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Musings from Brian J. Noggle
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Thursday, September 07, 2006
Christopher Hitchens Won't Need To Bother Debra J. Saunders speaks ill of Steve Irwin:
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. 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. 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:
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? Perry Mays takes it seriously. 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. 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:
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:
Well-played, sir! Illogical and, if intentional, duplicitous. 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? 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: ![]() 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:
White men are not welcome on the MetrolinkFriday, 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?
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:
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To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."
"I will." Heather L. Igert, angelweave.mu.nu "Genuis." Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times "Some wanker." Kim du Toit, on the Noggle Library. "Brian J. Noggle apparently forgot that the proper design for a tin foil beanie calls for the shiny side out." Robb Allen, Sharp as a Marble. "I'm weeping openly right now. Thanks for hurting my feelings, pinhead." Bob Rybarcyzk, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Instapundit Protein Wisdom Ace of Spades HQ Wizbang! Outside the Beltway Robert B. Parker Dustbury Damn Interesting Michelle Malkin Radley Balko's The Agitator Exultate Justi The McGehee Zone Signifying Nothing The Jawa Report Master of None Dr. Helen The Anchoress Electric Venom Kim Du Toit Belmont Club Little Green Footballs Overtaken by Events Rocket Jones Boots and Sabers Triticale Ann Althouse The American Mind Ravenwood's Universe Asymmetrical Information Boondoggled VodkaPundit Professor Bainbridge Virginia Postrel Ken Jennings Joanne Jacobs Faster Than The World Dilbert Blog Junkyard Blog In DC Journal IMAO Baldilocks Powerline Q and O Hugh Hewitt Buzz Machine Daniel Drezner Roger Simon American Digest Blackfive The Volokh Conspiracy Cold Fury Captain's Quarters Tim Blair Chequer-Board Emperor Misha Just One Minute Blame Bush Inaniloquent Trey Givens OverLawyered Suburban Blight Another Rovian Conspiracy Angelweave Bad Example Rachel Lucas View from the Porch StL Recruiting a big victory Spector's Hockey Fark /. TechDirt F*****d Company CNet News Joel on Software James Lileks Mark Steyn Bob Rybarczyk Richard Roeper Neil Steinberg John Kass Steven Chapman Drudge Report Ananova Slate Reason's Hit and Run Best of the Web Today National Review's The Corner Tech Central Station Fox News CNN Washington Post Washington Times Chicago Tribune Chicago Sun-Times Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel St. Louis Post-Dispatch San Francisco Chronicle New York Post Shepherd Express Riverfront Times New York Observer ScrappleFace Bob from Accounting The Onion Top Five List David Letterman's Top Ten BBSpot U.S. Constitution Declaration of Independence Snopes.Com (Urban Legends) Dictionary.com Internet Movie Database Complete Works of Shakespeare Marvel Directory Blooberry HTML Reference
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