Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
 
He's Also Not Fond Of Other QA Professionals
Musings from Brian J. Noggle: Your #1 Internet Source for "hate technical writers".


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:22 PM   0 comments
 
A Low Wattage Tragedy
Cue the violins: 16 horses killed in trailer crash on I-44.

The grisly toll:
    Officials say 26 of the 42 horses in trailer survived but nine had to be put down and the other seven died at the scene of the accident.
The authorities are taking heroic measures to save the survivors:
    The surviving horses were taken to an arena at the St. Clair Saddle Club, where veterinary personnel were working on them. The highway was reopened to traffic about 11 a.m. Cole said she did not know what would happen to the horses that survived. She was looking for places for them to stay until their status is cleared up.

    "The Highway Patrol made them our responsibility," she said. "The Humane Society is footing the bill for all of this. We are looking into the legalities as we go along."
The bureaucracy and its attendant veterinarians are no doubt working through the night to make sure the survivors are healthy and can continue on their journey.

    The horses were on their way to Cavel International Inc., a horse processing plant in DeKalb, Ill., authorities said. In a statement today, Cavel said even though the horses were bound for the slaughterhouse, "where they would have been euthanized under the supervision of federal inspectors and USDA veterinarians," the horses belong to the horse trader who bought them until they reach the plant.
That's right: these horses are being healed so that they'll reach the slaughterhouse in prime shape.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:13 PM   1 comments
 
His Master's Voice
Robert B. Parker has a new Web site and a real blog with comments and everything.

As you know, I give Robert B. Parker and his Spenser novels at least partial credit in raising me, as I read the bulk of his early work in my formative years (see also "Meeting Robert B. Parker").

It's weird that after twenty years of admiration, he's suddenly as accessible as, say, Michael Williams is a little odd. I don't think I'll have the nerve to actually leave a comment over there.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:47 PM   0 comments
 
Where Have You Gone, Alex P. Keaton?
Michael J. Fox to host McCaskill fundraiser:
    Michael J. Fox will be in St. Louis next week to host a fundraiser for Democratic Senate candidate Claire McCaskill.
Well, he is an actor, and so his political thinking skills were suspect from the start.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:14 PM   0 comments
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
 
Things You Can Find On The Internet
Back in the early 1991, I was a sophomore in college. I'd finally gotten a PC (we called them "clones" in those days) the year before, but I still had my Commodore 64 hooked up on the desk beside the PC, and I still hung out on C64 Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). One, called the City of WISE (Waukesha Information System Exchange, as I recollect), I called every night (because in those days, you had to dial up with your modem to connect to a bulletin board system, and you often had to call late at night when you wouldn't tie up the phone). I ran a trivia message board, and I even started a message board for a Call of Cthulhu game.

Someone else was going to run some sort of roleplaying game on a message board, and I signed up. But that gamemaster never showed. Instead, one of the other users (Brass Orchid, handle derived from a Samuel R. Delany book I still haven't read) and I started riffing absurdly, playing somewhat to roleplaying game conventions. Eventually, Brass Orchid collected these messages and sent me a copy on disk to see if we could make some sort of story out of it.

Fast forward fifteen years to the present day, and I'm browsing TextFiles.com, a repository of text files from that era, and I get to thinking about The Forgotten Legacy (as the message board was called, undoubtedly some grand sweeping sword-and-sorcery campaign that we subverted to our own ends). So I Google Brass Orchid by his real name, and lo, there it is, on his Web site: 
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

12/21/91; 12:43PM
From: Brass Orchid [3]

We could always play without him. All the GM 
does is provide structure and coherence to the game.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

12/21/91; 10:39PM
From: L. S. Creetor [62]

I'll take my bastard sword and stab the Ultimate 
Reality in the gut.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

12/22/91; 5:08AM
From: Brass Orchid [3]

The Ultimate Reality suffers 120 HP's damage and 
falls, semiconcious, to the ground, muttering, "That
Bastard sure knows how to hurt a guy."
L. S. Creetor collects 20 Exp. Points and finds
the Medallion of Adaptation.
Suddenly, the sky splits open and a stairway to
the stars appears. Branches off of the main stairway can
be seen, dwindling into the distance.
Your move...
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Suddenly, I'm nineteen years old again, connecting through LotusWorks, and casting spells I made up on the fly. I can see the wood paneling and smell the light must of my basement room, I can feel the keyboard in my lap (because that's all we had for ergonomics, you damn kids--you could put your keyboard in your lap), and I played late into the night with my short stories, with my bulletin boards, and with simple games without 3D rendering. I had most of college and all of my life ahead of me, and I was as optimistic as a college Objectivist could be.

Crazy, the things you can find on the Internet. I am of the first generation that can find its youth.

UPDATE: Revised a sentence to make clear I looked for Brass Orchid elsewhere but TextFiles.com.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:06 PM   2 comments
 
Possibly The Wrong Inference From A Headline
Janet Jackson hoping to turn things around.

Janet Jackson wants to moon America.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 PM   0 comments
Monday, September 25, 2006
 
I Got Nothing
Let me, then, share Cat Head Theatre's rendition of Hamlet:



Ah, YouTube, gracious provider of content for the contentedly otherwise contentless.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 PM   1 comments
 
Hard Harry Redux
Apparently, some people are still seizing the air, feeling it, et cetera. How quaint; pirate radio stations when all the cool kids have podcasts.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:22 PM   0 comments
Saturday, September 23, 2006
 
Book Report: Priest-Kings of Gor by John Norman (1968, 1973)
This book is the third in the series. I haven't read the first two. Although I have owned a large number of Gor books in my life, I currently have but four. Back near the turn of the century, I was an active eBayer, picking up books and whatnot at garage and estate sales and listing them on eBay. I bought a stack of Gor books at a quarter each and discovered, as they were first printings and second printings, that they were worth far more than a quarter each. I think I sold the 23rd book in the series for almost sixty dollars. So I made my money back on them and kept my eyes open for Gor books in the future. Needless to say, I didn't sell all of them by the time I was done with the eBay thing. So I have a couple left, later printings.

The Gor books draw a lot of attention because of certain elements within them. Okay, one: women are about chattel in these books. They're subservient at best and most of the time, they're slaves. Apparently, some segments of the population like to re-enact this lifestyle according to the books (so much that Gorean sites are banned by some Web hosts). Weird, huh?

The storylines strike me as reminiscient of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Warlord of Mars or maybe John Jakes' Brak stories. Elements of science fiction coupled with sword and sorcery that was kinda popular for much of the last century. In this book, Tarl Cabot, an Earthman transported to Gor, the planet on the opposite side of the sun from the Earth. Cabot is going to seek the forbidden priest-kings who rule the planet from afar to seek vengeance for their destruction of his city. He goes into Sardor, the mountains encircled by a wooden frontier, armed with only his sword, shield, and wits.

The book is very detailed in the description of Gor, its lifestyles, its species relationships, biology, and so on. Not bad for a third book in the series; Norman gave a lot of thought to what he was doing and what he was going to do.

I liked the book well enough. Enough to read more, but not enough to chain women at the foot of my bed. I'll read the others I own in the series and maybe pick up a couple more. Because unlike some survivors of collegiate English programs, I can suspend my moral outrage along with my disbelief to enjoy a little hack'n'slashery, although this series probably rises above the most base in the genre in spite of its depictions of women.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:55 PM   2 comments
Thursday, September 21, 2006
 
It Only Makes Sense
The CDC recommends regular AIDS testing for people 13-64.

    Federal health officials Thursday recommended regular, routine testing for the AIDS virus for all Americans ages 13 to 64, saying an HIV test should be as common as a cholesterol check.
Because you're just as likely on any given day to eat eggs and cheeseburgers as you are to have sex with an intraveneous drug-using homosexuals who trades sex for drugs.

Oh, right, like I'm the only one who tosses that coin every morning.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:39 PM   0 comments
 
First, It's Puppy Safety Seats, Then It's Mandatory Booster Seats for Beagles
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch tells another heartwarming story of someone with a personal preference who would probably not mind government enforcement of his preference. This time, it's car restraining systems for pets:
    Since then, Rodriquez has beome an advocate for having all dogs in cars secured in the back with safety restraints.
Ad absurdum used to be a logical fallacy. Now, it's standard operating procedure.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:31 PM   2 comments
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
 
Marketer-to-English Translation
Hasbro is using brand name products for token in its new Monopoly Here and Now game:
    Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition will be branded, offering players the chance to be represented by miniature versions of a Toyota Prius hybrid car, an order of McDonald's french fries, a New Balance running shoe, a cup of Starbucks coffee or a Motorola Razr cell phone.
Hasbro Games senior vice president for marketing Mark Blecher assures us:
    Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens, Blecher said, to minimize concerns that the new edition would be too commercialized.
Apparently, in Blecher's world, 62.5% commercialized is acceptable, whereas 62.6% is not. However, as I am in marketing myself (obliquely), allow me to translate what Blecher really means: Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens because it couldn't find cross-promotional deals with an airline, a dog breeder, and a computer maker.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 PM   2 comments
Monday, September 18, 2006
 
Some Unfunded Government Mandates Are More Equal Than Others
Mandating $15 ID to vote, restoring some measure of faith and legitimacy to elections by making it harder to vote fraudlently? Bad.

Ordering citizens who would procreate (nowadays, that's Republicans and the poor) to add a $49.99 (minimum) booster seat after the mandated $99.99 (minimum) infant car seat and the mandated $99.99 (minimum) toddler car seat on the off chance that the child will be in an automobile crash? Good.

Someone call me and ask me if I have faith in my government so I can add a couple hundredths of a percentage point to an inconvenient poll that our venal government betters will ignore.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:19 PM   3 comments
 
Probably Nothing To See, But
D.C. man charged with stealing desktop with info on thousands:
    Authorities have charged a 21-year-old Unisys Corp. subcontractor with stealing a desktop computer with billing information on as many as 38,000 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical patients.

    Khalil Abdulla-Raheem of Washington was charged Wednesday with theft of government property. He is the employee of an unnamed company that "provides temporary labor to Unisys," according to a statement released by the VA's Office of Inspector General.

    The computer was stolen in late July from Unisys' Reston, Va., offices. It contained records on about 16,000 living patients who had received treatment at VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well has information on another 2,000 who are deceased. Data on an additional 20,000 patients may have been stored on the computer, according to the VA.

    The VA said these records may have contained Social Security numbers, addresses and insurance information. The FBI is analyzing the computer to determine whether the information was compromised, but investigators do not believe that Abdulla-Raheem was after the VA data.
Still, forgive us our sensitivity to fellows with Arabic names. No, probably, we won't be forgiven; instead, we'll be told to pay no attention to criminals of a certain faith.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:15 PM   1 comments
 
What, It's Not Identity Genocide?
In the San Francisco Chronicle, a quote by a feminist equates theft of consumer data in a video game to, what else, rape:
    "It's identity rape," said Lisa Stone, co-founder of Palo Alto's BlogHer, an organization for female bloggers, and a sporadic resident of Second Life. "If this happened, it would be a personal violation. It's completely unacceptable."

    She said she's typically much more uninhibited in the virtual world of Second Life than she is in the real world. This is largely a factor of using a pseudonym when interacting with other Second Life members and having an invented digital image -- an avatar -- to hide behind.

    "It's fantastically freeing," Stone said. "When I'm online, I can be anyone I want."
So knowing your secret identity is exactly, or at least metaphorically, equivalent to forcible sexual penetration with actual violence or the threat of violence? I doubt it, seriously, and I haven't even had to be raped to know the difference. Perhaps that makes me a chickenvictim or something.

You know, modern rhetoric and discourse has a distinct lack of imagination for metaphor. It's either rape or Hitler to someone, somewhere, who lacks inventiveness to create his or her own turn of phrase. Yet these people get rewarded by a chorus of "Hell, yeah!"


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:08 PM   0 comments
 
The St. Louis Cardinals Bring St. Louisians Together
Who would have thought it? Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and I agree on something: the owners of the St. Louis Cardinals played the civic "leaders" like ballpark organs:
    Not so with a ballpark. If developers thought a Ballpark Village were a great idea, they would have built a village around the old ballpark. They didn't. So when the Cardinal owners wanted some financial help for their new stadium, they promised - and put that promise in writing - that they'd also build a Ballpark Village. This would be a big plus for the revitalization of downtown.

    Now comes the word that yes, the Cardinal owners could live up to that promise, but the Village would be a lowercase sort of place: ballpark village. Doomed to failure. Who wants to live in ballpark village? On the other hand, the city could have something spectacular - three times the size of the original plan - but the taxpayers are going to have to help out again. Maybe $100 million or so worth of help.
Perhaps these crony capitalists are serving a function for the greater good.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:05 PM   0 comments
Sunday, September 17, 2006
 
St. Louis Cardinals Pop Some More Seed Corn
Media Views: A cut in free-TV games seems to be in the Cards:
    As the baseball season winds down, the clock also could be ticking on KPLR's run of televising Cardinals games. It remains to be seen where the over-the-air games in the Cards' local television package end up next season -- or even if there will be a free-TV portion to the deal. The current agreement places 41 games on Channel 11.

    FSN Midwest, the cable-satellite TV outlet that carries the bulk of the team's local television package (110 games this season), has been negotiating with the club for months to increase its number of games as part of a new deal that would begin next year. (The club's arrangement with KPLR allows for either side to opt out of after this season.)

    This is a high stakes game not only for the team and TV outlets, but for a significant number of fans. Only about 80 percent of homes in the market subscribe to services that carry FSN Midwest, which is one of the lowest percentages of cable-satellite TV penetration in the country. That means that one in five homes in the area -- about 244,000 total ­-- could face a significant reduction in the number of telecasts available over free TV, as the club would be taking money over those fans' interests and the fact more people watch on KPLR than FSN. That would parallel the team's switch of flagship radio stations, from KMOX (1120 AM) to KTRS (550 AM).
Let's not forget the Cardinals made the public build them a stadium with fewer seats in it, so they've got to dissuade the casual fans somehow. By making the games unavailable for free on television or the radio, they're on their way.

You know, current sports owners remind me more and more of quick-turn real estate rehabbers. They buy a team, slap some wallpaper agreements raising revenue in the short term, and sell it for exorbitant profit after only a short time. The next investor group picks it up, does the same, and hopes to make their short term profits before the infrastructure--in this case, the fan base--crumbles entirely.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:27 PM   0 comments
 
Book Report: TV Now: Stars and Shows by Dorothy Scheuer (1984)
I picked this book up at a book fair for a quarter because it's like TV Superstars '83, and I already shot my credibility as a serious thinker by admitting a weird attraction to the Scholastic books covering television from the era in which these things mattered to me. Man, I remember the little one page tissue-paperesque book order forms from Scholastic, Tab, Arrow, and so on, and how one could buy real books for a buck or two for a paperback. Of course, we didn't have a buck or two, so I just got to look at the catalogs and imagine (for the most part). And now, some twenty years later, I'm amassing a library which includes the occasional book I was denied in elementary school.

This book, like the other, deals with television shows in the 1983-1984 time frame, so there's quite a bit of overlap--Mr. T., Tootie Fields, Gary Coleman, and so on. But where TV Superstars '83 filled out its pages with stars who've faded from even my memory, this book delves into the television industry, including chapters on the portrayal of technology on television, cable television, a bit about ratings, adulation for commercials, and musings about the future of interactive television. So this work might be the slightly more serious of the two.

Like you're going to run out and get it or click the link below to order it from Amazon. Still, I read it because it was a cheap and quick way to get another item on my annual list of what I've read and a last ditch Sunday night blog entry. But I read it, and here's my post on it.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:21 PM   0 comments
Saturday, September 16, 2006
 
That's One Inept Conspiracy
Bush administration distances itself from ailing U.S. automakers:
    Please call back after the election.

    That's the message from President George W. Bush's business-friendly administration to executives of the ailing U.S. auto industry.

    Twice this spring, Bush postponed a summit with the chief executives of Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler unit and General Motors Corp., citing scheduling problems.

    In a Sept. 8 phone call to Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr., Bush said he wanted to wait until after the Nov. 7 midterm elections to keep partisan politics from intruding on the event.
I mean, if the Bush administration is wholly owned by Big Oil, what the hell is it doing by not pandering to Big Auto, one of the best mechanisms through which citizens consume Big Oil's products? I guess the two choices are:
  • The Bush administration isn't wholly owned by Big Oil.

  • The Bush administration is incompetent in the service of its master, Big Oil.
Many people in the blogosphere will just expect it's option 2.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:46 PM   0 comments
Friday, September 15, 2006
 
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Headline Writer Again Focuses Wrongly
Here's the headline: Teen student shot by officer is charged with two felonies.

Note how the teen student's major role in this headline is to be shot by the officer, and then passive-voicedly charged with two felonies. What, pray tell could those felonies be? Illegal Larceny of Government Rounds By Secreting Them Upon One's Person Or In One's Body? Failure to Be Dead From Government Shooting? Here's the handy lead to shed some light on it:
    A Westminster Christian Academy student who was shot in the leg by police during a confrontation at his school Wednesday has been charged with two felonies.
Well, a confrontation. Perhaps the young man exchanged words with the policeman. Perhaps he tried to speak truth to power or to enlighten the policeman to the policeman's oppressive role in the existing order.

I guess the Post-Dispatch does get to the point eventually:
    The officer fired at Vincent - first grazing his leg and then striking it - as the student sat on a curb on the campus with a .410-gauge shotgun, according to Creve Coeur police Capt. Bob Kayser.

    Witnesses said Vincent, who had not been in school that day, was pointing the shotgun toward his head and that he had earlier sent a text message to another student, saying he was planning to kill himself.

    After police arrived, they began talking to the teen, who threatened to kill himself, Kayser said. At one point, Vincent lowered the shotgun and pointed it at the officers, who told him to drop it, Kayser said. An officer shot him when he did not.
So, this isn't just the teen student shot by police; this is the teen student who brought a gun to school to commit violence upon himself or others.

(More fun with the Post-Dispatch and its love of passive voice here, here, here, and here. More coming to a newstand near you tomorrow.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 PM   1 comments
Thursday, September 14, 2006
 
Stop, Spot! The Alligator Is Not Your Friend!
What kind of messages are our children's books sending with pages like these?

Spot and Friend


I mean, come on, green or not, the alligator is not the puppy's friend. The alligator is a carnivore known to come out of Floridian canals to take puppies for a little death roll and snack. They do not sit on the sides of the canals and make garlands like a shepherd and his love.

So you'll pardon me if I censor my offspring's literature to provide common sense adages like The grass is green. Oh, crap, it's an alligator. I knew we shouldn't have come to Florida for vacation. Cover your ears, Spot, Daddy has to shoot the primordial enemy of man.

Call me insensitive and, yea, prejudiced for not liking things of other colors which would eat me if given the opportunity.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:30 PM   1 comments
 
Book Report: Small Felonies by Bill Pronzini (1988)
As you might remember, gentle reader, I read Bill Pronzini's Blowback in May. I thought well enough of it that when I found this particular book at the Carondolet YMCA book fair this month, I picked it up for a dollar. I'd already broken through the buy/not buy barrier and the bottom of a stroller makes it easy to forget how much you've already selected. Not that there was a baby in the stroller, mind you; babies take up room better left to books.

This book collects fifty short short stories in the mystery genre. These stories run under 2000 words for the most part--three or four book pages. They don't offer a great deal of character development, layered nuance, or other such hallmarks of immortal literary fiction that won't survive the decade. They do, however, have plots, crimes, and sometimes a twist of an ending. Sure, they're obvious sometimes and are fairly simple in structure, but they're all good short shorts.

And they're easy and not very intimidating to start reading because they're so short, but it's hard to stop because the next one won't take long, either.

I enjoyed the book, and I'll have to start watching out for short short collections. Also, this book doesn't diminish my view of Pronzini; I think I'll move him a little higher in my unofficial pantheon and start looking for more of his works. For when I start buying books again, which hopefully will be sometime after I've run through my backlog of thousands.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:25 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
 
At Least Some Good Came Of It
Bears' Shutout Means Free Furniture:
    Kendall County furniture store owner and "huge Bears fan" Randy Gonigam got tired of players bragging about their defense, so he decided to put his money where their mouths are. Over Labor Day weekend, Gonigam's World Furniture Mall in Plano offered customers free furniture - up to $10,000 - if the Bears shut out the Green Bay Packers in their season opener. Four quarters, 206 customers and about $300,000 later, Gonigam is still a little shell-shocked.
Let the conspiracy rumors begin: Mike McCarthy threw the game for a nice bedroom set.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:04 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
 
After the Civic Failed
Accord averts teachers' strike in Alton schools

- posted by Brian J. @ 9:39 PM   0 comments
 
Saddam Hussein Becomes Farce, Moreso, Again
Now he's apparently channelling the Kids in the Hall:
    Hussein later lashed out at "agents of Iran and Zionism" in the courtroom and vowed to "crush your heads."
For intelligence into how this is possible, I refer you to the following documents:






- posted by Brian J. @ 7:01 PM   5 comments
Monday, September 11, 2006
 
Kevin's Notes
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Kevin Horrigan, former sports columnist and now Editorial Page staff reporting to former television columnist and now Editorial Page Editor Eric Mink, proves that not only can you get promoted if you try hard enough and if ownership roils enough on your paper that you're the only guy left, but also writes an attempted satirical column depicting a Bush book report on Camus' The Stranger:
    Some lessons in this book: One, if this is a French masterpiece, then I don't want to hear the French whine about anything any more. Two, don't go sleeping around. Three, what'd I tell you about the Arabs? Four, capital punishment is a good thing, because it not only put this guy, Meursault, out of his misery but it put the rest of us out of our misery, too.
Now, that's hardly satire; as a matter of fact, that and the preceding paragraphs pretty accurately sum up the book. But Horrigan loves his own wit, and has to turn an enlightening summation of the book into an imagined indictment of Bush:
    Five, the war in Iraq made us all safer. Six, keep your expectations low. And finally, anyone who believes I actually read this book probably still believes Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
Well, now. Honestly, I think Bush probably read the book--it's skinny enough and it's not Entangled Existentialism like Being and Nothingness. Also, I think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and may or may not still have undiscovered caches thereof, but I wouldn't expect the newly reconstituted Iraq defense forces to have a WMD program already.

Secondly, I was going to apologize for my ad homenim funning above about Kevin Horrigan's pedigree. But, on the other hand, that sort of rhetorical goofballery is the kind of thing that can get you on the editorial page of the Post-Dispatch, and I just want them to know I am available, and fond of my own biting wit.

(In a bit of Brian lore, when I checked The Stranger out from the Marquette University library, I also checked out another slender volume called The Outsider by Camus. As soon as I polished off the 120 pages of The Stranger, I opened The Outsider and found it to be a strangely familiar, yet laden with Existential meaning, experience. As you probably know, well-educated reader, The Outsider is the British translation of L'Etranger. Imagine my chagrin.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:02 PM   0 comments
Sunday, September 10, 2006
 
Good News for Packer Fans
The Green Bay Packers aren't peaking too early.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:25 PM   0 comments
Saturday, September 09, 2006
 
Wealthy Owners, Profitable Ball Club Cannot Fulfill Promises Made to Get Public Money Without More Public Money
The St. Louis Cardinals want the taxpayers to throw more good money after bad--for the Cardinals owners to catch, of course:
    As the new Busch Stadium continues to attract sellout crowds, the crater next door that was once the old stadium continues to do what it has done since the season's first pitch: gather dust.

    Team officials have promised that the site one day will be Ballpark Village, a bustling collection of shops, restaurants and condominiums that will transform downtown St. Louis. To get a tax break from the city, Cardinals executives three years ago committed to spending at least $60 million to develop two of Ballpark Village's planned six blocks.

    Now they are back, pushing for a $650 million project on all six blocks. But with that renewed ambition, comes an outstretched hand - more public financing. A look at similar projects shows that the taxpayers' burden could well exceed $100 million.
I would be almost be happy if this proved to be an expensive lesson to governments who would spend their constituents' money to pamper sports teams. However, like all other boondoggles before it, I expect this will ultimately only prove to be expensive.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:12 PM   0 comments
 
The Only Possible Rejoinder
Iraqi PM set to visit Iran:
    Iraq's prime minister announced plans to visit Iran on Monday, just days after his deputy returned from the country, accompanied by several top officials.
Whereas some people will no doubt say, "We toppled Saddam Hussein to make a little Iran?", I can only rebut, "Well, it's a free country."


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:12 AM   0 comments
Friday, September 08, 2006
 
Which We Is That?
Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy today attended an immigration rally, which means an amnesty for illegal immigrants rally in Washington to show his support for the cause. However, his speech proffers a possibly ill-interpreted turn of phrase:
    And if we can't get this Congress to pass fair immigration reform now, we'll elect a new Congress in November that will pass it.
No doubt the we means the naturalized citizens and I, but given that he's speaking before a crowd that could, quite possibly contain some non-naturalized gente, doesn't it sound almost as though Edward Kennedy is exhorting illegal aliens to vote Democratic in November?

One could easily make that mistake, couldn't one?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:13 PM   0 comments
 
Metaphor Failure! Metaphor Failure!
In a story about how Macy's will revitalize downtown when its preceding Famous-Barr gave up and lie curled in a fetal position at the corner of 6th and Olive, we have a gusher:
    "This is exactly the punch in the arm downtown needed," she said. "I think this is just the beginning. Famous-Barr had been here for years. Then Macy's took it over and, boom, they brought it back."
There you have it. Macy's is giving downtown a punch in the arm. Sorta like the bigger kids in gym class. No word on when Macy's will demand the lunch money of downtown, but all corporations do, sooner or later.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:03 PM   0 comments
Thursday, September 07, 2006
 
Gut U.
How hard can you expect a university to be when it's URL is http://www.uwlax.edu/?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 PM   0 comments
 
Christopher Hitchens Won't Need To Bother
Debra J. Saunders speaks ill of Steve Irwin:
    Irwin did not deserve to die -- but his death can hardly be considered a surprise. It was the predictable end that followed the marriage of a dangerous hobby with a dangerous conceit -- and better Irwin than the baby.
Poor form, Debra.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:06 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
 
Book Report: Executive Blues: Down and Out in Corporate America by G.J. Meyer (1995)
I have been waiting almost a decade to read this book, ever since its excerpt appeared in Harpers when I still read that rag. I remember recognizing that Meyer was a St. Louisian, as was I. I read the hints of his heartbreak of losing his cush executive job and thought the excerpt was interesting enough to warrant further attention. Unfortunately, I waited a decade until I found a used copy at the JCC book fair for a buck (autographed, too!) before I could delve into it.

What a bunch of sour grapes.

The book spans 1991 and 1992 after Meyer is laid off from a vice presidency at J.I. Case as their communications leader. He'd been laid off previously from McDonnell Douglas in St. Louis from a similar position. The book purports to delve into the new uncertainty in the marketplace for super-executives of billion dollar companies and how hard their lives are when they discover that sometimes at-will means at-won't-anymore.

I mean, the guy's laid off, but he's shocked at the prospect for starters and lacks any imagination for anything other than landing another equal position at another billion dollar company. Atop that little bit of hubris, he attempts to indict corporate America for being what it is. That is, he resents (he actually uses that word) corporate America for not feeding his addiction to power and a big salary. Which corporate America somehow corrupted him into.

Jeez, the one thing I learned from the excerpt was to always downplay your current/recent positions so you don't overqualify yourself for lower positions in that time of desperation. I could have stuck with the excerpt and had all I could learn.

On one hand, I come from another generation and another industry, raised in a turbulent world of dot-coms and tech companies where your expertise matters more than your pedigree and where it's expected or okay to work as a contractor or to bounce around. Also, I've not worked for many of the big companies, particularly at the highest echelons, but that makes it easier to project a future that's no more turbulent than the past. As I work in a "fluff" job myself--QA, like communications, is a nicety and not a necessity when it comes down to struggling for a profit--I accept my tenuous position. But someone of the boomer era in the late 1980s, no doubt this would have been terrifying.

But the resentment and the indictment on every page, interspersed with the longing for the irrationally exuberant perks of that upper echelon, really ground on me so much that I didn't enjoy the book as much as endure it. Do I recommend it to you, gentle reader? Perhaps, if as a historical document whose advice and situations are anachronisms to study, yes; or perhaps as a moral fable of how not to grow to accustomed to the current gravy train in your life and to have something upon which you can fall back, yes. Maybe even as an indictment of hiring English majors for anything, anytime. But this book is hardly a serious study engendering serious attention. It's like Nickel and Dimed (by Barbara Ehrenreich, which was also excerpted by Harpers in the same era); it's an indictment of capitalism by people who purposefully refuse to understand it.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:57 PM   0 comments
Monday, September 04, 2006
 
Important Safety Tip
When travelling to Japan, do not ask the tattooed native if he/she is a member of the jacuzzi unless you like finger prosthetics.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:53 PM   0 comments
Sunday, September 03, 2006
 
Mac Attack!
Well, the Kansas City Star has once again snipped yours truly for its editorial page.

They excerpt this post as follows:
    Roger that, good buddy
    I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it until I’m proven otherwise: Blogs are CB radio with permalinks. And we know how much CB changed the face of citizen media in the 1970s. It spawned a number of books, three "Smokey and the Bandit" movies and "Convoy." Some of its slang lives on, but you don’t see many cars with the antennae on their roofs anymore, do you?
I'd like to think I was pointing out that bloggers can, and sometimes do, find themselves more important than they are in mass culture.

Perry Mays takes it seriously.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:25 PM   1 comments
 
Who Needs an Act of Congress?
I hereby proclaim the first full week in September Capitalist Week.

It's only fitting to be longer than Labor Day, since capitalism has done more for this country than organized labor.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:07 PM   0 comments
Saturday, September 02, 2006
 
I Feel Secure
I don't know which makes me feel better in this story.

That the pilot locked himself out of the cockpit:
    An Air Canada Jazz pilot who left the cockpit of his passenger jet to use a back washroom moments before landing found himself locked out upon his return, an airline official told AFP.
Or that he could get back into the locked cockpit:
    The pilot eventually busted into the cockpit and safely landed the Bombardier CRJ-100, but not before alarming some 50 passengers who watched him bang on the door and talk frantically with the cockpit through an onboard telephone for several minutes, according to local reports.
I think Big Oil set this all up to make people drive more.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:09 PM   1 comments
 
Spot the Straw Man
Sylvester Brown, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, writes in a cites a couple of things in the column entitled Blaming blacks is popular with some, but it's perilously naive:
    A few weeks ago, an NPR "Morning Edition" segment featured interviews with Emmy Award-winning correspondent and author Juan Williams and writer John McWhorter. Black leaders "excuse crime and poverty," said McWhorter, while Williams chided leaders who embrace the "notion of victimhood."
And:
    In his commentary last week, New York Times columnist Bob Herbert described the "indications of a culture of failure . . . boys saying it's a 'rite of passage' to go to jail . . . or kids telling other kids that if they're trying to do well in school, they're trying to 'act better than me' or 'trying to act white.'"
But watch the subtle shift to the straw man:
    This diatribe - that the black man is inherently flawed, violent and savage - is older than the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. Heck, a twisted interpretation of Noah's curse on the dark-skinned descendants of his son, Ham, offered biblical rationale for dark servitude.
Brown cites his opponents who chastise individuals (leaders and boys) and a man-made, man-maintained, and (to some extent) man-chosen construct (culture) and then promptly attributes to them to an unchosen and uncontrollable factor (race). In doing so, Brown not only mischaracterizes his opponents' views, but also strips the people whom his opponents criticize for the behavior the opponents criticize.

Well-played, sir! Illogical and, if intentional, duplicitous.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:57 PM   0 comments
 
Simple Reflex
If they're against it, I'm for it: Lawyers don't recommend retention of 2 county judges.

They probably have good reasons, but why humor lawyers?


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:55 PM   0 comments
 
I Haven't Mocked The Metro In A While, So.....
I absquatulated from an informational stand outside the Convention Center Metrolink stop with this $3.00 Metro Guide for Fall 2006. Here it is:

Metro Guide 2006


I cannot believe they put a cover guide on these things. I mean, who would pay $3.00 for these? Since it's the Fall 2006 edition, I can only imagine that you can actually get a subscription, with quarterly editions mailed to your home every season.

But, nah, they've probably got the price and edition date on the cover to skirt some postal regulation regarding the cost of mailing them as periodicals. As a result, we can dwell in the delicious absurdity of a local government organization gaming the regulations of a federal government organization, but that's just good government practice ca. 2006.

For starters, that's a sweet new logo and whatnot....when did Bi-State get a new branding as Metro? It must have happened while I wasn't paying attention or mockery, because I just lost an argument about what the big M stood for. I guess by calling the mass transit system as "Metro," Bi-State has hoped to conflate itself with its more useful counterparts in real cities. One has to wonder how many quarters of its regular losses this image recreation effort would have funded. Never mind the fiscal responsibility, there's unlimited slush in the pockets of the taxpayers.

I have to wonder about the models on this cover, frankly. I really hope they're stock shots of some sort or another, because I've never seen anyone that excited about riding mass transit. How professional can these models if they actually worked specifically on this project. What did the photographer to say to inspire that reaction? "Imagine your train is on time! Yeah, baby, that's it, and there's a seat in it....and the seat is not wet with some unknown but too-imaginable fluid! Go with it!"

Even with a paycheck at the end of the day to fantasize about, that's some amount of excitement. But in all of the print modeling and commercial acting work, my paychecks haven't been that much anyway, so perhaps I need to get another agent. Or any agent.

Then I recognized how this cover really does capture the zeitgeist of mass transit ridership:
  • The gentleman on the left isn't dancing with joy--he's using kung fu on would-be muggers.

  • The woman second from the left has finally reached that point where she's decided, after a particularly harsh breakup with the Clayton attorney she's lived with for two and a half years and for whom she endured an abortion, to end it all; how serene she appears when leaping in front of the Eastbound train.

  • The center woman, an obvious amputee, is happy to have survived the derailment and to have settled out of court with Metro.

  • The two figures on the right; they're falling forward, arms splayed out and in a grimace of pain as though they've been shot in the back by unknown assailants while trying to flee.
Aside from that, the one message I take from this cover recognizes the diversity. We have:
  • A black man.
  • A white woman.
  • A hispanic woman.
  • A black woman.
  • An Asian gentleman.
I get it.

White men are not welcome on the Metrolink


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:03 AM   1 comments
Friday, September 01, 2006
 
Bush's Secret War on Oldest People
Can it be a coincidence that so many centenarians and super-centenarians died in the months leading up to the 2006 midterm elections?

It's obviously a Bush plot. I mean, some would say that it's statistically probable that really old people will die, but that's just the insidious cloak in which the Bush cadre cloaks its nefarious activities.

No, these people were killed, many with a special strain of pneumonia that appears to only be a case of pneumonia and not a deadly bacterial agent. Look at the list and note the reasons why they had to die:
  • Many of these Americans over 100 years old were, well, senior citizens, and senior citizens tend to vote Democrat.

  • The Bush administration has often been at odds with the Mugabe government and wanted to send a message.

  • The Bush administration has often been at odds with the French government and wanted to send a message.

  • The Bush administration is displeased with the amount of money that the American trial lawyers are spending in support of Democrat candidates as payback for attempts at tort reform. Of course, it wanted to send a message.

  • The British woman was an innocent killed to make it look like the deaths of the others were "normal."
You think I am mad? Listen to how carefully they planned it out!


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:48 PM   0 comments
 
After Hunter, He Just Got Mean
Dryer likely sparked deadly Carlinville explosion


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:06 PM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."