Remembering the Old Times, Back Before the AHL Became The Big Leagues

Internet Hockey Database, featuring the best compendium of stats anywhere.

(Link seen on Hockey Pundits.)


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

 
Just Childish

It's hard to believe that a grown-up wrote this column with Bill McClellan's byline in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A young woman left a message on my voice mail. She said she was driving on Highway 40 when she noticed an SUV practically on her bumper. The driver flashed his lights at her and then pulled up next to her. He was a middle-aged man, and he snarled and yelled something she couldn't make out. When he finally pulled ahead, she realized what the incident had been about. She has an anti-Bush bumper sticker, and the SUV had one of those "W-04" stickers.

"I have a question," the young woman said. "The conservatives won. Why are they still so angry?"

If only he had left it alone with the mindreading, wherein he could tell from his desk at the Post Dispatch downtown that the other driver was not, in fact, upset because the woman who called Bill McClellan obeying the unwritten Missouri traffic standards and driving in the passing lane while doing about or below the speed limit.

No, then McClellan has to explain how conservatives are the dweebs, geeks, and nerds from high school while liberals were the cool kids, the cheerleaders, and the athletes.

The man's next step is fingerpainting his columns, folks, I kid you not.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:22 PM   0 comments

 
Verb Abuse

CNN Headline: Explosion targets Spanish hotel. I'm not a physicist, so take what I am about to say with a grain of sodium chloride, but

Explosions don't target things; people do

Headline writers use this cheap personification when they want to hide appropriate subject of the sentence, the actor who made the typically bad thing happen. To say "Basque Terrorists Target Hotel" makes the Spanish separatists sound just a little mean, doesn't it? Better the explosion itself --an act of nature that just happens under just the right circumstances, such a combination of Semtex and detonator-- take the rap than to single out the people who actually performed the deed.

Headline writers also use this when they want to emphasize an inanimate object's role in the event, especially when the prevailing windsom indicates that the object itself is bad. That's why you get SUVs running down grandmothers and guns killing innocent bystanders.

Personification is a nice device in fiction or creative non-fiction. Journalists should probably avoid it, except when their journalism is fiction or creative non-fiction. Come to think of it, perhaps journalists are already adhering to this maxim.


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

 
Another War Criminal Heard From

In the weekly antiques column from the Saturday St. Louis Post-Dispatch, we find this war criminal:

On or about June 3, 1945, I was one of three men in the 101st Airborne Division who explored Hitler's hideout on a mountain near Berchtesgaden, Germany. The 101st was the occupying force in that part of Germany. We climbed through an open window into the living room. Nearby was a small dining room with cupboards full of china. I took two dinner plates and mailed them home. I had the plates framed when I got home, and they have been hanging in my house ever since. The plates are white with a scalloped, gold-painted edge. The border of each is decorated with two red dragons and an abstract floral design. In the center there are two stylized red birds posed in a fighting stance. The only mark is a set of two crossed swords. Can you tell me how old the plates are and identify the maker? The design looks Chinese to me.

There are photographs showing Hitler and his cohorts using these dishes in the Eagle's Nest hideout. The dishes were manufactured at the Meissen factory in Saxony, Germany. The pattern, known as Meissen Red Dragon, has been made since the early 1700s and was used not only by the German High Command, but also by several European royal families. Write down the story about how you came to own the plates, and be sure your family has a copy. Although no one is likely to consider your plates anything other than wartime souvenirs, you should be aware that ownership of items removed from Germany and other European countries during World War II can be legally challenged. Your plates could be worth $1,000 or more with proper documentation.

Geez, Luis, why don't you just spare yourself the trouble and mail those plates to the German consulate? Because we all know, history will prove that Hitler was only almost as bad as George W. Bush, and that taking a couple of plates which can still be recovered and their $1000 of worth go to a good German rates more outrage than direct or indirect participation in the deaths of millions of people and burning much of Europe to the ground, because, you know, that took place a long time ago.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:06 PM   0 comments

 
Government Wealth Redistribution

Story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Critics say that Jim Brown isn't worth millions:

The city of St. Louis, the St. Louis Airport Authority and the transit agency Metro have paid more than $3 million over the past five years to a Washington lobbyist to be their chief advocate with Congress and federal agencies and to steer federal money back home.

The lead to this story highlights the fundamental inefficiency in the current system of government funding and its built-in waste.

The Federal government makes its sweeping national mandates that it wants states and communities to implement. To help the smaller government units handle the demands from above, the federal government passes on grants and whatnot.

So the Federal government collects the taxes, takes its percentage from the top, and hands the money to lower governments. The lower governments spend money from their general funds to employ grant writers and lobbyists to get the diminished revenue pool passed on by the Federal government. Meanwhile, government departments, advisors, and lobbyists get their points from the money passing through their hands from the citizen to the highest level of organization and then back down to the local governments who actually do the work.

So does the Post-Dispatch point out the inherent inefficiencies of the system and argue that the Federal government could scale back its centralization and allow local communities to use local tax revenue for local projects directly and that local communities wouldn't have to waste existing tax revenue pursuing other tax revenue?

Of course not. They're upset that the lobbyist isn't efficient bringing the slop from the Federal trough:

But the lobbyist, Jim Brown, has a mixed record at best, according to interviews with two dozen members of Congress, aides and local officials.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:21 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Savage Love by Dan Savage (1998)

I bought this knob-licker's book from the three-for-a-dollar rack outside the Hooked on Books in Springfield. The book's cover and pages are kinda wavy and the book has a sort of sweet odor to it. I don't know if some Southwest Missouri State student, steeped in openmindedness and something sweet and smoky, dumped the book before moving from the stifling confines of the Bible Belt for a big city or if someone received the book as a gift and ran it through the dishwasher because it's dirty. I can only speculate, but I didn't practice safe reading and read this book without protective latex.

I've read Dan Savage in the local tabloid and on Salon in the middle-to-late 1990s. His columns tend to have the message that if it doesn't hurt anyone (unless they want it), sexual practices are okay. He's right, of course, but focus on the physical pleasure disservices participants who don't know or expect anything more thank a hook-up.

Savage writes as a know-it-all, slightly an ass, and it's hard for me to take any more than a couple of pages or letters in any one sitting. Because it will undoubtedly offend Mr. Savage, I'd like to point out that his voice reminds me a little of Rush Limbaugh. There's a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek in the voice, as though Savage is playing the part of being more ass than he really is. It's that quality that makes Rush Limbaugh amusing, but Savage is more, well, savage in his assishness. He calls names, casts aspersions, and belittles those whose sexual aesthetics differ from his rather expansive set. So he's like Rush Limbaugh, but not as good or humorous. Maybe Dan's more like Michael Savage, who an Internet rumor I'm starting right here indicates is Dan Savage's estranged older brother.

So I'd recommend sticking to the columns and not investing any more than thirty-three cents on the book, and I don't imagine I'll buy any of Savage's other books of commentary.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:18 PM   0 comments

 
Remaining Anonymous

From the LA Times story about a man in last week's train crash in LA who

As he lay wedged under a train seat and metal debris, with whatever energy he could summon and a heartbreaking economy of words, he scrawled a farewell in blood on the seat. "I {heart} my kids. I {heart} Leslie," he printed.

Some people are inspired by the story and want to find him, but he wants to remain anonymous:

"I'm a private person," he said in a statement the hospital released for him, "and the message that I wrote was a private message to my wife and my kids because I didn't think I was going to make it."

Ann Althouse comments:

The extraordinary thing is that this man with an opportunity to be paraded about in the public eye has chosen to remain private.

Perhaps his wife's name isn't Leslie. That would explain it, ainna?


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

 
The Myth of Conservative America ca. 1949

Okay, so some twenty-five or more years after I spent Sunday mornings watching the Lone Ranger scattered among old episodes of Sgt. Preston and his dog King of the Yukon, Hopalong Cassidy, and the Bowery Boys, I bought a DVD containing the "pilot" episode of the Lone Ranger from 1949. To you damn kids who attend public schools, I will helpfully calculate that it was 55 years before the cheap DVD was released and by now about 56 years ago that network television presented a hero that:

• Was rescued by a minority person of color whom the hero had helped previously, in a time when helping minority persons of color was not respected
• Rescued a quadraped and nursed it back from the brink of death and managed not to eat it
• Offered the wealth of his and his brother's share of a silver mine to a poor substinence farmer but for some small stipend
• Vowed to shoot to wound, not to kill
• Lived as a symbol of the rule of law, not the rule of self-defense or revenge

Cheese, Louise, had the Lone Ranger lived to vote in 2004, he might have voted for John Kerry.

This is the shared herotage that some people would deny America. I'd like to think that perhaps we could share these ideals, but then some schmuck starts thinking that perhaps since my house is so nice I should give more than what I can spare beyond it that I start casting my own bullets out of whatever the heck they make nickels out of these days.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:22 AM   0 comments

 
Book Review: Voodoo River by Robert Crais (1995)

This book features Elvis Cole working for an adopted starlet who's interested in finding her natural parents in Louisiana. When Cole travels to Louisiana, he discovers that her past is shrouded in mystery, mayhem, and the secrets of a small town.

Enough of the back of the book stuff. Another good Elvis Cole book, but one that again makes me think of the work of Robert B. Parker--the end reminds me a lot of Early Autumn, but with a twist. Of course, these novels make me feel like pre-Spenser:For Hire Spenser novels, when I could wonder what was going to happen before I was caught up in the dialog-driven post-Spenser: For Hire Parker novels, when the dialog just carries you from page 1 to page 300 without allowing the reader to wonder what's going to happen.

On the other hand, this novel represents the first time Crais deploys the old "first person narrator discloses to other characters, but not to the readers, the plans" trick, which is second in cheap tricks only to the "first person narrator dies at the freaking end" device in absolute author naughtiness. Poor form, Peter, especially when you're just throwing it in on page 200 to create suspense. Stephen King would thrash you, and rightfully so. That doesn't count as proper foreshadowing.

Still, I recommend the book, particularly if you can, as I did, get it as a Christmas gift from a beautiful wife who gives up her collection because she knows I won't read books that are not on my To-Read Shelves unless they're my books. Otherwise, they're worth your paperback or second-hand dollar.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:21 AM   0 comments

 
Sharon Stone Puts Down Payment on Land Rover

Story: Sharon Stone steals charity limelight at poverty debate:

Hollywood siren Sharon Stone, more used to the film studio than the business stage, stole the limelight with an impromptu fundraiser at the World Economic Forum that secured one million dollars in aid to Africa.

Seizing her chance during a heavyweight debate on how to tackle poverty in Africa, Stone stood up in the middle of the crowded hall to offer an immediate personal pledge of 10,000 dollars -- then challenged others to follow suit.

It rather undercut the big-name panelists, who included Britain's finance minister Gordon Brown, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and the billionaire Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.

That won't even buy a whole Land Rover for the do-spenders who distribute aid in Africa.

It's also disingenuous of this journalist to say Sharon Stone upstaged Bill Gates. Let's write it out with zeros:

750,000,000	Bill Gates donation to Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation
10,000,000	Bill Gates donation to UN for polio vaccines
3,000,000	Bill Gates donation to tsunami relief
10,000	Sharon Stone's donation to poverty relief in Africa

But Bill Gates is an evil capitalist, and Sharon Stone is a feeling artist out of Hollywood with a good pair of legs and, as some lizards would atest, tasty feet, so of course she upstaged Bill Gates by promising an amount equal to 1% of what Sandra Bullock gave to tsunami relief.

But at least Sharon Stone was dressed appropriately, eh, Robin Givhen?


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:26 PM   0 comments

 
Dress for the Occasion

Virginia Postrel, who lives in Texas, concurs with a Washington Post fashionista who dings Vice President Cheney for dressing warmly for an outdoor ceremony in January:

You don't dress for a solemn state ceremony as though you were going for a hike.

You know, Postrel and Robin Givhen might have approved of William Henry Harrison's attire for his first inauguration speech. The sartorial splendor killed him.

Listen to this Wisconsin boy: if you're going to be outside for a long period of time, you dress warmly and let the other people keep themselves warm giggling at your attire or expressing their outrage. That way everyone is comfortable.

Update: James Joyner agrees.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:58 PM   0 comments

 
Gall as Big as Church Bells

I haven't awarded the award in a while, but I will present it deservedly so to Missouri Governor Matt Blunt who is seeking to actually cut a government benefits program:

His [Governor Blunt's] proposed budget would cut 14,607 low-income elderly and disabled people who signed up under the latest program expansion. They are among 89,046 adults who would lose their coverage under Medicaid, the joint state-federal health care program for the poor.

Blunt said Medicaid's price tag has doubled in six years, making the program unaffordable for taxpayers. Even with his proposed cuts, it will cost $5.3 billion, or more than one-fourth of the total state budget.

In addition to curtailing eligibility, the governor would ax some services. For example, the state would no longer pay for physical therapy, occupational therapy, ambulances and hospice services. Also gone would be money for dental care, hearing aids, prostheses and wheelchairs.

Children, pregnant women and the visually impaired would be exempted from the cuts.

Social service advocates were dismayed at the scope of the proposed reductions.

Needless to say, some free-spending politicians are up in arms over the proposal:

When legislators expanded taxpayer-paid health care for the elderly and disabled three years ago, then-Sen. Sarah Steelman was jubilant.

"In my district, going door to door, I'd come across widows who clearly needed assistance," recalls Steelman, a Republican from Rolla who is now state treasurer.

Let's rewrite that: a politician from Rolla who's job-hopping up the political ladder and whose goals are electability, not what's good for the state.

The more treasure to spend, the more powerful the treasurer, I guess.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:38 AM   0 comments

 
Argument for Term Limits

Ladies and gentlemen, I present the best argument I can think of for term limits:



Kennedy Calls for Troop Withdrawal in Iraq:

The American military's continued presence in Iraq is fanning the flames of conflict, and signals the need for a new detailed timeline to bring the troops home, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy said Thursday.

Just three days before the Iraqi people go to the polls to elect a new government, the Massachusetts Democrat said America must give Iraq back to its people rather than continue an occupation that parallels the failed politics of the Vietnam war.

If we limited our senators to two terms, like we do our presidents, they would only have 12 years to turn into bloviating goofballs, would only have one re-election for which they needed to raise funds, and would not accrue valuable soft power that leads them right into lobbying.

Also, Teddy Kennedy would have just been another quiet lush in an expansive family compound after losing a presidential election in 1976.


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

 
Moving in the Right Direction

Developers scale back plans for PabstCity complex: New proposal for entertainment center seeks smaller city subsidy:

Plans for converting the former Pabst Brewery into an entertainment, shopping, office and housing complex have been scaled back, and developers will cut by almost one half the amount of funding sought from Milwaukee taxpayers.

The proposed downtown development, known as PabstCity, is now expected to cost $317 million, with $39 million sought from the city, the project's developers said Wednesday. Their estimate last summer of a $395 million development included $75 million in financial assistance from City Hall. Mayor Tom Barrett and other city officials said that earlier request was too high.

Good on Barrett and the other city officials. If only they had said that any welfare benefits to wealthy developers and corporations were too much.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:12 PM   0 comments

 
Richard Roeper Embraces Slavery (for Others)

Roeper weighs in on the Maggie Galagher microbrouhaha:

Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post reports that syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher pushed the Bush administration's "marriage initiative" without disclosing that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services.

That's the second time in recent weeks that we've heard about a columnist taking money to push a political agenda. When radio disc jockeys took money to play certain records, the name for it was "payola." Isn't this the same thing?

Kurtz also reported that Gallagher received $20,000 from the Bush administration to write a report titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?" I wonder what conclusions she drew.

Yet Gallagher told Kurtz: "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? You tell me."

Well. YES.

You also violated journalistic ethics by taking the money in the first place, dear.

Message: When the government wants you to do work for it, you do that work for free, citizen.

Perhaps the government needs someone to comment on its training films....I nominate Roeper. For free!


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

 
FULL DISCLOSURE

I took Pell Grant money from the Federal Government as part of my college financing package.

You, gentle reader, should then assume that all words on this blog and all independent thoughts and ideas I have are duly vetted and approved by the administration of President George H.W. Bush, by whose largesse I could afford a private university.

Update: Read my longer take on the Maggie Gallagher artifiscandal here.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:28 AM   0 comments

 
FULLER DISCLOSURE

I have, from time to time, also received a FEDERAL INCOME TAX REFUND, which is a greyer area. Depending upon your point of view, it's either my money or money from the government, either an increase or decrease or I have somehow precipitated a cut in federal revenue.

Regardless, you should assume then, gentle reader, that I am withholding too much from my paychecks every week, and I think you would be right.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:27 AM   0 comments

 
Challenge for Pro-Business Governor

Some people have called Missouri's new governor Matt Blunt "pro-business." At least one legislator is ready to test that: Senator wants to show exit to Missouri's adult businesses:

A Show-Me State lawmaker wants a sin tax -- on those who show too much.

First, Missouri banished sexy billboards and young strip dancers. Now, Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Kansas City, wants to force adult entertainment businesses out of the state by stripping them of their profits.

Legislation pending in the Senate would impose a 20 percent tax on revenue of all "sexually oriented businesses," charge a $5 fee for each person entering their doors and prohibit them from staying open late at night.

"The goal of the bill is to make Missouri inhospitable for these businesses," said Bartle.

If this sort of idiocy passes the legislature, which it might since Republicans frequently feel that some businesses are more equal than others, Governor Blunt should veto it. He probably wouldn't, since he may be pro-business, but he's more pro-politics (demonstrated by his career choice).

Bartle would like to drive this sort of business out of Missouri so that people who like to see boobies can do it untaxed on the Internet or in Illinois. Once the thousand or so adult entertainment businesses are closed, he can then cover the budgetary shortfall by taxing other sins--such as eating, drinking, driving, reading, ad absurdum.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:58 PM   0 comments

 
A Mountain Out of a No Hill

Subtitle this piece "Is Magge Gallagher the Devil?" because that's how she'll be played by people who want to discredit the ideas she has expressed in her writing. So is she the devil? No, she's a writer, but let's get into the case as presented by the Washington Post's Howie Kurtz:

In 2002, syndicated columnist Maggie Gallagher repeatedly defended President Bush's push for a $300 million initiative encouraging marriage as a way of strengthening families.

"The Bush marriage initiative would emphasize the importance of marriage to poor couples" and "educate teens on the value of delaying childbearing until marriage," she wrote in National Review Online, for example, adding that this could "carry big payoffs down the road for taxpayers and children."

But Gallagher failed to mention that she had a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health and Human Services to help promote the president's proposal. Her work under the contract, which ran from January through October 2002, included drafting a magazine article for the HHS official overseeing the initiative, writing brochures for the program and conducting a briefing for department officials.

"Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it?" Gallagher said yesterday. "I don't know. You tell me." She said she would have "been happy to tell anyone who called me" about the contract but that "frankly, it never occurred to me" to disclose it.

So her crimes against the prevailing and convenient ethos of those who are now hunting for conservative writers who write for a living include:

• Drafting a magazine article under contract for a customer
  
  
• Writing brochures under contract for the customer
  
  
• Conducting a briefing for the customer
  
  
• Writing a column about the same topic covered by the work for hire

If Maggie Gallagher is the devil for making a living at writing, then most working writers are.

I've worked as a technical writer, during which time I have:

• Written technical manuals covering a specific technology for my employer
  
  
• Written press releases and marketing material for my employer covering the specific technology
  
  
• Written a white paper for a customer (my former employer) about the technology
  
  
• Written articles about the technology for publication

We're both guilty of:

• Learning about a particular subject
  
  
• Writing about a particular subject
  
  
• Writing about the same subject for publications and for business customers

Unfortunately, the slipery slope of evil means that once you become knowledgeable on a subject, more different clients will pay you to write about it. As a writer, your powers and your inner darkness grow hand in hand!

So am I the devil, too? Guilty of payola, plugola, writola, or whateverola? A tool of the vast technology-embracing conspiracy, working at the beck and call of shadowy figures with their own agendum to sell the technology? No, I am a writer, maximizing my knowledge of a particular technology in as many formats and for as many markets as I can. The only difference between Maggie Gallagher and me is that I've done my work for technology companies, talking about technology, instead of writing about public policy for magazines and syndicates and for the big customer, The Federal Government.

Her contract price wasn't out of line for what she did for the government, and I assume that her syndicate and the National Review pays her a salary upon which she and they have agreed for her work. So all sides in this transaction are happy, and the consumers can read what she wrote and evaluate the information the same as anyone who's read one of my white papers can. Take the contents of the article or leave it.

But because she's written materials regarding public policy, the rules are different. Instead of making a case for an opposing policy, some people attack the person. Current writer ethics, used as a cudgel, demand a monastic existence from Writers in Papers or Magazines, where the writer cannot work outside the realm of the Reader's Interest or some other inchoate abstraction. Startled editors and other townspeople with pitchforks and torches want full disclosure, but any writer with any success or with any experience in contract business writing should overwhelm lists of customers, clients, and publications. Sometimes the details of the contracts aren't the writer's to disclose.

As I said, I'm fortunate to not have any technical writing contracts in public policy. The rules in technology are different. The technologies and their marketing fluff, white papers, and ideas contend in a marketplace, where the competition doesn't stoop to knocking the individual authors who write about technology. Instead, the competition develops their own technologies and hires people like me to write marketing fluff, white papers, and other materials for trade shows and for inclusion in trade magazines.

Maggie Gallagher is guilty of being an efficient and a smart writer who has successfully marketed her insight, gathered knowledge, and writing talent to a variety of customers. As a writer, I applaud her success and wish her continued success. I also wish her character assassins would fight ideas with ideas, but recognize that's unlikely.

(Rant inspired by this post on Outside the Beltway.)

Full disclosure: I have taken sums of money and favors for writing things, but neither from Maggie Gallagher.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:54 PM   0 comments

 
Tripp Hardin Responds, Lauds Favre

Perhaps I was disingenuous (which depends on what that word means) when I posted this bit about an ill child who met Brett Favre. I explained who I thought was the real hero of the piece:

This John Q [Tripp Hardin] gave up his own tickets and sprung for the flight for the kid and his mother from Texas to Green Bay. Favre? He just showed up and patted the kid on the head.

Tripp Hardin commented in e-mail:

I am the person that you were referring to in your story about Christopher and Brett Favre. I first want to thank you for your kind words regarding me. Second, I would like to correct you in regards to Brett Favre. Brett went beyond the call of duty as did the entire Packer organization. Brett could have just showed up and patted Chris on the head but he did much more. First, he approved the entire visit. It was his decision. Second, He spent an hour with us when he could have gone home to spend time with his wife who in his words "was having a very bad week with her Chemo" (she is suffering from breast cancer). This was on Saturday around noon when the team had from noon to 7pm free time before they needed to be sequestered in the hotel the night before a play-off game. He also spent a few moments taking pictures on the field before warm-ups. Neither actions are something that he had to do. It was simply out of the kindness of his heart. You are correct in that there was wrong focus that weekend. It was mostly focused on the childish antics of a Minnesota Player instead of what really counts, helping people.

I riposted:

I also think you're being modest. Favre did what gracious athletes do. I'm not knocking Favre, he's a gracious athlete by all accounts, but you did something even better.

According to the account I read and remarked on, you took the initative and made it happen.

Since it's my blog, I get the last word, and I stand by my earlier assertion and its reprise. But I posted the exchange so you could see what sort of fellow this Hardin is and so you, gentle reader, would know that someone besides you reads this blog.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:16 PM   0 comments

 
Congratulations Might Be Forthcoming

Johnny Carson has inspired John Kass to quit smoking.

Good luck, Kass.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:52 AM   0 comments

 
Live Blogging the President's News Conference

These reporters don't want information. They want to catch the President.

I know, that's obvious, but I notice it most acutely when I actually listen to it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Free Fall by Robert Crais (1993)

I have this book in hardback, but that means instead of bending paperback covers, I got blue ink on my hands from the spine of the de-dustjacketed book. I guess it was worth it.

Elvis Cole receives a visit from a damsel in distress who thinks that her fiance, a cop with an elite undercover group, is in some sort of trouble. The cop visits Cole right after the woman leaves and explains that he's just cheating on her. Elvis follows up and finds that one of them is lying and one of them is not. It would be a much shorter book if only the woman had been lying.

The book returns to a better hard-boiled standard where the detective is looking for answers and not just solving a problem--even though there's some of that in this book. Still, I like the style of the plot better than Lullaby Town, and I'm even willing to overlook some questionable plot holes in the beginning--as long as I don't think about it too much.

Still, it's better than average detective fiction bordering on the exceptional.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:32 PM   0 comments

 
Anti-Robot Bigotry on the Left

At the local recycling facility this afternoon, I say the following bumper sticker:

Support Organic Farmers

I assume that person will be one of the last to welcome our new robot farmer overlords.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:32 PM   0 comments

 
Cue the Violins

Headline: Rural counties keep afloat with tape and bubble gum:

Weaverville, Trinity County -- Supervisors in this 13,000-resident county the size of Rhode Island are postponing $3 million in road repairs to keep Trinity's debt-ridden hospital afloat.

You mean Trinity County, which owns and operates five public use general aviation airports located throughout the County?

Trinity County, which gives out grants according to the directives of the its Trinity County Children and Families First Commission's Strategic Plan [to spend money]?

Which has its own Department of Tobacco Education?

Which has its own Department of Risk Management?

Which has a number of parks and its own Library System?

Although money might be scarce, I think that these municipalities, like most other governments, lack clear priorities. They run out of money before they run out of ideas, but they don't put the ideas on hold or examine their feasibility; instead, they get more money.
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:56 AM   0 comments

 
Razzies Clear Shark and a Couple of Whales

The annual Razzies awards have taken a political stand by nominating George W. Bush as worst actor:

In addition, the president made the list for worst actor for his film clip appearances in "Fahrenheit 9/11," a movie he might well consider the worst of the year. Also nominated for their appearances in the politically-charged film about the Iraq war were Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Well played, fellows. You're now as counter-culture as traditional Hollywood and the Oscars you used to spoof.


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

 
St. Louis County Government Says, Nyah Nyah

After an embezzler with the county government pilfered funds and overbilled a title company to cover the shortcoming, the county government says, too bad, so sad, we're not recompensing the title company. Story:

When a St. Louis County employee stole $727,215 from a cash drawer over about six years, she covered it up by overbilling Investors Title Co. to balance the books in the Recorder of Deeds office. That means the county should bear the loss, company President Joseph Crutchfield told a jury Monday.

But Investors Title had the paperwork it needed to discover the crime from the start, and thus should accept responsibility, a lawyer for the county countered in St. Louis County Circuit Court.

The message, of course, is that you should just assume that your government is composed of felons out to rip you off.

It's a good message. Thank you, St. Louis County, for stating it clearly and loudly.


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

 
Unleash the Dogs of Irony

Christian Slater explains why he loves London in a story in the Times of London, December 12, 2004:

I like the fact that there’s no gun culture here but I don’t necessarily feel safer. There’s a frisson in London that’s similar to Los Angeles or New York, a sense that something might happen at any moment, and I really appreciate that. If I was moving for safety’s sake, I’d head for somewhere like Vancouver, but I enjoy living in a country that’s a bit raw. In America there’s a real sense of danger right now, a sense that lightning might strike at any time; it’s not attractive. I prefer the edginess I find in London.

Christian Slater is attack with an edgy weapon in London, January 2005:

American actor Christian Slater has escaped a knife attack after a performance of his show in London's West End.

Well, at least he's safe from George W. Bush's America and its gun culture.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:26 PM   0 comments

 
Nutria: Delicious and Nutritious

Nutria Recipes, courtesy of the United States Geological Survey. Yes, that is your government and your tax money at work.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:59 PM   0 comments

 
Forget the Border, There's a Book to Seize

Here's the lead for the story "Germany demands return of rare book found here":

Any of the usual suspects in the book world could have bought the book, but only Rod Shene recognized the rare quality in the slender volume of old German drawings. He put down $3,900 for the work and hoped that one day he would be rewarded for his judgment.

Just another day on the job for Shene, 46, who buys and sells rare books for a living out of his St. Louis apartment. Though $3,900 certainly represented a sizable investment, serious dealers such as Shene typically spend up to $15,000 for a collection.

But there is nothing typical about this book. In the past four years, it has thrust him into a heated dispute with the German government, threatened to damage his reputation and robbed him of his time when he needed it most. Yet the book is the find of his career.

First, the good news: Shene was right about the book’s quality. Last year, leading auction house Sotheby’s valued the book of drawings at $600,000.

But Shene’s good fortune came with some bad news: The book may have been stolen from an unlikely victim — the German government. The state-owned Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart claims a World War II U.S. Army captain took the book and others from a castle and eventually deposited them in his Richmond Heights home.

Here's the most disheartening bit:

The German consulate in New York contacted the U.S. attorney’s office about the matter. It, in turn, contacted the Department of Homeland Security to see whether Shene illegally moved stolen merchandise across state lines.

I feel safer not that the DHS has run out of terrorists, illegal aliens, and mobsters to prosecute under the Patriot Act.


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

 
Governor Blunt Favors Hijacking, Theft, Robbery

Blunt wants tough curbs on cold pills used in meth:

Missouri may soon be stepping up its war on methamphetamine. Gov. Matt Blunt announced Friday that he wants the state to join Oklahoma and Oregon in enacting tough restrictions on the sale of the most popular over-the-counter cold remedies.

Under Blunt's plan, consumers who want to buy cold pills containing pseudoephedrine could get them only at pharmacies, and purchasers would have agree to have their identities recorded in a police database.

Decongestant pills containing pseudoephedrine can be a cold sufferer's dream or a narcotics investigator's nightmare. The medications, which are available everywhere from service stations to hotel vending machines, are easy to convert to meth and in recent years have fueled an explosion in illegal drug manufacturing.

This twisted logic represents the same ill thinking demonstrated by people who favor gun control. You see, if we make it harder to legally acquire something used by criminals, we'll make fewer criminals. In this case, it's Sudafed. Next, to defeat child pornography, people will have to register their digital cameras. Why not? What have you got to hide?

Of course, making it harder for criminals to get the legally-ownable things they need will not prevent the criminals from getting their Sudafed. It will mean that criminals will have to get their meth ingredients by illegal means, such as burglary, armed theft, and hijacking Walgreens trucks. Ergo, Governor Blunt is in favor of more violence in the war on drugs.

At the very least, the nonviolent meth cookers in Missouri will cross state borders to buy their gross cases of cold remedies, which means those other states will get the sales tax.

The proposition is lose/lose/lose/lose. The cold sufferer loses because it's harder to get legal remedies. The public, particularly pharmacies, loses as criminals resort to more violent means than commerce to acquire that which they will acquire anyway. Tax spenders, that is, the legislature loses the revenue of legitimate commerce. Finally, the taxpayers lose as they have to fund a new apparatus to support the initiative.

On the other hand, some do win from the proposition. A database provider will make some money. The governor will look tough. Small town pharmacies in border towns outside Missouri might prosper. There's your half full paragraph for the evening.


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

 
Governor Blunt Also Favors Voting Fraud

Gov. Blunt proposes making absentee voting easier:

JEFFERSON CITY - Gov. Matt Blunt has a plan that he says would make it easier for people to vote early without costing taxpayers a bundle. Blunt wants the Legislature to authorize "no-excuse absentee voting." As the term implies, voters could request absentee ballots without giving a reason.

Under current law, people must state under oath that they will be unable to go to the polls on Election Day due to absence from the area or another eligible reason. Sometimes, people may fib about their excuses because election authorities don't check.

Blunt would open up the process so that all registered voters could cast absentee ballots up to six weeks before the election, either at the election office or by mail. He would do away with the requirement that absentee ballots be notarized.

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:30 PM   0 comments

 
Cancel the NHL Season, Please

I've spent the season following the Milwaukee Admirals of the American Hockey League (the AAA league, so to speak), and I don't want to have to switch gears and root against these fellows when they're called up to the National Hockey League as Nashville Predators, division rivals of the St. Louis Blues.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:54 PM   0 comments

 
Milwaukee Police Want to See Boobies

City considers police cameras

Of course police like cameras. They're cheap and allow the police the ability to gather evidence of criminal activity without having to leave the warm confines of their surveillance centers. Police watching through cameras won't actually prevent crime with cameras--the victim will still be beaten/mugged/raped/killed, but at least the police will have full color tapes of it.

Assuming, of course, the police behave better than the security officials at Caesar Atlantic City, who were fined for using the security cameras to ogle women or than law enforcement officials in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, who diverted traffic cameras to look at young women.

I don't want to sound too anti-police on this matter, but I don't think that cameras improve public safety much, if at all, and certainly not enough to justify the expense or the loss of privacy involved.


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

 
Misplaced Paranoia

In a column entitled Desktop search threatens your privacy, columnist David Sheets builds a long story about how desktop search applications can threaten your privacy. His main point stems from the thought summed up in first part of the following quote:

"The thing is, somebody who sits down at your computer after you’ve just used it can go back and look at everything you’ve done, even if you’ve just used your credit card to buy something or typed in your password to your bank account," Moore said. "If no one has access to your computer, then you’re OK, for the most part."

You know, if someone untrustworthy sits down at your computer and wants to do bad things, he or she is not going to use your desktop search. He or she will install backdoors and keystroke loggers and can just use Windows Explorer or the freaking Start menu to go through everything on your PC at will.

But some of you want the advice of your shidoshi of paranoia, and I will dispense the wisdom. What can you do to prevent someone from sitting at your computer and finding out your innermost secrets or sitting at your computer and installing malicious software?

You must always properly secure your computer chair.

Your revered sensei of paranoia always locks his computer chair in the closet when he's going to be away from his desk; as anyone knows, a burglar with hacking skills or an FBI agent with a court-ordered spyware kit won't be able to work their dark magic on his computer if they don't have somewhere to comfortably sit while doing so. Hackers, social engineers, and their ilk simply won't abide by standing, kneeling, sitting on the desk, or bringing their own folding chairs to your computer.

This simple step, often overlooked by computer users, can render your computer more secure immediately.


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

 
How Can You Tell When A Politician Is Lying?

When they promise a temporary sales tax that will sunset:

"It is a one-half cent sales tax for whatever amount of time it takes to pay for the issues," said Presiding Commissioner Mark Mertens. "It will not last for more than five years."

Jefferson County, Missouri, officials want the sales tax for a laundry list of things:

If approved, the sales tax would provide funds for a new juvenile detention facility, expansion of the county jail and the creation of a park development fund. The tax would also cover the cost of bringing county buildings into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Perhaps presiding commissioner Mertens believes what he's saying, and perhaps he thinks that he and the people who follow him in Jefferson County government will not find further means to spend money generated by the new tax so that Jefferson County will need to extend or make permanent the sales tax.

However, as a private citizen, I have my doubts. Once the sales tax is in place, I suspect it will be permanent and eventually, I predict that Jefferson County will find some reason to raise its amount for the Children or some other pet projects.

Once Jefferson County's revenue becomes dependent upon sales tax monies, watch for eminent domain abuse as its government officials determine that large retail developments are worth more to them than actual residents who own the land the developers covet.

Slippery slope? Not too slippery, since it won't happen suddenly. After all, it would be five years before the Jefferson County government has to act to make the temporary sales tax permanent. But don't doubt they would try.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:30 PM   0 comments

 
Incensed

I just returned from one of those January holiday parties, and I admit that I, too, was finally offended by the overtly PC sensitivity people who insist on calling it a holiday party instead of naming it properly to pay homage to the reason for the season.

The people throwing the party should have called it a Martin Luther King, Jr., Day Party along with any company throwing parties for their employees in January and calling them "Holiday Parties."


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:01 PM   0 comments

 
Free Ice Cream

Headline: Ben Kingsley and wife have split.

They had a split? Did it include fudge and crushed nuts?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:36 AM   0 comments

 
He's Not Paranoid, He's My Brother

Sure, a skylight sounds nice, but why would you let the satellites look right into your bedroom?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:19 AM   0 comments

 
Trust Us

Story: AMR might add flights:

American Airlines, the biggest operator at Lambert Field, will add more flights in St. Louis if it can negotiate lower airport costs in the coming year, AMR Corp. Chairman Gerard Arpey said Wednesday.

"If we can get facility costs down, that can only be good news for adding new service in St. Louis," he said. AMR, of Fort Worth, Texas, is American's parent company.

Kudos to the headline writer for recognizing that once AMR gets what it wants--lower rates--it might not actually deliver the possible new flights.


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

 
Wrong Focus

AOL to expand capabilities in Web searches:

America Online is expanding its online search capabilities in an effort to establish a bigger presence in the lucrative search-advertising market.

AOL is expected to announce on Thursday that it has teamed up with several technology suppliers to help it offer expanded search functions, such as improved geographic-based searches, clustering results by topic and helping people refine their searches through suggested alternative keywords.

AOL plans to expand the advertising appearing on its search page, the article said. It will also use the unusual approach of charging advertisers based on how many telephone calls are generated by their ads.

No word about improving the customer experience; if anything, it looks like it will adversely impace the user experience with the inclusion of more advertising.

Perhaps AOL should stop the continuous loop of Field of Dreams at headquarters. Just because you build it does not mean the users will come.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:42 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Lullaby Town by Robert Crais (1992)

Lullaby Town is the third Elvis Cole book, and Crais takes the series in a new, but common direction. No longer does Elvis Cole have to figure out what's going on, but rather he knows what's going on and has to get his client out of it.

When a famous Hollywood director hires Elvis Cole to find his ex-wife and child, Cole has to travel from the warm and friendly confines of California to New England. He soon discovers the wife has made a new, successful life for herself but with accidental and encompassing involvement as a money launderer for a New York crime family. So early in the book, we know the whole thing and the remainder of the book is not so much mystery as it is crime-based problem solving.

Robert B. Parker took this tack, too, with a number of his novels and, in many cases, the lesser novels in his canon. Chandler, nah, Marlowe was always trying to figure out what was going on in the room. Whenever crime novels run in this direction, they tend to make their heroes the most clever person in the room, and that goes against the spirit of the hardboiled school in a way, where the detective perseveres and wins in the end not by outfoxing, necessarily, the bad guys, but through his tenaciousness and relentlessness. Okay, with some intelligence, too.

Heather assures me that not all of the remainders of the series reflect this trend, which I hope is the case. I root for the underdog, and guys who hope to outsmart organized criminals aren't underdogs. They're just smart guys who outsmart organized crime. And in series of detective novels, they do it once a year at least.

Confession: When confronted with the name Elvis, most people would think of the Elvis. Me, when I picture Elvis Cole in my head, I have a different Elvis as a starting point.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:01 PM   0 comments

 
Together We Will Rule The Galaxy as Father and Daughter

Is it just me, or is there a family resemblence here:

Bill Gates

Ellen Feiss

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:19 PM   0 comments

 
How The Mitey Have Fallen

I just heard, while listening to Michael Medved show on KRLA 870 in Los Angeles, Gary Coleman doing a radio spot for CashCall.com, an unsecured loan broker.

Heather and I have most recently seen him in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century where he played Hieronymous Fox, a child genius. As he did so many times. I grew up with Gary Coleman as a kind of hero, a kid my age who was always smart, clever, and funny. I'm somewhat sad to see him reduced to stumping for a lender based on his own past poor credit.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:23 PM   0 comments

 
Apologia

Upon hearing the clock chime three, I asked (rhetorically, of course) of the cat, "Where does the day go?"

I realize this was insensitive and wish to apologize, sincerely, to all the Italians I may have offended by saying syllables together that sound like an ethnic slur. Because I understand some members of some ethnic groups take offense at that sort of thing.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:00 PM   0 comments

 
Shouldn't We Warn Somebody?

Headline on CNN:


Click for full size

Four car bombs hit Baghdad in 90 minutes? Shouldn't we warn someone?


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:50 PM   0 comments

 
The Affect of a Minimum Wage Increase on Some Morale

Over at Boots and Sabers, Owen is covering the proposals to increase minimum wage in Wisconsin using a lot of insightful commentary, meaningful statistics and projections. We here at MfBJN won't rise to that level of discourse, preferring to build consensus on anecdotal evidence about the negative impact of minimum wage increases on the morale of the brighter and harder working mambers of the lower end of the wage scale. Who am I kidding? It's all about me.

I got my first job in the summer of 1990 in Milwaukee at a grocery store. I worked as a bagger and accepted minumum wage, $3.85 an hour, as a matter of course. All the teenage boys and infrequent twentysomething bagger started at minimum wage. Gold's Shop Rite wasn't a union shop, so the raises weren't planned nor mandated. Still, my exemplary nature as an employee shone through as I learned the facets of the business and could be called upon to not only man the checkout lanes, but also to handle the other sundry duties involved in grocery stores without goading from managers. To reward me, they gave me a $.20 or a $.25 raise, so I was making about $4.00 an hour. Then they trained me to run a cash register, one of a few baggers ever entrusted to do so, so they raised me to the checker's starting wage as a reward. As such, I received two merit raises in under a year, and by March of 1991, I was making $4.20 an hour. It's a pittance, I know, but it wasn't brain surgery. I was very pleased to be recognized and rewarded by earning more than people who'd started the job before me.

When I opened my check in the first week of April, I noticed my wage had increased $.05. Without prompting. That's an odd raise, I thought, and my first instinct was to draw the error to the attention of the store manager. Then I remembered something about the minimum wage going up.

Of course my employer couldn't raise my salary respective to the minimum wage, as it already had to contend with increased labor costs in a low margin business. The federal government and my duly elected legislators had deemed me as equal to the freshest, least productive employee hired off the street even though my employer had thought otherwise. Thank you, Uncle Sam, for returning me to my place as poor cog in the machine, getting uppity and increasing my earning power without the help of my betters in bureaucracy. Thank you, comrades, for ensuring that other people who didn't bust their hump were rewarded the same as I was.

See, to this day it rankles me. I was working hard in a low paying job, and I went from a cut above everyone else to earning just as much as anyone else. I know how much a little bit more matters--I spent almost three years after college switching jobs for an extra quarter an hour--but on that April day, the minimum wage increase forced me to trade a point of pride--my heightened salary--for two dollars a week more in income. Pre-tax.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:09 PM   0 comments

 
Life in the OC

You know, I always put the outgoing mail in the mailbox with the stamp to the left. It's not a conscious thing, but it just seems right to have the addresses rotated counterclockwise. Isn't that weird?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 AM   0 comments

 
Close Call For The Athletic

I saw this headline, Sports Authority cuts budget after complaints, I worried because I confused it with the Sporting Authority, our preferred retail outlet for non-bicycling athletic gear.

Fortunately, though, the retail establishment will remain open, and the St. Louis Regional Convention & Sports Complex Authority will continue spending private/public tax largesse with only the normal amount of annual abashment:

Board members of the St. Louis Regional Convention & Sports Complex Authority made the move after learning last month that the authority's employees had gone over budget last year in nearly every expense category and had not notified the board.

The authority overspent last year even after Mayor Francis Slay and others publicly accused it of wasteful spending.

One of the cuts:

One new cost savings for this year: The board declined to renew the contract of the authority's public relations firm.

Executive Director Kent Underwood had asked for $72,000 to be budgeted this year to pay the Vandiver Group, the PR firm.

Last year, the authority paid $98,000 to Vandiver - more than four times the $24,000 that had been approved by the board.

Good idea, since the PR firm certainly hasn't convinced we the people of the purpose or necessity of this entity.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:27 AM   0 comments

 
Harry, Harry, Harry (I)

By now, most of you know, Prince Harry of England recently attended a costume party dressed in a Nazi uniform, and the for-public-consumption outrage uproared and stamped its hoof threateningly in the dirt. Mark Steyn writes a column about the big Hollywood premieresque indignation.

As a service to our readers, I include a handy table of costumes of both evil people and not evil people as whom Harry could have dressed and the uproar those costumes would have provoked:

Costume	Reaction:
Nazi	Because certain segments of the punditocracy continue to harp the x=Hitler equation, they must continue to reinforce the public's opinion that Nazism and Hitler are the worst evils ever produced in the world, even though by twentieth century standards, they were a pretty standard lot of totalitarian killers of innocent people (see also Stalin, Tse-Tung, Amin, et al.)
Commisar	Red chic is so fashionable and retro ironic. Pass.
Mongol Horde Member	Sure, they raped, pillaged, and razed villages in the manner of Ghengis Khan, but that was so long ago it's a worthless analogy to use on Bush or Blair, so Harry gets a pass. Unless he's savaged, so to speak, for mocking a barbarian of color.
The Devil	As an icon of evil used by one or more major religions, the Devil has no more meaning than kitsch to the intelligentsia, many of whom the plebes could argue are already in the Devil's pocket.
Jesus Christ	The professional shriekers only respond to the outrage of a select few Christian moonbats who would express outrage over this continuing example that Christians and Christ are the only thing you can dress up as for Halloween without outrage except for theirs. Those silly people, getting so upset for nothing, the intelligentsia would cluck.
Pontius Pilate	Who are you supposed to be? ask the chatterers. Who's that? they ask when told.
Mohammed	After someone at the fanatic edge of Islam cuts Harry's head off, the shrieking classes say he asked for it by offending the sort of people who would cut your head off.

So the outrage sort of fits into the total program of presentation, where Nazis are bad bad bad not so much because they're totalitarians who tried to take over Europe and who killed a lot of people (which differs from the European bureaucracy only in body count, but not so much in intent), but because Nazis are bad, bad, bad. Because the Nazis have to be bad so that creatively-challenged dissenters can compare current world leaders to them thoughtlessly.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:14 AM   0 comments

 
Harry, Harry, Harry (II)

Does anyone else find this quote (also in Mark Steyn's column) too earnestly Orwellian?

"In a Europe grounded in peace and freedom there should be no place for Nazi symbols," declared Markus Soeder, general secretary of the Christian Socialist Union party. "They should be banned throughout Europe, as they are with good reason in Germany."

Prohibition=freedom, citizen.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:13 AM   0 comments

 
Paranoia Sense Tingling

Satellite lost over the south Pacific:

Intelsat, Ltd. announced today that its IS-804 satellite experienced a sudden and unexpected electrical power system anomaly on January 14, 2005, at approximately 5:32 p.m. EST that caused the total loss of the spacecraft. In accordance with existing satellite anomaly contingency plans, Intelsat is in the process of making alternative capacity available to its IS-804 customers. The satellite, launched in 1997, furnished telecommunications and media delivery services to customers in the South Pacific.

If this were the early chapters of a Tom Clancy novel, the Chinese would be plinking.

(Link seen on /.)


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

 
They Want Reform Now?

Story in Sunday's St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Missouri fee agents prepare to lose contracts after shift in power: Democrats call for change in system:

Maria Turner knows that any day now, she'll lose her job.

Turner runs Department of Revenue fee offices in Chesterfield and Clayton. The offices sell license plates, issue drivers licenses, process applications for titles and collect sales taxes on new vehicles and boats.

Her shops are among the busiest in the state's 171-office network of independent contractors, and Turner is proud of her lower-than-average error rate in processing applications. But she figures her days are numbered. The reason: sheer politics.

Fee offices are among the last vestiges of patronage politics in state government. The governor's campaign contributors traditionally get the contracts, which in some cases can provide six-figure incomes to their operators. The offices charge a fee for each transaction. After expenses are covered, the rest is gravy.

Democratic contractors appointed by former Govs. Bob Holden and Mel Carnahan expect to be replaced soon because Matt Blunt, a Republican, took over the governor's office last week.

I don't weep for Maria Turner, the woman who'll have to go from clearing six figures plus salary for a number of years as a Democrat appointee to the soup kitchen. I do gasp, almost, with surprise that Democrats want to act now when their contributors will lose the gravy train. As far as I know, Carnahan, Wilson, and Holden didn't agitate for it when they were governors or when the Democrats controlled the legislature, so I think the Democrats in Missouri are demonstrating another disingenuous and yet transparent maneuver to not allow the incoming Republican administration the same amenities their boys have enjoyed for the last dozen years.

That said, I think it's a capital idea, and I hope pro-business governor Matt Blunt actually goes through with it. I'd like to see a minimum of two fee agents per county to ensure that citizens have a choice in their driver's license renewal options and perhaps see some customer service out of the functionaries behind the counter whose inner clocks move on four year cycles.

What, you think I have had one or more bad experiences in these little ill-furnished storefronts and could do nothing but bite my tongue and line the pocket of someone idealogically opposed to me? I have, and I had no choice in it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:20 PM   0 comments

 
So-Called Watch

From a CNN.com film review:

In the film "In Good Company," Dennis Quaid's character, ad executive Dan Foreman, lives out a fear hidden inside millions of American men and women over 50 -- losing their job just when they are hitting their stride professionally.

Foreman has played by the rules all his life and is living the so-called American Dream. He's respected by peers and clients as the head of ad sales for a weekly New York-based sports magazine. He has a loving wife, Ann, played beautifully by Marg Helgenberger ("Erin Brockovich," TV's "CSI") and two daughters, the oldest of which, Alex (Scarlett Johansson), is just entering New York University.

Is that a sneer towards the values of good family, working hard, living quietly? Why, I think it is! Don't the plebes know the American dream involves a third floor walk-up in Manhattan, foreign film festivals, and endless nights of trying to score at bars and nightclubs with anemic europhile women?


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:54 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Stalking the Angel by Robert Crais (1989)

I read the second Elvis Cole book, my second in 36 hours, so that bespeaks much of how enjoyable these particular novels are proving.

This one finds Elvis Cole looking for a a stolen Japanese manuscript, protecting a wealthy businessman's family, looking for a kidnapped girl who might be complicit in her disappearance, and battling Japanese organized crime. Elvis Cole battles more crime in a day than some fictional private eyes see all book.

The plot is convoluted, but not confusing; as the first person narrator has to reframe events in his own mind, he takes the readers along, so it's not confusing or overly elaborate. Heck, I figured it out sixty pages in with a guess as to how I, as a writer, would play it.

I'm eager to continue with the series as it, like John D. MacDonald's work and some of the sixties paperbacks I've taken to in the last six months, entertains me and inspires me to write. As soon as I finish another book, of course.


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

 
Sunday Night Fiction: "Shepherd: At College"

Okay, so I got nothing this weekend. Here, have a short story. This particular piece piggybacked on a piece I wrote while in high school, not that anyone knew it. "Shepherd: At College" represents the second Jim Shepherd story, which chronicles the adventures of a young man who grew up reading too many hard-boiled detective adventures. This story represents one of my many publication credits, as it appeared in the Spring 1994 Marquette Journal. Lest you forget because this is the Internet, friends, the following piece is copyright 1992 Brian J. Noggle, and it should not appear on your Web sites without my permission until, as Disney rules are in effect, 2999 AD.

---

Shepherd at College

   Dark rolled down outside the blinds of the little coffee house I was sitting in. I was trying to stare wistfully into my drink, which was difficult because it was a flattening Cherry Coke served in a paper cup with a strange dichromatic ocean picture that became clear only after you stared at it a while. Maybe it really wasn't an ocean scene. Maybe that's only what I saw after staring at it a long time. I was swaying in time with the bluesy jazzy poppy music they piped in to the joint, swaying and looking wistfully into a paper cup of soda. It was not one of my better days. Then she walked in.

   Her heels clicked to a stop on the fake brick floor just inside the door. She shimmered. She glistened. The room coalesced and kaleidoscoped. She did other things in the light that made my eyes hurt. And I had only been drinking Cherry Coke. She swirled a glance over the accumulated misfits and might have lingered on me for a minute. I wish. I straightened up and shoved my hat back. A macho enough gesture, but the hat was kind of tight and moving it back hurt a bit, so she would have no idea how macho it really was. I ran my fingers along my hairline and pulled my hat down. It hurt.

   What would Spenser do? He'd go over and say, "Want to see me do a one-armed push-up?" and she would giggle and he would snap off ten. Spenser was a wuss. I could do one-armed push-ups two at a time. I decided against the gesture. She'd just think it was macho posturing or something. Besides, ten is an awfully high number and she might get bored in the middle of my macho posturing.

   As it were, I just tipped my chair back against the pseudo-brick wall and leaned my head back. The brim of my hat hit the wall and the hat slid painfully down over my eyes. Mike Hammer never had this problem. I coolly chicked the front legs of my chair back down and shoved my hat back. Her back was to me as she paid for some coffee concoction with a crisp fiver. Good.

   She looked over the room and looked at the empty table next to me. It was the only one in the place. Our eyes met and I felt the electricity. She looked around again, probably to make sure that everyone was watching as she swanked deliberately over to the table. It was hard for her to decide whether to sit across the table so she could see me or on the side nearest me, and she settled on sitting with her back to me, acting coy and indifferent but handy when I wanted to strike up a conversation.

   She was doing a good job on the cool thing. She didn't even turn half way and look out at the room so she watch me out of the corner of the eye. She was good at this game, but I was better.

   "Excuse me, do you know what time it is?" I asked her.

   She didn't even glance at the little Seiko on her wrist. "No." she said.

   Hard to get, I thought. I knew the thing. The harder I chase her, the more I'll like it when she gave in. And she could check out just how much I liked her in just how hard I chased her. An ego thing. I was one step ahead of her.

   "Shepherd's the name," I said as she spread a New Yorker on the table in front of her. "Jim Shepherd," I said after a dramatic pause, a pause made more dramatic when she hadn't said anything. Or even looked at me.

   "Good for you," she said.

   "And you are?"

   "Getting irritated."

   A big jockish looking guy came over to her table. "Hi, Sharon," he said. "How ya doing?"

   "Great," she said.

   Great, I thought.

   "I'm headed over to Duffy's. Want to come along?" Jock Boy said. Sure, if he didn't have those muscles and all that where would he be?

   "Thank God," she said, closing her New Yorker slipping it into her bag. She turned and they walked out. She started talking as they were out of earshot. I watched them leave, and I have to say I enjoyed it.

   Sharon. I liked the name Sharon. I liked Sharon. At least it wouldn't be one of those lingering, clinging things. She and Jocko turned the corner and were gone. But not forgotten. I wondered if she were a freshperson. That would give me four years. Plenty of time. It was going to be a good four years. Oh, those blue eyes, I thought and I would have sighed except I'm a tough guy.

   I looked at my soda. It was almost empty. I could use another pretty soon, but the tap was so far away. A little red bird was flying across the sky on the cup, and it wasn't getting anywhere. Tough luck. I was sympathizing with that bird when she walked in.

   She seemed to seep into the room like a fog. A mist of perfume, hair that rolled from her head like a dark warmth, and a presence that crept before her and lingered after she left. She glanced over the room and her big brown eyes flowed over me like molasses. They might have syrupped on me for a moment, but it might have been just me. She looked at the table next to me, the only empty one in the joint, and she cascaded over. I took a healthy slug of my Cherry Coke. What would Philip Marlowe do? I wondered.


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

 
Book Report: The Monkey's Raincoat by Robert Crais (1987)

I got this book, and all of Robert Crais' novels to date, for Christmas, so I started with this book as it's the first Elvis Cole novel.

The book features a private investigator in California who follows well the footsteps of Philip Marlowe and Lew Archer, better than that Moses Wine guy. Elvis has to investigate the a husband who has disappeared with the couple's son. The husband, a down on his luck agent, has been cheating on his wife with the sordid lot of starlets and seems to have gotten himself in over his head with drug dealers, organized crime, and femme fatales.

The writing is denser than Robert B. Parker's work, from whose early this work seems slightly derivative. This book does draw its attention to a common modern writing foible, though; the shortcut use of the brand name as an adjective. You don't find it in the older stuff that remains fresh to this day; Chandler didn't tell you who made the high-quality merchandise, he described how the merchandise was high quality. A lot of authors these days just drop the brand name in and let us make the appropriate judgments on how well the character is dressed--or not. Unfortunately, I don't know a lot of California brand names, so I can't get the full flavor of the scene. So I've learned something to avoid in my writing. Sure, the brand names will draw contemporary readers in, but over time, their use will stale quickly.

Still, The Monkey's Raincoat is a good read, even if I don't understand the title or its allusion. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series anyway.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:51 AM   0 comments

 
Best Headline of the Day

TechDirt's Bezos Innnnnn Spaaaaaaaaace!

I laughed because I got the allusion. And I'm not explaining it to you damn kids.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:23 PM   0 comments

 
Hint for Poets

Abu Ghraib rhymes with astrolabe.

Just in case you need it for your next sonnet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:23 PM   0 comments

 
Does That Mean What I Think It Means?

From an article entitled "Police: Coroner Confesses To Stealing From Dead - El Paso County Deputy Coroner Says He Sold Stolen Drugs":

Deputy coroners' jobs include removing bodies from homes, hospitals and other locations and collecting prescriptions of those who died.

Coroners use the medicine to make sure the victim was taking the prescribed dosage and didn't die because of an overdose.

The journalist could have phrased that better, ainna?


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:59 AM   0 comments

 
Good Column by Steinberg

I spend a lot of time and blog inches disagreeing with him, but Neil Steinberg's column today contains nothing with which I disagree and several things with which I agree.

Just thought I would mention it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:06 AM   0 comments

 
The Problem with Preventing Crime

Does anyone see the paradox in this? Pilot arrested in cockpit after screener smells alcohol:

The charge:

An armed AirTran Airways pilot was charged with operating an aircraft under the influence after a federal screener at McCarran International Airport smelled alcohol, authorities said Thursday.

The problem:

"The captain neither took command of the aircraft nor was the aircraft operated in any manner," the airline said.

Authorities, operating under the assertion of the precogs, have charged this fellow with a crime he was about to commit but had not yet committed. He's not charged with conspiracy. He is being charged with the actus reus, friends, and if it sticks, it's precedent.

Keep that in mind the next time you've had a couple of beers and go to get something out of the cabin of your car.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:37 AM   0 comments

 
Wince

Surprisingly, a commentary columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch doesn't like Fox News or conservatives in the media:

"A PBS Mind in a Fox News World." I saw that slogan on a bumper sticker, and it resonated with me. I consider many news programs on the Fox network unabashedly partisan and ultraconservative. The idea that millions rely on it for news and information makes me wince.

You know, the thought that anyone gets news or insight from the Post-Dispatch would make me grimace, but I just can't make that leap of disbelief. The funny pages, yes, because for the Post-Dispatch, they start on page one. But by unleashing this common broadside of a normal newspaper commentariat who thinks airborne conservative communitariat are vain and whiny, I have to wonder what point the columnist is trying to make, and to whom he has targeted the piece. Does he want to draw the publicity ire of conservatives who will drive readers to him if only to mock him? Is he having a bit of fun with his small circle of readers who are reality-based in a real world?

Also, why do I care? But that's enough questions for now.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:45 AM   0 comments

 
Elite Gamer Report

Amid an evening spent installing the latest in strategy and first person shooter games, well, if you extend "latest" to include Unreal Tournament 2003, I would like to announce that I have won my first game of Minesweeper in almost a decade.

Not because I suck, mind you, but more because for the first time in ten years I have bought a computer instead of a sack of parts, which means also for the first time in ten years I have had Minesweeper installed.

But I take some small pride in winning nevertheless.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:31 PM   0 comments

 
Some of the Best Bloggers Are, and Then There's Sullivan

Contrary to what Google might imply and some Google user might suspect, I have never had sex with Chris Pronger.

Thank you, that is all.


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

 
But I Don't Have a MUPP

Since I don't have a Masters in Urban Planning and Policy, of course it strikes me as senseless and tragically humorous that portions of St. Louis County are using eminent domain to turn residential area into retail area, and that portions of the City of St. Louis are turning retail area into residential area.

I will think it equally amusing in twenty or thirty years when the roles reverse, because St. Louis County municipalities' sales tax diminishes because there are no citizens left to shop in the retail areas and the city determines it can get more in sales tax revenue than in income tax and other revenues from actual citizens.

Had I that precious degree, I would think it very serious indeed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:22 AM   0 comments

 
Thinking Inside the Box

St. Louis Union Station, the city's old train station, remodeled as a mall, isn't doing so well:

Randy Knight set a new record at his Union Station kiosk, and it wasn't a good one. He had a day, earlier this month, when the crystal figurine and tchotchke stand where he works made just one sale: $15.

At the rental rate of $1,600 a month, it may not be long before his brother-in-law, who owns the kiosk, becomes another failed businessman at the converted train station.

Business is slow at Union Station and seems to be getting slower, shopkeepers say. It doesn't help that the St. Louis Blues aren't playing this winter at the nearby Savvis Center. Krieger's Sports Grill, which opened just a year ago, shut its operation after New Year's Eve.

Union Station, beautifully restored 20 years ago with a soaring, glass-enclosed shopping area adjoining the former train depot, recently was taken over by a new management company, Jones Lang LaSalle, one of the nation's largest managers of shopping centers. General Manager Byron Marshall and Marketing Manager Frances Percich have been on the job for less than two months.

"We're going to come up with a plan," Marshall said. "We're very optimistic we can come up with change, some positive change."

Meanwhile, even though train tracks continue to butt up against the mall so that people who can afford it can ride a to eat and drink well while enjoying the vistas of the junkyards of East St. Louis, rail travellers in St. Louis will visit a new temporary rail station since Amtrak is replacing the previous 25-year-old temporary structure (the Amshack).

So when faced with no shopper traffic in a "revitalized" former train station chock full of shops and kiosks that sell t-shirts and St. Louis souvenirs but very few necessities of life (unless you subsist on coffee and fudge), undoubtedly the obvious answer demands that you turn some of the empty shop space into condominiums.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:06 AM   0 comments

 
Ten Year Plan

Oh, boy, here comes trouble: Homeless no more: Plan seeks to end chronic homelessness in 10 years:

If you can imagine Downtown without any homeless, you can imagine success for a regional plan to end chronic homelessness within 10 years.

I cannot imagine, but then again, I am a taxpayer, not a tax spender. Apparently, their imaginations are better.

The 10-year plan for the city and county will identify the needs and then say what services and housing facilities will be used to end chronic homelessness.

I just bet I can guess what sorts of programs those will include, and how effective the plan will turn out.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:00 AM   0 comments

 
Hollywood Sense Tingling

Does anyone else wonder what this implies?

ABC is teaming with veteran TV movie producer Robert Halmi Sr. for "The Ten Commandments," a four-hour miniseries that will retell the classic biblical tale of Moses.

Halmi was quick to point out that the miniseries will not be a remake of Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 movie starring Charlton Heston, but will rely on extensive biblical and historical research for a realistic, truthful presentation of Moses and the Jewish people's exodus from Egypt and their travel to Mt. Sinai, where, according to the Old Testament, God descended to deliver the Ten Commandments.

"I felt that (the Ten Commandments) is the first written document of law, morality and order for the human race, and we completely ignore it," said Halmi, whose myriad credits include "Legend of Earthsea," "Dinotopia" and "The 10th Kingdom."

Story: ABC to make new 'Ten Commandments'

That sounds swell. Recasting a biblical "tale" by the fellow who produced The 10th Kingdom (A father and daughter are caught in a parallel universe where the great queens Snow White, Cinderella, and Little Red Riding Hood have had their kingdoms fragmented by warring trolls, giants and goblins.) and The Legend of Earthsea (A reckless youth is destined to become the greatest sorcerer that the mystical land of Earthsea has ever known.).

Does anyone see the potential for offense-giving in this? Let the prelash begin.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:43 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: From a Buick 8 by Stephen King (2002)

I paid several dollars for a remaindered copy of this book, so you can guess I like Stephen King enough to part with green instead of silver for his books. That's my disclaimer for bias you'll find in this book report.

The book chronicles, in a series of flashbacks told as part of a narrative, how a troop of Pennsylvania State Police deal with a portal to some strange world and its occasional tendency to disappear state troopers or disgorge aliens. After the SC (sergeant commander) of the troop recounts the story to the son of a recently-killed trooper, the situation comes to a head in the now as the young man decides --probably under the influence of the alien force -- to destroy --or empower--the Buick 8.

The narrative shifts among different speakers both in the present and in the flashbacks, so the narration is somewhat disjointed and not particularly effective. A couple of times in the book, I wanted the action to move a little more quickly, but I made it through. It helped that the book runs only 350 pages, a mere short story for King. Also, he resorts to trickery in the epilogue, poor form, Stephen.

Still, it's always interesting and inspirational to read a Stephen King book to examine his style and his voices and how he can turn a simple plot into a readable and enjoyable novel.


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

 
Wrong Focus

In this generic Terminally-Ill-Child-Meets-Sports-Hero story, entitled Terminally ill child has a new friend in Favre, the writer focuses on Favre, but the real hero of the story is the private citizen who made it happen:

When Packers fan Tripp Hardin first read Christine’s letter on Jan. 4, he was instantly moved, but he knew that to get them to the game, he had to act quickly.

He knew that Favre occasionally looked at the message board and answered questions. But the game was less than a week away, and he figured the chances of Favre seeing the letter were “slim to none, with slim walking out the door.”

The Packers frequently allow visits from terminally ill children through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, said Cathy Dworak, the team’s manager of community relations. But Christopher’s case was a direct appeal to Favre, so this was his call, not the Packers’.

“Brett decided he wanted to do it,” Dworak said.

Hardin, 45, a financial adviser in Kenosha, is a season ticket holder, and he gave his playoff tickets to the Foppianos. After a busy two days of phone calls to Christine, the Packers’ front office, and his father - who donated his frequent flier miles - Hardin had pulled it off.

This John Q gave up his own tickets and sprung for the flight for the kid and his mother from Texas to Green Bay. Favre? He just showed up and patted the kid on the head.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:00 AM   0 comments

 
Paying My Hockey Dues

As bound by the terms of my participation in the Hockey Whoopass Jamboree, I must post the



logo because the Houston Aeros defeated the Milwaukee Admirals for the second time this season last night.

Worse, the Admirals have fallen to second in their division to a team from Chicago. Come on, a team from Chicago. Chicago sports teams should only be in first when they're alone in a division, for crying out loud. The Chicago division, specially created so the rest of the country can escape their giant Charybdis, mythical-class sucking.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:12 PM   0 comments

 
Application for Medical Insurance

6. Health Information

D) Do you, or any family member listed in Section 5, take any medicine(s), drugs, pills or herbs, or require shots? X Yes _ No

If you checked any itesm in Question C or answered "yes" to Question D, please complete the following (use additional application form, if necessary):

Name of Person	Condition	Dates Diagnosed and Treated	Type of Treatment/ Names of Medications	Current or Further Treatment?
Brian J.			Basil
Brian J.			Sage

Well, they asked what herbs I was on.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:19 PM   0 comments

 
Soundtrack to the Work Day

Interesting. KMJM is playing the song that runs through the strip club scene in Beverly Hills Cop. I think this makes my home office a hostile workplace. I might just sue myself.

On the other hand, I wonder what the title is, not that anyone would know it. It's the Beverly Hills Cop Strip Club Song.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:15 AM   1 comments

 
Noggle Predicted, Congressman Delivers

In my last post yesterday, I made fun of baby boomers who didn't care about Social Security because they'll die while it's solvent. I mocked, but a Congressman says:

"Why stir up a political hornet's nest .... when there is no urgency?" said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. "When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Your candor impresses me, you confiscatory eater of the young. Unfortunately, the candor from a politician indicates that he thinks it's a safe sentiment to express, like cursing Bosnians in south St. Louis. You're among friends and you all think the same way, ainna?


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:53 AM   0 comments

 
The Noggle Edit

Another ad in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from yesterday, with my markup in red for your approval:

Social Security

If we feel like gambling,
WE'LL PLAY THE SLOTS
AND WE CAN, BECAUSE WE HAVE
THIS FREE GOVERNMENT MONEY WE CAN PISS AWAY.

Let's not turn Social Security into Social Insecurity. While the program needs to be strengthened eradicated, private accounts that take money out of Social Security are not the answer on Jeopardy! since you have to answer with a question and will hurt all our generations, the only one with any real hope of dying while Social Security is solvent. There are places in your retirement planning for risk, but Social Security isn't one of them, and you can take our word for it since we're wise enough to rely on continued government largesse and taxpayer benevolence for our retirement instead of, you know, intelligence of any sort. Call your legislators at 1-800-307-8525 and urge them to oppose private accounts that put Social Security at risk.

AARP The power to make it better ourselves richer at the expense of those damn kids, many of whom are in their thirties by now.

I would tell you what I think about the AARP, but the language might get me banned by some filters, and I wouldn't even know about it to cash in on the persecutional publicity. Let me say that I respect my elders and I respect any other human until such time as he, she, or it tries to violate me, my family, or my property. Which is really what the AARP wants, my earnings to fund its members' continuing and unplanned for existence.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:49 PM   0 comments

 
The Noggle Addendum

Advertisement, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Sunday, January 9, 2005:

January, 2005

Dear Missouri Legislators and Honorable Governor Blunt,

We send our best wishes as you prepare for the upcoming legislative session. We look forward to opening a dialogue that will build consensus about the direction in which our state is moving.

Many of our coalition members have been involved in the creation and support of state programs that help children, the elderly, people with disabilities, and working people of Missouri. We want to join in your efforts to improve state services and inform the public about the vital role of the state in promoting a healthy, productive workforce and strong families.

Our government has the capacity and the ability to serve Missouri residents efficiently and fairly. The foundation of a responsible, compassionate society is that all citizens have access to basic human services such as education and health care.

Our goal is to work with you on proposed changes to state programs and to ensure that government delivers the high standards of service you have promised Missouri residents.

Governor Blunt, the coalition especially appreciates the commitment you have made to keep Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program intact and to fully fund education. On behalf of those who need health care and cannot afford it--and on behalf of our children who deserve quality public schools--we promise to work with you to uphold your commitment to the well-being of all Missourians.

Missouri Budget Program (www.mobudget.org)
Missouri Coalition for Budget & Policy Priorities

Scrawled on the bottom, in crayon, the Noggle addendum:

And get me a jelly sandwich 'cause I'm hungry, and it's your duty to ensure continuous homeostasis for all beings, whether human or otherwise (except for some flora). And you, productive members of society, business owners, and corporations: put on the fezzes and dance for me! Dance while I chew the lotus blossoms provided by Mother Socialism until I giggle myself to contented sleep and stupidity. Because I wanna, and there's a lot of coalitions who want me to!

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:32 PM   0 comments

 
Headline for the Day

Blunt promises new direction

Because north, south, east, and west are so cliché.

A special kudo to whomever at the St. Louis Post Dispatch or its online arm that filed this story in the Metro East section. Because Jefferson City is east of....well, Kansas City, anyway.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:58 PM   0 comments

 
Monday Morning Pop Quiz

My score:




- posted by Brian J. @ 6:19 AM   0 comments

 
Belson Writes a Book

Hey, look, everybody: Sergeant Frank Belson wrote a book.

News story in USA Today: 'Memory' triumphs over publisher apathy:

Ron McLarty is one of those busy character actors who is recognized but not famous.

He has played a sex therapist on Sex and the City, a judge on Law & Order and is the baritone voice of Papa Bear on the cartoon version of The Berenstain Bears.

At 57, McLarty says he's not used to being interviewed: "Reporters want to talk to the stars. Not me."

Not to mention he was Sgt. Belson in the television show Spenser: For Hire, which is probably the highest achievement in his career since it let him portray a character from Robert B. Parker's Spenser novels.

Hey, I might have to check out the book, The Memory of Running, because he's related somewhat to the Spenser universe and because it sounds like the plot of a long poem I started sometime after 1987.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:18 PM   0 comments

 
Word for the Day

Today's word for the day sounds like it's related to swearing, but it's not:

ineffable

Used in context: That ineffable nutbar in the Durango just cut me off!


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

 
She's Not From Wisconsin, But Nobody's Perfect

Michele Catalano explains why she's a Packers fan even though she lives in New York.

Meanwhile, Brian calculates that if the Packers win today and both Philadelphia and Atlanta lose next weekend, his dream of a Packers-Rams NFC championship game would take place at Lambeau Field in the first week of February. Ah, that would be most excellent.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:35 AM   0 comments

 
Embrace the Profundity

Stray 3 x 5 card in my office, frequently shunted about while cleaning but not discarded in case it's important or I would be inspired to remember what it meant:

There is no mention of the ships docking or crashing or sinking or going back to Miami. No further word at all.

Let that be the final thought, then, for this index card as I discard it, literally. For now there will be no mention of the no mention of the ships.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:14 PM   0 comments

 
Google Baiting

Who would have thought Michelle Malkin would need to Google bait with obscenities and vulgarities?

She's going to be number one with a bullet for searches such as topless dancers, suckin, er, you know, on videotape, and shootin bubbles up your, oh, never mind.

Meanwhile, I am still google baiting my way to the top of the search for "Brian J. Noggle is a cheesehead", where I am oddly enough mired in the third position.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:21 PM   0 comments

 
Steinberg's Government Overreach

Get a load of this hyperbole from Neil Steinberg today:

You have to laugh. No sooner do we get rid of one Constitution-shredding attorney general, John Ashcroft, then in rolls another, Alberto Gonzales, the man who called the Geneva Convention "quaint." The man who brought us Abu Ghraib. The man who revised not only American policy, but 2,000 years of Judeo-Christian morality into an ethical system that can be summed up as "torture is fine as long as we do it."

Not only does Steinberg blame an executive for enforcing laws written ambiguously by those who inquisite Gonzales, but he also admits that his entire ethical system is dependent upon what the government tells him to do and it's subject to revision by appointed officials at their whim.

No, no, it's just hyperbole. Ill-conceived hyperbole, but just hyperbole.


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:27 PM   0 comments

 
Book Review: Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe edited by Byron Preiss (1988)

To honor Raymond Chandler on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth, Byron Preiss commissioned a number of contemporary writers to try their hands at writing Philip Marlowe stories. So a number of them did, including Roger L. Simon, Roger Crais, Robert J. Randisi, John Lutz, and other known names as well as a bunch of writers I hadn't read before.

As with any amalgamation, the treatment remains uneven. Some of the authors appreciated Chandler's style, and the stories mesh with Chandler's voice and vision for Marlowe. In many cases, the author might as well have taken one of his own short stories and have changed the names and sometimes the gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and board game affinity to get the check. Still, the book moves quickly, as even the most flamboyantly non-Marlowe stories are just short stories and are decent examples of the mystery fiction.

An interesting omission from this book: Robert B. Parker. After all, he finished Poodle Springs and then wrote the poor sequel to The Big Sleep, Perchance to Dream. By 1988, he'd written a number of Spenser novels and had a television show for which he consulted. That's a why-didn't-he-do-it worthy of investigation!

The book's worth your money if you're an extreme Raymond Chandler fan, like I am, and it's worth it if you're just a mystery fan and can find it cheaply. It's probably not worth Internet prices for the casual reader, though ($20.00 hardback, $7 paperback) unless you're Byron Preiss's mom. Sorry, Byron.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:54 PM   0 comments

 
Day Seven

In another scandal, George W. Bush has not interrupted his regular activity to express sympathy for Big Band fans in their loss of revered band leader Artie Shaw.

Seven days, Mr. President, and no word from the White House. You're sacrificing America's international hep cred by not speaking up to give hope and solace to dozens.

You make me ashamed to be an American, and I am thinking of moving to Illinois in protest.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:12 PM   0 comments

 
Roeper Responds

In his column today, Richard Roeper responds to respondents:

Apparently, Republicans aren't the most introspective people in the world. In a column earlier this week, I asked them not to contact me -- but to ask themselves if they would have criticized Bill Clinton if he had been as indecisive as President Bush was last week in reacting to the tsunami.

Within hours of the column appearing, at least 200 Bush-backers e-mailed or called me to react (often with obscenities and name-calling) to an item in which I specifically requested that they not contact me.

Hilarious.

I mentioned this story before, and let's recap Roeper's exact words on this matter:

To my Republicans friends:

So the people he wrote him are Republicans, but not his friends. Although I can't imagine he has many Republican friends, I'll bet it's a fairly exclusive group, and they probably didn't say a word.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:40 AM   0 comments

 
Cats Leading Cause of Osteoporosis

Obviously, if a glass of milk appears underneath Ajax's new sunlamp, it's milk for Ajax:



If I ever develop osteoporosis, you'll know why:

1. The cats drank all my milk.
   
   
2. Too much exposure to felinogen induced menopause in what looked like a healthy human male.

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:07 PM   0 comments

 
WWCD? WFC?

In a shotgun blast of a column today, Richard Roeper pulls together a series of musings on the tsunami in Southeast Asia (mostly potshots at the West, its citizens, or the current administration) and poses this question:

To my Republicans friends: Be honest now. If Bill Clinton had waited three days to make a public statement about the worst natural disaster in a generation, how would you have reacted? If Clinton initially pledged $35 million in relief even as we were hearing that his inauguration parties were going to cost $40 million, would you have slammed him for that?

Don't contact me; I'm just asking you to be honest with yourselves. If you'd find fault with Clinton for such behavior, why didn't you criticize Bush for his slow and uninspired response?

Roeper doesn't quite understand the way our Republican hearts work. If Bill Clinton had offered any relief at all, we would have accused him of trying to distract the media from his latest scandal.

The question elevates a trivial topic to a completely new level of trivial trivialism. The whole "Bush waited three days" nonsense would grate on me if I took it seriously, as seriously as some people (including, apparently, Richard Roeper) do. Who cares what Bush did? He's the President of the United States, for crying out loud, not the Great All Father from whom all teachings and wisdom is derived. He could have said less, or nothing, and my wife and I would have contributed what we contributed. But we're independent people who don't need direction from Annan or Bush.

But to continue dragging Clinton and Clinton bashing into any backlash against left-of-the-aisle trivial carping? Bill Clinton's presidency ended five years ago. To ask what we would have done in 1998, during an unprecedented economic expansion, if a tsunami had hit and had Bill Clinton somehow not managed to publicly bite his lip for three days? What's the point of the exercise?

Other than justification for inane commentary about the three day period in which the president might have, you know, been educating himself to the scope of the disaster, deliberating about the proper response, and perhaps even calculating how much of the United States government's deficit should be spent on non-citizens and its relation to the incredible sums voluntarily given by American citizens to private relief efforts.

What would Clinton have done, and how would his critics responded? Who cares? Unlike some people, I have matured and have moved on.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:49 PM   0 comments

 
Place Your Bets

Anyone want to bet whoever wrote/keyed in this headline thinks Bush is stupid?


Click for full size

Just asking.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:07 AM   0 comments

 
Great Moments in Sentence Writing

A BBC piece entitled "Tribe shoots arrows at aid flight" features a number of illustrations about how pronoun abuse hurts everyone:

Officials believe they survived the devastation by using age-old early warning systems.

No, I think that the officials survived the devestation by being elsewhere when the devestation occured.

Scientists are examining the possibility to see whether it can be used to predict earth tremors in future.

The last sentence represents the worst sentence I have seen in a long, long time. "The possibility" doesn't really have an antecedent in the preceding paragraphs; I think the author meant that scientists were going to examine the actual actions of the tribes to determine if, possibly, they have a line on predicting tsunamis that won't cost money.

But the idea of using a possibility kinda scrums me. It sounds kinda Star Trek, ainna? But Captain, we can use the Solar Possibility to metaphase the Enterprise back in time four days....

On a side note to the natives who tried to shoot the planes with bows and arrows: although you, too, have watched the computer players' spearmen hold off your tanks in Civilization III, it's not that easy in real life.


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

 
Comic Relief

This certainly didn't happen in Florida after the hurricanes:

The main airport at Indonesia's Sumatra island has reopened after an accident that dealt a severe blow to efforts to deliver aid to the region worst affected by the tsunami disaster.

The crucial airstrip in Banda Aceh -- the province's only runway -- was closed for much of Tuesday after an aircraft carrying relief supplies hit a water buffalo on the runway.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:26 AM   0 comments

 
Geek Thoughts

I wonder what my collection of Norton Antivirus discs will have. I have quite the set, from Norton 1997 to System Works 2000 with one or more copies of Norton Anti Virus 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:22 PM   0 comments

 
Why Philosophers Don't Do Math

So the rest of you probably covered this in the required college math classes that I dodged because I was an English/Philosophy major, but the Packers ended the season 10-6. Is that two games above five hundred or four games over five hundred?

One on hand, the Packers won four more games than they lost, so they were four games above the five hundred mark; however, on the other hand, if the Packers had lost two more games, they would have been at the five hundred mark. You see, we dithering philosophical types can see both sides of an equation, the right answer and the wrong answer, and they both look the same.

Honestly, the proper answer given by a graduate with a degree in philosophy is What do the people interviewing me for this tenure-track position want it to be?


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:51 PM   0 comments

 
Time for The Prodigy Story Already?

It first came to my attention when the St. Louis Post-Dispatch did a front-page-of-the-Everyday-section story a couple of years back entitled "He's Twelve Years Old and He's Smarter than You" about a young man, twelve years old (if memory serves me), who was precocious and knew enough mathematical tricks for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch to declare him smarter than Brian J. Noggle, or at least the average reader. I've discovered that paper has a habit of running stories highlighting young people with any sort of intelligence as wonderful curiosities.

It must be that time of year again, because the front page of the local news section carries the story "Triplets excel, but aren’t peas in a pod" which starts with this line:

Meet the 18-year-old Foglia triplets, who use SAT words like "acerbic" when asked to describe one another and who can lose their friends, parents and other adults with obscure, esoteric references.

They use "SAT words" (which means, I think, words that are found on standardized tests designed for high school students) like "acerbic" (which your humble narrator uses that word to describe himself all the time), and this makes these high school students stand out? Stand above the average Post-Dispatch reader, perhaps. Lose friends, parents, and other adults with obscure references? Not only can your humble narrator do this, but so can any other reasonably talented and specialized member of the geek community--which is not as small as one would think.

Note: To demonstrate his facility with the language, your humble narrator might point out that "obscure, esoteric" is redundant, and that the serial comma is not just a good idea, it's the law, but this isn't supposed to be about how smart Brian J. Noggle is. Were that the point of this blog piece, the author would also explain why he thinks Kavita, the name of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writer, is such a pretty name, given its Hindic meaning. But we wouldn't want to show off, would we?

I don't know what sticks me in the craw of these stories, which have become quite the boilerplate for the Post-Dispatch. I hope it's more that they treat intelligent young people as anamolies or sideshow oddities than because, well, they never wrote one about me when I was a high school underachiever and am a sensitive, albeit super-smart, young man.

Well, I was, before I got old and bitter.


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

 
New Year's Google Hits

Why do I suspect that everyone who hit this site last night looking for information about field sobriety checkpoints in St. Louis had a more practical concern than whether their civil liberties are under assault by the practice?


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:14 PM   0 comments