Musings from Brian J. Noggle
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   0 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."