Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Saturday, April 22, 2006
 
Things That Make Me Feel Old
S & H Green Stamps

Granted, my mother collected them at the end of their era, but I do remember shops that advertised giving them out and the booklets wherein one could paste the stamps and redeem them later for other goods.

Kinda like Marlboro Miles, but without the lung cancer.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:23 AM   2 comments
Friday, April 21, 2006
 
Blogrolled!
Damn Interesting, a blog of articles about, well, interesting things.

I don't know that I've ever tried to read a blog's complete archives before.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:02 PM   0 comments
Thursday, April 20, 2006
 
The Male Conundrum, 2006
More proof it's hard to be a man in the twenty-first century: these conflicting mandates: 59 Things a Man Should Never Do Past 30:
    6. Hang art with tape.
Hanging Pictures on Rock-Hard Plaster Walls:
    Back then, walls were finished with three coats of plaster — like the ones in your home — that dried like rock. Hooks with nails won't go in easily. You might consider using hooks that attach with adhesive.
I guess one can avoid the conflict by only living in homes with drywall after 30 (or mud-walled hovels if that's your personality), so it's not a true conundrum.

Fortunately, I know men, real men, don't check off items in these sorts of checklists of manly behavior and disobey all sorts of dicta. So I'll just ignore both.

If the nail bends, I'm just not using a big enough hammer.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:22 AM   2 comments
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
 
Free Restaurant Idea
If I had a large fortune I wanted to turn into a small fortune, I know what I'd do with it: an ethnic restaurant that could fill a globally-conscious niche, that could authentically charge high prices for small portions and make a mint:

The North Korean Buffet.

Just think of it! I could call it "Happy Kim Garden" or "Revered Buffet". The menu would be simple: grass boiled in dirty water and dirt. All you can eat of both. I wouldn't have to restock the buffet very often. At $9.95 for dinner and $5.95 for lunch, I would easily recoup the costs of whatever I would need to buy--I mean, the raw materials are free.

But I don't have enough to afford the quality downtown location where I could ensnare the hip young professionals who dig that sort of thing.

Ah, well. Back to work.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:51 PM   0 comments
 
Department of Righteous Taserings Which, Unfortunately, Resulted in Death
When a drunk man is in a woman's home uninvited and is killed, is it acceptable or bad?

Man, that's tricky. I mean, when the woman does it, it seems acceptable:
    "She felt threatened," says Lt. Lane Byers, Pickens County Sheriff's Office. "She felt she could not leave the home to get away from him. And she felt she had to defend herself. She used a firearm to do so."
But when cops do it, it doesn't seem right:
    City police officers shot a man twice with Tasers, then scuffled with him, a friend who witnessed the incident said Monday.

    Hours after that Saturday scuffle, Nick Mamino Jr., 41, was dead.
When I read that last story, I reacted immediately with my standard, cops-misusing-tasers outrage, but seeing the first story so soon after has put the incidents into stark relief. In Collinsville, Illinois, the police came to a woman's home where an unarmed man (with a history of armed criminal action) refuses to leave and runs back into the house. To lock himself into the bathroom and sob? To plead with the woman he loves who has just called the cops on him? Or to get a gun?

Given that and given the subtleties of the home-invader versus home-wouldn't-leaver storylines that are only available the next day in the paper, I conclude the police were correct in trying to subdue him with less than lethal means which, unfortunately and accidentally, proved fatal to Mamino.

The woman who killed her home intruder will receive her recognition in Kim du Toit's Department of Righteous Shootings. Meanwhile, the police in Collinsville will get pilloried for the crime of enforcing the law while law enforcement officials and for the ultimate results of Mamino's suspect actions.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:58 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, April 18, 2006
 
Medical Establishment Dismayed Potential Prozac Consumers Try Alternate Methods
The British medical establishment has determined: Too Many 'Self-Medicate':
    Dr Andrew McCulloch, chief executive of the foundation, said: "The research confirms our worries that people are drinking to cope with emotions and situations they can't otherwise manage.

    "Drinking alcohol is a very common and accepted way of coping - our culture allows us to use alcohol for 'medicinal purposes' or 'dutch courage' from an early age.

    "But using alcohol to deal with anxiety and depression doesn't work."
No doubt the good doctor would prefer you try any of the handful of colorful brain chemistry-altering alternatives offered by prescription only. Using Prozac, Paxil, and so on to deal with anxiety or depression might work, might not work, or might make you suicidal. Kinda like whiskey, but more expensive and not available without a doctor's visit.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:24 PM   0 comments
Monday, April 17, 2006
 
No Childhood Disease Left Behind
Mumps cases multiply in Missouri, Illinois

But wait until they try long division.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:45 PM   0 comments
 
Yesterday's Punchlines Today
Powerball jackpot: 1 ticket. 13 people.:
    They used to chase dead-beat dads. Now they're chasing dreams.

    On Thursday, the Missouri Lottery announced the winners of the state's largest Powerball jackpot ever, $224.2 million. The big winners, dubbed the Lucky 13, are employees with the Missouri Department of Social Services.
When interviewed, the winners said they wouldn't work another day and that the lottery wouldn't change them. Given their employer, this is probably not a contradiction.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:30 PM   0 comments
Sunday, April 16, 2006
 
More Gay Marriage Fallout
Just like the opponents of gay marriage said, it's anything goes, apparently:

Chihuly marries glass and gardens

As it says in the good book, "Thou shalt not lie with drinking vessels, as with flora: it is abomination."


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:16 PM   2 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."