a beer tap, Chester.

Why am I drinking boxed wine? Because I bought it as a joke for Atari Party 5 and the joke's on me--nobody else touched it.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:20 PM 0 comments

Book Review: Nightmare in Manhattan by Thomas Walsh (1950)

I can't believe I read the whole thing.

I bought a copy of this book for $2.95 at Downtown Books, and I was in the mood for a good older (pulp, noir) book after watching Call It Murder, a movie I got as part of a Humphrey Bogart movie box set and which Humphrey Bogart gets first billing only because his last name begins with a B. So after watching a poor transfer of a decent play turned into a bad movie, I picked this book up. Nertz. I deserved it, I suppose.

This book won the Edgar Award in 1951 for best first mystery novel. Apparently, the author was a widely-published short story writer, and the back cover explains that he's an expert craftsman who doesn't like a single waste word. Unfortunately, you can flip the book open to any page and find wasted words, impersonal expressions, extraneous adverbs, and everything else.

If this book served as our only artifact, we might assume that 1949 preceded the important invention of dialog. Open this book and just look at the text, and you might think you're looking at a Russian novel or an academic piece of nonfiction. Long paragraphs fill out the pages, with nary a line of spoken dialog between--and when the characters speak, they speak in paragraphs.

These two factors alone would deprive a book of pacing, but that's not all. Walsh apparently conducted his research into the Manhattan train depot, the primary setting of the novel, because he spends pages upon pages describing its environment and its back corridors. Whereas I like glimpses behind the scenes of different business/industrial scenes, Walsh pours these wordy descriptions into even climactic action scenes. The antagonist should run down a corridor. That's all I need to see. I don't need to know what rooms branch from the corridor, or how high the windows in the corridor are, or upon what rooms the other doors open. Just get the antagonist down the corridor.

Walsh also uses a poor device to try to build suspense, wherein he cuts between the cardboard characters, some of whom are lucky enough to be distinguished by their archetypes but others are only different in name, just as an important event is going to happen. Short cuts might prove interesting and suspenseful if the reader could tell the characters apart or cared about the characters. However, when the clock sits at twelve minutes to noon and these cut scenes stretch into paragraphs and dialogless pages of characters reflecting that they're scared/anxious/nervous because the upcoming event is important amid meticulous recounting of the staircases and balconies of the train station, the reader just wants to fast forward those twelve minutes so that over the course of ten pages, something important will happen.

Perhaps I'm a jaded modern reader who doesn't appreciate the important ground broken by this crime novel. But I do know that pulp fiction published at the same time had more at stake than this book. The plot: kidnappers, amusingly spelled kidnapers in this book (obviously, it preceded the common spelling of the crime), kidnape a child and hold him ransom for (pinky to mouth) fifty thousand dollars!. A tough transit cop and his superiors want to find the kidnapers before they kill the child. Russeted onto the story, we have an understated love interest in the secretary of the businessman whose son was kidnaped. Also, we have the train station, which is not personified and doesn't become a character in any sense like Ray Chandler would do to LA or Ed McBain would do to The City.

The plot, really, is secondary to the mind numbing description and language. One cannot escape them, and indeed I didn't so much read this book as rubberneck the wreck it became.

One last thought, and pardon me while I spoil the climax for you. The only mirth I derived from this book I found in the climactic thirty page final chase, wherein the tough cop mortally, or at least seriously, wounds the bad guy with a gunshot to the upper chest, and the villian leaps from a balcony and runs through a door into empty office spaces in the train depot, and falls down some stairs, runs down a corridor, falls down more steps, leaps out of the way of a train when he finds himself in a tunnel, and then almost makes it back to the child to kill him. The legions of law enforcement, meanwhile, cannot find where this fellow went. Because apparently, in 1950, they had not yet invented bleeding profusely.

I don't think it was supposed to be funny, but during those thirty pages of climax, I had a lot of time to enjoy the absurdity.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:49 AM 0 comments

So-Called Watch

Another alleged "professional" writer deploys the bane of my existence. Eleanor Clift, writing in Newsweek, uses "so-called" to disparage something:

The fact that Kerry attributed the breakdown in military discipline to the policymakers in Washington is lost on these men, who take Kerry’s words personally. This is not about Kerry’s performance in Vietnam; it’s what he said when he came home. Kerry has never made extravagant claims about his heroism in Vietnam. He never said his wounds were serious, and he never said he didn’t want to get out of Vietnam. After three wounds, under military rules, he was entitled to ship out, which he did after a combat tour of four months and 12 days. Nothing these so-called Veterans for Truth have come up with contradicts what Kerry has said, but that’s not the point.

Come on, Eleanor; so-called makes your prose sound more juvenile than your content does. It's "talk to the hand" or "whatever"; if you say so-called past age 23, your development has arrested.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway, where James Joyner thoroughly fisks Clift's column.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:43 PM 0 comments

Which of the Five Ws Is This?

Here's the beginning of a story on CNN.com entitled Missing Arkansas girl found dead:

The body of a 7-year-old girl missing since Sunday was found Thursday night in a northeastern Arkansas field not far from where her shoes and pink bicycle had been recovered days earlier.

The family's pastor, the Rev. Stephen Chitman, said police searching among corn and soybean fields found the body of Patricia Ann Miles, who disappeared Sunday morning after riding her bike to a grocery store. Television footage showed family members wailing after officers told them about her death.

Can anyone here tell me why the journalist who wrote this piece saw fit to include a detail about television coverage of this story, particularly an invasive convention widely deplored?

Just what do they teach in journalism schools these days?

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:26 AM 0 comments

Litigation Pool

Walter Olson at Overlawyered speculates on upcoming litigation after Hurricane Charley.

This sounds like the perfect opportunity for a pool!

Lawsuit	1 month	2-3 months	4-6 months	7-12 months	13-24 months	Over 2 years
Sue Vietnam over continued attacks from Charley.
Sue Alabama, Georgia for not allowing Florida penninsula to retract northward to safer location.
Sue Catholic Church for God's wrath impacting the innocent as well as the guilty.
Sue Chinese entomologists for not controlling their butterflies.			Brian J.
Sue President Bush, Governor Bush for allowing Illuminati to perpetrate this disaster.
Sue Chicago; the Windy City and its jealousy are behind this somehow.
Sue landscapers for putting those dangerous trees in places where they can fall, split, break, or otherwise endanger people or property.		Brian J.
Sue automakers, except for Hummer, for not making vehicles heavy enough.
Sue utility companies for piping/transmitting dangerous gases/electricity through residential neighborhoods.

$5.00 gets you a square. Pick the lawsuit and timeframe in which you think it will be filed.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:27 AM 0 comments

Answers to Trivia Questions

Here are the answers to some trivia questions soon to be asked:

Samantha Fox
Bright Lights, Big City
David Hartmann and Joan Lunden
Walter Mondale, Geraldine Ferraro, Lloyd Bentsen, Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, Joe Liebermann, John Edwards
Teen Wolf Too
Nancy McKeon
The Satanic Verses
Here's Boomer
Yemen
Texas Instruments home computers and Jello gelatin desserts.

Feel free to think up your own and to join me in studying to ensure dominance in trivia nights ten years' hence.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:18 AM 0 comments

Welfare, Please

I hate it when rich capitalist developers aren't too proud to beg for tax money:

Schnuck Markets Inc. plans to close its only store in East St. Louis, but the company has extended the store's life for another 30 days while a developer tries to buy the building and negotiate a more favorable lease that would allow the store to remain open.

Clayton developer Jim Koman has the property at 25th and State streets under contract, but wants financial assistance from East St. Louis and the state of Illinois before closing on the property, which is held in a trust with a Belleville bank.

"If we don't get some kind of support, it will be difficult for us to make this transition," said Koman, the president of Koman Properties. And, he added: "We don't have an agreement with Schnucks."

So the only thing he's guaranteeing is that he'll take the tax dollars.

It's not even begging, it's extortion, and deals like this give capitalism its slightly darker tint. Unfortunately, city and state officials enable this stupidity when they spend the people's money to ensure that developers with their own millions in liquid cash don't have to risk anything to turn a profit.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:48 AM 0 comments

Headline of Tomorrow

Germany appeals to United Nations:

Make the Americans occupiers stay in our country.

President Kerry: Our Allies Need Our Troops to Support Humanitarian Missions

Our Military Spending Props Up Important Progressive States

Germany Blindsides France With Another Invasion

Seeks to Cure Unemployment with Military Adventure, Hostile Domestic to Occupation by American Imperialists

Make your own. Here's the starter kit: Germans Wary of U.S. Troop Withdrawal .

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:01 PM 0 comments

Candidates for Me, But None for Thee

Steve Chapman comes out in favor of eliminating the electoral college. Because, I think he argues, it doesn't empower individual states. And:

Another claim is that this system upholds federalism and decentralization. In fact, no state government would find itself weaker without the Electoral College, because it confers no meaningful authority on state governments.

Nor does it protect small states, which are granted proportionally more votes than large ones. Residents of Delaware and Idaho have no discernible common interests merely because they happen to live in small states. New York and Texas are both big states but, trust me, they don't feel a deep and special bond because of that. Americans vote on the basis of ideology, religion, race, economic concerns and the personal appeal of the candidates, not on some hazy "state" interest.

Most small states, in fact, get zero attention. During the 2000 general election campaign, says Edwards, only six of the 17 smallest states were visited by either presidential candidate. Many bigger ones (like Illinois) also got shortchanged--and are getting similar treatment this year.

Why? Because of the Electoral College. John Kerry will get millions of votes in Texas, but none of its electoral votes. No matter what Kerry does in California, he's almost guaranteed its electoral votes. Neither he nor President Bush has any incentive to waste much time in those places. They focus instead on the few states where the outcome is in doubt. Under a direct election, by contrast, candidates would go where the votes are--giving most Americans actual exposure to the campaign.

The electoral college preserves federalism, and although it doesn't give any small state a lot of power, it does ensure that presidential candidates pay attention to regions comprised of small states. Make no mistake about it, if the candidates only had to pander to the interests of the populous coastal states and not to the Midwest, the plains, and much of the South, they would not--and our government would tip further to a rule by the coastal elite, who don't care if gas taxes go to ten dollars a gallon because they live in small states where if they trip in Maryland, they bang their heads in Delaware, or who think eliminating all guns is noble because they won't be called upon to reason with a bobcat or a bear.

But Steve Chapman lives in Chicago, which would be the lone visit between coasts for candidates, and I guess he wants his exposure to them.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:14 PM 0 comments

Who Put Miller Park in Athens?

Empty Olympic stadiums set off alarm bells

Games chiefs ready to give away tickets

On the bright side, at least Athens didn't mortgage its future to build an empty stadium. Oh, wait....

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:41 AM 0 comments

Oh, Canada

Police want you to pay for their wire taps:

Canada's police chiefs propose a surcharge of about 25 cents on monthly telephone and Internet bills to cover the cost of tapping into the communications of terrorists and other criminals.

Swell. So once again, the phone companies get a new surcharge to charge everyone to pay for something that only a few will use. And police want to make it so.

(Link seen on /..)

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:27 AM 0 comments

Joke

This woman, who's a real *UNT, told me this joke today:

An old woman, watching the news, sees the traffic report and calls her husband, who's on his way home. "Honey, be careful on 270, they say there's someone driving the wrong way."

He says, "One? There's hundreds of them!"

My mother's sister is so spunky. When used regarding a six-year-old, that adjective's just precious. Applied against anyone over fifty, the adjective's condescending and ALMOST SEEMS TO BE SPOKEN SLOWLY AND LOUDLY, have you noticed?

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

And Brian Is Shamed

Only 45.36489% geek on the Inner Geek Geek Test.

However, now that I know what to study for it, I will do better next time.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:26 PM 0 comments

Oprah's Big Day In Court

From CNN:

Oprah Winfrey was expected to make an appearance at the Cook County Criminal Court -- for jury duty.

A spokeswoman for the talk-show host confirmed Friday that Winfrey would report Monday.

She won't get picked for a jury, but it's good to see she's doing her civic duty when she could have easily gotten off.

- posted by Brian J. @ 2:19 PM 0 comments

Blogging Through a Hurricane from a Safe Distance

Instapundit's keeping track of nutbars blogging in the path of a hurricane.

Nutbars!

Listen, boys and girls, I read Condominium, and I have effectively, pre-emptively evacuated myself to the middle of the country for the duration of every hurricane season and, just in case, all of the other seasons as well.

Oh, sure, you more worldly types laugh, but I still remember the fear of a seven-year-old young man in 1979 who knew just enough geography and just little enough meteorology to fear Hurricane David. Don't worry, his supportive mother said, hurricanes only occur on the ocean. But I had enough imagination to suspect hurricanes could come up the Gulf of Mexico, up the Mississippi River like a steamer, and then across the state of Wisconsin to imperil me in Milwaukee.

Sure, some of you laugh at the notion, and my therapist tells me that I, too, will someday find humor in it.

But not yet.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:27 AM 0 comments

Marine Corps Bumper Stickers

Strategy Page has a list of Marine Corps bumper stickers. Check them out.

Yes, I mean you, Mom.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:23 AM 0 comments

News Producers on the Other Side of the Line

So if you or I lip off to a TSA official at the airport, we're going to prison for a couple years for some handy felony or another.

So these two men show up in full "I Am A Terrorist" regalia at a charter helicopter hangar in the St. Louis suburbs in Illinois:

Arlene Thomas grew suspicious when two men with out-of-state drivers licenses and a large wad of cash came into her Sauget helicopter hangar Wednesday morning and said they wanted to see St. Louis landmarks from the sky.

The men, whom Thomas described to police as of "Middle Eastern descent," were carrying a duffel bag and a backpack and drove up in a rental car with Texas license plates.

The signs pointed to terrorism - that's exactly the impression the two men, an NBC News producer and cameraman, were trying to create.

They're met with a warm greeting:

Thomas called police, who searched the bags and the men and found a butane lighter, box cutter, two knives, duct tape, a powdery substance and a bottle filled with a clear liquid. The men also had maps of New York, Chicago, San Francisco and St. Louis with major landmarks highlighted in yellow.

But because they're news people, they're special:

Four hours later, the NBC employees were released without charges but with the wrath of airport director Bob McDaniel.

"I'm absolutely outraged that NBC News is out here trying to create news rather than report news," McDaniel said after meeting with members of the Transportation Security Administration. "This clearly scared the hell out of a lot of folks and wasted a lot of valuable resources, tying up emergency forces, and all of it was entirely unnecessary."

NBC defends its actions:

NBC defended its actions in an e-mail statement to the Post-Dispatch, saying that the employees did nothing wrong in determining the security measures at helicopter charter services.

"Nothing they did or carried was illegal," said NBC spokesman Allison Gollust. "In Illinois, the system worked and ... our reporting will include this part of the story, evidence that civilians like those in Illinois are making attempts to keep the skies safe."

Spare us the sanctimony, hey? You're pissing in the pool of resources and are diminishing the vigilence of the population by making them wonder, hey, is that a terrorist, or just a national news media exposé on how small town hicks profile men who look middle eastern and who are doing perfectly legal, but suspicious, things while carrying perfectly legal, but suspicious, things.

And in your own way terrifying people for your own gain. What does that make you again?

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 AM 0 comments

Book Review: Selected Poems 1956-1968 by Leonard Cohen (1972)

This book collects four of Leonard Cohen's first volumes of poetry, including Let Us Compare Mythologies (1956), The Spice-Box of Earth (1961), Flowers for Hitler (1964), and Parasites of Heaven (1966). The book also includes some never-before seen poems, kind of like the bonus material you get on a greatest hits album. Except this collection is not greatest hits, it's all the filler material, too.

I first heard Leonard Cohen, as I am sure many of my generation did, in the film Pump Up The Volume, where Cohen sings the theme song of the protagonist. Unfortunately, the credits and the soundtrack do not credit Cohen, so all this young man got was the Concrete Blonde rendition. But I persevered and discovered the I'm Your Man album. Good album. Leonard's got a rich voice, and the songs are literary and lyrical in the best sense of the word.

So it helps to read the book with knowledge of Cohen's voice. The voice can carry much of what the words cannot.

Cohen's poems tread the mystical, where they allude to Judaica that I don't understand. Then he's throwing all sorts of Catholic imagery into the poems, which I don't understand as well, but I'm more familiar with them; I went to a Jesuit university, you know.

The best section is The Spice-Box of Earth, wherein Cohen explores relationships in greater detail than the others. I could relate more to the poems, as I was once a young man seeking to get laid by young women. I appreciate the sensual confusion in the coffeeshop pheromones and cigarette smoke. Heck, the section made me feel ten years younger. I remember longing and loss.

But even the best poets have their off poems (apparently, Emily Dickinson had 1767 of them), and unfortunately readers have to wade through them. I took from this book no other poems I could recite from memory than when I began (I could recite "For Annie" which I remembered from an anthology I'd read before I heard I'm Your Man).

But I liked the book okay. I feel smart, reading poetry in my spare time and all. So if you don't mind some free verse with a distinct coffeehouse flare, you won't mind this book.

Post script: I would never knowingly participate in a poetry slam in which Leonard Cohen took part. He's got enough A material, and he's got the voice. 'Nuff said.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:11 PM 0 comments

Another Invasive Species Threatens Ecosystem

From the New York Times: Red-Footed Falcon Debuts in Western Hemisphere:

So Mr. Laux, an ornithologist who has led birding trips all over the world, recruited island friends with telescopes and digital cameras to send images of the bird to Jeremiah Trimble, an expert birder and curatorial assistant at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. When Mr. Trimble arrived at his office on Tuesday, he looked at the photos, consulted his reference materials and left immediately for Martha's Vineyard. Mr. Laux had spotted a red-footed falcon - Falco vespertinus - the first reported in the Western Hemisphere. And now birders from all over are arriving to see it.

Undoubtedly, this single bird will eat all the tasty small rodents and will mate with the local falcons to spawn a new race of super falcons with European accents. We cannot allow this to happen. We must kill it now, and we can grill it later!

Unless it eats snakehead fish, in which case we should bring a dozen over from its native habitat so it can eat all the tasty snakehead fish and mate with local falcons to spawn a new race of snakehead-eating super falcons.

Man, I am glad I am a Republican, because being environmentally sensitive is confusing and tiring. One snakehead fish is bad, because making the local ecosystem more diverse with token representatives of outside species can ruin the delicate balance of a natural system which has survived for aeons, but a single red-headed stepchild falcon is a tourist attraction, good for the local economy.

As the partially-educated like to quote, "Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:33 PM 0 comments

No Sympathy For The Devil

Here's the teaser for Bill McClellan's latest column in the St. Louis Post-Distpatch: After 30 years, he's faced with life on the outside. So I started to read it.

Here's the heart-rending:

"I'm about ready to give up," he told me Tuesday afternoon, and I thought for a moment that he was going to cry. I asked if he were happy to be out of prison, and he shook his head.

His story was front-page stuff 30 years ago. He was 36 years old, and by all accounts, a simple man. He had a seventh-grade education. He had never been in trouble.

Man, that does sound like a rough bit. He's been in prison for a long time, and a lot of the world undoubtedly must seem strange to someone who flashed forward three particularly changing decades. I sympathized with him. Hey, armed robbery, drug dealing, maybe a repeat offense for burglary, and suddenly you're in a time warp.

Except this guy:

In November 1973, his wife left him and took their young son. Epps went to the police and filed a missing person report. He said he thought his wife's family knew where she was. A patrolman drove him to his in-laws' house, but they said they had not seen her. The patrolman took Epps back to the station, but he returned to the house and shot and killed his wife's mother and her grandparents.

End of sympathy, and shame on you, McClellan, for presenting him as a tragic figure. Yes, I see he's only had a seventh grade education and thus missed the Don't Kill Your Inlaws unit in eighth grade social studies, but I am not sparing any of my compassion on him.

Couldn't you have written about another little man who needed defending from the iniquities of the real world, McClellan?

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:52 PM 0 comments

List of Columnist Who Bill McClellan Is No

I don't normally read Bill McClellan because I think he's obnoxious, and find his columns common, predictable, and rather simplistic. It's obvious he's trying to champion the common man, but I don't care to read about most of the people whom he champions.

To make it clear, I have created this handy chart of columnists you can easily use in the sentence, "Bill McClellan is no...."

John Kass	Bob Greene	Mary Schmich	Clarence Page
Steve Chapman	Eric Zorn	Richard Roeper	Neil Steinberg
John O' Sullivan	George Will	Anna Quindlen	Mike Royko
Studs Terkel	Robert Novak	James Lileks	Mark Steyn
Jim Stingl	Whitney Gould	Mike Nichols	Andrea Peyser
Steve Dunleavy	Charles Krauthammer	Michelle Malkin	Anne Applebaum
Robert J. Samuelson	Bob Rybarcyzk	The Night Cabbie	David Nicklaus
80% of college op-ed columnists.	Catherine Galasso-Vigorito	Most Suburban Journal Opinion Shapers

That's a start.

This is the only time I am going to mention it. If I let my animosity towards other commentators eat at me, I'll start writing like Neil Steinberg.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:24 PM 0 comments

Many Layers to A Story

This story begins like a feel-good libertarian story of the year:

Two girls found the lemonade business sweeter than ever Wednesday, after the St. Louis Health Department shut their curbside stand the previous day.

Mim Murray, 10 and Marisa Miller-Stockie, 12, of St. Louis, have been selling lemonade together for three summers in their neighborhood north of Forest Park. The two friends hope to save enough to buy laptop computers before starting seventh grade in a few weeks. Last summer, they made more than $100.

But on Tuesday afternoon, a city Health Department inspector told the girls they lacked the proper business licenses and were selling unsafe ice cubes, the girls said. The girls were selling Country Time lemonade from a powder mix and store-bought ice cubes near the corner of Des Peres Avenue and Forest Park Parkway.

Yay! Laissez-faire! But wait, this is in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, so I am suspicious there must be some angle within it to turn my libertarian blood hot.

Oh, here it is:

A nearby resident, O.V. Carreathers, 48, of the 5900 block of Pershing Avenue, had complained about the stand on Friday to the city's Citizens Service Bureau. The girls took the day off on Monday, but the inspector tracked them down on Tuesday.

"I just didn't want them on my property," Carreathers said Wednesday. "I just didn't want them blocking my walkway."

Mim and Marisa said their stand had been on the grass between the rear of Carreathers' property and the parkway. They said Carreathers had threatened to spray them with a garden hose if they didn't leave.

"That's not the American way, dude," Mim said Wednesday.

Those damn kids are nothing nothing but squatters who seek to profit from using some capital owner's resources for free. Now that's a story the Post-Dispatch can trumpet. The Man takes it again! Yay, plucky pint-sized property rights usurpers!

Sounds like Mim has learned the American way, dude, and it's not her great-grandfather's American Way. Bleh. I think I am drinking too coffee, which heats my libertarian blood rather quickly.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:48 PM 0 comments

Not On His Spectrum

Rush Limbaugh's going off on Steve Chapman's column in the Chicago Tribune today, wherein Chapman goes off on Kerry's new hawkishness.

Limbaugh offers this column as a sign of the left's solidarity fraying. Limbaugh calls Chapman a liberal. Perhaps his imagination cannot fathom an isolationalist libertarian.

Poor form, Rush. Read a little more, and don't oversimplify it for your radio audience. We're not as dumb as you think we look.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:40 PM 0 comments

Man the Forward Moonbattery!

With oil prices going up and temperatures unseasonably cool, isn't it obvious to anyone else that Enroniburton has secretly reversed global warming to pump up its profits this winter?

Am I the only one connecting the dots dancing before my eyes? Come on, people, wake up!

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:15 AM 0 comments

And Your Little Dog, Too

So authorities investigate a burglary in Georgia and bust the homeowner and his son for having an AT-4 anti-tank missile and some other things that they apparently picked up hiking (illegally, of course) on the ranges at Fort Stewart. They've even been arrested on the base before. But the best part of the story is the charges levied against the pair:

The charges included illegally possessing automatic weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines, as well as harassing an endangered gopher tortoise with a Rottweiler, said Steve Hart, spokesman for Hunter Army Airfield.

Apparently, the pair had not parked illegally while conducting their expeditions onto the gunnery range.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:38 AM 0 comments

Suggested Slogan

John Kerry: It's Time for a Kurt Waldheim in America.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:54 AM 0 comments

This Is Your Plane

This is your plane on crack.

Any questions?

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

Title the New Hit "Whiteys Just Don't Understand"

Will Smith explains to a Frankfurt (Germany) newspaper:

When asked if 9/11 had changed anything for him personally, Smith answered:

“No. Absolutely not. When you grow up black in America you have a completely different view of the world than white Americans. We blacks live with a constant feeling of unease. And whether you are wounded in an attack by a racist cop or in a terrorist attack, I’m sorry, it makes no difference.”

I'm not going to write off Will Smith movies because he's an enjoyable actor, and although Hindrocket from Powerline doesn't remember, he started out as an amusing rapper.

I don't think I'll look to him for political insight, though. Or judgment, really, for joining the cavalcade of stars who make their politics known in Europe but wouldn't poke their American audiences in the eye directly.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:59 PM 0 comments

All Other Problems Apparently Solved

Apparently, having solved all other problems, the Federal government can turn its focus to guaranteeing car loans to sub-prime consumers:

Dubbed "Ways to Work," the program is run through Provident Counseling Inc., a 145-year-old St. Louis nonprofit agency involved in a wide range of social service work, from afterschool children's programs to anti-drug and alcohol counseling. In many ways, the car program offers a "last hope" for working St. Louisans who otherwise might not be able to buy and drive their own cars, said Karen Jackson, loan coordinator for the program. Provident is scheduled to officially kick off its "Ways to Work" program today, in festivities at its offices at 2650 Olive Street. ... Money to kick start the program - $345,000 - came this year from the Department of Transportation and is expected to help St. Louis-area residents buy 50 to 60 cars the first year. Jackson said the federal grant requires that Provident obtain matching "dollar-for-dollar" support from the community, either in cash or in-kind donations.

The headline? Carless can now get federal help in securing a new ride.

Make that a free ride.

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

Is Brian Media Diverse?

Over at Signifying Nothing, Chris Lawrence Takes Michelle Malkin's Media Diversity Test (original Malkin post here.) He scores 60 out of a possible 100, which indicates he's slightly more...what, Midwestern, conservative, something...than the major media.

Here's how I did:

Question	Answer	Comment
I have never voted for a Democrat in my life.	No.	I voted for Chris Liese over his competitor 4 years ago, for example, because I received a flyer at the polling place which said his competitor was in favor of strong sodomy laws. It was all I'd heard about the challenger, and it was that he was against homosexuals.
I think my taxes are too high.	Yes.	I think all taxes are too high, not just mine. The government wastes money, period, because it can always get more.
I supported Bill Clinton's impeachment.	Yes.	Perjury is a crime. Whether it's about sex, or about the color of the sky.
I voted for President Bush in 2000.	Yes.	I volunteered for the campaign and I displayed a yard sign. Of course, I supported McCain first.
I am a gun owner.	Yes.	I hate to admit it because my admission on the Internet flags me if They decide to confiscate all guns.
I support school voucher programs.	Yes.	Why not? If you think the government redistribution of wealth should be directed to a goal other than increasing the size of government, you should be, too.
I oppose condom distribution in public schools.	Yes.	Do the students need them for school? No, don't answer that.
I oppose bilingual education.	No.	I do, however, think that speaking, reading, and writing proper English are important to survive in society and oppose any education that would have students believe that speaking a tribal language inherited from their ancestors is equal to speaking a common tongue.
I oppose gay marriage.	No.	I don't think the state should deprive long term gay couples who want to commit of the same privileges granted to heterosexual couples. I don't think marriage should be a state issue. So I don't condemn religions who prohibit gay marriage, either. I'd rather the state eliminate the concept of marriage and issue Civil Union licenses used by couples when they marry in the churches of their choice. Or don't.
I want Social Security privatized.	Yes.	Actually, I want it eliminated, but if privatization is all I can get, I will take it. Somehow, though, I suspect that "a bankrupt nation, much like they enjoy in Europe" is what I will get.
I believe racial profiling at airports is common sense.	Yes.	What, ethicity counts as a special factor in college admissions, but not in anything else? Give me a break.
I shop at Wal-Mart.	Yes.	Before I accidentally married the woman of my dreams, I bought most of my new clothes at Wal-Mart. Now, though, she's informed me that better quality jeans make my butt more attactive, to her at least, so who am I to argue?
I enjoy talk radio.	Yes.	I gauge my work day by talk radio. 7-9, Weber and Dolan. 12-3, Rush Limbaugh. 5-7, Hugh Hewitt. It's entertainment more than enlightenment, come on.
I am annoyed when news editors substitute the phrase "undocumented person" for "illegal alien."	Yes.	It's small potatoes, though, to a greater problem in newsrooms across the country. They have a greater latitude to play linguistic tricks because people are less literate to identify them.
I do not believe the phrase "a chink in the armor" is offensive.	Yes.	I'm not even offended by off-handed racial epithets that target my race. If someone's speaking them to get a rise out of me, though, I will respond to the context. But it's not the words. It's the speaker using the words effectively to elicit the response he or she wants.
I eat meat.	Yes.	Well, tonight I ate fish, but it's all the same to the lower life form that I exploited for my further existence.
I believe O.J. Simpson was guilty.	No.	I don't believe anything. I wasn't there, and he was not convicted. I don't believe he's innocent, either, though, and he's got a cloud over him that I don't think is undeserved.
I cheered when I learned that Saddam Hussein had been captured.	Yes.	I'll mark this as a yes even though I didn't shout, "Huzzah!" I remember where I was, and I called out to tell Heather that they did, which is good enough for me.
I cry when I hear "Proud to be an American" by Lee Greenwood.	Give me five points.	I don't cry, but I do feel close sometimes when I hear this song depending upon the context.
I don't believe the New York Times.	Yes.	I don't believe any source of news. They all tell me some facts interspersed with their interpretations. I have to treat it with the same skepticism I treat anything anyone tells me. Less, actually, since I haven't vetted the media as well as I have vetted my closest friends.

Final score: 80/100

What does it mean? I'm different from Chris. Also, Michelle Malkin would probably think of me as a relative comsymp, much like I think of Alex Knapp of Heretical Ideas.

I guess we're diverse, which is good, ainna?

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:33 PM 0 comments

Atari Party 5: Fellowship of the Joystick Photos

In case you didn't think I had actual friends in the real world, I have posted the photos from Atari Party 5: Fellowship of the Joystick.

Of course, this could mean I married a woman with many friends, but I don't dwell on it. Too much.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:29 PM 0 comments

Book Review: Dreamcatcher by Stephen King (2001)

I can count the number of Stephen King books I've read on both hands, and it makes it much easier that I'm not a Stephen King surviving protagonist, because they never finish with 10 digits. I've read The Stand, Eyes of the Dragon, the first three books of the Dark Tower, On Writing, The Dark Half, and this book. I really like his style and his attitude, and I liked this book too.

The plot: four friends on a hunting trip encounter an alien invasion or biowarfare during a blizzard. Cripes, it would be a simple enough pitch for a movie, but undoubtedly the two hour feature couldn't begin to delve into this book.

I'm going to speak about a few things in my few paragraphs, the first of which is his style. As I mentioned previously, a horror novel is simply a fantasy novel wherein the heroes don't know they're in a fantasy novel until it's too late. That gives King the opportunity to play with the timeline, using foreshadowing and flashback to great effect. The simple, throwaway foreshadowing in the beginning of the book really draws the reader in, but King knows when the hook has been set and lays off after the first third of the book. Swell. Also, King lavishes a lot of detail on most of the characters in the book that are more than names. It really bugs the reader when the good guys die, or when they lose fingers.

Secondly, King's well read and slathers his books in allusions to popular and literate works. He alludes to Poe unself-consciously and mentions a boook by Robert Parker by name. Cool.

Also, I found this book an interesting artifact. Although King, in his author's note, talks about writing this book in November 1999 through March 2000, Bush is the president (and it's apparent that he's not well thought of by many characters). The president has to give a speech about an incident in which aliens bearing infectious and dangerous, world-conquering philosophies spores. The book is published in 2001. That's a little....creepy.

Of all contemporary mythmakers, if I had to guess whom students from the year 2200 would read from our era (assuming their studies of literature aren't limited to the Koran or Mao), I'd pick King. He's an engaging writer, he's smart, he's good at his craft, and he explores deeper human truths by transcending his genre.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:23 PM 0 comments

Post-Dispatch Math

That's some mighty smart figurin':

Brett Hull, third on the NHL's career goals list, signed a two-year contract with the Phoenix Coyotes on Friday.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The free agent forward, an 18-year veteran who starred for the Blues and spent the last three seasons with Detroit, has 741 goals -- second only to Coyotes managing partner Wayne Gretzky's 894 and Gordie Howe's 801.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:24 PM 0 comments

Sounds Like a Threat To Me

Hostage situation in Tosa: Parents protest class sizes in Tosa:

Parents and educators warned School Board members Thursday night that kindergarten teachers at several schools will be overwhelmed and children will suffer if kindergarten classes with as many as 27 students aren't reduced before school starts.

They will make the children suffer unless they get their way? What?

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:18 PM 0 comments

Steinberg Off The Wall

Neil Steinberg continues kicking Bob Greene:

There are honors I covet, as befitting the pie-pan depths of my soul. Not the standard newspaper milestones -- not the Pulitzer, God knows, not since they nearly gave it to Bob Greene.

Jeez, Louise, this absurd envy thing can only merit one response: I must quote the wise and beautiful Jem of Jem and the Holograms:

Every place you go, everywhere you turn
Someone else is movin' in,
And they're makin' time
And it's gettin' underneath your skin,
Whoa, whoa!

Doesn't it hurt?
Jealousy, baby!
Doesn't it burn?
Jealousy?
Doesn't it consume your soul?
Makin you lose control,
Jealousy!

Nothing to be said,
Nothing to be done
Someone else is in your place,
And you won't forget it
And it's hittin' you right where you live
Whoa, whoa!

Doesn't it hurt?
Jealousy, baby!
Doesn't it burn?
Jealousy!
Doesn't it grab hold of you?
Breakin' your heart in two
Jealousy!

All at once, you're wild and runnin',
Runnin' blind
Revenge, revenge, revenge
Is the one thing on your mind,
Whoa, whoa!

Doesn't it hurt?
Jealousy, baby!
Doesn't it burn?
Jealousy !
Doesn't it consume your soul
Makin' you lose control
Jealousy, jealousy, jealousy,
Jealousy!

It takes cartoonishness to fight cartoonishness.

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

Quick Reference

Horror Novel:

A fantasy novel in which the protagonists do not realize until it's too late that they're in a fantasy novel.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:51 PM 0 comments

Bistandardathon

Headline at Command Post: General Assembly President appeals for States to observe Olympic Truce.

With less than 10 days to go before the start of the Olympic Games, the President of the United Nations General Assembly, Julian R. Hunte, today appealed to all States to demonstrate their commitment to peace by observing the traditional truce during the quadrennial competition.

Fans of blowing random things up, such as Palestinians, Al Qaeda, and other non-State groups, rejoice at their apparent exemption from another UN call to action.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:34 PM 0 comments

Okay, Hijinks Now A Felony

Two lawyers play around in their office building by shooting BBs at each other, someone in another office sees and calls the cops from beneath her desk, and now they're going to get it:

Police said they discovered that two lawyers who work in the building apparently had engaged in a BB gun fight with each other. Police arrested one of them, Gary K. Burger, 37, and booked him on suspicion of flourishing a dangerous and deadly weapon, a felony. Police have not yet sought formal charges from the prosecutor's office.

It would take a greater legal scholar than I to sort through the byzantine implications of this law, such as whether brandishing a dangerous and deadly weapon is a worse crime, or whether this law covers holding ceremonial muskets or sabres over one's head when presented with it, although one suspects it could at NRA rallies.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:37 AM 0 comments

Dispatch from the Sports Wars

Speaking of a ballot initiative to prevent sale of the naming rights to Candlestick Park, a San Francisco 49ers offers this level-headed and non-hyperbolic assessment:

"I think putting this on the ballot has catastrophic consequences for the future of Candlestick Park and the future of professional sports in San Francisco," said 49ers spokesman Sam Singer.

Perhaps he needs a reminder of what a catastrophe is.

But should one even hope for better from a spokesman for a team with gold-digging right in the name?

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:55 AM 0 comments

The Wonder of Cats, Part XVII

When I say I am, when I am say I, and even when I cry the out obvious, some organic creature will respond with a meow, even if it's only hoping for a Whiskas fish-flavored chunk.

No more worrying about the furniture's silent treatment.

(Jeez, I gotta cut down on the Jeff Goldstein.)

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:09 PM 0 comments

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Wants Packer Bloggers

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is looking for bloggers to cover the Green Bay Packers this year. Those bloggers selected get a free subscription the the Packers Insider, an extra supplement to the paper for which people actually pay extra, and a trip to Lambeau.

Entry details here.

Me, I'm not entering. Even though I listen to Weber and Dolan in the mornings, including the Green Bay Grapevine on Fridays, and I read the Journal-Sentinel religiously, and I plan my autumn around the weekends when I can watch the game on television, I cannot think of three things to say about training camp. As a matter of fact, most of my blog entries about the Packers taunt Pejman or Cagey as needed.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:43 PM 0 comments

A Conspiracy of One

Once more, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski opens her mouth and shows more of her Peter Principle qualifications:

Karpinski told British Broadcasting Corp. radio that she had information suggesting officials took action to keep her in the dark about the mistreatment.

"I have been told there's a reliable witness who's made a statement ... indicating that not only was I not included in any of the meetings discussing interrogation operations, but specific measures were taken to ensure I would not have access to those facilities, that information or any of the details of interrogations at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else," Karpinski said. She didn't identify the witness.

"Correct," Karpinski responded when asked if she thought there was a conspiracy at senior level to stop her knowing what was going on.

"From what I understand ... it was people that had full knowledge of what was going on out at Abu Ghraib who knew that they had to keep Janis Karpinski from discovering any of those activities," she added.

Asked whether she thought the conspiracy reached up to the Pentagon or the White House, she said: "The indication is that it may have."

So she's telling foreign news services that her underlings, and maybe those shadowy administration figures, conspired to make her a poor leader.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:45 PM 0 comments

An Irrelevant Link

Humorist Frank J., who will probably enjoy publishing success before I do (the bastard!), pens:

Know Thy Enemy: Democrats.

Truth to power.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:48 PM 0 comments

Admission

I don't mind telling you, I will be glad tomorrow night after 7 pm when the polls close. Every time I have answered the phone today, a recording from some former political hack has greeted me, undoubtedly encouraging me to vote one way or the other.

Unfortunately, I hang up once I recognize the call for what it is.

These recorded calls insult me more than a volunteer calling me live to talk to me about their candidate or issue. I know, they occur mostly during the day when people aren't home with the specific purpose of having a recorded message engage a recording device (the answering machine). Come on, though..... I work at home, and every time your goofball devices call, I oughter bill you for an hour of my expensive consultant time.

Unfortunately, I never make it long enough into the recorded message to know whom to blame.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:06 PM 0 comments

Welcome to the Market

Last month, SalesForce.com had its IPO.

This month, the first shareholder lawsuits were filed.

If I weren't laughing, I would be crying.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:28 PM 0 comments

Drink Up That Geritol, Generation X

Duran Duran, Poison, Huey Lewis, and Whitney Houston are as fresh to kids today as Cream, Traffic, and J.J. Jackson were to us.

I SAID, DURAN DURAN, POISON, AND.... Oh, never mind, you won't remember it anyway.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:09 PM 0 comments

Sure, Blame QA

Somewhere, some project manager is undoubtedly chewing out his or her QA staff for letting this one get through:

A computer glitch grounded American Airlines and US Airways flights from coast to coast Sunday morning, causing delays that were expected to last all day.

American had its planes back up after two hours, while US Airways flights were grounded for about three.

Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said the FAA was alerted to the problem, and both carriers asked the FAA's air traffic controllers to help communicate with planes to keep them on the ground until the problems were fixed.

US Airways spokeswoman Amy Kudwa said the airline's flight-operation database malfunctioned, due to "an internal technology problem." A similar problem affected American's flight plan system, grounding about 150 flights, spokesman John Hotard said.

But hey, I bet EDS delivered the system on time, on budget, or neither, by trimming some quality assurance somewhere.

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:39 AM 0 comments