Whose Side Are They On?

Headline: Linkin Park donates $100K for tsunami.

The American rock and roll band give nothing for the tsunami survivors, and one hundred thousand for a tsunami itself.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:54 PM   0 comments

 
Althouse at the Art House

Ann Althouse visited the Milwaukee Art Museum and has pictures.

I saw that Masterpieces of American Art show in October and thought it was pretty good. I even took the headset for the multimedia presentation, although I only listened to one part of one snippet before deciding that the headphone presentation, with its musical interludes, sound effects, and deep-voiced narrator would have merely created the experience of a 3-d Discovery Channel presentation instead of augmenting the museum experience.

Also, they misspelled Masterpiece in the text in the player's LCD display.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:18 AM   0 comments

 
We Didn't Give

The Humane Society of the United States called the other day to drum up some extra cash in light of the tsunami in southeast Asia as part of the Relief Efforts for Animals Difficult after Catastrophic Tsunami campaign.

Compounding the human tragedy unfolding in South Asia after a massive tsunami swept across the Indian Ocean, animal victims are now beginning to emerge as well. While the impact of this natural disaster on animal populations is currently very difficult to assess, Humane Society International (HSI) and its partners in the region are working to support disaster relief efforts in the affected countries.

Undoubtedly, countless animals died and were washed out to sea by the initial tidal waves, while the bodies of thousands of others litter the beaches and fields of devastated areas, complicating the disaster relief process. The necessity of disposing of both human and animal remains to contain the spread of diseases like cholera and typhoid is still critical.

And while the relief efforts of animal welfare workers in Asia understandably remain focused on human victims of the disaster, many are preparing to spend the coming days and weeks fighting disease and helping as many victims as possible—both human and animal.

It's not a joke. To some people whose livelihoods depend upon raising funds for animal welfare, I guess this represents a reasonable opportunity to show animal compassion.

In light of the unimaginable human suffering, though, I find it crass.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:44 AM   0 comments

 
Shameless

Monday: Lautenschlager aims to seek re-election

Wednesday: Psychologists meet with hunter shooting suspect:

In a rare courtroom appearance, Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager handled the limited prosecutorial duties, adding one charge to the eight previously filed against Vang. The new information adds a third count of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, alleging that Vang tried to kill Lauren Hesebeck on two different occasions during the rampage.

So Peggy Lotsalager's showing that she's tough on crime by showing up to personally oversee the high profile case of the Hmong hunter who shot and killed several other hunters. That should help people forget she likes to unethically drive state cars while intoxicated.

Extra kudos for the extra charge for trying to kill the same person twice. Why stop there? Why not one for each bullet? How about an attempted murder charge atop a murder charge if more than one bullet struck an individual. No, wait; how about a murder charge for every bullet that could have killed a victim?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:16 AM   0 comments

 
Rules Are Made To Be Litigated

94-year-old lottery winner doesn't want to wait for her cash:

A Massachusetts woman says she wants her lottery winnings now -- because she's 94 and isn't likely to live another 20 years.

Louise Outing won $5.6 million in September.

But it's the policy of the Massachusetts lottery to pay out jackpots from its Megabucks game over 20 years. In this case, that would be about $200,000 a year.

Outing's lawyer is asking a judge to force the lottery to pay her now in a lump sum, minus taxes.

Personal call for attorneys:

Dear sirs, the policy of the Missouri lottery is that it won't pay out a lottery jackpot until you win it. However, given the astronomical odds, it will take me thousands of years playing the same number every week to win a jackpot. As I shall probably not live to see that day, please litigate on my behalf to force the Missouri lottery to force an immediate payout minus taxes. Thank you.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:35 AM   0 comments

 
Short Fiction: "Little Grey Man"

I'm still cleaning out my inventory of old short stories; this one, too, dates from college, and it, too, is copyright 1992.

---

Little Grey Man

   Grey like a battleship. Grey like a piece of granite. Grey like an elephant's tough hide, and usually in my case almost as wrinkled. That's what my uniform looks like. Actually it's a blue-grey, a blue grey like nothing else but a postal carrier's uniform. So it was.

   I liked the job, carrying letters. I felt like the bearer of tidings from far away places, like an unstoppable force. Through rain, sleet, and snow I walked my route, delivering letters and stuff, mostly bills and junk mail, but sometimes letters and cards. Nothing could stop me. I was like that great battleship, ploughing through the waves, carrying the letters no matter what. Rain and snow slowed me down a little bit. Dogs sometimes, too, but I was behind the grey uniform and the little can of mace, so I was safe.

   I like the neighborhood I carry in. It's a nice almost suburban neighborhood up in 53225, townhouses and duplexes with a couple regular houses. A nice quiet corner of the city, but I guess no corner of the city is all that quiet all the time.

   The winter parka was warm on me as I walked along. I think it was November, one of the first cold days of the year. The sun had shined a little, but the clouds were rolling in. The winter parka was a bluer grey than the summer shirt, but it was warmer and thicker. I was carrying my bag over my right shoulder and I liked the tug. Sometimes I loaded it extra heavy, because I figured that I was keeping in shape walking all the time, I might as well get big shoulders, but my shoulders never did get that big, and it would have only been the right shoulder anyway, so it was just as good.

   I was whistling something stupid like I normally do when it's the beginning of winter and just getting cold enough to make my cheeks red and just cold enough for the parka. I got to my favorite corner of the neighborhood, up on 100th Street, right behind the park, Little Menomonie, I mean. It's a nice neighborhood. There's apartment buildings, but they're good enough people.

   I was walking along, whistling something stupid, something by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, I think. I was counting the mail and sorting it by house, counting it to see who got the most mail and what they got. It's not like I was keeping tabs or anything, I was just looking mostly at the covers of the magazines that I came across. Tom Filbin, one of the people on my route, always got the best magazines. He got Discover and Smithsonian all the time, and Smithsonian always has the neatest covers. I like Us and People sometimes, when they have really pretty movie stars on them, but Cyrus Stevens came later in the route, and it was too late in the month to be getting a magazine anyway.

   I was walking along, counting and sorting mail, and thinking about the houses coming up. The walk down the street was on the side with all the apartments, the evens, and the walk back was on the side with the townhouses, the odd side. I had already finished the apartments, and I crossed the street down by where it dead-ends. It doesn't actually dead-end, but the street ends and another comes in by the corner, so it's not like a dead end at all.

   I was thinking about the houses coming up, which I sometimes do, but generally I only think about the people I know. Some people on a mail route like to meet me at the door, like they lived waiting for me. It was my letters and stuff, I know, but sometimes they were friendly and said hi to me and stuff, and we'd talk for a second about the weather, usually as I was walking up their sidewalk or onto their porch. Sometimes I'd get to know them a little better and I'd stop to talk to them for a minute or two when I get ahead of my schedule. One lady on 107th gave me a Christmas card last year, her face crinkling up when she smiled. She invited me in for coffee one day, like I sometimes hear they do in the rural areas, and it was an old house and an old woman, so she probably did the same thing twenty years ago when this area was still fields and a little river. I thanked her, but I was late, so I told her some other time maybe, and I kept going.

   I was thinking about one house that was coming up, mainly because there was a pretty lady that lived there, and I liked to talk to the young ladies as much as anyone else. Maybe more. Bikorsky once told me about a pretty lady meeting him at a door on his route in a thin flannel nightgown. I don't believe a word of anything Bikorsky tells me, besides, I just like to see them smile and say hi. This particularly lady was not home, but I generally only see her on Saturdays anyway. It was a Wednesday, I think, and I was silly to think she'd meet me at the door anyway.

   I walked on, still whistling "I Heard It Through The Grapevine", probably because the second to last house on the block had a vine growing up the side of it. I don't think it was a grapevine, but in the summer it made the house look distinguished and old. Like something that would be growing on Harvard or Yale or something. Vines just made me think of Harvard and Yale.

   I dropped the mail in the boxes on the third to last house, no magazines or packages, so they fit right in nicely and I could be on my way like a grey ghost, unseen and spreading the first Christmas cheer. Like the ghost of Christmas Present. I could see the browning leaves on the side of the next house, and I was whistling "I Heard It Through The Grapevine".

   I was sorting through the mail, whistling, and I counted out three envelopes and a big bulk rate card for the left side and only the bulk rate card for the right. I walked up the driveway, carefully. I'm always careful and I don't walk across the lawns like some carriers do, they sometimes save time by cutting across the grass so they can get to their trucks and have a cigarette or warm up. I don't smoke, like I said I'm trying to stay in shape, and the extra walking was good for my heart.

   I was walking up the driveway, thinking about the house a bit I suppose. I hadn't seen any of the occupants very much, not with a Christmas card, a cup of coffee, or a flannel nightgown. I had seen the lady on the right once, a young lady about twenty-five. She didn't smile and only seemed to open the door when I was there by accident. She wasn't very pretty, but she didn't smile, and I like to see the young ladies smile. I said hi and handed her her mail, and she said thank you, and I smiled and turned around and continued with my route. That had been in the summer, and I was wearing my lighter summer shirt, crisp and clean like the air.

   I was walking up to the mailboxes, kind of looking at the ivy leaves and thinking they should be cut in the winter or something, but if they were, they'd have to grow back all in the spring. I filled the left side first, because the driveway is on the left and the walk comes up from the driveway, and I never cross the lawn.

   I was crossing the porch and looking at the ivy and thinking it should be trimmed. It kind of blended with the brick, though, so it didn't look all that bad, but up close I could see the dead leaves better, and I wondered if it would look better if they were all pulled off, the dead leaves I mean. They surrounded the front window and made it look like Yale in the summer.

   I was putting the mail in the mailbox, the one card, and looking at the ivy around the window. The curtains were half open, pink curtains, like the last part of a sunrise. Yale doesn't have pink curtains, I don't think, but the right side of this townhouse wasn't Yale, and I wasn't whistling any more. I had gotten to the part of the song I forgot, so I stopped whistling entirely. The air was stilling chilling my cheeks, but I wasn't whistling.

   I was closing the mailbox, looking at the window, and thinking about Yale and pink curtains when he hit her.

   They had been in the living room, mostly hidden behind the pink curtains and the vine-covered brick wall when I came up, and now he was yelling at her, but I really didn't hear it until I saw him hit her.

   It was a slap, not a punch or anything, but it knocked her down.

   I could hear him yelling at her still, or more, like a maniac. She didn't try to get up, but he bent over and grabbed her by the shoulders and picked her up. He wasn't that much bigger than she was, but big enough, probably not as big as he thought he was. He started shaking her, and her head bounced back and forth, her brown hair bouncing over her blue covered shoulders, over his white knuckles. He shouted something right in her crying face and threw her back onto the couch, behind the curtain.

   I could have knocked on the door and demanded to know what was going on. I had my mace, what could he have done to me with a faceful of mace?

   I could have knocked on the door and acted like I had a package for them. I did have a little box in my bag for someone around the corner. I could have asked for him to sign for it but then acted like I realized the box wasn't for him. He might have gotten mad at me then and yelled at me and forgotten about her or something.

   I could have gone back to my truck and radioed for the dispatch to call the police and maybe kept an eye on them to make sure he didn't really hurt her until the police came. Or something.

   I closed the mailbox softly so that they wouldn't hear, and I turned around and continued with my route like a battle-scarred battleship limping through a storm and toward drydock. Like a grey fog rolling through the neighborhood, unimposing and unnoticed. Like an old man in a parka too big for him.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:55 AM   0 comments

 
You Want Imagination?

San Francisco lawyer and trainer of international prosecutors and other internationalist muckety-mucks Robert S. Rivkin asks:

So -- where is the imagination in our national leadership?

Unfortunately, Rivkin's "imagination" only extends to more taxation on Americans for two years (come on, permanently--taxes don't go away that easily, or we'd be done wiring rural areas for phone by now) to rebuild southeast Asia:

For example, the president could propose a flat $50 surtax applicable to every American tax return with an adjusted gross income of between $25,000 and $40,000; a flat $75 surtax on every tax return with an adjusted gross income between $40,000 and $80,000; $100 for incomes over $80,000, and so on. This small assessment for two years would produce many billions of dollars, which could be placed into a fund which would support infrastructure repair and development over a period of at least 10 years in the stricken countries.

Hey, you want imagination? How about this proposal: Now, some tribes in devestated areas are probably not that far--maybe a generation or two--from head hunting and cannibalism. How about we send a couple of San Fransisco attorneys to tide them over? We've got a surplus here in America, and it's awful stingy of us to let them simply grow old and die when they could sustain a family for a month.

(Thanks to Jeff Jarvis for starting my morning off right--with indignation and head shaking.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:39 AM   0 comments

 
We Gave

Lutheran World Relief


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

 
Book Review: Three Survived by Robert Silverberg (1969)

All right, so this book is really a young adult science fiction book and not an adult science fiction book. But, in my defense, I bought it from the local library for a quarter, and the library conmingles its adult and youth fiction on the sale tables. Also, many of the novels of the era were shorter, so the thin spine nor story line didn't give much hint, and I didn't spend that much time perusing the text in the library before making the acquisition, which represents all the excuses you'll need to understand why I owned this young adult book.

I read it because the only way to get an acquisition off of my to-read shelves is to read it.

The book runs about 100 pages and tells the story of three diverse characters who are the only survivors of a spaceship accident: Rand, an engineer; Dombrey, a low level jetmonkey crewman; and Leswick, a Metaphysical Synthesist. Although Rand thinks he'll lead the group of deadweight survivors, he learns that it takes more than logic to meet the challenges of the jungles and the natives of a hostile world.

Read it as a parable of how people should respect the talents of those who have a different skill set. For example, Rand could represent developers, Leswick the sales and marketing types who have to deal with people for a living, and Dombrey the techinical writers and the testers that everyone thinks are dumb and superfluous, but who know which fruits to eat and which vines are really snakes, and the developers had just best get off of their little primadonna "We run the world" schtick and realize that it takes dumb jetmonkeys and liberal arts majors to make a successful software company.

Or maybe I'm reading the morale of the story wrong.


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

 
Because the Budget Just Won't Spend Itself

US Orders Probe of Air Travel Troubles:

U.S. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta said on Monday he was launching a probe of air travel disruptions over the Christmas holiday weekend at US Airways Group Inc. and Delta Air Line Inc.'s regional carrier Comair.

Doesn't normmineta sound like a bacterial gastrointestinal disorder?


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:47 AM   0 comments

 
Book Review: Blood on the Arch by Robert J. Randisi (2000)

Well, in Randisi's defense, he had just moved to St. Louis when he wrote this book and, given his prodigious output, he probably didn't have a lot of time to research the area or how the police departments interoperate, but....

The book begins with murder on the grounds of the Arch or, as it's formally known, the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial. The intrepid St. Louis City police detective Joe Keough investigates the crime on his day off and then shuts the facility down indefinitely. I'm not so clear on the jurisdictional issues here, but I would expect the federal authorities to investigate a murder in a national park, which is what the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial represents. But in Keough's world, this closure occurs without a squawk by federal employees. Underneath the Arch lies the Museum of Westward Expansion, capitalized in this book as a proper noun as the Arch Museum. So in the first few chapters, I got the sense that Randisi was unfamiliar with his setting.

So I spent much of my reader processing power looking for inaccuracies. They come aplenty. Twice, the main charater refers to St. John's hospital as The Palace on Ballas, once asserting that everyone in St. Louis calls it that. I've never heard it called that before in my twenty years of residency in the St. Louis area (including five in the northwest corner of St. Louis County near St. John's). The cop refers to the new prison in Clayton, but it's a jail, not a prison, and a cop would probably know the difference. A city cop, even Detective Joe Keough, would not make an arrest downtown and book the suspect in Clayton as the city and the county are completely separate (the city of St. Louis is not even in St. Louis County because of some short-sighted short-term tax money greed in the late 1800s). Also, someone familiar with the layout of St. Louis, which I would expect from a cop, would not take Highway 44 to Highway 270 to travel from downtown to St. John's--but a new resident to the city who lived in a southern or southwestern suburb might. Not Joe Keough, who lives right off of Highway 40 in the fashionable Central West End; I wager Randisi lived off of 44 and knew it as the main corridor to the suburbs from downtown because how he traveled. Let's also overlook the claim that mayor of St. Louis is the most powerful man in the city. That bias probably carries right over from Randisi's time in New York.

So as much as I hate to, I have to knock a fellow St. Louis author. I have to hope that when I add local flourishes to my novels that they won't end up like this. Aside from the grimace-inducing local mistakes, the book is a servicable police detective story. It's not up among the MacDonalds or Chandlers or Parkers, but it's not low among the Liningtons. I paid almost five dollars for this book in a 80% off bookstore, where I also got my Roger L. Simons (also, one of whom Randisi is not).

I hope and fully expect the others in the series will be more technically accurate, so I haven't written Randisi completely off, but I have no intentions of seeking him out new or used.


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

 
By Any Other Name

The Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center, a brand new struggling venue for arts no one wants to see on the UMSL campus presents Over the Rainbow:

Honoring the 100th anniversary of composer Harold Arlen's birth, this multi-media musical concert delves into Arlen's life with behind-the-scenes clips from "The Wizard of Oz," home movies and photos. Broadway stars Tom Wopat and Faith Prince join forces for an entertaining walk down memory lane.

What, no mention that he is best known to most of America as Luke Duke (that's from the The Dukes of Hazzard, you damn kids) ?

I guess the trustees of Blanche M. Touhill are keeping their target audience separate from the taxpayers who funded the underused, underattended facility.

Kudos, too, for adding their own service charge to tickets. Classy.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:04 PM   0 comments

 
Toward a Paperless Office

Ajax contributes to the effort to make Jeracor a paperless office:



Or perhaps he's merely contributing to a paper-jammed office.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:51 AM   0 comments

 
How Do You Make a Small Fortune in Charitable Donations?

Start with a large fortune, of course.

The New York Post details a number of charities in New York who lost money on fund raising campaigns last year.

Tips to charities who want to raise money from the Noggle household:

• Send us a couple of mailings a year so we have the envelopes, but cut out the bi-monthly, glossy campaigns. Our five dollars barely covers the costs of your printing and postage.
  
  
• Don't bother selling our name to other charities and charity-facilitating for-profit corporations because we don't respond to charities we don't know, no matter how importantly the National Sisters of Animal Defense and Welfare fund takes itself, or how pretty we find its unsolicited and beautiful-but-no-salable-for-a-quarter-at-our-garage-sale calendar.
  
  
• For the most part, if you've got National, American, United States, International, Global, or Galactic in your organization name, save your bulk rate postage. We give precedence to local charities that don't need to support national administrative costs so executives can attend meetings, lunches, and conferences on our five dollars. We give to the local Habitat for Humanity, not the conglomerated federated American effort, which needs to pay its salaries and costs before trickling down donations to local organizations. Sounds remarkably consistent with my position on the Federal Government spending, ainna?

Thank you, that is all.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:32 AM   0 comments

 
Another Cutler Martyr

According to the Riverfront Times, a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter was fired for blogging:

Following publication of an Unreal item in last week's Riverfront Times, newsroom management at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch seized the computer hard drive of staff writer Daniel P. Finney and suspended him from reporting duties.

The Unreal piece, "Local Blog o' the Week," highlighted an online diary written under the pseudonym Roland H. Thompson. Though Finney did not identify himself by name in the blog, titled "Rage, Anguish and Other Bad Craziness in St. Louis," he chronicled minute details of his life, including lengthy passages about his job as a Post-Dispatch features writer.

Of course, what's a story about a blogger losing a job without an obligatory genuflection to the apparent patron saint and prostitute plucky promiscuous-and-enterpreneurial Washington insider, Jessica Cutler:

Firing employees for their private blogs is nothing new. U.S. Senate mail clerk Jessica Cutler made national headlines earlier this year when she lost her job after detailing her sexual escapades with Senate staffers.

Although the content might have been pithy, I doubt Finney's blog detailed receiving anal sex for six hundred dollars per.

Man, if this blog ever leads to my dismissal or loss of business, I shall keep it quiet just so no one mentions my name and Jessica Cutler's in the same article.


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

 
Associated Press: On the Other Side

More perfidy by the Associated Press:

After nearly costing Green Bay a crucial game with one of his familiar mistakes, Brett Favre rallied the Packers to victory - and the NFC North title - with one of his famous comebacks.

Crikey, the man is sporting and spots Minnesota a touchdown, and this is how an Associated Press writer characterizes it? Peh on you, you purplo journalist. Here in St. Louis, the Packer flag flew on Christmas, and the red bulb in the green-and-red set for the porch lights has already been replaced with the gold. Until February, we hope.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:05 PM   0 comments

 
Apologia

Dear Blogosphere, or just people who don't like it when there's too much purple on my beautiful wife's occasional blog and not enough posting:

For Christmas, I gave her a Nintendo Game Cube with Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime II. I guess I have exacerbated the lack of posting for the next few months. Sorry.

Perhaps you could just read the posts here instead.

Sincerely, Brian J. Noggle
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:56 PM   0 comments

 
Short Fiction: "Not Between Friends"

Good day.

I'm recycling more college material here. Heck if I know what made me write this story, but I did. It's entitled "Not Between Friends", and it, too, is copyright 1992 Brian J. Noggle.

---

    Shelly and I had been friends for two and a half years, which was only two and a half years, but a lot of our lives to that point. We're still friends, as far as I know, but subtle doubts and darknesses have crept into what our friendship was.

    Shelly is a lesbian, which was the third thing I knew about her. The first thing I knew was that she was drop dead beautiful, at least to me at that time. Blonde hair clipped short, almost scalped. Long slender arms reached for mailbox 2B, and long trim legs carried up the stairs to apartment 2B, one floor above mine. The second thing I knew about her was her apartment number, and my first conclusion was that I would have to stop by sometime soon.

    I did stop by the next morning, to borrow some sugar. I was new in the apartment building, so I thought it would be a good excuse to go around introducing myself, and I figured that asking to borrow a cup of sugar would be trite enough so that she would see through it and know I had an ulterior motive. So I rapped on her door at eight-oh-nine on that September morning.

    "Hi, can I borrow a cup of sugar?" I asked when she opened the door, dressed in an oversized shirt and bunny slippers.

    "A cup of sugar?" she asked. She was three quarters of the way made up. Her eyes were highlighted expertly, and I felt like I might wilt under their inquisitive gaze.

    "Yeah, I know it sounds corny, but I just moved in downstairs, and when I stocked my apartment, I remembered the coffee, but I forgot the sugar. I just moved in downstairs. 1B. My name is Andrew Saroll, but people still call me Andy."

    "Nobody downstairs had any?" she asked, cocking her head to the side. Well, so much for the cover story.

    "There was nobody downstairs I really wanted to introduce myself to," I said.

    "And you wanted to introduce yourself to me?" she asked.

    "Absolutely."

    "Why?" Point blank. No way to dodge a point blank question.

    "I saw you getting your mail, and I said to myself, now there is the kind of woman you can settle down with in a small rural home and raise prize-winning samoyeds with. Or at least ask to a dinner in the most expensive restaurant I can afford. How about it? You free tonight, or tomorrow, or any time in October?"

    She looked amused. Not a good sign. "I'd love a free dinner, but I'd hate to wreck your samoyed dreams. I wouldn't be interested in settling down with you."

    "Oh," I said.

    "It's nothing with you," she said with a strange smile. "I'm a lesbian." Another point-blank.

    "Oh," I said, "What a relief."

    "Most guys say 'waste'."

    "Well, I am trying to project a mature viewpoint here. True beauty is never wasted."

    "So you're a mature flatterer. I can handle that. So when is this free meal?"

    I set it up for the following evening, and I did treat her to the most expensive restaurant I could afford, which happened to be one of those sit-down fast-food joints where the soup of the day is made several weeks in advance.

    I did manage to get her name, Shelly Stevens, and her profession, telemarketer. She was just out of college, which put her one up on me, and she was very frank, which put her a second up on me. We got to be pretty good friends, which is an understatement, because she was the only friend I had in the building, and one of the few I had in the city I chose to make my collegiate home.

    I met her before my sophomore year, back when I was young and cocky. It's now the middle of the summer before my senior year, and I guess I'm still young, and maybe a little cockier now than I had been. During the two years before I left for my internship here in New York, like I said, we got to be pretty close.



    It was Shelly who took me out to the bars when I turned twenty-one. We hit a few of the neighborhood bars, which were pretty jumping. We both managed to find our apartments, but if we hadn't cooperated on finding our building, I don't think either of us would have made it.

    Some people might ask me how I became that good of friends with a lesbian, as if it were something strange or unholy, which I suppose it is to a lot of people. When you go back and try to find the reason you become friends with anybody, you can't really trace it to a specific. I guess it was because we met, and we clicked. She told me that I was too long-term up front, that when I introduced myself to women with dreams of forever that I intimidated them. And such stuff.

    There was no one better to go bar-hopping with. After my twenty-first birthday, I started hitting all the bars, in some hope of finding Miss Right or perfecting my game of 301. We would sit on our stools, backs to the bar, checking out the women. It was awkward at first to go in with a woman and look at others, but one time I watched some brunette out of the corner of my eye, and after she passed, I turned back toward Shelly a bit self-consciously. She nodded and said the brunette was pretty good, and I quickly got over my self-consciousness, after four or five such incidents.

    She must have been glad to have me along, too. Being with a guy kept the other guys off of her, mostly. There were a few times I had to tell guys, mostly bigger than me, to screw, and every time except one they did. The one time he didn't, well, it was painful for both of us, and he didn't get Shelly anyway. She told me later that I shouldn't have, but I told her I had to. I couldn't have her be the more macho of the two of us. She laughed deeply.

    She was my best friend for those two years, and I spent a lot of time crashed on her couch listening to her alternative bent of music and to her complaining of rude people she talked with at work. I'm probably idealizing those times now, and it wasn't all that often that I did see her, only a couple of times a week, which for best friends is a bit low I would guess. I don't know if she even considered me her best friend.

    Then this letter came, the first one I have gotten from her since I started my internship. It came yesterday, two weeks before I leave to return to school. She didn't put a return address on it, but I recognized her handwriting on the envelope when I got it out of the mailbox, and it was the first thing I opened when I got back to my cubicle of an apartment. It was the only thing I opened, I should add. I don't get much mail.

    "Dear Andy," her blue ink said on the lavender stationery, "How are you? I am great! I did it! I am pregnant!" Which was good news, but not a surprise to me. I knew she had it in mind, which is probably why I hadn't gotten a letter from her during my internship.



    It was a rare warm day in March, and we were sitting on the front porch of our apartment building, watching the people go by on the street, like we had done many times before. Tika, Shelly's companion and roommate for the last few months, was visiting her mother in Green Bay, and it was just Shelly and I, like in the old days. We were talking about the city, and the future. I had only a year left in college, and Shelly had only a few years left in her twenties. I was scared, but she wasn't. Just wistful. I had paused after wondering what I would do with an English major and a Spanish minor and was taking time to watch a little red Fiero with a redhead slither down the street.

    "I want to have kids," she said, looking up into the tree in the yard.

    "You always liked challenges," I said.

    "I'm serious," she said slowly.

    "Okay," I said, switching gears. "You and Tika going to bring it up? Or just you?"

    "Tika and I," she said. "We haven't talked much about it. I just mentioned it might be nice, and she agreed."

    "It's a lot of responsibility."

    "What, do you think I'm not up to it? Or do you think I'm not capable because of my sexuality?"

    "Whoa," I said. "It's Andrew Saroll you're talking to. You can keep the indignity practice for someone who thinks it's wrong. It's just a lot of responsibility, a kid, that's all I said."

    "Sorry," she said. "It is."

    "If you're ready for it, go for it." We sat in silence for a few minutes.

    "Would you be the father?" she asked, strength back in her voice. Beating around the bush didn't suit her.

    "You want me to ....?" I asked. My first and second instinctive responses popped quickly. They were, I am ashamed to admit, an unveiled instinctive "All right! Yowza!" and then a quick "With Shelly?" sort of distaste because she was a friend or a lesbian, and then my first cognitive response was a sort of regret for both of them.

    She looked a bit repulsed herself, but covered it quickly with her scientific disinterest. "No, I just wondered if you'd donate the semen for artificial insemination. I figured I'd rather have a kid something like you than like a total stranger. Keep it among friends, you know."

    I was quiet for a long time. Shelly waited for a response for some time before she got up from the railing around the porch. "Think about it a while," she said before heading in.

    I did think about it for a while. For about nine hours that night, until I was finally able to tumble into a dark and dreamless sleep. I thought about how much it probably meant to her to have me do this. She asked a friend, and she must have thought about it a lot. It wasn't her norm to take so long to throw out an off-the-cuff question. She wanted me to be the father of her child.

    I thought about being a father at twenty-two, and not really being a father at twenty-two. I wouldn't have a hand in raising my child, and it might not even know I was its father. It would have Tika and Shelly, two mommies. I'd never thought much about gay marriage and gay couples raising children before then, so I didn't have any handy rhetoric to fall back on. Not that it would have helped in a personal situation.

    I'd hate to say no to Shelly. She'd think I didn't trust her with my spawn or something, which was not entirely true, but I knew I couldn't explain it away. As much as I didn't want to do it to Shelly, I didn't want to do it to the kid, either.

    It's traditional, I know, not wanting to banish a kid to life without a father. A real father. One that lives with them and is used by the mother as a real threat. Particularly if the kid was a boy, he'd need a role model, and as much as I like Shelly and tolerate Tika, neither one of them would teach him how to defend himself against the big fourth grader who would call his mothers dykes. And the fifth grader, and the sixth grader, and so on. I thought of my own childhood without a father, and I couldn't be a party to putting a kid through the same hell. It wouldn't even be that simple of a hell for the kid. My kid.

    So, in the depths of the night, I decided that my mature and open new-consciousness was just a sham, and that I would not help my best friend with one of her greatest dreams. I worried about the consequence for a while before I drifted to sleep.



    I don't know if I consciously avoided her or not, but she seemed to guess my answer before it was spoken. She came down to my apartment three nights later. "Have you thought about it, Andy?" she asked, even though the expression on my face must have screamed that I had.

    "I can't, Shelly," I said simply.

    "Why?" she asked with a voice more level than I deserved.

    "I just can't" I said. There was no way to tell her without hurting her feelings. There was no way I was going to avoid hurting her feelings, but I hoped this way somehow hurt her less.

    "And you're not going to tell me why?" she asked.

    I shook my head.

    "Okay," she said, and we made some small talk for a while, and then she left. It wasn't like old times, it was something different. Like someone flipped a switch, and the biggest thing that got me was that it was me.



    Our friendship faltered after that. I told my land lady I wouldn't be returning to her building. I left for New York City and the glamour of a magazine internship, but I left her my address out of a courtesy, I guess. I did not expect her to write, and there her letter sits, on the table next to my bed. My room is neat, because in two weeks I will head back to the city, to a different apartment, and to new friendships. I wonder if all will be forgiven, and I wonder if she knew who the father is. And I wonder why it matters so much to me.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:51 PM   0 comments

 
Sophistication, Thy Antonym is Noggle

On Wednesday, Richard Roeper identified the worst holiday songs and assigns the worst ribbon to "Jingle Bells" by the Singing Dogs, which leads me to confess: I have this song on a cassette single.

As Roeper mentioned it, I put it in the old cassette deck and clicked the play button. And sang along.

Granted, I am just a suburban schmuck and not a big-city sophisticate (pronounced as Frenchly as possible), but even I have limits. For example, I don't care for the Singing Dogs' rendition of "Oh, Susanna" which is the flip side of the tape.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:56 AM   0 comments

 
Book Review: What If? 2 edited by Robert Cowley (2001)

I have always been a big fan of what would become known as counterfactual history; why, to this day, I have a large collection of Marvel What If comic books, wherein Uatu the Watcher examines alternate realities in which pivotal events in the Marvel Universe turned out differently than they did in the actual comic books. This volume, a sequel to a book I haven't read, does the same with actual historical events, where historians and other people who write about history imagine what would have happened if history had gone another direction than it did.

Essays within the book include musings on what would have happened had Socrates died in battle (written by the blogpular Victor Davis Hanson, whose name isn't even on the cover), what if Antony had won, what if Pontius Pilate had spared Jesus Christ, what if France had defeated Haiti, what if Lincoln hadn't issued the Emancipation Proclamation, what if the Chinese had discovered the New World, and a number of what ifs revolving around World Wars I and II.

To sum up, in most of the essays not dealing with Socrates or World Wars I and II, the sum result is that the United States wouldn't exist as we know it. Either it would be the eastern part of the Chinese empire, or part if a Caribbean/French empire, or anything but the oppressive regime it is. The book was written before September 11, 2001, and before chimphitler got re-elected, so I am sure that some of these writers have other what ifs in mind to cry into their lattes.

To illustrate how some of the speculation slightly skews anti-American, take the example of the essay "The Chinese Discovery of the New World, 15th Century", wherein Theodore F. Cook, Jr., muses on the possibilities of expansion during the Ming Dynasty. The story centers around eunuch admiral Zheng He, who led several large armadas to Africa, India, and throughout the southwest Pacific, overcoming many youthful difficulties, including:

Selected for his alertness and courage by the general himself and marked a "candidate of exceptional qualities," after enduring the excruciating agony of castration by knife (which traditionally removed both penis and testicles), the boy was assigned to the retinue of one of the emperor's sons, the Prince of Yu (Zhu Di's ititled during his father's reign), [sic] at the capital of Nanjing.

So the Chinese were painfully emasculating a portion of their population, but on the other hand:

Might not the worst horrors of the Atlantic slave trade been aborted by a halt to Portuguese expansion along the African coast at this early date?

This author happily trades forced castration for stopping the Portuguese slave trade. To many academics, undoubtedly, it's not a bug, it's a feature.

I found many such idealogical digs and inflammatory throwaway lines to note, but once the book got back to warfare, where apparently the serious historians play, it turned more coldly analytical.

Still, it's a good read and worth your time as each essay explains what happened and how it might have changed, which serves to remind and reinforce one of historical knowledge one might have, or need. Counterfactual history, as the introduction notes, reminds us of the narrative of history instead of the dry dates and campaigns of history. Plus, it makes me feel like Uatu.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:22 AM   0 comments

 
Euphemism

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, high-priced law firm Bryan Cave gets a loan from the city:

The law firm still will receive a forgivable loan of $300,000 from the city to offset some of the cost of expanding and renovating its offices.

To those of us outside of the public-private partnership working together to suck money from taxpayers for the betterment of the public-private partners, this sounds an awful like corporate welfare. But it's just a loan, the city insists, waving its hand to implant that thought into the mind of the weak or the inattentive.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:11 PM   0 comments

 
Happy Holiday Hiatus

Just to let all six of my readers know, I, too, will take a Christmas hiatus.

I probably won't post between 10pm Christmas Eve and 6am on Christmas morning because I don't want Santa to skip my house because I'm awake.

Posting will resume on its regular irregular schedule at 6:01 Christmas morning.

Thank you, that is all.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:13 PM   0 comments

 
Miracle Cure

Headline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Woman is off life support after stabbing attack.

Why don't they try that with everyone on life support, then?


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:54 AM   0 comments

 
Top Mispronunciations of Sarah McLachlan's Name

Like Milla Jovavich, Canadian siren Sarah McLachlan has a name that's difficult to spell or pronounce from memory. Undoubtedly (used here in the sense of "I am making it up"), Ms. McLachlan has endured people addressing her or writing of her with one or more of the following:

• Sarah Machlachlanahan.
  
  
• Sarah Mchlandlached.
  
  
• O'Sherrie McLachlan (by Steve Perry, of course).
  
  
• Shiraz McLachlan.
  
  
• Sarah McLockedLAN.
  
  
• Natalie Merchant.
  
  

Sure, it's a gag that amuses me, but will I think it funny when one of these young ladies mocks me in such a fashion? Probably not; I am thin-skinned and overly sensitive.


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

 
A Writing Assignment for Heather

Professor Bainbridge has a writing assignment for Heather:

Being somewhat of a fan of crossover fan fiction stories (e.g., X-Files/Highlander), I've come up with a solution. I want to read a really good story in which one of my favorite fictional villains crosses over into Anita Blake's world and, well, snuffs her. (Not to put too fine a point on it.)

What's his problem?

It's not just the gratuitous S&M-tinged sex and violence. It's not just the incredibly formulaic plots (big bad vampire comes to town; Anita's not allowed to kill vampire bad guy due to some contrived rule of vampire politics; after killing and screwing lots of other folks, Anita finally gets to kill the bad guy. Yawn).

It's simply that the main characters have become so unlikeable. Anita Blake is the worst of the lot. She's a insufferably smug psychopathic bitch who is constantly pissed off at something and whose first reaction to somebody new is either to screw them, kill them, or both. She's also one of the most remarkably self-centered major characters I've ever encountered, leaving behind a trail of broken hearts and (dare I say it?) blue balls wherever she goes. (One of the oddities of the series is that, despite the amount of sex in the books, Blake is always leaving somebody high and dry.)

Well, I think insufferable, smug, psychopathic, and constantly pissed off are rather attractive features in a woman (present beautiful, sufferable, not-smug, well-adjusted, and pleasantly-disposed wife excluded, of course), but I also quit reading the books when Anita Blake set up the whole sleep with the werewolf one night, sleep with the vampire the next night rotation and the books became more of the author's wish fulfillment than this reader's wish list.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:26 AM   0 comments

 
No Exceptions

A special message to the pagans in the audience:

Happy holidays!

- posted by Brian J. @ 11:18 AM   0 comments

 
Holiday Hint

Having trouble distinguishing between Lou Reed and Lou Rawls? MfBJN offers this handy guide:

• Lou Rawls is the guy with singing talent.
  
  
• Lou Reed had something to do with Andy Warhol, who was a mid-twentieth-century painter who was famous, briefly, because Americans were bored after World War II.

Don't be fooled by that talking-over-a-bass-line that represents "Wild Side"; that didn't take much talent, and hence it's obviously Lou Reed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:45 AM   0 comments

 
Holiday Safety Reminder

Remember, if you try to do your beautiful wife a good turn by picking up her dry cleaning, which she specifically took to the dry cleaners to remove the scent of cigarette smoke from her new apparel:

Do not leave the dry cleaning in the car with your White Castle lunch while you run into the hardware store for twenty minutes.

Failure to heed this warning will totally negate your good hubby points; in fact, it will probably put you into red, parentheses-surrounded points in your wife's book.


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

 
The Post Wherein Brian Finds His Cup Empty and Seems to Support the United Nations, Briefly

I need more coffee anon.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:03 PM   0 comments

 
Wish You Were Here

A Monday morning greeting from Tristan:



I think he's taunting us.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:29 AM   0 comments

 
Happy Holidays

You know, the current kerfuffle of the season (or currfuffle in the lingo of those who need kerfuffles to survive) revolves endlessly about the de-Christianization of Christmas. As every year, groups of aggressive atheists file suits to prevent governments from putting mangers on their properties. Since not everyone can involve themselves in the constitutional litigation and legislation, a lot of common folk have decided that saying "Happy Holidays" is the contemporary equivalent of throwing Christian believers to the lions. Remember the reason for the season, they shout, ignoring the fact that the season occurs because Persephone ate six pomengranate seeds while in the underworld, whereas the anniversary of Christ's birth provides only the reason for one of the holidays in the middle of winter.

I've participated in a holiday program that wished consumers "Happy Holidays" and have seen the instant backlash produced, wherein previously loyal customers threaten to go elsewhere because the company used the inclusive turn of phrase. I've seen reasonable people in the blogosphere sputter their indignation. And when it comes time for my company to send out holiday greetings, I send out something that says "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas."

I use the "Happy Holidays" professionally, as I assume many commercial people do, when I address people whose faith I don't know. I do wish my family and my Christian friends a Merry Christmas because I know what they celebrate, and I don't want to be an oaf and ask them to enjoy a holiday they don't celebrate. I would never say "Happy Independence Day" to a Canadian on July 4. I think the "Happy Holidays" captures the spirit I would like to share with everyone, regardless of creed, during late November and all of December. Come January 2 or 3, though, it's back to curses for everyone.

Some of the commentariat argue that "Happy Holidays" is disingenuous because it doesn't recognize the clean-up batter of the holiday lineup, and that political correctness has run amok. James Lileks, columnist for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, says:

Am I offended that they name the other holidays by name? Of course not -- no more than I'd be offended if a practitioner of those creeds wished me a happy whatever. This is America. Come one, come all. Frankly, I look forward to the day when the Mexican Day of the Dead is a national holiday; having a picnic in honor of departed relations is an improvement on, say, Arbor Day. Fifty years from now, we'll all drive hovercars right up to the grave and grill some steaks. In any case, if someone wished me a Happy Whatever tomorrow, I'd be honored that they cared to include me. Why some companies are terrified of this idea I cannot imagine.

As though those who say "Happy Holidays" avoid the word "Christmas" because they don't want to offend minorities. Instead, I think people who use "Happy Holidays" want to include as many as they can., instead of because they want to include. Two separate sentiments entirely, I say. Virginia Postrel, author and former editor of Reason magazine, says:

I can't blame Christians, who are the vast majority of Americans and the ones whose religion is celebrated in all those carols at the mall, for wanting their holiday acknowledged in public. I don't get offended when Dallasites assume everyone, of course, celebrates Christmas. (Everyone they know does, after all.) And I hope to have a happy, though not necessarily merry, December 25. But I wish good-hearted folks like Lileks would consider that Christmas greetings don't make everyone feel good.

Once again, she's focusing on the predicate that people don't want to offend instead of the impulse to include. I think they both misunderstand the impulse to say Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas or Happy Winter Solstice or any particular holiday in this period of increased brotherhood among men and sisterhood among women and consumerhood among consumers.

But what really twists my valve is that the most vehement of the anti-Happy Holidays crowd demonstrate the impulse to exclusion that they project upon everyone else. That if someone wants to wish you well during December, that that person must say, "Merry Christmas" or the sentiment won't stick. Plainly and simply, some Christians won't accept the good tidings of others unless it acknowledges their particular tastes in good tidings, that heathen beneficience is the work of the devil. It stems from the retake-the-holy-land impulse in some strains of Christianity, not the brotherhood-of-man strain, and it's particularly odious given the spirit of the Holidays. I rankle, and I refuse to let others exert their self-imposed authority over my holiday greetings.

So I bid you happy holidays, whether you like it or not.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:08 PM   0 comments

 
It's Not That I'm Superstitious

But when I'm watching the game and the Packers are losing at the half time, I change Packers apparel.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:02 PM   0 comments

 
Things That Don't Make Me Feel Old (Yet)

The end of the year brings reflection on where you have been, and continued viewing of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century brings reflection on what I haven't done in the last twenty-five years, so I have lit upon a list of things that don't yet make me feel old, but undoubtedly will in the next few years:

• Remembering the Rewind button.
  
  
• Jokes where the punchline involve Imelda Marcos.

I am sure I had others, but I just cannot seem to remember them right now.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:55 AM   0 comments

 
Poor Grammar Solves Murder

In this report about the murder in northwest Missouri, the poor writer would to have already solved the mystery:

Nodaway County Sheriff Ben Espey (pictured, center) said authorities are awaiting DNA testing to confirm the girl is the child of Stinnett, 23, who was found slain in her northwest Missouri home Thursday afternoon by her own mother.

- posted by Brian J. @ 4:06 PM   0 comments

 
Book Review: Tough Guys and Dangerous Dames (1993)
Edited by Weinburg, Dziemianowicz, and Greenberg

This book represents the best book value I've gotten all year. The book weighs in at 605 pages. I paid $.33 for it at Hooked on Books. That amounts to 18 pages per penny, friends, and you won't find dime detective fiction any cheaper.

The book collects a number of short stories from the 1930s and 1940s from the pulp detective fiction. The authors include Raymond Chandler, John D. MacDonald, Erle Stanley Gardner, Paul Cain, and Robert Leslie Bellem (as well as Robert Bloch, Fritz Lieber and others). The language? Oh, yeah:

I grabbed her gently, but firmly; pulled her close to me. "No look, Frenchis, I like you, see? Your glims are like stars. Your stems belong behind footlights."

Poetry.

Unfortunately, as with any book of this size, the authors feel the need to include stories that wander into the fantastic, including two Depression-era Robin Hoodesque superheroes, some Scooby-Dooish pseudo-supernatural thrillers, and a midget detective. Crikey, if I wanted to re-read The Defective Detective, I would have, or I would have gotten its sequel (if I could find it for three-for-a-buck).

Still, the book mixes the stories up, so when you read about a special mad scientist murder method in one story, you can rinse your mind out with some mindless two-fisted, slug-of-scotch action in the next.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:58 PM   0 comments

 
Fun with Software Pricing

Joel Spolsky examines an important topic: Camel and Rubber Duckies.

It covers the vagaries of pricing computer software, which is an important decision hopefully forthcoming from Jeracor. When we get our bountiful off-the-shelf applications written, I mean.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:11 AM   0 comments

 
Good Company

The former Delta Airline stewardess who doesn't understand the nature of at-will employment laments her firing and chooses some questionable peers:

That was when I began to hear stories about people like Heather B. Armstrong, of dooce.com, who was fired because of her blog in 2002. Then there was "the Washingtonienne," who was fired earlier this year because of comments she entered in her blog.

One should not compare oneself to Jessica Cutler, as one always suffers by the mention.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:52 AM   0 comments

 
A Carved Tree

Perhaps it's the end of the year and time to just dump old DOC files that I converted from WPS files which I converted from the original LotusWorks files I created in my prolific college period, but since I saw Edmund Spenser's "One day I wrote her name upon the strand" over at Pejmanesque, I thought it only fitting to present my responses:

---

A Carved Tree (I)
Copyright 1991 Brian J. Noggle, you illegal poem-sharing rabble

One day I carved her name into a tree
with mine inside a Cupid-arrowed heart.
When I had closed my knife, she checked my art,
and shook her head, and then she looked at me.
"Now why'd you come and maim this oak?" asked she.
"Here in the woods, it lived its life apart,
but now the awful manly meddlings start.
This tree will never have its privacy."
"I maimed this oak so everyone could see
our names as linked for all Eternity,
and I must admit to you, my deified,
I like our love like this, objectified,
so that it's not another petty 'love',
but like a natural law passed from above."

---

A Carved Tree (II)
Also Copyright 1991 Brian J. Noggle,
so don't repost without permission, Harvey

This quiet spot, beneath this ancient oak,
is where I come to think on brooding days.
The open sky is blue and mocks the strays
that cower underneath the leafy cloak.
I sit and sip my slowly warming Coke,
and stumble through my memory, a maze
of many cul-de-sacs of yesterdays.
I remember how, beneath this tree, we spoke....
Above my head, carved by my careful hand,
the heart and letters of a "Brian and ...."
I remember once, the reckless words I said,
in love's embrace of sweetly muddled head.
With human eyes, a truth is now revealed:
That higher laws can also be repealed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:50 AM   0 comments

 
A Christmas Story

I wrote the following story 13 years ago, when I was young and in college. Forgive me my youthful exuberance, but since it's Christmas, I thought I'd post it since it contains a heartwarming message we can all share:

---

Die Hard MDCXCII: Die Really, Really, REALLY Hard
Copyright 1990 Brian J. Noggle, you hosers

     The Christmas Muzak was driving Ryan crazy. There are only so many times you can hear "Good King Wenceslas" before you want to strangle any available customer. And that limit had been passed twice over in the seven hours that Ryan had been on duty.

     The snow was not drifting lazily down as it would on an ideal Christmas Eve. It was blizzarding, if there is any such verb. Two feet had fallen in an hour, setting a record that will probably stand until the earth passes through a major galactic dust cloud, or Brian Noggle gets a book published, whichever happens first. Ryan shivered just looking at the two rows of carts inside the store, hoping the supply would not diminish to the point when he would have to go out in THAT.

     An eskimo came through the electric doors. White snow clung to his parka up to his shoulders. Gloves lowered the hood, removed two woolen hats, a Sphericky's cap, and a set of earmuffs. It wasn't actually an eskimo, Ryan discovered, but "Plaid" Jackson, a delivery man. He must have the last load of cranberries for the season, thought Ryan. But who was going to come in at ten o'clock on a night like this to buy cranberries?

     "Is the snow deep and crisp and even?" Ryan asked of the trucker.

     "Huh?" replied Plaid. He paused to mull over the question and then the answer. Ryan looked at the clock hung high on the wall over the Deli department. He was supposed to get off at eleven, and the question had eight words in it. Plaid wouldn't have an answer by then. And 'even' had two syllables. Drat, thought Ryan.

     "Hey, Ryan, could you get the trash out of here?" asked Ed, the store's night manager. 'Here' referred to the small elevated office. It was surrounded by a four foot high wall topped by a foot and a half of bulletproof glass. Once again Ryan paused to consider the necessity of the glass, as any stick-up man over four foot tall could point the gun over the glass and kill anyone in the office anyway. Never question, he reminded himself.

     "Yeah," Ryan responded, demonstrating the eloquence he had picked up at his year at the local Jesuit-run university's oratorical classes.

     He entered the ultra-secure sanctuary of management and looked at the pile of garbage. It had not been emptied all day and looked like a horn of plenty of cigarette cartons and losing lottery tickets. He sighed and began to redistribute the trash into trash bags.

     Ed noticed Plaid and walked over to him. "Do you have a load for us?" he asked, slowly, of the driver. The piped-in Muzak started on the forty-second rendition of "The Wassail Song".

     Ryan looked around furtively. Ed was outside the office proper, and the only other person in it was a checker currently bent over a calculator. She was obviously performing some function above the brain capacity of a utility clerk. The Muzak control panel was right above him. He grinned and hit a button. The Muzak stopped abruptly, replaced by the clicking of the calculator's printer, as reproduced by the store's intercom.

     Ryan lifted the three bags of refuse and exited the office. Ed was waiting expectantly by Plaid. "Fill the milk shelves while you're back there," Ed called. Karen stood alone in her checkout lane and watched the cart. Ryan through the garbage in a cart and started wheeling it toward the back door. Plaid said, "Yeah." Ryan wondered if he had gone to the same college.

      

     Far off in the back, the door to the back room by the dairy department squeaked. Ed stepped into the office, leaving the door open behind him. Plaid went back to his truck parked behind the store. Outside the front windows, a van attempted to squeal to a stop, but slid past the windows and out of sight. A few seconds later, the van reappeared, traveling in reverse, and halted. Twelve armed terrorists leaped from the back of the truck and entered the store. The last one to enter shut off the electric eyes for the doors. The leader pushed into the office.

     "What do you want?" asked Ed.

     "The code for the safe," said the terrorist, brandishing a big automatic pistol. To Ed it appeared to be a VERY big automatic pistol, but it really was just a big automatic pistol.

     "Who else is here?" asked another terrorist, speaking to Karen. Eleven automatic rifles caused her a bit of fright and she was unable to answer.

     The checker in the office looked up from her calculator only to faint when confronted with the appearance of the evil-doers. She subsequently hit the floor with a thud.

     Ten automatic rifles unpointed themselves at Karen and fanned out to search the store.

     "I don't have the code. I'm just the night manager," said Ed calmly. He had dealt with ten-year-olds shoplifting candy bars. Be calm, yet firm, and intimidating. How different could this be? he wondered.

     "Give it to me or I will have to shoot you," threatened the bad guy. He cocked the big automatic pistol.

     Maybe a little different, thought Ed. Calm, yet firm. "I guess you'll have to shoot me," said Ed.

     "Ok," said the gunman, and the gun barked.

     Too firm, thought Ed. Or so he started to, but the thought was never completed because his brains most uncooly splattered against the cigarette racks on the wall.

     "How about some music?" asked the leader, and he turned the switch on the nearby control panel from intercom to Muzak. Then he started humming "Jingle Bell Rock".

      

     Ryan was standing with a crate hook in one hand and his jaw open. The whole exchange was coming through loud and clear over the intercom. He was now watching through the window in the dairy door. The office and therefore the entire scene was being played out at the other end of aisle eight from where he stood.

     "Ok," said the unfamiliar voice, and Ed's pretty much headless corpse staggered backwards.

     "Great. I'm going to have to clean that up," muttered Ryan. His musings were interrupted by the appearance of a machine gun bearing hoodlum in the same window. Ryan quickly stepped behind a convenient corner. The gunman walked past, and Ryan extended the hook before the advancing feet and pulled. The gunman fell backwards. "Mama mia!" he exclaimed as his head crunched on the concrete floor.

     "Good. No mess," said Ryan. He picked up the bad guy's weapon and Official GI Joe Walkie-Talkie.

     "Did you hear something over there?" whispered a voice on the radio.

     "Luigi? Luigi?" asked a frantic voice.

     "Did you see where he was going?" asked another.

     "Over by the dairy section," said another voice. How many was that? wondered Ryan.

      

     "The safe is protected by three super-duper locks," said the geekiest looking terrorist. "There is one combination lock, one laser intensified multiple pin steel lock, and the code key. Unless we break them all, we can't get it open," he continued. He set up a U.S. Army Special Piercing Laser for Military Use Only, available at any surplus store or local K-Mart for $19.95, and its red beam began to work on the safe.

      

     One of the terrorists kicked the dairy door, and then he kicked it again. On the third kick, the door opened with a squeak, and three automatics pointed into the dairy back room. Leaning against a pile of trash against the back door was Luigi. A sign saying "SALE! Nyuck nyuck nyuck, now I have a gun," was taped to his chest. The first man to reach him, and fortunately not the brightest, read the fine print on the sign -- "Look behind you!" Being a crack commando sort of guy, this terrorist crouched, spun, and fired, mortally wounding his two companions.

     "Gosh, sorry," he said to the cadavers. "He's a tricky one, eh?"

      

     A large Italian-looking terrorist tried to pick up a cash register and dash it to the floor in rage, but found the object too heavy to lift. He grunted and set his gun on the floor. Then, with both hands, he tried to heave the register. He grunted and strained until a sweat broke out on his forehead. He strained some more, took off his jacket, and strained even more. After ten minutes, he gave up and settled for knocking a candy rack over, spilling candy bars and bubble gum to the floor with passion.

     "Mario's pretty hacked off," said one terrorist.

     "The guy in back killed his brother," replied another.

      

     "I want this guy dead," said the lead terrorist into his walkie-talkie. "How's it going?" he asked of the geeky terrorist.

     "The combination lock is gone, and I'm working on the laser lock, but without the code key...."

     "Find the key," growled the leader.

     The checker in the office gained consciousness, saw Ed, and fainted again.

      

     "Hello Mr. Rogue Good Guy. Do you think of yourself as some big screen star of an action flick? Chuck Norris? Sylvester Stallone?" asked the voice of the guy who killed Ed over the walkie-talkie.

     "I was always partial to Leslie Nielson and 'Weird Al' Yankovic," replied Ryan. He lie on the crawlspace above the meat counter. It was crisscrossed with two-by-fours, and a foot's worth of decorative ledge kept him hidden from view.

     "You can't win. There are too many of us," said the leader.

     Ryan tried to think of a defiant, witty, sarcastic, and/or cynical wisecrack, but none was forthcoming. "Oh, yeah?" was all he managed.

     Ryan thought of his options. The snowfall had by now made exit impossible. He hadn't been able to put out the trash a half hour ago, so by now the snow must be six feet deep. No cops. No help. Just him and ten terrorists. I'd better get overtime for this, he thought.

     He cautiously peered over the edge. No terrorists were in sight. He lowered himself down and ran in a crouch for the grocery room, located twenty feet ahead of him in the back of the store. There came a shout as he crossed the wide Produce Department aisle. An echoing sound of gunfire reached his ears as the bullets zipped by. He threw himself through the swinging double doors. Red splattered on his blue vest.

     He looked at the red and staggered. He even felt shock coming on until he realized that it was only the remnants of some deceased tomatoes. Relieved by this discovery, he climbed atop the boxes of paper bags and lie down on the large produce cooler.

     Three terrorists burst through the double doors. They spread out and searched for him. One climbed a flight of stairs to the employees' lounge. The other two played hide and seek among the pallets of merchandise. "Peek-a-boo!" said one, leaping from behind a pallet of paper towels. His partner barely restrained himself from perforating the former. They concluded their search, shrugged, and moved toward the produce cooler. Ryan slid back from the edge and hoped he was invisible.

     A burst of gunfire came from the lounge. A few seconds later Ryan watched the third of the trio descend the stairs clutching a can of Coke.

     "Dang soda machine wouldn't take dimes," he explained. Ryan nodded to himself, agreeing with the actions of the terrorist. The heavy door to the produce cooler whooshed open. After a few moments, the double doors on the other side of the cooler opened. Ryan turned and watched on of the terrorists go through a side door into the Deli Department and the other two go out the door leading to the produce aisle.

     Ryan wiped a nonexistent bead of sweat from his forehead.

      

     "I can't find the code key anywhere," said the geek. The office was now in disarray. Cigarette cartons, books of computer printouts, and other assorted papers littered the floor and almost buried the checker. She opened her eyes, saw the mess, gasped, and fainted.

     "Search her," said the leader, pointing at the checker on the floor.

     "What are you guys looking for anyway?" asked Karen, apparently discovering her vocal cords.

     "In this safe is a stack of stamp books and over one hundred thousand bonus stamps. With that haul, we would have enough full books to get quite a few Musicfest tickets," said the leader, laughing heartily.

     "You guys aren't terrorists. You're just thieves," Karen said.

     "We never said we were terrorists. It was the writer of this story that first implied we were terrorists," corrected the leader.

      

     A lone THIEF exited the produce cooler below Ryan. As soon as the door closed, Ryan pulled a rope that he had found atop the produce cooler, and a hastily devised trap sprang shut. A stack of the paper bags fell on the bad guy. Ryan slowly climbed down and examined the newly dead body. There was a backpack with a Packers logo on it under a box of bags. Ryan opened it and discovered a few bricks of C-4. He smiled. "It's about time," he said with a mischievous and somewhat maniacal grin. He looked around, gathered his rope, and said, "Let's get busy...."

      

     Big Jim, the store's power fork, roared out of the double doors of the grocery back room. Its handles was lashed into the "Forward, Full Speed" setting. Two bad guys in the back row of the store looked in surprise. A machine gun was also lashed on board at a level of about three feet above the ground. As the machine plowed forward, the gun fired a continuous stream of bullets toward the front of the store. One of the thieves fired a few bullets at the fork as he and his companion began to run toward the dairy. A scream issued from Aisle One as a bad guy received a helping of bullets. Blood mixed with catsup on the floor, creating a gooey mess that Ryan would probably have to clean up.

     The two thieves trotting ahead of machine passed Aisle Eight and turned the corner of the frozen aisle. The machine hit the corner where the dairy cases meet the frozen cases, and the plastic used the occurrence as an excuse to explode. Two horribly mangled corpses flew threw the air and knocked over a Kool-Aid display in the center of the frozen aisle. Torrents of milk, orange juice, and egg spilled onto the floor. Big Jim was now Hundred Thousand Little Jims.

     It didn't take long for three gun-toting crooks to figure out where the power fork had emerged from. They charged through the door with little regard for the possibility that there might be a utility clerk with an automatic rifle waiting for them. There wasn't, though, because Ryan had planned on the presence of brains in the criminals.

     What the hoodlums did find was three cases of banana peels on the floor. They danced a cartoonish jig as they tried to keep their balance. They failed and fell to their backs. A snickering Ryan, after leaning against the produce cooler door and enjoying the show, ended their shame with a barrage of lead.

     Ryan then entered the produce cooler and emerged in the produce room. A vicious kick launched his gun into the air. It clattered onto the crawlspace he had so recently occupied. The source was a big mad Italian dude. Mario. He appeared a VERY big, VERY mad Italian dude to Ryan.

     "You killed Luigi," Mario said.

     "Er...sorry," said Ryan with a sheepish smile. He figured the apology had been rejected when Mario hit him with a right hook to the jaw. This was followed by a flurry of blows that made Ryan's face numb and his head swim. Another kick and Ryan found himself knocked into the produce cooler. He backed to the opposite door and grabbed whatever weapon was handy. The weapon happened to be a case of eggs.

     Mario let out a yell and entered the room with a flying kick. Show off, thought Ryan. The first Sphericky Grade A Jumbo caught Mario above the right eye, and the following eggs hit him in the chest and stomach. Mario raised his hands to defend himself from the barrage as he moved closer to Ryan. The U/C gave up his futile attack and turned to open the door, but was stopped by a massive chop to the back of the neck.

     Mario stood him up and spun him around. "Now you will pay in full," Mario said with a horrible smirk. He raised his right fist and Ryan felt the crosshairs on the bridge of his nose.

     At that moment, over the speakers, began a familiar sequence of musical notes. The Muzak had faded into the background with this new repeated hard stimulus to Ryan's face, but there is only so much a man can take before his hidden resources kick in. Only so much can a man take before the hatred, rage, and pain set him off for good. And the ninety-seventh repetition of "Good King Wenceslas" was too much for Ryan.

     Ryan's eyes grew red and his fingers curled. They found the neck of his adversary. "No, no more," said Ryan. He forced his muscular opponent to the floor and kneeled on his chest. "NO MORE!" he screamed, and he beat Mario's head against the floor with a passion. Mario soon grew slack and the back of his head had the consistency of a bruised McIntosh apple, but Ryan did not cease until the song was over. When it finished, he stood up, straightened his blood-stained vest, and searched for his gun. He found it and checked the clip. One bullet left.

      

     "Where is the flamin' code key?" asked the leader. The gunfire from the back had ceased a long time ago, and none of his men had reappeared. He had never lost his composure before, but he was close now.

     "I don't know!" shouted the geek. He was sweating. He too knew the score, and it was something like Rogue Dude With the Gun 10, Them 0.

     "Yeah, Ryan!" shouted Karen. "He's whipping up on you guys."

     The leader stepped out of the office and grabbed her arm. "You know him?" he asked fiercely.

     "Sure. He's a U/C here."

     At that moment a rifle and blond head of hair appeared from behind the register at Lane 8. "Freeze!" shouted Ryan, aiming the rifle at the leader.

     The leader pulled Karen between Ryan and himself. The automatic appeared in his hand, and to Karen it looked like a VERY big automatic. "Lay down your weapon and come here," said the leader, "or she dies."

     Drat, thought Ryan. The cute checker I'd most like to impress with my brave heroics. "The big Italian dude's dead. So are the rest," said Ryan, lying his rifle at the start of the conveyor belt of the checkout counter.

     "And you must die," said the leader, shoving Karen away and aiming with both hands at Ryan. Ryan stomped his foot on the pedal that activated the belt and snatched the automatic rifle. He pulled and held the trigger, and shell after shell pounded into the body of the former leader. After a few seconds he released the trigger.

     That's odd, he thought, removing the clip. One bullet remained. That's right, he thought, the hero never runs out of bullets.

     The geeky bad guy watched the body of his boss slump to the floor in the same manner as Ryan had an hour and a half ago. Newly promoted to leadership of the band of hoods composed of himself, his first decision was simple: retreat. He opened the door to the Manager's office and passed through it to emerge in the frozen aisle. Ryan's shot crashed through a door in the frozen case and killed a container of Cool Whip.

     "The dairy back door!" shouted Ryan, and he took off in a trot down aisle eight. The last thief spun the corner and headed into the dairy back room. The next shot from Ryan, fired on the run, splooched into a bowl of ricotta cheese.

     Displaying athleticism uncommon to the ordinary laser-operating nerd, the crook vaulted over three corpses, a pile of trash, and hit the Emergency Door Unlock bar. The alarm began to whine as he pushed into a seven foot wall of snow and into the night.

     Ryan arrived at the back door. He could not see far into the tunnel dug by the guy, but he fired blindly into it. He heard the roar of a diesel engine, and a mountain of snow moved. There was a crashing sound and then a grating sound. This grating continued for a few seconds, then there was a lingering scream quite befitting a geeky criminal, and then silence.

     Ryan pulled a nearby stepladder into the snow and climbed it. As he poked his head out of the snow, he saw Plaid's truck had plowed into the dumpster and shoved it ahead a few feet. He also traced the the collapsed roof of the crook's tunnel and noted that it ended at the dumpster. As long as they don't move the dumpster, I won't have to clean that one up, he thought.

     The driver's side door of the truck opened. "Yeah," said Plaid. "Deep and crisp and even. Ha. Say are you gonna pull this load or what?"

      

     "Where is the code key?" Karen asked Ryan as he appeared at the front of the store, bleeding, torn, and fatigued. He hoped she was impressed.

     "You know Ed. He probably locked it in the safe," Ryan explained. He dropped the gun to the floor.

     "You look pretty messed up," Karen said. "Let me see if we can find some Band-Aids." She stepped into the office, and Ryan followed, secretly happy. To him he felt secretly VERY happy. He ignored Ed's corpse.

     The checker on the floor came around again, and this time she managed to stay conscious. "Ryan, get a broom and a mop and clean my office," she murmured weakly.

     Ryan sighed wearily. "And some 409 for the cigarette rack, right?"


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:13 PM   0 comments

 
That's No Moon

When coupled with a long in-text ad, this Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story produces a line break that leads to an interesting interpretation of the text:


Click for full size


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

 
Wherein Brian Supports Ralph Nader

In Ohio,Ralph Nader has filed suit to end corporate subsidies:

St. Louis built a $260 million stadium to attract a football team. MasterCard got $41 million of tax incentives to build its technology center here. Ford got $17 million to keep its Hazelwood plant open.

Public officials justified each of those economic development deals as a legitimate investment that created and preserved jobs. But each also could be labeled corporate welfare.

Would we be better off if such subsidies were banned? It's an enticing thought to many taxpayers, and a chilling thought to politicians and corporate officials. But the debate has been largely theoretical until recently. Now, a court case in Ohio may make some tax incentives illegal.

He's a better gadfly than commander in chief, that's for sure.

The government has no business spending tax monies to either perpetrate itself or to aid corporations so that they might indirectly benefit citizens.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:32 PM   0 comments

 
Meanwhile, in the Sophisticated World

Our European friends again broaden themselves beyond their normal anti-Semitism to demonstrate their 'superiority' over blacks:

The IMG/Primus Worldstars tour of Europe was organized as a gesture of goodwill, but not all fans at their 5-4 win against the Russian Stars on Sunday felt the same.

A fan twice threw a banana on the ice when Worldstars forward Anson Carter was playing, once during the first period and again during the third. Carter, who is black, told ESPN The Magazine's EJ Hradek that he noticed the racist act but did not alert game officials.

A bit of perspective that people are thugs and punks everywhere, not just here in the United States where over 150 years ago, certain sections of the country practiced a barbarism.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:11 PM   0 comments

 
Now Available from Time Life Books

Beavis and Butt-Head -- The 2nd Coming.

Somehow, I wonder if Time-Life has any reputation left from which we can deduct respect for this offer.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:20 PM   0 comments

 
Government and Technology, Part Infinitum

Story in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Freeway Web site could have cost less: Rivals say they would cut price in half on $685,000 no-bid job.

That's the Wisconsin Department of Transportation spending the better part of a million dollars for a Web site explaining how they're going to rebuild a major interchange in downtown Milwaukee.

The contract, released last week to the Journal Sentinel, also includes $15,600 for 25 flights.

Where in Wisconsin do you need to fly at $624 a pop?

Meanwhile, the people sucking the government teat are pleased:

"We're damn proud of this Web site," said Brian Swenson, vice president of HNTB's Wisconsin operations. "I know we're taking a lot of heat and a lot of hits for it, but this tool is going to save people time and money when construction comes up here."

It's all about serving the public, ainna? At as high of a price possible from funds that the public cannot determine how to spend because it's been taken from them by their elected and appointed betters for distribution liberally to their unelected, unappointed, and no-bid betters.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:17 AM   0 comments

 
Zoo-Sized Pet Peeve

You know, I really hate when advertisements in online papers require an additional download to view. For example, in the stories today on StL Today, the online arm (complete with swinging arm flab) of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, an in-article advertisement needs a plug in and instead of displaying with all its clock-cycle-grabbing beauty, overlays the actual text in the story.

Here's a quick word to you online marketing types: I am not going to download a plugin to see advertising. What were you thinking? Pinheads.


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

 
Academic Arguments

Scientists clash over origin of 'the Great Dying': Volcanic, celestial theories on extinction 250 million years ago take stage in S.F.:

A cataclysm 250 million years ago wiped out nearly all life in the Earth's oceans, and nearly three-quarters of the plants and animals on land vanished too. It was the greatest catastrophe the Earth has ever experienced - - but scientists who study such events are in sharp disagreement over what caused it.

Indeed, scientists in San Francisco are divided: Is it the Bush administration's environmental policies that rent the space-time continuum to cause a cataclysm in distant the past, or is it a Bush administration policy that has yet to pass? Can good scientists stop the evil Edward H. Haliburton III, who many people don't realize still plots maniacally in a lair in the Mojave Desert?

Hopefully, a burst of triumphant fanfare will arise from this Science League retreat to save the future and the past!.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:18 PM   0 comments

 
Ocean's Twelve Safety Tip

After watching the movie Ocean's Twelve, do not attempt to compliment your wife or female significant other by telling her, "You've got more feminine hands than Catherine Zeta-Jones and are prettier than Julia Roberts," if she can quickly grasp the implications.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:12 PM   0 comments

 
Damn Faint Praise

Last week's edition of the Riverfront Times, St. Louis's alternate weekly, provides some damning details about Richard Gephardt's career:

Gephardt, who turns 64 next month, showed up more than 90 percent of the time to vote in all but 7 of his 28 years in Congress.

Yeowtch. So for 75% of his career, he's been present 90% of the time to do his job. Although that's better than my scholastic career, it's nowhere near my professional behaviour.

The Riverfront Times goes on to enumerate some of the years where he's fallen short:

• 1987, where he made 18% of votes.
  
  
• 1988, where he made 80% of votes.
  
  
• 1996, where he made 88% of votes.
  
  
• 1997, where he made 87% of votes.
  
  
• 2003, where he made 9% of votes.

The RFT doesn't cover the last two years, but they don't have to. It serves to highlight that legislators, of both parties, not just Gephardt and the 2004 senatorial tandem that shamed their consituencies most publicly, receive hundred thousand dollar salaries and then don't bother to show up for work.

Imagine the jobs you've held, gentle reader, where you can take that six figure salary and only show up one day every two weeks. Or the one where you got four day weekends every weekend without working more than eight hours Monday through Thursday. Are you having trouble? So am I.

Of course, if you start to figure in vacation, you might have missed a couple of weeks of work. Certainly, this downs your percentage. But it shouldn't figure into a position, such as Congressional representative, where the employee has plenty of time to relax when Congress is not in session. Nor do Congressional missed votes come from sick days, for the most part. Instead, they come when the employee takes care of personal business--whether looking for another job or working deals with other employees regarding workload and credit for accomplishments.

No, our legislators have the best of government work. High salaries, long vacations, and less accountability than real people or even other government employees.


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

 
Alternate Theory

You know, much has been made about the discovery that Viktor Yushchenko, Ukrainian politician and soon-to-be president elect, has been disfigured by a large amount of dioxin introduced to his body. Most people suspect the Russians or political rivals, but I've used Occam's Cosmetological Scalpel to come to a different conclusion.

You know, perhaps he's studied American politics and has learned that certain American politicians have injected deadly poisons used as devices in 1970s and 1980s suspense novels and movies, such as botulism toxin, directly into their bodies in vain and, well, vain efforts to make themselves more appealing to the public.

Unfortunately, because the Ukraine is not Massachusetts or Beverly Hills, Yushchenko got the dioxin and not the botulism.

It's just a crackpot theory, so it might be wrong. But that's what they want you to think.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:16 PM   0 comments

 
The Far Reaches of Agriculture

I just browsed the latest Consumer Information Catalog from the GSA Federal Consumer Information Center. Certainly, if you're not a damn kid, you remember the advertisements they used to run for this free catalog, often (it seemed) during Saturday morning cartoons. Well, I picked a copy up at the local library last week and paged through it. A couple things struck me: first, we have a National Institute of Arthritis & Musculoskeletal & Skin Diseases? Second, why do some departments, like Department of Justice and Department of Interior get abbreviated to DOJ and DOI, while Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services get abbreviated to USDA and HHS?

Finally, as I am paging through, I note most of the USDA (Department of Agriculture) publications don't deal with growing things. We have:

• How to Get a Great Deal on a New Car
• Nine Ways to Lower Your Auto Insurance
• Guide to Health Insurance
• Guide to Long-Term Care Insurance
• How to Buy a Home with a Low Down Payment
• Am I Covered? (deals with homeowners' insurance
• Indoor Air Hazards Every Home Owner Should Know About (joint publication with the EPA--although in certain circles, joints are not considered air hazards)
• The Consumer's Almanac
• Annuities

Contrast this list with the publications offered by the Department of Agriculture that deal with products of agriculture:

• Fabulous Fruits...Versatile Vegetables
• The Food Guide Pyramid
• How Much Are You Eating?
• Recipes and Tips for Healthy, Thrifty Eating

Non-agricultural topics outnumber agricultural topics by more than two to one. I know, you're putting pen to paper right now to ask your congressional representatives how this can be. Are they trying to educate ignorant peasants in the country side to finance? Well, you're not thinking that because I have few leftist coastal readers who would characterize the family farmers out here that way. But I don't expect that these documents where designed to instruct farmers and farm hands or even migrant pickers on the topics they cover.

No, friends, these are budget burners if I ever saw them. Some department within the USDA had some money to spend and understood that if it didn't spend that money, it wouldn't get it next year. So it commissioned a number of booklets on topics which are undoubtedly useful but which should lie outside the scope of the Department of Agriculture. But since the funds were spent in the fiscal years in which the documents were created, undoubtedly future funds must be spent to keep these documents and to supplement the documents with further useful booklets.

Which leads me to guess why the Department of Agriculture goes by USDA instead of DOA. Because when its funding bills come before Congress, perhaps the department recognizes that the legislators don't actually read beyond the title of bills for which they plan to bother showing up to vote, and any funding bill stamped DOA might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Although this would be good for the country, it probably wouldn't be good for the USDA and its professional communicators.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:33 AM   3 comments

 
Recreating the Miracle of Cable

It looks like government officials in Madison, Wisconsin, want to return to the glory days of the 1980s, where local governments gave cable companies monopolies in exchange for wiring their communities. Instead of cable, though, Madison wants a single company to provide wireless Internet access to its citizens:

Wireless Internet could be available in downtown Madison and at the Dane County Regional Airport by this spring, said mayoral spokesman George Twigg.

The state Department of Administration is putting out a request for proposals today seeking vendors interested in building the network, said Twigg and Scott McDonell of the state Department of Administration.

...

Twigg said the city is trying to strike a balance between imposing user fees and building the cost of using the network onto the property tax.

"It's a tradeoff," he said.

Let me project what's going to happen:

1. Some sucking connected wireless provider will bid low.
   
   
2. As part of the contract, sucking wireless provider will want exclusive rights to downtown Madison and the airport.
   
   
3. The wireless company will run over budget and will come weeping to the government to build finish the network it's contractually obligated to deliver.
   
   
4. Government will spend taxpayer money to finish the network.
   
   
5. Sucking wireless company will use a clause in its contract to increase user fees by up to 20% annually.
   
   
6. Other local governments will think it's a good idea and will follow Madison's lead.
   
   
7. It will become a felony to place a router in your downtown place of business to pay only one user fee for wireless access and connect multiple computers.

You think I am mad? Look at your cable bill and wonder why you're beholden to a single company for service.

(Link seen on Boots and Sabers.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:53 PM   0 comments

 
Talking Back to Christmas Carols

Yes, Ms. McGovern, they know it's Christmas. They're kids, for ding-donging out loud.

(Apologies to Jeff Goldstein for stealing his groove. Well, not really.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:37 AM   0 comments

 
The Government is my Firewall

Whenever I read a story like the one I saw on CNN.com entitled "Bush pressed for more Net security", I immediately start putting the words crony and capitalist together and start leaving laissez-faire alone. For once we get into the details-that is, the first paragraphs-we see what this group wants:

Computer-security experts, including former government officials, urged the Bush administration on Tuesday to devote more effort to strengthening defenses against viruses, hackers and other online threats.

The Bush administration should spend more on computer-security research, share threat information with private-sector security vendors, and set up an emergency computer network that would remain functional during Internet blackouts, a computer-security trade group said.

It's a trade group, which represents companies that take money to do computer security services such as researching computer-security, sharing threat information with private sector security vendors (each other), and setting up emergency computer networks to remain functional during Internet blackouts. That is, the trade group wants the government to devote money to pay to the trade group's members. The call is as relevant as any group of potato farmers or mohair ranchers shrieking that the people of the United States need their product to survive.

I am alarmed, however, with the amount of play and seriousness given to the idea that the government should do something to ensure the security of computer networks. As companies have sacrificed security in developing their infrastructures and network capabilities in favor of cost savings, expediency, and convenience, they should not expect a government bailout now. The government undoubtedly should expend public funds to ensure that its capabilities remain intact during an emergency, but it shouldn't retrofit, expensively and bureauwastefully, security for any factory or utility that placed its flow controls online on the Internet for convenience and a chance to lay off people who would have to check those controls in person. I don't want to spend tax money to ensure that my bank is secure nor that my credit card companies can weather an attack, nor to ensure that my power company can continue delivering amperage down my pipes; that's a cost of business, which the businesses often pass on to me through service fees and surcharges so that those costs don't come out of the profit margin and the shareholder's take.

However, since these lobbyists want the best of all worlds: surcharges to charge consumers for the cost of business and the government, and by that I mean us taxpayers, actually paying for the costs of business. Since the customer or taxpayer backlash hasn't arisen, Willie, it's go time.

As a taxpayer and a customer, I don't look forward to the expanding synergy between government security administration and private industry. Let's take an example from recent history: airports. Airlines, leaky boats which the government frequently bails out with buckets of taxpayer cash, and airport authorities, government bureaucracies in their own right in many cases and not very good at for-profit in others, abdicated their obligation to secure their places of business. First, they took government funds to pay for their own surly security employees, and when that wasn't enough, the government stepped in and provided its own employees, surly and unaccountable to the private sector, to grope grandma.

So call it a slippery slope if you will, but private/public partnerships do resemble a water park. If a group of lobbyists paid highly by companies, whether profitable or failing, calls for government aid, they often get more than we customers or taxpayers want or deserve. Imagine a decade hence, when companies have pissed away the government funding on efforts to secure further government funding--which is where most government funding goes, even in the government. The private-public partnership has failed, and some legislator who wants to get on television midwifes the Computer Security Administration (CSA). This new authority dictates that computer owners must install the government flavor of McAfee anti-virus and must allow the government to schedule scans twice a week. Anyone who does not let the government perform its security function, loosely defined by Congress and arbitrarily envisioned by a mid-level Homeland Security manager looking forward to a better appointed position, faces a fine or felony charges just like impudent fliers do now. Our leadership class explains that responsible Internet travellers must accept this sacrifice, and the media will find some AOL user to explain that it's a good idea and doesn't impair his experience at all (it wouldn't). The government gets to scan your hard drive every night for the good of the nation, and if you don't like it, in four years you can vote for a different legislator too timid to agitate for its reversal.

Once the government takes over the security, all customer ill will regarding the inconvenience and the intrusiveness of the practices goes to the government and its employees, and the companies and their trade groups can only shrug their collectivist shoulders and say to their customers, sorry, it's the government running its fingers over your shapely posterior, not us. All responsibility for irresponsibility successfully shirked, the trade groups can turn their attention to the next government handout--and hand over.

Sound crazy? Imagine what you would have thought about current TSA practices in 1994. Or 1987.

To make a short story long, Internet and corporate network security are not the government's business. They're the exclusive burden of companies who choose to participate in networks and of the consortia and standards bodies and organizations, well, organized by private industry. If our "capitalist" industries cede that obligation to the government, they're putting their short term cost savings ahead of the ultimate best interests of their customers and the interests of the citizens of the Republic.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:11 AM   0 comments

 
$1,200 We'll Never Have Back

Thanks, Jon Dolan, Missouri State Senator from Lake St. Louis and an alleged "Republican," for cooking up this stupid waste of tax money: "Visitors will know Miss USA is ours":

Stan Musial hasn't had one. Neither has Chuck Berry. In fact, no St. Louisan has been honored with his or her name posted on a state highway sign leading into Missouri. But that's about to change.

Starting next year, motorists driving west over the Poplar, Jefferson Barracks and Interstate 270 bridges into Missouri will be greeted with this: "Welcome to Missouri. Home of Shandi Finnessey Miss USA 2004."

Not to put too fine a point of it, but by that time, it will be that Miss USA was ours, once, sometime around the turn of the century, like the World's Fair.

Jumping jesuits, but that's a lot of money to laud a transitory and ultimately unimportant honor. For the love of peat, why?

"She's a hottie, and she's a smarty," said state Sen. Jon Dolan, R-Lake Saint Louis, whose idea it was to put up the signs.

Dude, next time you try to impress a woman, how about you expend a little of your own money to send flowers?


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:12 AM   0 comments

 
Property Rights Leaking

Fresh from triumphs in determining whom restaurant and bar owners whom those business owners can serve on their private property, government officials in Philadelphia now want to determine whom theatre owners can serve by limiting children under the age of 6 from some screenings. By law.

Mainly, I suspect, because although the human condition doesn't change that rapidly, but because legislating is a full time job and computer solitaire can only fill so many hours in the day.


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

 
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

 
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

 
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

 
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

 
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

 
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

 
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