Thanks
Has anyone ever noticed that status.blogger.com tends to have a post describing a problem after they've fixed the problem?


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

 
Thought for the Day
Sometimes you shoot grainy, out-of-focus photos of the sasquatch, and sometimes the sasquatch shoots grainy, out-of-focus photos of you, in which case it's probably not a true sasquatch.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:12 PM   0 comments

 
Sanity Returning to Wisconsin Government?
Lessons in tax and spend?: MATC's levy plan could bolster case for elected board:

Two area state senators suspect their summer homework will be easier thanks to the Milwaukee Area Technical College and its proposal to raise its property tax levy 5%.

Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) and Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) had planned to spend a little free time building support for their proposal to require elections for all boards that have the authority to tax.

The proposal went virtually nowhere in the last legislative session, but they figure tax increases proposed by MATC and the other technical colleges in the state will bring some momentum. And it will help that those increases will appear on tax bills mailed in December, just a month before the next session.

"I believe it's best to have representation that's accountable, and that means being elected and having people know who's making the decision; and to give people the opportunity to make changes," Darling said. "People have to be accountable for spending and taxing."

I'll believe it when I see it.


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

 
Stop: Bubble Time
The latest sign that a bubblegeddon might be upon our markets: The Segway IPO:

And Segway Inc. President and Chief Executive James Norrod, hoping to parlay the growth into a payday for the original investors in the scooter, has made grooming the company for an initial public offering in the next few years a top priority. Gauging Segway's prospects in an IPO is difficult, as the company will not reveal its yearly revenue or whether it is profitable. Norrod will only say that "tens of thousands" of Segways have been sold around the world, and that the company's revenue has been growing by at least 50 percent over each of the last few years.

Time to adjust the portfolio away from equities and back into guns and liquor.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:25 PM   0 comments

 
Preach It, Sister
Oracle security sister preaches:

Oracle's security chief says the software industry is so riddled with buggy product makers that "you wouldn't get on a plane built by software developers."

And:

"What if civil engineers built bridges the way developers write code?" she asked. "What would happen is that you would get the blue bridge of death appearing on your highway in the morning."

Remember, gentle reader, MfBJN thought about that in 2004.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:15 PM   0 comments

 
Tax Shell Game in Milwaukee
The Milwaukee County Transit System has budget problems, as described in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story Transit system at 'critical point': Transit funding options skidding into pressures on tax dollars. Setting the dire scene:

It is a route that never seems to change.

Every weekday, more than 150,000 times a day, someone boards a Milwaukee County Transit System bus to reach a job, a class, a store, a doctor or a home.

And every year, for six years straight, the Milwaukee County Board has cut bus service, raised fares or both.

With one of every 12 county residents riding a bus to work or school, transit supporters believe the county must find a new route to keep the buses and the local economy driving forward.

As a matter of fact, while I was in college, I rode the white and green limousine several times a day as I shuttled between home, work, school, work again or home, school, work, school again. So I got plenty of benefit from the robust transit system, and any cuts would have inconvenienced me.

So I'm not arguing that cuts wouldn't hurt or adversely affect a number of people. But the leaders and their cheerleaders in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel face finitude with great pluck, as they perhaps would prefer to merely posit infinity and act accordingly. When referring to tax money, of course:

But that new route could lead into the politically dangerous neighborhood of new taxes. The transit system is one of the few its size that compete with other agencies for limited property tax dollars.

Limited property tax dollars are a bad thing in this scenario, and special interests--and understand, every government body and agency is its own special interest when it comes to feeding at the public trough. But since property tax dollars are limited, those official special interests have other solutions in mind:

And long before the recent push to create a sales tax for parks, recreation and cultural programs, transit backers were seeking a new revenue source to wean the bus system off the property tax levy.

So instead of the trough marked property tax dollars, they want to feed a little from the trough marked sales tax. Especially given this horror:

Further down the road, officials also are concerned about exhausting federal funding that now helps balance the transit budget. From 1993 to 1998, the federal government gave the transit system more money than it needed to buy buses, building up a reserve of more than $30 million. Starting in 1998, federal rules allowed the transit system to use that money for major maintenance, and officials started to gradually use up the reserve.

The buffet pan marked federal dollars is running dry.

Instead of making hard decisions, the mass transit special interest has thoughts on levying automobile fees, sales taxes, and all sorts of other creative mechanisms for increasing the overall tax burden on the people upon whom it serves itself.

By creating various and sundry unelected Authorities and Boards and Committees with their own focuses and their own ability to request or raise taxes, our elected officials get to abstract and insulate themselves from these actions and can avoid making the hard choices that balance the needs of some of the population. Instead, they can churn new programs, boards, and authorities to do the hard work for them, without direct accountability to the voters, and every time some special governmental interest, they'll have a new, creative revenue source and the taxpayer to tap out.


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

 
Nugent 2012
One more reason to vote Nugent for president in 2012: he scares the lesser Brits.

Although somehow, my choice of post titles and election years belies a certain dismay with the Republican Party's prospects in 2008.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:23 PM   1 comments

 
A McGehee Saturday Night
Kevin McGehee: Karaoke Superstar!



No one does a better version of Dido's "White Flag". He sings it with such emotion that one thinks that perhaps he's experienced profound loss, such as the lack of a recent Instalanche to bolster his traffic numbers. Unlike some of us.


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

 
Your Column Says No, But Your Column Inches Say Yes
A "feud" exists between former St. Louis Cardinals shortstop Ozzie Smith and Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa stemming from the latter's platooning of the hall-of-famer and St. Louis icon with Royce Clayton in 1996. Starting last week, the "feud" has flared again as Smith let the world know he was happy with the decision, and LaRussa said he was.

Here's baseball writer Dan O'Neill in a column entitled 10 years later, it's time for Ozzie to get over it:

To be fair, Smith was responding to questions, not preaching from a pulpit. The interview had a lot of positive information about his work with the Hall of Fame. He said all the right things as he indicated the past was behind and he had moved on.

But then he didn't move on. He had to pick at the scab one more time with comments about management. A guy who has been paid $2 million by the Cardinals for "personal services" over the past 10 years can't find it in himself to embrace that same organization as long as La Russa is around. That is almost as petty as it is absurd.

A nice sentiment, to be sure, but the current "feud" is nothing more than a soap operaesque crashing chord provided by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Let's look over what the Post-Dispatch has provided:

• Rare Bird Sighting: Ozzie Smith, the profile of Ozzie that started the story.
  
  
• Tony La Russa on Ozzie Smith: 'He's not welcome', the rebuttal that fueled the fire.
  
  
• Ozzie-Tony rift: Sad, but understandable, a column by Jeff Gordon.
  
  
• Ozzie-Tony spat hurts Cards' image, a column by Bryan Burwell.
  
  
• The aforementioned column by O'Neill.
  
  
• Letters to Gordo: The Ozzie-Tony Feud, a round-up of letters to columnist Jeff Gordon.
  
  
• Letter in Sound off, the "letters to the editor" portion of the sports page.
  
  
• Another appearance in Sound Off.
  
  
• A third appearance in Sound Off
  
  
• An online forum backing Ozzie Smith.
  
  
• An online forum backing Tony LaRussa.
  
  
• Rick Hummel's Take, today, a week after the original Ozzie Smith profile that set it off.

The Post-Dispatch certainly can flex its floodus zonei muscles effectively for the most inconsequential topics. Although, honestly, I'd prefer the paper do it on a silly topic that will sell papers to the impassioned Cardinals fans than for something designed to make our lives better by enabling more governmental rule.

(Full disclosure: The author booed when Royce Clayton appeared onscreen in the film The Rookie.)


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

 
Just Superstitious Enough
I don't think owning a car branded Kia is good luck. I also wouldn't own a car called Doa. I just think that's asking for an amped up tanker truck driver to try to take the Poplar Street exit at 45 miles per hour some morning, tumbling gently down to a car named deathtrap.


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

 
Doomsday Averted, Again
Last of radioactive waste passing through area:

The last of nearly 4,000 massive containers of radioactive waste are expected to travel through the St. Louis area today on their way to a temporary storage site in West Texas.

Funny, when the authorities first mentioned the plan, it was going to be THE END OF US ALL!!!!!

Better luck next time, environmental doommongers.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:58 PM   1 comments

 
Corollary
If you lie down with dogs, you get peed on by the incontinent dogs.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:09 PM   2 comments

 
The Dreaded Tentacles of Convenient Health Care
Judge tosses out zoning that blocked Aurora hospital:

A Waukesha County judge ruled Thursday that the City of Oconomowoc illegally rezoned land to block construction of a hospital by Aurora Health Care.

In response to the ruling, Aurora - the largest and, critics contend, most expensive health care system in southeastern Wisconsin - immediately moved to extend its reach into affluent western Waukesha County.

I've written about this before. It's good to see, though, that eventually, occasionally, right-minded citizens cannot EJM (Ends Justify the Means, now a verb of its own coming soon to a blog near you) to thwart the encroaching tentacles of the health care menace. Even if it's from one of those eldritch, foetid for-profit companies.

Cptlism fthagn.


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

 
Convenient Technicalities
Ballot proposals rejected by Carnahan:

The November ballot in Missouri won't be quite as crowded after Secretary of State Robin Carnahan announced Thursday that two proposals can't go before voters because of faulty petitions.

Carnahan tossed out proposed state constitutional amendments to limit the use of eminent domain and to restrict state spending. She cited technical problems with the petitions, each signed by about 200,000 registered voters, and an inaccurate financial summary attached to the eminent domain petitions.

Never fear, gentle reader, the spokespeople are out to assuage your fears:

Carnahan spokeswoman Stacie Temple said the decision to toss out the petitions was based solely on law, not Carnahan's personal or political views.

How convenient that Carnahan tossed out government-limiting ballot initiatives that would cap state spending and limit eminent domain, but that the following ballot measures--sometimes whose petitions were circulated by the same people as the aforementioned rejected petitions--are still on the ballot:

• Stem cell research.
  
  
• Tobacco tax increase.
  
  
• Minimum wage increase.
  
  
• Medicaid Reform, by which we mean adding 90,000 people removed from the Medicaid roles back onto the public dole.

I'm sure that the two conservative ballot items were removed for valid legal reasons. I also think we have too many technicalities and byzantine legalities from which a determined public servant can pick and choose to advance his or her own agendum within the nebulous framework afforded by an inattentive constituency.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:45 PM   4 comments

 
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Red Cross warns blood donors of possible ID thefts in Midwest:

About 1 million blood donors in the Missouri-Illinois Blood Services Region of the American Red Cross were warned last week that personal information about them could have been stolen earlier this year by a former employee and might have been used in identity thefts.

The former worker had access to 8,000 blood donors in a database she used in her job, all of whom were notified by mail of possible identity theft problems on March 17, according to the agency. But after the original warning letters went out, the Red Cross decided to expand the identity theft warnings to all 1 million donors in the Missouri-Illinois region because of concerns that she may have accidentally accessed other records in the larger group.

They don't need your Social Security Number to take your blood. But by asking for it and putting it in their computers, they made it available to someone with less than honest intentions who would work for them for minimum wage.

Remember, just say no to SSN, boys and girls.


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

 
Rove's Gift To His Beloved Condi
Is there nothing this cabal cannot do?

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice took time out from matters of war and peace to catch this week's finale of American Idol. Unlike many adults who claim they watch the show only because their kids commandeer the TV, Condi is an unabashed fan.

Rice was rooting for fellow Birmingham native Taylor Hicks and will soon send him a congratulatory letter, says a State Department official.

Nothing is too trifling for a conspiracy for these people. Rigging American Idol? Hey, they've got to stay in practice between elections.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:30 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Biblioholism: The Literary Addiction by Tom Raabe (1991)
I paid $4.50 for a used copy of this book from Hooked on Books when I went on my books-on-books binge (more details here). Of the other books, this is the one I liked least.

In the introduction, the author mentions that the book stems from a humorous essay. Perhaps the author should have left well enough alone. I bet this was a humorous essay. As a full-length book, though, it's wanting.

The book defines biblioholism too broadly for my test and paints the accumulation of books as trying to just have books or to build a library to look smart. Maybe it's a gag. Maybe it's too close for comfort to me, so I cannot enjoy mirth that ensues as the author lists various and sundry obsessive and compulsive behaviors associated with liking books.

I'm not sorry I read the book, but I am sorry I paid $4.50 for it. Since you don't trust a word I say anyway, feel free to buy the revised edition noted below for almost $6.00.

Books mentioned in this review:


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

 
Victory for British Police: One Fewer Armed Klingon
Star Trek blade seized:

THIS five-foot martial arts sword capable of beheading a man was recovered by shocked cops in a house raid.

The terrifying Batleth weapon is identical to one wielded by Klingon aliens in the Star Trek sci-fi films.

Officers seized the three-handled sword — which has huge pointed blades at either end — at a home in Gloucester.

It would be funny if, deep down, I wasn't afraid that these brilliant ideas--seizing all knives and knife turn-in amnesty programs and the eventual outlawing of the fetal position as a defense because it offends those who've had abortions--were impossible here.


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

 
Eminent Domain, One Room at a Time
You know that extra room in your house? The city of Chesterfield, Missouri, has taken control of it, or at least who can room in it: Council approves ban on renters in houses:

Although they added an exception for foreign exchange students, Chesterfield lawmakers approved legislation that prevents homeowners from renting rooms in their houses.

City officials – and some residents - have insisted the practice can lead to excessive crowding, parking difficulties, more transients, and other neighborhood nuisances.

Other residents, who spoke to the City Council on May 15, protested that renting rooms can be a valuable aid to young students and elderly homeowners.

Besides, the single occupant isn't high enough density. If you've got a spare room in your house, the city of Chesterfield will put a retail outlet of some sort in it, since that's the best use of your downstairs bedroom from their perspective. And they'll stick you with the bill to make your walk-out basement ADA-compatible.

In a shocking turn of events, the prosecutors are eager to begin:

Those who violate the law will be subject to a fine of up to $1,000 or jail time of up to three months.

Tim Engelmeyer, the city's prosecuting attorney, favored the bill and recently told city officials in an E-mail that the law would "protect the integrity of our neighborhoods."

As a bonus to eroding property rights, it will also generate revenue! What's not to like about it?

Other than the erosion and generation parts to the benefit of a government, I wholeheartedly support bending the dangerous individual to the will of the community.


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

 
Dan O'Neill: Disciple of Fark?
Fark.com, Tuesday, May 23, 2006, 5:04 pm:

Barbaro reportedly doing very well after surgery. When asked if he felt any ill effects, Barbaro replied, "Na-a-a-ay"

Dan O'Neill, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Thursday, May 25, 2006:

Barbaro is doing surprisingly well after surgery. Apparently doctors reached this conclusion after asking the injured thoroughbred if he was in any pain. Reportedly, Barbaro said, "N-a-a-a-a-a-a-a."

Plagiarism, or simply two people hitting the obvious joke? I guess only O'Neill knows for sure.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:20 PM   0 comments

 
My Other Hockey Team Is A Mercedes
Congratulations to the Milwaukee Admirals (of the American Hockey League) for sweeping the Grand Rapid Griffins and advancing to the Calder Cup playoffs.

Great shot, kids. Don't get cocky.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:43 PM   0 comments

 
More Hoopty Than The World
Michelle Catalano, formerly of A Small Victory, is blogging about big 1970s cars and punk music at Faster Than The World. Update your bookmarks and buy misspelled domain names as appropriate.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:41 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Baby in the Icebox and Other Short Fiction by James M. Cain (1981)
I bought this book for $1.00 at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair because, as some of you know, I'll soon need to know when it's appropriate to place your baby in the icebox. After all, my beautiful wife is reading a number of parenting books; why shouldn't I pitch in?

Imagine my feigned surprise when I discovered that this book was not actual book about child care, but rather a collection of short pieces by the author of The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity!

As its title indicates, this book collects a number of short pieces from Cain, including a number of the bucolic "dialogs" he wrote in his early career as well as some of the grittier crime fiction he wrote for some serious money.

I enjoyed the book. The early pieces reminded me of Franz Kafka in that they're more slice-of-lifeish than anything earth-shattering, as though they were written as fictional smalltalk than I'm accustomed. Still I appreciated their language more than Kafka's.

The crime fiction portions were more pedestrian pulp, but that's what I handed over the dollar for. Enjoyable, and slightly unrealistic crimes, but set in the thirties and fourties, so they provide small glimpses into the past as well as into lurid crimes.

And in case it ever comes up, the time to put a baby in the icebox is if your husband has unleashed a hungry tiger into your house to kill you and you're holding the tiger off with a flaming brand which will inadvertently set fire to the house. As soon as I finish this review, I'm going to scan the indexes of some of Heather's parenting books to see if this holds as true in the 21st century as it did in the 1930s.

Books mentioned in this review:

 
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:41 PM   0 comments

 
Milwaukee MATC Party
Time to dump some textbooks into the Milwaukee River, what with unelected representatives levying their own taxes:

A budget endorsed Tuesday by the Milwaukee Area Technical College Board would increase the school's tax levy 5% in the coming fiscal year, outpacing inflation and contradicting the growing anti-tax sentiment in the state.

After breathing a sigh of relief that the Legislature had failed to pass constitutional tax and spending limits earlier this month, the board backed a budget that would increase spending about 6.3%, based on current projections.

The $309 million MATC has budgeted for 2006-'07 represents a 32.4% increase from its spending at the start of the decade and tops the rate of inflation for that period by roughly 14 percentage points.

Contradicting the anti-tax sentiment? I'd say not; these bureaucrats are actually acting on it and feathering their nests while they can, because taxpayer relief of some sort will pass in Wisconsin, accidentally, one of these days, and the tax districts want to make sure that they get as much loot as they can before they're leashed. And if it never comes to pass, well, it's even better, as it's a precedent for ever-inflating percentages into perpetuity.

Over at Boots and Sabers, Owen thinks it's wonderful. He's being sarcastic.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:49 PM   0 comments

 
New Market For Venezuelan F-16s?
If Greeks and Turks are going to play chicken:

A mid-air collision between jousting Greek and Turkish fighters in disputed airspace over the Aegean Sea yesterday threatened to reignite age old rivalries.

The two planes are believed to have rammed each other, in full view of a passing commercial jetliner. The Turkish pilot, Halil Ozdemir, was rescued by a merchant ship after ejecting, but last night emergency services were still searching for the downed pilot of the Greek F-16 jet.

might provide a unique marketing opportunity for South American dictators with too many F-16s on their hands.

Come on, people, think outside the box. We can get this deal done.

(Link seen on Outside the Beltway.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:39 PM   0 comments

 
Sign That Kid to an NBA Contract
This kid has skills:

A Boston defense attorney was nearly strangled to death in a courtroom yesterday by his shackled client - an accused killer whose case he had unsuccessfully sought to drop.

That's the sort of talent one can leverage into a long NBA career.

Bonus flashback: My 1997 riff on Sprewell: The Cynic Express(d) 1.11: Barbarians at the Gates.

(Link seen on Wizbang!)


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:30 PM   0 comments

 
Always Bet on Black(five)
Who are you going to believe, the Beer Advocate when it lists Top 50 Places to Have a Beer in America or Blackfive, who can tell you good drinking cities all across the country?

Didn't your parents ever tell you to listen to Rangers?


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

 
Even An Unset VCR Is Right Twice a Day
In Illinois, Rod Blagojevich wants to privatize the lottery:

Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Tuesday proposed selling or leasing the state lottery to raise $10 billion as part of a plan to reform Illinois schools.

His proposal includes $1.5 billion for school construction, performance pay for teachers and the consolidation of school districts.

As a libertarian, I stand in favor of all fornicating, liquoring, and gambling. As a matter of fact, I would do Rod one better: instead of offering a government-sponsored monopoly on number-running, why not let everyone do it?

Sorry, I guess getting the government to give up one of the things it's seized from the syndicates is a start toward a libertarian paradise.

But that it comes from Illinois, and Blagojevich, irkles me.


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

 
In Overland, They Still Practice Recount By Combat
Overland mayor survives recount

Unfortunately, the challenger suffered from a fatal naginata wound from the Once and Future Mayor, all hail!


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

 
Big Fonts Please

FTC sees no illegal gas price manipulation

Because you're not going to hear that particular rest in the grand anti-free market symphony conducted by our revered leaders in the media and legislatures.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:20 PM   0 comments

 
Slow Reader Mooching
Geez, gentle reader, I know it's been a while since I've reviewed a book for you to ignore. To make sure you have plenty of book reviews for you to pass over completely, check out Ace's review of The da Vinci Code.

And since I said it, I must link to the Amazon page for it. In case you accidentally click through and buy it so I can make another eight cents.

Books mentioned in this review post about a review:


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

 
In Some Cultures, It's a Gift From The Gods
Piece of plane nearly lands on 9-year-old

I mean, come on, at the very least, it's free scrap metal. You can do so many things with scrap metal, not the least of which is trade.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:11 PM   0 comments

 
Nowhere To Go But Up
Baby placed in trash bin is improving

You know, if you're dumped in the trash as a newborn, I'd say that you have nowhere to go in life but up.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:08 PM   0 comments

 
Short Story: "The Brooch"
     I was walking down Commonwealth towards Berkeley with a spring in my step. I was wearing my nice clothes, the slacks with no holes in them, and a white shirt with a string tie, and my hair was combed. I had things to do. The day after tomorrow was Megan's birthday, and I had seventeen dollars in my pocket. The weeks of working at Mr. Roy's grocery store had paid off, and I knew just what I was going to get Megan.

     When I had been walking her home last Wednesday, we had walked past the jewelry shop in the Park Square Building. She stopped to look inside, like all girls do. She asked me what kind of ring I was going to get her when we got married. I didn't know, and I don't even know if we're going to get married. But she likes to think so. After she looked at the rings in the bottom of the window, she looked up at another glass case, and ooohed at a brooch.

     I didn't think it was anything special, but I'm a guy. It was gold and silver, and there was a big M in the middle. It was cursive writing and fancy, and Megan liked it a lot. I wondered how much she would like it when she saw it in a box in her hands the day after tomorrow.

     "Hey Kevin," Sid Leary called. He was sitting on his front porch with his brother Ronald and the rest of the Dunston Boys. "Where've you been the last month? We haven't seen you around."

     "I've been busy," I said without stopping. I didn't want to stop. Sid might find out I have money, and if he did, it'd probably get spent on pool or whiskey, neither of which would do Megan any good the day after tomorrow.

     Sid called out after me as I walked past, and as I turned the corner he shouted again. I hoped he wouldn't be too mad at me, but I had things to do.

     I imagined how Megan would look opening the box, how the brooch would look on her favorite red sweater, how her friends in school would like it, too.

     Officer Mulready was out walking his beat along Berkeley, his hands behind his back. He looked me over, but I wasn't doing anything wrong today, so I looked back at him. "Well, Mr. Murphy, out and about this afternoon?"

     "Yes sir," I replied. He stopped in front of me, and I had to stop, too.

     "Where you going?"

     "I'm going to my girlfriend's house, sir," I said. It was just habit not to tell the truth to him.

     "Isn't she in school?"

     "Yes, sir, but I'm going to wait for her."

     He cast a disbelieving eye over me, but nodded and continued on his way. He turned the corner and I could hear faint notes on the wind as he started to whistle. It ended abruptly, and I heard his booming voice questioning some other innocent person.

     And then I was at the Park Square Building, outside the jewelry store. I fingered the rolled money in my pocket and went in.

     A bell jingled and a man appeared from another room. "May I help you?" he asked.

     It was warmer inside and it smelled nice. There were glass cases with all kinds of necklaces and things, but I looked at the case in the window. I could see the back of the brooch. I could very plainly see the little white sticker with the number 21.00 written on it. I felt my stomach drop and my throat got tight.

     "I, ah, want to see something in that case," I said.

     "Come around," he said, waving his hand around the display in front of it. He pulled a big ring of keys from his pocket and unlocked the display.

     Then the bell over the door jingled, and Sid Leary and the Dunston Boys came in. "Look at that," Sid said, pointing at one of the rings in another case.

     The jeweller stepped around the glass case. "Can I help you boys?" he asked coldly.

     The case was open, and the brooch was hanging on velvet. I snuck a glance at the jeweller. He was watching the Dunston Boys and paying no attention to me. I could just reach in and take it.

     It was just like the sham we would pull in Wheeler's drug store. One guy would go in and look around and then the rest would be rowdy and while old man Wheeler was throwing them out, the first guy would be loading his pockets. He'd then buy something cheap and split. It was usually good for a few packs of cigarettes and gum. It was my turn to be the pigeon.

     Megan wouldn't like something that was stolen. Some of the girls didn't care, but Megan wouldn't wear it if she knew it was stolen. She'd probably get mad at me too.

     "If you're not buying anything, you should go somewhere else," the jeweller said, and I thought he was talking to me. I turned and he was pushing the last of the Dunston Boys out the door. Reggie appeared in the window and made faces at the jeweller, but then Sid called and Reggie disappeared from sight.

     "Now what was it that you were looking at?" the jeweller asked after brushing his hands together.

     "Well, sir, this brooch," I said softly.

     "The lacework is silver. The letter is inlaid with gold. It'd make a fine gift," he said.

     "It costs twenty-one dollars?" I asked.

     "Yes, son, it does. It is a good deal for the piece. It was hand-worked, you know. Imported from Peru."

     "I only have seventeen dollars. Could I work here for you for the rest?"

     "For your mother?"

     "My girlfriend. It's her birthday tomorrow. She really likes this brooch."

     He looked at me for a moment, probably to see if I was lying. "Tomorrow's her birthday?"

     "Yes sir."

     "How old will she be?"

     "Seventeen, sir."

     "I tell you what. Seventeen dollars for seventeen years sounds about right to me."

     I breathed again. "Thank you, sir," I said. He took the brooch from the velvet and punched numbers in the cash register. It chinged and the number seventeen appeared in the windows on the top. I pulled out my two five dollar bills and seven ones. He put the brooch in a little white box and gave it to me.

     "The other condition is if you marry this girl, you have to buy the ring here." He smiled. "Would you like a receipt?"

     "No, thank you, sir," I said, and I took the box in both hands and left.

     Megan was going to be so happy. I opened the box as I walked. The gold and silver didn't look as good against the cotton as they had against the black velvet. Megan was going to love it.

     Sid and the Dunston boys were standing on the corner of Commonwealth waiting for me. "What'd you get, Kevin?" Sid asked, uncrossing his arms and standing up from the lamp post he had been leaning on.

     "Nothing." I walked wide around the group.

     "Hey," Sid said, grabbing my right arm and half turning me. "What's in the box?"

     "Buzz off, Sid," I said, shaking my arm out of his hands. I hurried up, and the Dunston boys stood, staring at me from the corner. Sid called my name again, but I ignored it. I went home and spent most of the night looking at the brooch and thinking of Megan.



     Megan smiled when I held the box out. "You remembered," she said with fake surprise. She opened the top and gasped. "Oh, Kevin," she said softly. Her green eyes looked at me. I thought she was going to cry. "It's beautiful," she whispered.

     "Do you like it?" I asked.

     "I love it." She stopped. "Can you put it on me?"

     I stopped. "Sure," I said, swallowing. I put her books down on the sidewalk and took the brooch. I unfastened it and tried to hide my trembling hands. I put it on the right side, right over her heart. I didn't stick her, either.

     "Wait till Judy sees this," she said after we started walking again. "Thank you, Kevin," she said when we got to the fence around her high school. She kissed me lightly and went in.

     I watched her walk proudly into the building. Halfway up the steps, her friends Judy and Sandy met her. She gestured at the brooch and pointed at me. They smiled and looked wistfully at me. I felt good.



     I got home from Mr. Roy's store at eight thirty. My father and mother were screaming at each other in their bedroom. My little sister was in the living room and the radio was turned up to try and cover their disagreement. She ignored me as I came in, and I went up to my bedroom to change clothes. I got my tie off and the top button on my shirt open when Catherine called me from the living room.

     Megan was pacing on the front porch. I closed the door behind me. "Hi," I said.

     She turned, eyes blazing. "Don't 'hi' me, Kevin," she said. She was still wearing the red sweater, but the brooch wasn't on it.

     "What's wrong?"

     "Where did you get this brooch?" She stuck it in front of me like it was a cross and I was a vampire.

     "I bought it at Taylor's Jewelry Shop. It's the one we pass going to your house."

     "Did you buy it, Kevin? Or did you steal it?"

     "I bought it."

     "Sid Leary told Sandy that he helped you steal it for me. That they made a distraction and you stole it while the jeweller was throwing them out."

     "That's not true," I said. "I...."

     "Tell me they weren't in there with you, Kevin. Tell me you were at the jewelry store alone."

     They were there, though, and I couldn't lie to Megan. "They were, but...."

     "Kevin! I thought you were done with the Dunston Boys. I really did. I thought I meant more to you then those hoodlums. If I don't, then you can take your stupid brooch and find another girl."

     I didn't want another girl, it wasn't like that at all, I did buy the brooch, but none of these words came out. She looked at me for a moment as I stood there with my mouth half open. She then threw the brooch onto the porch and ran down the steps and into the night. The big cursive M glared at me.

     I picked it up, and wondered what I'd do now. I went inside, drank a couple glasses of water, and went into my bedroom. Girls are crazy anyway, I thought.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:43 PM   0 comments

 
Another Helpful Hint From Industry
Whereas the Chicago Tribune quotes a helpful, neutral expert (registration required) who suggests improvements for workplace productivity:

"If you're watching video, you're probably not working," said Vimal Solanki, director of product marketing at McAfee Inc., a software vendor whose products to block Web access are selling briskly.

Not to be outdone, the makers of Stadium Pal not that if employees are going to the bathroom, they're probably not working, either.

(Link seen on this little blog out of Tennessee run by an obscure academic. Click through! He could use 1/10th of my traffic.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:13 AM   0 comments

 
Sad Testament
So, how many of the RateBeer.com's Worst 50 Beers have you had?

My total:

1. Busch NA
2. Steelback Tango
3. Black Label 11-11 Malt Liquor
4. Sleeman Clear
5. Steelback Silver
6. Michelob Ultra
7. O'Douls
8. B-40 Bull Max
9. Coors Non-Alcoholic
10. Olde English 800 3.2
11. Pabst NA
12. PC 2.5 g Low Carb
13. Natural Light
14. Tuborg T-Beer
15. Steelback Link
16. Jacob Best Ice
17. Natural Ice
18. Camo Silver Ice High Gravity Lager
19. Gluek Stite Light
20. Miller Sharps
21. Camo Genuine Ale
22. Coors Aspen Edge
23. Diamond White Cider
24. Molson Ex Light
25. Hurricane Ice
26. Hurricane High Gravity Lager
27. Labatt Sterling
28. Milwaukees Best
29. Tuborg T-Beer Citrus
30. General Generic Beer
31. Outback Chilli Beer
32. Busch Ice
33. Molson Kick
34. Blue Ice Beer
35. Cave Creek Chili Beer
36. Tuborg Super Light
37. Tooheys Blue Bitter
38. Pabst Ice
39. Fosters Light
40. Hek Original Lager Blonde Beer (Blue label)
41. Old Milwaukee Ice
42. Fosters Ice
43. Lucky Lager Force 10
44. Zhujiang 10°
45. Bootie Light
46. Schlitz Red Bull
47. Archa
48. Bud Light
49. Matt Accel
50. Genesee NA

I have drunk 6 of the worst beers in the world. I don't know whether to be proud or ashamed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:37 PM   1 comments

 
Retaliatory Strike
Oh, yeah?

McGehee's right. His new self-portrait does make him look like a Klingon:

A cross-dressing Klingon at that.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:41 PM   1 comments

 
You Can Download Anything
Ginned-up story of the day: Using Internet for drug deals is not unusual, authorities say:

While the wide array of drugs seized from a student's car this week at Lutheran High School South struck authorities as unusual, the suspicion that a supplier used the Web to get them here was not.

No word on the obvious use of that dangerous technology the automobile in the lead, but there's that demon Web.

Authorities indicate that with a broad enough band, you can download drugs right into your computer:

Investigators said they have indications that some of the seized drugs were obtained from Bosnia via the Internet.

But thanks to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for recycling this story from 1995 and reprinting it. One must wonder if a glance through its archives would have found a story a little over a hundred years ago explaining how madams were using stagecoaches to get women to their cathouses.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:29 PM   0 comments

 
You Couldn't Find a Better Union in a Fark Photoshop Contest
Pop-Tarts Presents American Idols Live! Tour 2006.

Someone out there in marketingland has a subversive sense of humor.


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

 
Recursive Logic Error
Looks like everyone's running with this story today: Study finds we're human-chimp hybrid.

Revel in the logic, friends. It's GNUs Not Unix all over again. We, humans, are a cross between humans and chimps. The humans that they crossed with the chimps were a cross between humans and chimps. Which in turn must have been human and chimp hybrids.

Sloppy headlines reveal sloppy thinking. And we get a lot of that in the papers today, ainna?


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:10 PM   0 comments

 
That's How You Get Them To Fit Into The Vase
Some creative pruning of firearms:

He brought a rifle to school Monday. The stalk had been cut off the gun. Benton was arrested.

(Link seen on Ravenwood's Universe.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:12 PM   0 comments

 
Boeing CEO Doesn't Wear Horsehair Shirt, Self-Flagellate to Post-Dispatch Reporter's Satisfaction
The CEO of Boeing gives a speech at Saint Louis University, sponsored by the Boeing Institute of International Business at SLU's John Cook Business School. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Boeing chief skips mention of scandal in speech:

Boeing Co. Chairman Jim McNerney's first public speech in St. Louis was filled with historical references: Lewis and Clark, the real story behind the invention of the Post-it and why aviation pioneer James S. McDonnell set up shop here nearly 70 years ago.

However, in his speech on Tuesday, McNerney steered clear of a recent development in Boeing's history: a $615 million settlement with the Justice Department that allows Boeing to avoid admitting wrongdoing and criminal prosecution on corruption charges.

"Reporter" Tim McLaughlin goes on to list a number of scandals and shoddy business practices that preceded the CEO's assumption of the Chief Executive post. McLaughlin then throws in an aside to why he thinks the CEO should half turned the collegiate appearance into a weepy, mea-culpa Oprahesque piece of failure and redemption at the audience's pity:

Not mentioning the scandals and the subsequent tentative settlement in the speech was notable, given that McNerney left 3M Co. to rebuild Boeing's reputation.

That's nothing but a self-justification for this particular story list of anti-Boeing bullet points.

Meanwhile, we at MfBJN note that McLaughlin didn't bother to mention the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's declining circulation or job cuts in this article. We have to wonder why not?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:30 PM   0 comments

 
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Fails Compare-and-Contrast Exam
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch today makes equivalent two statements from two very different men (Guards on border: Bistate leaders splitting on plan).

Missouri Governor Matt Blunt:

"As commander in chief of the Missouri National Guard, I stand ready to assist in the border control efforts the president outlined and know that Missouri's men and women in uniform are more than prepared for this challenge," Blunt said.

"Missouri's National Guard personnel have answered the call of our federal government many times in the past and were among the first in the nation to help the storm-ravaged Gulf Coast last year. It is a high honor for me to be associated with such a committed group of patriots," he said.

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich:

But Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich said that after five years during which Bush had largely ignored immigration issues, he should not seek to boost border security in a manner Blagojevich said would be at the expense of homeland security.

He said Bush had already left National Guard units underequipped and stretched too thin, and he expressed concern that the Guard would be weakened further if it were now asked to police the borders, said his deputy press secretary, Abby Ottenhoff. States rely on the National Guard to respond to disasters at home.

The governor called for more answers from Bush about how he plans to protect states if Guard units are diverted to the nation's borders.

Of course, they have two different biographies.

Matt Blunt:

Matt Blunt, Missouri’s 54th governor was elected on November 2, 2004, carrying 101 of Missouri’s 114 counties.

Governor Blunt was born November 20, 1970 in Springfield, Missouri. He attended public schools in Strafford, and graduated from Jefferson City High School prior to entering the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland.

Prior to his election as governor, Matt Blunt served as an active duty Naval Officer, as a member of the Missouri General Assembly (District 139) and as Missouri’s 37th Secretary of State.

Governor Blunt graduated from the Naval Academy in May 1993 with a bachelor of science degree in history. He went on to serve as an Engineering Officer aboard the USS JACK WILLIAMS (FFG-24) and as the Navigator and Administrative Officer on the USS PETERSON (DD-969).

Governor Blunt’s active duty service included participation in Operation Support Democracy, involving the United Nations blockade of Haiti, missions to interdict drug traffic off the South American coast, and on duties involved in the interdiction of Cuban migrants in 1994.

During his Naval career, Governor Blunt received numerous commendations, including four Navy and Marine Corps Achievement medals.

Governor Blunt is the only statewide official in Missouri history called to active military duty in wartime, serving for six months in Operation Enduring Freedom, America’s response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He is currently serving as a Lieutenant Commander in the Naval Reserves.

Rod Blagojevich:

Rod R. Blagojevich was sworn in as the 40th Governor of Illinois on January 13, 2003. As Illinois' chief executive officer, Gov. Blagojevich is working aggressively to create jobs, build stronger communities, provide Illinois families the tools they need to improve their lives, and restore the people's confidence in state government. Gov. Blagojevich's top priority is ensuring access to quality health care for every child in Illinois. Nearly 250,000 children in Illinois are uninsured and many come from working and middle class families who earn too much to qualify for programs like KidCare, but not enough to afford private health insurance. That is why Gov. Blagojevich proposed and signed legislation creating the All Kids program. All Kids makes Illinois the first state in the nation to make sure every child has access to comprehensive and affordable health care coverage. Illinois' uninsured children will now have access to doctor's visits, hospital stays, prescription drugs, vision care, dental care and medical devices like eyeglasses and asthma inhalers. Parents will pay monthly premiums for the coverage, but rates for middle-income families will be significantly lower than they are on the private market.

Let's cut through the first three quarters of Blagojevich's "biography," since they're really nothing more than campaign promises. For substantive biographic information, we get:

Prior to his election, Gov. Blagojevich was a Cook County Assistant State's Attorney. During his tenure, he prosecuted domestic abuse cases and felony weapons charges, which made him a strong advocate for tougher sentencing laws when he was elected to the General Assembly in 1992.

In 1996, he was elected to represent Illinois' 5th District in the U.S. House of Representatives. While a congressman, he secured funding for after-school tutoring programs and distinguished himself as an advocate for education. He was also a leader in the fight to establish a Patients' Bill of Rights, to assure prompt access to mammograms, and to require higher safety and care standards at nursing homes.

So one of these governors has served in the military, and one of these governors has served himself in the government employ. Personally, I'd take the insight from the one with actual experience in the field more than the insight from the one whose insight runs to electoral campaigns.

But I'm not a real journalist, so I'm missing the beauty of the direct opposition of their viewpoints and how they build drama and conflict into something that's much of a story with which to begin.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:19 PM   1 comments

 
Let It Be Known
Whereas Musings from Brian J. Noggle is sort of grateful for the traffic represented in its semi-dominant position as seventeenth in the Google search for where to buy heroin in oakland ca, we on the staff prefer to think our law enforcement officials have more competence than to simply monkey-type searches in the search engines as part of a complete investigation.

Thank you, that is all.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:25 AM   2 comments

 
Book Report: Sharky's Machine by William Diehl (1978)
Continuing what only appears to be 70s Week here in the MfBJN book review department: I bought this book at the Kirkwood Book Fair for $2.00 because I recognized the name from the 1981 Burt Reynolds movie and thought that, since it was only $2.00 for a stated second printing, it might be worth something Of course, since I seem to be falling into collecting books that are the sources of movies (more to come from the Kirkwood Book Fair where I fell), I guess it is worth that to me, even though I'm not making a killing on these books. Perhaps it's just my way of reading the pop culture that everyone talked about some years ago.

At any rate, this book depicts a narc cop (Sharky) who gets put on vice detail when one of his narc stakeouts takes a deadly turn. Once in vice, he gets a case to run, complete with supporting personnel (the "machine" of the title). A simple investigation into a prostitution/blackmail stakeout leads to a presidential candidate looking to unseat President Ford bankrolled by stolen World War II gold.

The book starts out Ludlumesque, but about 300 pages into its 370 page length, the book goes Hollywood. You can almost hear the pens of the Hollywood people signing the option while Diehl was still writing. Nevertheless, the book represents some interesting, accessibly 70s pseudo-pulp. The book relies on a third person limited omniscient narrator, but cuts back and forth betwene characters and even begins with the 1944 theft of gold to engage the middle-aged reader of its day. Equal parts MacLean, Ludlum, and 70s film detective fiction, this book satisfied me. For a couple bucks, who could go wrong?

Of course, you cannot expect to get a stated Second Printing for a couple bucks like I did, gentle reader. You should expect to pay $30 or $150 or something so as to inflate my perceived value of my own collection. If you're not buying the stuff off of Amazon courtesy the handy links below, it's the least you could do.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:23 AM   0 comments

 
Life in Canada
Share this moment with that special Canadian in your life.


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

 
Pancho Villa 2006
So the plan is to put 6,000 of our military troops on the border in advisory sorts of roles. Am I the only one who looks at this and sees the possibility for an escalation of sorts?

Because it's one thing for those reputed Mexican Army incursions to barnstorm across the border and pop off a few rounds at U.S. Border control officials, but it will be another thing entirely to have an exchange with the United States military. As a sometime fiction writer, I can see how easily one or more of these sorts of incidents would lead to a hot pursuit into Mexican territory, and suddenly we have a whole new another Mexican Expedition underway.

It's easy to forget, with our current public education-enforced historical myopia, just how ultimately unpeaceful our relationship has been with Mexico.

Update: Okay, so I'm not the first to remember Pancho Villa.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:29 AM   0 comments

 
Headline of the Day
Charity freeze money collected from raffle sales

To someone at the Post-Dispatch, no doubt charity is the plural of the original Latin charitum.

And if you click through the link to the story, note that it deals with one of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's current crusade stories. On any given day in the last week or so, you can find the front page of stltoday.com banging on the drums in its current outrage kit:

• The Overland mayor who, after a close election, wants to throw out some of the city officials (today's story: Hearing on Overland police chief to begin Tuesday). The Post-Dispatch, the people's paper, sides against the elected representive of the people on behalf of unelected officials and cheers all sorts of procedural moves and an ultimate trip to the judiciary to thwart the rabble. Go, team! (For a complete list of stories and attendant column inches regarding this small municipality in the last month, click here.)
  
  
• A somewhat dubious charity called Gateway to a Cure that has run expensive raffles in the area for the last ten years. The Post-Dispatch has run articles digging for dirt for over a month now. They've not uncovered a smoking gun, but they have gotten another investigation of the charity. Kudos to the Post-Dispatch for ensuring that a struggling charity has to pay legal defense bills. (For more stories from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the charity, click here.)
  Full disclosure: Heather and I rented a hall from this guy's brother for our wedding reception, so for the price of a low rate, I've obviously sold the integrity of the blog. We never got our Shania Twain CD back from the brother after he played that innocuous "From This Moment On" for our first dance, so perhaps I ought to jump on the bandwagon and pillory the charity owner.

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

 
Nuance
Border troops would be temporary, US tells Mexico

Because they'll only be on the border before the invasion.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:50 AM   2 comments

 
Missing the Bigger Scandal
CNN tries to gin up the old outrage that Report: Mentally ill troops forced into combat, wherein only troops who aren't down in the dumps go off to war.

No, CNN, you're missing the bigger scandal: The American military is violating the Americans with Disabilities Act by sending those troops off to war without their emotional needs dogs.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:58 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: His Affair by Jo Fleming (1976)
I bought this book at the Belleville Book Fair last weekend for a couple pennies because frankly I needed something to fill the $2.00 bag I'd already bought. Besides, it sounded interesting. The cover freatures the title in a very seventies script and offers this teaser: The powerful true story of one woman's confrontation with every woman's nightmare. Granted, that was 30 years ago, and some women have different nightmares by now, but a spouse's affair remains a nightmare for some subset of the population.

The first section is entitled Ending, the second Midway: The Second Year, and the third Beginning. So the book right away carries with it the progression of some sort of self-help mental health journey.

Ending does capture the pseudonymbous author's discovery of her husband's affair as they return from a trip. His mistress just cannot help herself and writes him a letter delivered to the hotel, and the husband proceeds to read it on the plane in front of his wife. The woman then has to question their marriage, their life together, and everything she's known for 25 years. I thought perhaps the book would serve, if nothing else, as a fable of how marriages crumble under time and hopefully could serve as a reminder to not let the dwindling communication and elusive intimacy affect your marriage.

However, somewhere towards the end of the ending, it became clear that Jo Fleming was going to overcome the affair by becoming some sort of whackerdoodle post-Sexual Revolution open marriage proponent, and that at the climax of the book, she would overcome her Victorian upbringing and have an affair of her own as she went beyond fidelity.

Ergo, the book develops a series of diary entries chronicling her growth with her husband into some 1970s era Greatest Generation Geriatric emotional swingers. It's rife with dream recreations and interpretations, dialogues between her and her husband, her and her therapist, her and her husband's therapist, and her and herself. The writing's somewhat adolescent and repetitive, easily skimmable--a quality I learned to appreciate by the end of the second year.

Essentially, it's a twisted rendition of The Total Woman; to build a better, more loving marriage, instead of working inside that marriage, this book advocates going outside the marriage to fulfill your emotional and sexual needs. Now, while that might play on Manhattan, where the narrator of this book resides among the so-cosmopolitan set, here in the middle of the country, that sort of thing sometimes gets a person dead.

Oddly enough, even though it's purportedly a true story by a diarist who wants to be a writer, I thought the book might be a clumsy novel. I mean, most spouses don't frequently sit down and share weepy moments while exalting in their spiritual growth and moral nihilism immediately before encouraging each other to keep growing, where "growing" is a euphemism for going all the way with the handsome fellow in the office. Therefore, I felt perhaps someone had packaged up a rough draft of How To Save Your Own Life without Erica Jong's Jongness, or whatever made that particular novel worth its weight in wood pulp.

Perhaps I'm being unduly harsh on this book. Perhaps I'm reeling from the offense at being blindered, as the author says:

Some people, reading this diary, might disapprove of the freedom we have tried to introduce into our marriage; they will be the ones who grew up when I did and have somehow managed to keep their blinders on. (p 160)

Well, lovey, perhaps some of us aren't so ready to sacrifice our morals and our standards for to serve a tawdry narrative, even if that narrative happens to be a life.

So I spent a handful of pennies on it, and I personally wouldn't spend it again on this book, but I did get my money's worth on personal outrage and words for the blog, ainna?

Books mentioned in this review:

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

 
Police Seeking Sexual Fetish
Look at what can happen when you cannot tell the difference between a compound sentence and a compound predicate:

A man's sexual fetish crosses the line into the bizarre and is now wanted by police.

The world must be a much more interesting place for the ignorant.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:40 AM   2 comments

 
Harsh Penalty for Dumpster Diving
Man found in Dumpster shot to death


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

 
Casuality Is Not Just A River In Egypt
St. Louis Post-Dispatch, today, exclaims Blue-collar workers are paid well here:

In St. Louis, it's good to wear a blue collar.

Despite a wide wage gap in most parts of the country, local blue-collar workers barely trailed their more educated white-collar peers in pay last year.

Last week, in an article by the very same writer, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch lamented Retail overtakes manufacturing:

After decades of industrial layoffs, the St. Louis area has hit an unsettling milestone: More residents now work in retail stores than in manufacturing plants.

The news isn't surprising. Manufacturing employment has slipped below retailing in selected months in recent years. But last year was the first time it was true year-round.

And never the twain shall meet.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:37 PM   0 comments

 
Where Will They Put the Plaque?
The hospital where I was born is closing:

St. Michael Hospital, which is losing millions of dollars annually, will close its emergency room and most other departments starting June 5 - greatly scaling back a major health care provider for a large number of poor people.

St. Michael, 2400 W. Villard Ave., is closing its emergency room and inpatient services because the hospital's non-profit corporate parent, Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare, can no longer afford them, John Oliverio, Wheaton Franciscan president and chief executive officer, said Monday.

I guess this might have been foreshadowing:

Glendale-based Wheaton Franciscan, which recently changed it name from Covenant Healthcare System, "doesn't have the ability to fund indefinitely the types of losses we've incurred at St. Michael's," Oliverio said.

Convenant, as you know, means a sacred contract or an agreement. I guess were it Covenant, the company would be bound to providing care to those with whom it has made the compact. Wheaton Franciscan, on the other hand, is just a health care system.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:53 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Blowback by Bill Pronzini (1997)
This book represents an acquisition from the Belleville Book Fair last weekend, where I got books for an amortized $.09 each ($2.00 a bag, I bought a bag and a half since Heather didn't fill half of her bag, I got to fill that, too, so the 24+ books cost me less than a dime each). It's a book club edition, so the real collectors will make fun of me on the playground, but I'm an accumulator more than a true collector.

This book features Pronzini's nameless detective, a middle-aged collector of pulp fiction who is facing his own mortality as he frets during the course of the book about the results of a biopsy on a lesion in his lung. To distract himself, he heeds the call of his old friend Harry who has a tense situation at a remote fishing and hunting camp. A jealous husband, a potentially wandering hot young wife (red haired, natch), and a number of available fellows grind against each other mentally and physically. Nameless and Harry see a van containing a stolen Oriental rug smuggler crash into the lake, but they discover the man was dead before he hit the water. A couple other bodies pile up, and Nameless needs to find out who's doing it and survive the detection.

It's a thin book, and obviously a series book, but it's contained fairly well for a single book. That is, we're not lost without background details from the previous books. It's short and serviceable as a piece of genre fiction, a quick read and a solution that's obvious once you realize to whom Pronzini pays homage. Definitely worth a dime. Even if it's only a book club edition.

Books mentioned in this review:


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

 
A Very Noggle Corollary

In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high. --Henry David Thoreau

Or just use a shotgun.


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

 
No Wonder Tickets Were So Cheap
Let's just say the Cirque de Soleil Moon Frye was too comprehensible and too non-random to be truly French in nature. Also, the tickets were $2.50 or $1.50 with any can of beer for the hungry.

I was punkied.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:37 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Everybody's Guide to Book Collecting by Charlie Lovett (1993)
I bought this book for $4.50 at Hooked on Books in Springfield at the same time as I bought Warmly Inscribed and Slightly Chipped. I found myself in the books about books section and went nuts. What can I say? I already had a couuple books in hand, and once you crack that vast barrier between having nothing and buying something, you're done for.

Unlike the Goldstone books, which are personal narrative essays about collecting, this slender volume is a FAQ. It clocks in at a little more than seventy pages with a couple of appendices and an index. The body of the book is a series of questions about book collecting and answers provided by a book dealer. It delves lightly into why you would collect, how to collect, and what the collector terms mean. So if you're new to collecting or need some refreshing, the book's a nice little pocket book. A For Dummies book from before the time when their yellow bindings dominated the introductory scene.

Also, given the age of the book (1993), the book does not include the prevalence of the Internet in this hobby, but its not too out of date in spite of it, because we book collectors still like to visit the second hand shops and book fairs and whatnot.

To slip into collector mode, this edition is a nice piece of work. Although a trade paperback published by a small Kansas press, its pages are resume-quality paper. I liked it. Worth $4.50, even in a good to very good first edition? Eh, you can almost do better on the Internet before shipping and handling.

Books mentioned in this review:

   
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:17 PM   0 comments

 
Socks Checks In
Writing in today's Wall Street Journal, Samuel R. Berger opines upon what the United States should do vis-à-vis Iran and says:

....

Aw, what does it matter what Mr. Berger says? His mucketymuckability went out the door with the documents from the National Archive in his socks.

Still, the introduction of the hallowed and revered former something-or-other with in the Pax Clintona does lend itself to an obvious solution to the Iran question. Picture: A world-reknowned figure and statesman travels on a diplomatic mission to Iran to review their plans and blueprints under heavy security. Diplomatic mission succeeds, in that Iran thinks it has bought more time from the west, but when they look back in their files for the blueprints for centrifuges and nuclear devices are mysteriously gone!


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:28 PM   0 comments

 
Nothing Better Than Irreversible Body Modification Except Irreversible Body Modification That Requires Cancer-Causing Light To See
A new view for tattoos: Ultraviolet ink conceals body art for day jobs but comes alive under black lights:

In just about any professional setting, it would be almost impossible to notice anything different about Caitlin Sabel's wrists. They might appear a tad scarred, but nothing too out of the ordinary.

Look at them under a black light, though, and the words glow. Then, in an old-English font, her left wrist reads "regret" and her right "nothing."

Ah, the innovative ways of parting money from fools.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:43 PM   1 comments

 
One Fewer Symptom That Brian's Crazy
While driving along Big Bend Boulevard here in Old Trees, Missouri, our new home, I said to Heather, "Hey, it's a half track." Driving down Big Bend Boulevard. A half track. Heather didn't see it, and she didn't know what a half track was, so I had to explain it to her.

Fortunately, I could hold up a copy of the Webster-Kirkwood Times from this week and prove to her that my spotting a World War II era military vehicle tooling around town was not a symptom of my insanity.

Proving this was not a symptom of mental illness is not the same as proving sanity, I know, but I will take what I can get.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:31 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Bump & Run by Mike Lupica (2000)
I liked Full Court Press. I liked Wild Pitch. So of course, I was on the lookout for this, Mike Lupica's football book. A ne'er-do-well son inherits a football team from his father, the prodigal son hopes for some measure of redemption in achieving his father's dream....a trip to the Super Bowl. Other owners and the league, however, aren't sure they want the new blood injecting sense into a gentleman's sport, ownership, and the man must deal with two hostile co-owners--his siblings.

I thought I'd outgrown sports books sometime in elementary school. I'm not a sports fanatic, contrary to what my widow says. I don't watch non-sporting events on ESPN, for example. But I like Lupica's books because they're well-written. Engaging and often humorous, I enjoy these books, also engaging and humorous, even though they mostly lack dead bodies, space ships, or swords. I was very glad when Heather spotted this book at the Greater St. Louis Book Fair last week for $3.00. There's my endorsement. I'll buy the books for more than $.33, and I'll read them soon after getting them. Unlike the 40 other books I've bought in the last two weeks at these damn book fairs.

Books mentioned in this review:

   
- posted by Brian J. @ 12:34 PM   0 comments

 
Having Destroyed Earth's Climate, Bush Turns His Sites On The Rest of the Solar System
New Storm on Jupiter Hints at Climate Change:

The latest images could provide evidence that Jupiter is in the midst of a global change that can modify temperatures by as much as 10 degrees Fahrenheit on different parts of the globe.

Almost as though climate change happened cylically, naturally, and without the intervention of a sentient species.

But in the good news within this bad news for environmentalists:

• It will be overlooked by the tinny orchestra of the media and public consciousness.
  
  
• Al Gore has an opportunity to his ultimate action film, this time set in space and maybe starring Vin Diesel.

- posted by Brian J. @ 10:58 AM   0 comments

 
Spurious Assertion of the Day
Within a piece about computer security on Macintoshes, Arik Hesseldahl makes the following spurious assertion:

There’s two problems with that statement: First off, Mac users on average pay more for their computers, are self-selected because they tend to know more about technology than your average PC buyer, and by and large are a bit more affluent than those who buy cheapo commodity Windows PCs.

Macintosh users also self-messiah themselves as above the common rabble, so of course they're smarter and prettier than the Windows-using hoi polloi. But more technical? Not in my limited experience.

I work in a part Macintosh, part Windows shop, and I have had to research and teach some fairly basic Macintosh procedure, such as editing the hosts files and whatnot.

That is, they're normal users who happen to use Macintosh. On the one hand, some of them are more technical and into the glamour of their chosen technology; on the other hand, that technology and the operating system are pretty much idiot proof, so you don't have to learn much about the technology since the GUI doesn't crap out.

On the other hand, Windows machines are pretty much a commodity, so the basic user knowledge baseline is much smaller, but anyone with any curiosity into the technology will have to learn to get it working correctly. Additionally, since they're default still for youngsters learning, most extremely savvy people will start on Windows PCs, whether they end up on Linux or OS X or one of the even more compartmentalized niche OSes whose acronyms are only known to cabals of the initiates. Maybe these bring the technology savvy average up enough to account for the monkeys trying to compose The Tempest in Microsoft Works or, heaven forfend, Microsoft Paint.

Still, the assertion that Macintosh users tend to know more about technology than your average PC buyer merits an objection, your honor. Perhaps Macintosh users tend to have more hubris about technology than your average PC buyer. Which plays into the hands of those who would threaten the Macintosh users' security with viruses, trojans, and worms (oh, my!).


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:02 AM   9 comments

 
A Boy Named Schmuck
The headlines were amusing the first time I saw news about this fellow, but they've lost something personally for me, but maybe you'll still get a kick out of them:

Schmuck honored as national coach of year

If you were born with a name like Schmuck, you could reasonably expect to be picked upon in school. Which makes this fellow's career choice all the more self-flagellating, as he's a high school sports coach.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:53 AM   0 comments

 
Your One Stop Shop for Freaky Things, Werd
To quote a fellow award-winning blogger, THE REAL HONOR IS BEING NOMINATED, but it's nice to be number one on the Google search for a website that has werd freaky things on it.

Thanks, searcher, but do remember to offset the aside with commas and make Web site two words: a Web site that has, werd, freaky things on it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:28 AM   0 comments

 
Your Paranoia Shidoshi Knew This Would Happen
Keyless entry, OnStar, and so on and so forth. You saw convenience, and I saw it coming:

High-tech thieves are becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to stealing automobiles equipped with keyless entry and ignition systems. While many computer-based security systems on automobiles require some type of key — mechanical or otherwise — to start the engine, so-called ‘keyless’ setups require only the presence of a key fob to start the engine.

Of course, you know me; I thought that the keyed ignition system was inviting danger and a step back from cranking the engine.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 PM   0 comments

 
Have a Nice Day, from Family Direct Services, Inc.
An unsolicited greeting from the first company my mortgage broker could sell my name to:

Our records indicate you are not participating in our recommended MORTGAGE PROTECTION COVERAGE. You may now be eligible if you are UNDER AGE 76.

The ECONOMICAL term life insurance can PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE should you or your spouse DIE. It provides the SECURITY YOUR FAMILY NEEDS at the PRICE YOU WANT.

Well, if I DIE, I think normal insurances WOULD help my spouse PAY HER MORTGAGE (since, by dying, it would really no longer be my mortgage, would it?), and even if I were inclined to UP MY COVERAGE, I would probably look for a REPUTABLE INSURANCE COMPANY and not some fly-by-bulk-mail OPERATOR who probably won't even EXIST by the time I die (hopefully sometime in the twenty-second century, the later the better) and who interrupts my daily junk mail destruction with UNSOLICITED REMINDERS OF MY OWN MORALITY, IN BOLD AND CAPITALS AS APPROPRIATE.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:37 PM   0 comments

 
The First Thing To Do When You're In A Hole
After blowing $26,000,000 on a software system it won't even use, the executive vice president of the University of Wisconsin system offers a mea culpa. Or the bureaucratic, non mea culpa equivalent:

"We're very sheepish," Mash told the state Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. "We couldn't make this work. We've got to dig ourselves out of this hole."

Dig themselves out of the hole? What the heck does that mean in the public sector? Oh, yeah, it means you'll have to get more tax money to cover your mistakes.

In the real world, this fellow and/or one or two of his ill-informed cohorts would be out of jobs. But in the rarefied world of the public sector, no doubt a little sheepishness and an expression of desire to dig one's self out of a hole will save him.

And maybe even make available another $26,000,000 in budget to spend.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:43 PM   1 comments

 
MfBJN Joins the Fight Against Obesity
To join all the cool non-for-profits and organizations now trying to stake their claim on the public consciousness, public health funding, and class action settlement dollars, Musings from Brian J. Noggle joins the fight against obesity, wherein obesity is any shape to your body that does not come from a starving, distended belly by offering the following appetite suppressant as a public service announcement:

Radish shortcake, with extra whipped cream

That'll make you put down the bag of Doritos, eh, chubby?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:36 PM   1 comments

 
It's a Little Early to Celebrate, Edmonton
Just because the number 8 Edmonton Oilers eliminated the Detroit Red Wings in the first round of the playoffs is a little early to start stocking up the celebratory fireworks:

On Friday cops found a 1-Teck 9 fully automatic nine-millimetre handgun, an SKS assault rifle and a rocket launcher.

On Sunday, they also seized two handguns, a shotgun, 1.4 kg of cocaine, six vials of steroids, four grams of marijuana with a street value of $60, a samurai sword and one bulletproof vest.

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:58 PM   0 comments

 
Words That Do Not Belong In Country Songs, Part V
Groovin', as in "When the Sun Goes Down":

'cause when the sun goes down
we'll be groovin'
when the sun goes down
we'll be feelin' alright

Kenny Chesney, you used to be a cowboy. Why, you once stole a horse from the Law. But the beachfront property addled your brain, and suddenly you're sounding like something out of a 50s sock hop....granted, one where you've snuck in some booze, but come on, groovin'?


Exception to the Rule: I guess you can talk about groovin' if and only if you're singing about a plunge router, perhaps in a song entitled "If I Could, I Wood" about being briefly lonely when your woman tells you to choose between her and your sweet basement workshop.



- posted by Brian J. @ 5:56 AM   0 comments

 
Elegy
Weber and Dolan, RIP:

Milwaukee radio veteran Jay Weber, longtime co-host of "Weber & Dolan," has been selected to host his own program, beginning Monday, May 8.

Weber's new program, The Jay Weber Show, will be heard weekday mornings from 8:30 a.m. until 12 p.m., in the slot now occupied by "Weber & Dolan."

Bob Dolan, Weber's partner on News/Talk 1130 WISN for the past seven-and-a-half years, asked for and received permission from the station to withdraw from his on-air duties, in order to spend all of his time managing and performing within Dolan Productions LLC, a television production company that he recently formed.

Frankly, I have feared this coming since the move. Well, actually, I've feared it every time that their contract has come up for renewal. I've listened to Weber and Dolan since its inception, accidentally.

I caught it first in probably 2000. I was toiling away in a dark computer testing lab by myself and spent the days dialing around the Internet, looking for something to listen to. I lit upon WISN as a voice of home and enjoyed Weber and Dolan before Dr. Laura in the mornings.

Man, I've listened to them for a long time. I've listened to them with five different employers--DRA, MetaMatrix, Tripos, Jeracor, and infuz. I've listened to them through a series of streaming audio providers and their individual foibles and incompatibilities. I've listened, and laughed, through sundry Packer seasons. Tragic as it sounds, when I worked from home, I would often comment to my wife about what Weber and Dolan had talked about that day as though they were co-workers.

But they're breaking up, finally. I guess all good things must pass. Like childhood stars who've passed through cuteness and puberty, I guess these fellows need to expand their repertoire before they're typecast. Okay, I understand. But it saddens me still.

I probably won't listen to the Jay Weber Show. Part of the draw of the pair was their counterpoints to each other. Jay could be a bit curt and arrogant, but Bob tempered it with his laid-back nature and old-fashionedness. I wish both the best of luck, but I guess it's iTunes for me in the mornings now.


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

 
Book Report: Bosstrology by Adèle Lang and Andrew Masterson (2003)
I bought this book for $1.00 off of the extreme remainder table at Barnes and Noble in Ladue while engaging in a gift-card-fueled orgy of new book buying at the beginning of the year. $1! For a trade paperback! With this profligate spending, it's a wonder I could buy a new, larger house to contain all of my books.

This book, subtitled The Twelve Bastard Bosses of the Zodiac, appears as a sequel of sorts to a previous book entitled How to Spot a Bastard by His Star Sign. It does the normal office humor bit, identifying various poor management types as cardboard personalities and then associating them with a sign of the zodiac. It's a conceit that could have carried a ninety or a hundred page book, tops. However, the schtick goes on twice as long as it needed to, and overall suffers as a result.

One of the authors must be British and the other American; the book uses a lot of British turns of phrase (bum, arse, and so on) but a large number of American pop cultural references. Perhaps those were dropped in for this, the first American Edition. It didn't really impact the quality of the material, but it was noticeable.

Also, I'd like you to know, I don't share many characteristics with the Pisces bastard boss identified in the book. That doesn't mean I'm not a bastard boss, only that my bastardism is self-determined, free will-like, and not predetermined by the universe. Thank you, that is all.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:50 PM   0 comments

 
Don't Be Whiny
Maybe Google wants to become the next Netscape: New Microsoft Browser Raises Google's Hackles:

With a $10 billion advertising market at stake, Google, the fast-rising Internet star, is raising objections to the way that it says Microsoft, the incumbent powerhouse of computing, is wielding control over Internet searching in its new Web browser.

Google, which only recently began beefing up its lobbying efforts in Washington, says it expressed concerns about competition in the Web search business in recent talks with the Justice Department and the European Commission, both of which have brought previous antitrust actions against Microsoft.

The new browser includes a search box in the upper-right corner that is typically set up to send users to Microsoft's MSN search service. Google contends that this puts Microsoft in a position to unfairly grab Web traffic and advertising dollars from its competitors.

How come Google hasn't complained that all Gecko browsers, such as Mozilla, Firefox, and Netscape come standard with Google cued up in the unavoidable search bar? Oh, right, because this little tweak benefits Google.

Remember the last time some pioneering Internet company turned away from innovation and tried to protect its market share in Washington?

Neither, apparently, does Google.


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

 
Words That Do Not Belong In Country Songs, Part IV
Makin' it shake, as in "Boot Scootin' Boogie":

I see outlaws, inlaws crooks & straights all out makin' it shake
Doin' the boot scootin' boogie

Ronnie, it's okay to adopt a musical persona that's from KC, but it is not appropriate to channel KC and the Sunshine Band. Boogie's bad enough, but the graphic depiction of what happens during a boogie is too much.



Exception to the Rule: It's okay to make it shake so long as you're performing some act of violence upon it, such as grabbing a grizzly by the throat and throttling it vigorously.


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