Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
 
Memo to Harry Connick, Junior

Whistles do not belong in Christmas carols, ever. Your rendition of "Frosty the Snowman" is in violation.

Please, just rein it in a little bit, or we'll have to contact Senator John McCain to enact Congressional legislation regulating Christmas Carols to prevent damn kids from destroying the traditional music enjoyed for generations in this great land. Without schnucking whistles.

(McCain's got enough time if he has the leisure to tackle steroids in baseball, speaking of which, who doesn't think that there's enough bipartisan, nationwide sport to just freaking amend the constitution to prohibit steroids and blood doping in all sports?)

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:07 PM   0 comments
 
Who Needs the European Hockey Leagues?

Apparently not some members of the St. Louis Blues, who are keeping themselves sharp during the NHL lockout by playing on a local recreational league.

It's probably doing more to promote the sport than most NHL owners have done, combined, in the last couple of decades.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:19 PM   0 comments
 
Blame the Americans

Apparently, according to several unnamed sources, obese Americans are breaking cruise ships with their weight.

Not obese passengers, but obese Americans.

I've not seen that many unnamed sources since I read a the recap of a leaked story in the New York Times.

Undoubtedly, America is to blame for earwax, belly button lint, and static cling as well.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:49 PM   0 comments
 
Anointed

In 1973, my inlaws lived in Michigan and travelled to Florida on occasion to see my mother-in-law's parents. As they passed through Wisconsin, they boarded a small plane for the final leg of their journey. An icon adored throughout upper Midwest boarded the plane with them: Green Bay Packers legend Bart Starr.

As he passed my mother-in-law, already seated and holding her child in her arms, Bart Starr patted my future wife on the shoulder and said, "Pretty baby."

Proving that he was a prophet as well, for she turned out more than pretty.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:12 AM   0 comments
Monday, December 06, 2004
 
Most Dangerous Use of a Comma

From the February 2004 issue of The Writer in a column entitled "Writers in good company" by Benjamin Cheever:
    Why did I choose to be a writer? I was born to the trade. My father was a writer, my mother is, my sister.
Whew, that was close. The fellow was one comma away from saying my mother is my sister. That's demonstrating some faith that your copy editor isn't passive-aggressive.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:05 AM   0 comments
 
Unintended Consequences?

Apparently someone in New Hampshire has determined that online sex offender registries are one-stop shopping for his vigilantism: Man defends attacks on sex offenders:
    Lawrence Trant sees himself as a righteous crusader who put muscle behind his boiling outrage against pedophiles.

    The state of New Hampshire sees Trant differently. He is serving a 10- to 30-year sentence in New Hampshire State Prison after pleading guilty to attempting to murder two convicted sex offenders whose names and addresses he found on an Internet registry posted by the state.
Check out the subtitle of the article: Crusader gets jail term.

This attempted murderer, according to the Boston Globe, is a crusader. A veritable insurgent against the prevailing orthodoxy that these people retain a number of citizens' rights to not getting shot arbitrarily by people with nothing better to do. A rebel against the system that thinks that incarceration, forced hospitalization beyond their sentences, and notoriety, and that capital punishment is too much for the crime.

I remember an outcry when a pro-dead-abortion provider Web site listed doctors who terminated pregnancy along with good stalking information for them. I imagine we'll see less uproar over a government-funded registry that provides the same convenience for other Defenders of the Defenseless Children.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:00 AM   0 comments
Sunday, December 05, 2004
 
Book Review: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (1964)

I inherited this book from my grandmother and grandfather indirectly. So I didn't pay anything for it, and the book is worth more than that.

It's a set of lessons and steps to playing well with others. Unlike other self-help tomes, this one's particularly literate. Carnegie draws on Benjamin Franklin, William James, William Shakespeare, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and other learned sources to make his points. He wrote this book originally in 1936, and it would testify to how far we've fallen as a culture if Dr. Phil only quotes luminaries such as Oprah in his books. After all, Carnegie must have expected his audience would know who William James was.

At the best of times, this book resembles all self-help books in presenting the philosophy of pragmatism, particularly in dealing with other people. Sometimes it reads like an Elements of Style for courtesy, but at its worst it strikes me as a sort of Becoming Peter Keating. After all, Carnegie would have you win friends and influence people by being pretty yang, by putting other people first and by not contradicting others directly.

I've seen too much of this behaviour from used car salesmen and marketing professionals to swallow the hook, but it's convinced me to try to temper my natural surly nature. For example, I try to keep my net Carnegie Karma positive by not saying harshly critical things about people more than I compliment people. However, some days I still net positive through accounting gimmicks, such as telling another driver that his exceptional amorous ability undoubtedly traces to practice with his matriarch, but I'm working on it.

The book sold millions of copies in an earlier, more civil age, so perhaps there is something in it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:16 PM   0 comments
Saturday, December 04, 2004
 
Extend Your Vocabulary

Brainsaver: When you close your eyes and see the game upon which you've spent too much time over the last couple of days.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:27 AM   0 comments
Friday, December 03, 2004
 
Tis the Season

For a holiday special:
    Ayn Rand's A Selfish Christmas (1951)

    In this hour-long radio drama, Santa struggles with the increasing demands of providing gifts for millions of spoiled, ungrateful brats across the world, until a single elf, in the engineering department of his workshop, convinces Santa to go on strike. The special ends with the entropic collapse of the civilization of takers and the spectacle of children trudging across the bitterly cold, dark tundra to offer Santa cash for his services, acknowledging at last that his genius makes the gifts -- and therefore Christmas -- possible. Prior to broadcast, Mutual Broadcast System executives raised objections to the radio play, noting that 56 minutes of the hour-long broadcast went to a philosophical manifesto by the elf and of the four remaining minutes, three went to a love scene between Santa and the cold, practical Mrs. Claus that was rendered into radio through the use of grunts and the shattering of several dozen whiskey tumblers. In later letters, Rand sneeringly described these executives as "anti-life."

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:24 AM   0 comments
 
The Drug is a Brand

That's what I make of this capitalization from this story about a drug bust in Wisconsin:
    Along with the arrests, police seized powder cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy, seven handguns and ammunition, seven vehicles and $25,000 in cash. Police refused to give details.
However, if that's the case, shouldn't it be:
    Along with the arrests, police seized powder cocaine, crack cocaine, marijuana, heroin and Ecstasy® 3-4 methylenedioxymethamphetamine, seven handguns and ammunition, seven vehicles and $25,000 in cash. Police refused to give details.
Ecstasy has been in the mainstream 20 years now. How long until we drop the capital E. (I mean that in the grammatical way, not as a slang for actually, you know, doing ecstasy.) No one calls white lady Heroin any more.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:54 AM   0 comments
Thursday, December 02, 2004
 
Bill Clinton: Truthteller

Those Bosnian peacekeepers will be home before Christmas.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:01 PM   0 comments
 
Seasonal Safety Reminder

Bobtails are not bobcat tails. Management cannot be held responsible if you try to affix bells to the latter.

Thank you for your cooperation.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:45 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
 
The Unspoken Clue

This article about the serial killer in Kansas known as Blind, Torture, Kill, gives numerous details about the killer that he's revealed about himself in new missives:
    According to police, BTK claims to have been born in 1939, making the killer either 64 or 65 years old. The statement did not say where he was born or where he lived, but that his family moved frequently and always lived near railroad tracks.

    BTK's communications indicate a lifelong fascination with trains, police said.

    ...


    Among other details provided by police:

    BTK's father was killed in World War II, and he was raised by his mother, with his grandparents caring for him while she was at work. When he was about 11, his mother began dating a railroad detective.

    His grandfather played the fiddle and died of lung disease.

    BTK's communications include accounts of a cousin named Susan who moved to Missouri, and of a woman he knew named Petra who had a younger sister named Tina.
Unstated, but obvious to anyone who reads too much detective fiction and dabbles sometimes in the composition of same, is this unspoken but apparent klew:

The BTK suspect is terminally ill.


Since he's only now opening up to the police after apparently going without killing anyone for 18 years and he's in his middle sixties and he's got a history of lung disease in the family.

His final mockery comes as he reveals himself on his deathbed when we cannot punish him.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:18 AM   0 comments
 
Stick Your Yellow Ribbons

Blackfive speaks about ribbon magnets for your car and suggests you put that money somewhere where it will actually help troops. I concur.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 AM   0 comments
 
A Canadian Capitalist

The Meatriarchy guy defends Wal-Mart:
    Most of the criticisms I see leveled towards Wal-Mart are not only applicable to them. But to any other store in the retail sector.
He refutes a lot of things anti-Wal-Mart forces marshal as arguments to why capitalism, or at least the concrete capitalism practiced specifically by Wal-Mart, is bad.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:36 AM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."