Shrewsbury Puts Its Banning Boots On
But will they ban Guernseys, Holsteins, or Jerseys over this tragedy?

A northeast Ohio farmer was attacked by a cow and died a day later of a fractured skull suffered when his head hit the ground, authorities said.

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

 
Special Offer for 20th Century Fox: First Clue Free
As I settled down to watch The Keys of the Kingdom, 20th Century Fox presented me with this particular guitar-driven, almost-a-music-video reminder that I should not pillage:



As a matter of fact, 20th Century Fox sees fit to entertain me with this little bit of nagging every time I put the disc in or start the DVD player. Since I stop and start these old timey movies often, that means I see the PSA over and over and over again.

But here's a little clueflash for you, 20th Century Fox: The people who buy black and white movies from 1944 for $7 from Sam's Club are not the people who download the latest Vin Diesel flick from BitTorrent. We're the committed consumers, right? We're shelling out cash for your deep catalog stuff. So punishing us by hectoring us not to do something we don't do annoys us.

Annoyed people don't make impulse purchases of old, forgotten Academy Award Winners just so they can sound smart or to stock up on trivia.

And, since you asked, the movie was okay. I got a little aggravated when I got halfway through and suspected that the movie was presenting Chicom revolutionaries as heroes and the target of assistance of the Roman Catholic priest (since they were freeing the peasants from the imperialists). In 1944, Hollywood was rooting for the other side there, too. But then I calmed down and remembered that the film, made in 1944, was set some decades prior (during the Taiping Rebellion?). So I suspended my politics and got back into the story. Then Anne Revere made a brief appearance, and I realized the Chinese revolutionaries were probably actually supposed to represent the communists.

Oh, and Gregory Peck is heavily made up as an old man in the framing of the story, and they warbled his voice somehow on the audiotrack. That must have been something in 1944.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:18 PM   1 comments

 
The Gift Schtick
Around gift-giving holidays and birthdays, a certain stress accumulates like northern plains snow, centered upon what others will think of our individual capacity to proffer the pretense of caring for people to whom we do not speak for the majority of the year. Did we send our high school guidance counselor a Christmas card this year? She surely sent one to us last year, proving she's not yet dead. Did we get Janey's son Bobby something suitably expensive for his birthday, more than we would spend on a real nephew, but not so much to indenture Janey for our birthday?

Internally, we process the possibilities like Christmas calculus and crunch the metrics of what we know about the gift recipient. We dredge memories for shared moments, hobbies, or insights into that person's soul and spirit. We surf the intrapersonalnet, seeking the faintest rumors of needed household goods. When all else fails, we know that gift certificates offer the remote-controlled reminder of our relationship, but recognize that a gift certificate really emphasizes the obligation and not the emotion of gift giving. Gift certificates say, "We know we should get you something, but we don't know you well enough to know what you want."

Fortunately, amid the crush and bustle of the Christmas shopping season or the interspersion of gift-giving into our regular lives, we can honestly rely upon the honored tradition of the Gift Shtick to provide a default value for the drop-down lists of gift-giving.

The Gift Shtick represents a certain convenient gifting theme for a person that makes gift giving easy and gift reception safe. A person's Gift Shtick offers a single collectible motif, a single hobby, decorative fetish, or offhand comment, that friends, family, and acquaintances can seize upon with infrequent fervor to provide semiannual gifts. A good Gift Shtick offers almost infinite variation, providing the potential for almost thoughtless thoughtfulness.

The Gift Shtick can be sports memorabilia. For my wife, my relatives and I have found safe haven in buying St. Louis Blues apparel or paraphernalia. Although her interest in hockey is beginning to wane, and although she can almost dress in Blues jerseys and sweatshirts every day of the week, she can look forward to more of the same. For anyone in the state of Wisconsin, Green Bay Packers dinner china makes a handsome and thoughtful gift.

My friend Brian likes Elvis Presley, a Gift Shtick you can easily satisfy. You can walk into any mall in America and find something Elvish. Whether I find a wall hanging, poster, or CD of Elvis's first conversations recorded when he was three, I can give him something that says, "Dude, I didn't think you had this important piece of trivial tangential material in your collection."

I have an aunt who has a goose motif in her kitchen. I wouldn't know; I've never been in her kitchen to know whether she has adequate goose salt and pepper shaker sets to serve a dozen diners, all eating from goose china. My mother, bless her, provides twin bird shticks: she decorates her living room with bald eagles and her kitchen with owls. The eagle shtick has been so successful in the past years that I am going to buy her a new wall for Christmas just so she can display them all.

I let my family and friends down because I don't provide an easy Gift Shtick for them to employ. Each gift holiday, they must ask me what I want, and I am often at a loss. I rattle off a list of accoutrements that I don't need or a whim that I can conjure instantly. Instead, I need to create a theme for my home office décor or take up a particular hobby that comes with a lot of optional paraphernalia. That way, when it comes to paper-tearing time, I can be assured a surprise, albeit a safe surprise well within a set of established parameters and limits.

It's better to give than receive, everyone says, but it's certainly not easier. Anyone who's spent the last minute buying gifts from the end caps at Target knows the flutter of fear, of panic, and of an imminent gift certificate purchase. Whereas the Gift Shtick might not help the giver avoid a reluctant "Thenk yew" when the recipient opens the umpteenth throw blanket depicting a Bengal tiger, giving according to established or imagined predilections and peer pressure will allow you to escape the holidays with your sanity, and maybe even your inheritance, intact.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:04 AM   0 comments

 
The Sweepstakes Bodhisattva Speaks
I won't start off by telling you that I've never won anything; no, I've had my small share of victories in various minor games of chance. In my youth, I won a couple of "Guess How Many x Are In The Jar" things for a number of trinkets and toylets. In my adulthood, I've won enough free tickets in state lotteries to merely lament wasting $999s of dollars instead of thousands of dollars. I even win a gift every year in the company's gift swap. But I've never made the big score: the television, the car, the big decorative check.

I've completed sweepstakes forms. I've listened to the advice of innumerable bottle caps and have tried again. Five years later, I still visit iWon.com for my daily chances to win. I continue spending a latte's worth of my salary every week on my futile bid for state-sponsored number-running millions. My current strategy relies upon repetition of normal behavior: I go to the same Web site, I go to the same courtesy counter every week and buy the same set of numbers (the random ones), or I fill out the enclosed form and mail it off. So I've decided to alter my methodology.

With a flash of neo-Buddhist insight, I realized that my sweepstakes and contest entries have all sought to win prizes that I actually want for my own personal gratification. Money, new home theaters, and new cars would enrich my personal life. I would use their fruits in my daily pursuit of physical and materialist ease and pleasure. As such, of course Fortune does not favor me with these presents. Instead, I need to seek those prizes which I could neither use nor enjoy; only then could I grow spiritually through the gifts of random chance.

For example, I don't travel much; I'm a little edgy leaving the warmth and comfort of the Midwest. For me, a good vacation is a long weekend in Springfield, Missouri, or Milwaukee, Wisconsin—familiar cities where I have relatives and where I know the coffee shops in which to read. So when Clausthaler offered me the chance to win a trip to a golf resort, I filled out my vitals and spent a stamp to send off the entry. A trip thousands of miles to play a sport I've only tried once, badly, in my youth. Certainly, the Fates can frown on me with this grand prize.

To keep with the reluctant traveler motif, I've recently entered a sweepstakes for an African Safari, which includes hunting on the savannah. I've not been hunting since my youth, when I spent several scattered days in cold marshes at dawn to bond with my father. I've never actually hunted by carrying a gun. I don't have a passport, my immunizations are not up to date, and I'm not eager to leave the country for the continent that inspired Heart of Darkness and Anaconda. The prize would actually inconvenience me. No doubt Nike—the goddess and not the company—is signing the appropriate forms on Olympus even now.

Aside from those big, and travelsome, prizes, I've started looking closer to home for smaller scores. When local restaurants offer fishbowls in which customers can drop their business cards for the chance at a free meal, I only drop my business card in if it comes with strings attached, such as an hour's consultation with a financial consultant whose first lesson is There is no such thing as a free lunch. Certainly, I have a shot at that grand prize.

I'll continue entering sweepstakes, including the Publishers' Clearinghouse and Readers' Digest contests. By not purchasing, I'm not hurting my chances to win, but I'm really hoping that by not wanting, I'll bolster my chances. Ergo, when given the choice between the sports car and the minivan, I'm licking the minivan stamp every time. Someday in the future, should you find me tooling around in a Dodge Caravan, know that I am not only a winner, but I am learning a lesson in self-deprecation.


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

 
There's Natural Laws, And Then There's....
What goes up must come down? How quaint.

"Our townhouse in Wauwatosa, on the market for eight months, was reassessed at $391,000 last summer," Boyce said. "Our asking price, after being lowered twice, is now $349,900 and still we have not received any legitimate offers. Assessments are completely out of whack with values."

Government law trumps natural law, the laws of economics, and every other law it wants when it comes to getting its paws on tax money.

Don't expect your property tax assessments to fall with the market. Expect, at best, they'll hold steady until inflation or the government's own meddling force real estate prices up again.

If you object too strenously, citizen, perhaps you'd prefer to see your house as a couple of parking spaces and a light standard for the new stadium/mall/mixed use complex, eh?


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:19 PM   0 comments

 
The Nena Experiments
Apparently, 99 Green Balloons are not enough to start the apocalypse.

(Final hat tip to the cat man.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:46 PM   0 comments

 
Galt Protests
Here at the Noggle household, we've moved pretty much to LCD monitors for our various workstations, and the transition is not without its victims:



The cats used to love to climb atop the nice warm CRT monitors to nap. Now, this eMac is the last remaining CRT system in the house, and Galt vows to defend it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:08 PM   0 comments

 
Savor the Experience: Tips on Making Simple Household Projects Last All Day
Like many men, I try to demonstrate power tool prowess from time to time. The "to" interval represents something like a quarter, so each "time" follows the preceding "time" by about three months. I've derived many of the following tips the hard way; that is, I have learned much of what I know from the thin prose and disconnected photographs in tool pornography magazines such as Handy and The Family Handyman. I haven't actually completed many useful household projects, since I get my satisfaction from flipping through the magazines and dreaming. I am the son and grandson of remodeling contractors whose talents have apparently skipped a generation, but I have, up to four times annually, applied myself and my vast knowledge to improving my household. Ergo, I proffer advice appropriately to help you, too, turn a simple household project into an all-day affair.

Perhaps you've decided to put up surround-sound speakers for your home entertainment system. You just need to add a stereo outlet behind your entertainment center and run stereo wire through the walls to outlets for the rear speakers behind your sofa. It sounds fairly simple. Cut a couple holes in the paneling, run some wire between them. You could do it in an hour, right? Follow these tips, and your simple project will change into a life-transforming, all-day event.

1. Always take shortcuts which don't, in fact, save time.
   Some people, such as those who excelled in shop class in middle school, might tell you to begin your work by measuring, diagramming, or at least thinking ahead about what you're going to do to your den before you start. Balderdash! Planning wastes valuable time that you could better spend admiring your handy work and accepting the accolades of your family and friends. You've probably procrastinated this particular chore long enough for it to work its way into an Andy Rooney parable. Haste prevents wasted time, and once more make a breach, dear friends, once more.
   
   Besides, you only need a couple of holes and some speaker wire.
   
   
2. Don't worry about having the right tools; use whatever you have at hand.
   Civilization developed from Neanderthals who bound rocks to sticks as tools. Millennia later, we have screwdrivers and hammers. Either has innumerable uses, and combined they represent all possible combinations of tools. If you're going to add a sunroom to your home, you only need a hammer, a screwdriver, and maybe a pocket knife. You waste money when you buy custom tools that you'll only use once. You'll then store them forever, or at least until a visitor to your estate sale tries to convince your disinterested heirs that your heirlooms aren't worth two dollars each.
   
   You can drill through the paneling in your den like a manic mosquito with a ½ inch with 3/8 inch reduced shank proboscis until you've got big enough bits to pass the wire through. You can fish in the hole with a bent coat hanger or a string to pull the cable. You're set. Drill! Drill!
   
   Except your drill holes don't give you much room; you can't fit a finger in to feel for a coat hanger or a string. Since you will cover the speaker outlet with a faceplate, you could cut a bigger hole. You need a special saw to cut into the wall. What do they call that again? Oh, yeah, a drywall saw.
   
   
3. Make many trips to the hardware store.
   Sometimes, I hate to admit, the trifecta of fom toolery listed above won't serve your needs. If you've followed tip number 1, you'll discover this when you have removed a number of panels and have disconnected power to the entire house (just in case). You'll need an Allen wrench, one of the more exotic drivers, or a special tool for cutting wallboard or sheet metal—oddly enough, no tool cuts both well, not even that Swiss machinist knife you just sharpened.
   
   You'll need to trek to your local hardware store or home improvement supercenter. Personally, I find nothing compares to the self-assured manliness I enjoy in the hardware store when I know exactly what I need to perform a specific task. The experience puts me in touch with my ancestors and bonds me as an equal to burly men who even today have to work for a living by doing useful things.
   
   Remember, both the cavernous superstore and the local, struggling family hardware store offer a particular time-wasting strength. The cavernous superstore makes the search for a particular grommet exceedingly difficult as you forage through acres of eight-foot high shelving for a couple dollars' worth of plastic and metal. Even if you ask for help, the second-year high-school sophomore will need a manager, who has already committed to help another customer unlucky enough to find a teenage wonder-aboutkund.
   
   If the family hardware store remains open for business when faced with the competition of the national super lumberyard-and-hot-dog-stand, it has only a sixty percent chance of stocking your grommet. Fortunately, though, a drywall saw is a fairly common grommet, so the family hardware store probably has one. Just one, though, so hurry before another reader gets there to buy it.
   
   Whichever you choose, you face at least a half hour in your car and in the checkout line. When you get home, after you have carefully unwrapped the product from its box or blister wrap and have studiously ignored and lost the instructions, you will discover its power source requires charging or inconveniently-sized batteries.
   
   
4. Innovate, adapt, or just try something different.
   A true handyman is handy, and can adapt and jerry rig to obtain the desired result. Some might say that this displays a great degree of synthetic thought, where one applies experience and inductive reasoning together, but anyone who uses terms like "synthetic thought" and "inductive reasoning" probably hires a professional for his or her home upgrades.
   
   In our project, we might discover that our new drywall saw doesn't pierce wood paneling. You're supposed to punch it against drywall and saw, but the tip bends on paneling. Still, you've got the drill; you can easily drill a large hole in each corner of the square you want to cut and connect the dots with the saw. However, trying this leads to a time-consuming process which yields a jagged, unpredictable cut. A jigsaw would speed the process, but that would require another trip to the hardware store and further expenditure.
   
   On the other hand, you still have the hammer and screwdriver in reserve. Perhaps you don't need the jigsaw. You can adapt your technique to the tools at hand. You can use the screwdriver to pry the paneling from the wall and run the wire that way. Like Hannibal Smith and MacGyver rolled into one, you love it when an innovation comes together.
   
   
5. Throw at least one, preferably more, tantrum that sets you back.
   It's not uncommon to feel a little twinge of frustration after hours of futility in performing a simple task that you know a professional could accomplish in twenty minutes while intoxicated. Carefully devised shortcuts have failed. Innovations prove as troublesome as replaced, obsolete methodologies. Also, it doesn't help that you've opened a gash in your finger that bleeds enough to make you want to save the blood in a can in case the hospital needs to put it back.
   
   You've bent screwdrivers because you didn't have a crowbar handy. You've gone back to the hardware store to purchase your brand new crowbar. When you pry with your new, label-yet-affixed crowbar, the wood panel doesn't appreciate your deft, gentle, and soothing touch and splits. We, and by "we" I mean "at least I did, and I hope I am not alone," might feel a little rage. Not murderous, but a pure rage worthy of expression.
   
   Curse and tug with a final, gamma ray burst of strength. Revel in your own destructive capability as the paneling not only splits, but pulls free from the wall, tearing out the light switch faceplate, the light switch, and the telephone jack. The picture you didn't remove (to save time, of course), crashes to the floor and sprays glass nuggets onto the carpet and into the chair in which you'd expected to nap. The thrill of proving your point instantaneously transforms into remorse; the speed of the transition creates a thunderclap, or perhaps that's just further cursing. Also, don't touch that sparking wire.
   
   
6. Do what the professionals do.
   At this point in my projects, when my cursing reaches other rooms and sweat obscures the tunnel of my vision, my wife appears to ask if there's anything she can do, or perhaps to see what she can save. As she's seen me in this state before, she knows what to ask. "What would a professional do?"
   
   "Quit and get a retail job," you might want to respond, as I often do, but the question has its merit. Take a step back from your current situation, reflect upon what you're trying to do, and assess it coldly in the terms of dollars and sense. Imagine you were a kid fresh out of high school, a pierced-and-tattooed fellow with no military or college prospects who got a job and has to get up at six in the morning no matter how late the concert ended last night. Now imagine how his foreman would look at the situation.
   
   A professional would only do as much work as needed to achieve the result required. To place surround sound speakers, the professional would understand that opening the walls would run the cost of the project up intolerably. He would simply staple the wires along the baseboard or crown molding and in the room's corners to the speakers. Incidentally, a professional already owns the staple gun and would not have to make another trip to the Ace Hardware.
   
   A professional moves confidently, partly because he's done this at least once before. He won't move with the heightened timidity from which we suffer, the gingerliness that leads to the sudden explosion of frustration. No, the professional is one cool customer. His calmness stems from the certainty that if he errs, he can fix the error, or at least cover it up cheaply. He can patch the unnecessary holes and somehow disguise the splintered break in the paneling, no problem. Smug bastard.

With that final insight, and with thirty minutes of draping wire like Christmas garland, you have successfully, relatively, completed a project for which you no longer feel any pride. Night has fallen, and clean-up operations remain, which include rearranging the room to mask any extra holes in the walls.

You have learned a valuable lesson from the experience, though. If you're like me, you'll remember how inadept you are at this sort of thing for at least two months. Fortunately, this schedule will minimize the damage you can do to your home and the number of times you must call contractors for catastrophic repairs. It certainly helps me.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:12 PM   3 comments

 
Poetry Hint
If, in your sonnet to your immortal and incomparable beloved, you find yourself rhyming truest suitor with Bruce Sutter, you should probably just copy something from a greeting card.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:21 AM   0 comments

 
Laziness Is The Mother Of Perspective
Laziness is the mother of perspective. I've been taking the Wall Street Journal for some months now, receiving the well-rolled and well-wrapped papers in my driveway every morning. I threw them onto the passenger seat of my truck as I began my commute, but I soon forsook the pretense and pretentiousness of carrying the paper under my arm into my office for the cachet. Too frequently, the papers return home unread and accumulate on one end of the love seat. With a paper as expensive as the Wall Street Journal, you don't throw it into the recycling bin or use it as fireplace kindling when you're out of twenty-dollar bills without glancing at least at the section headlines.

Some weekends, though, I make a point of, at minimum, paging through the accumulated wisdom, and these blocs of skimming have instilled in me a greater understanding of history, or at least the relative insignificance in history of chatter, speculation, and sports-like spectator-ism that makes up ninety percent of the news coming from Washington and all other government seats.

Every day, I get my share of the chatter; I get headlines and news from the Internet, and I participate in the great diablog that occurs amongst like-minded individuals with Web logs. In the 2004 elections, I followed all of the barnstorming commentary at the speed of broadband. So I participate in the cheerleading and heckling that represents in-depth participation in politics in the 21st century. But October's Wall Street Journals cured that when I read them in November.

Every night in October of some past year, I hoped to set aside twenty minutes or a half hour each evening to read the paper, knowing full well that I would have seen the storylines play out on The Drudge Report, the blogs, CNN.com, and the local paper's Web site before I got to the print speculation. Still, I hoped for detailed analysis I didn't get from the quick scans of headlines when the boss wasn't looking. But life, chores, and computer games often interrupted my plan. Sometime in late October or early November, I allocated an afternoon to catch up and remove the papers that were beginning to tip the furniture. I had a reverse chronology of the preceding month's triumphs and follies for America and for the party. But by reading the papers in reverse order, I inadvertently received the perspective of history.

That is, I knew how the early October tribulations resolved before I read the articles outlining the strategies and the pitfalls. In the Internet real-time world, the rhetoric fires up the base and counts individual ticks on the scorecard of history, but the almanacs only carry the name of the winner. So Harriet something-or-other isn't a Supreme Court justice and some guy with a placid smile is. Ultimately, the individual plays, the calls from the opponents' cheap seats, and the shouts of the pretty boys and girls through their cones didn't impact the lives of most Americans. Sure, nine placid smiles on the Supreme Court will make America one way, as would six placid smiles and three earnest frowns or six earnest frowns and three placid smiles. However, the great events that lead to that court and that change the country occur infrequently enough that one doesn't have to arrest all normalcy to fight the good fight, or merely the fight (the difference lies in your position on the fight, of course).

Instead, I went about my business throughout October spending my immediacy on the things that directly impacted me (my job, household maintenance, my marriage, and too little exercise). Only when I read the preceding weeks' papers did I realize the peril to our way of life, but by that time, with the solid knowledge of the continued progress of history, I wasn't worried. It reminded me of watching a movie I'd seen before.

I once bought a box of Newsweek magazines from 1966-67 at an estate sale; I'd spent two dollars to purchase the year-long subscription in hopes of turning it into eBay wealth. As I searched individual issues for keywords to drive up the bidding, I found similar tropes: Viet Nam, Viet Nam, Lyndon Johnson, the decline of the west, and more Viet Nam. In 1967, it was an ongoing concern, dribbed and drabbed out nightly or weekly as needed by the media of the time to support their corporate habits. By the time I was born, Viet Nam was a conflagration unimagined within those archived magazines. In the thirty-five years before I bought the magazines, the living memory of the year faded to romantic youth for that generation. Within only a matter of decades, that year and its live-or-die will fade to simple line items in history books or full treatises among which historians can dig in libraries.

The politics, too, of our age will fade like this. Remember distinctly the congressional shutdown of 1995? I remember it, although it's fading to a mere sentence and sense of what it meant. The immediacy and its attendant vehemence for that bastard who caused it—well, I can summon them in name only. So this years' nominees, secretaries, and Congressional leaders might someday earn themselves trivia questions, but most won't merit that. Between the now and that then, though, life will go on, regardless of what partisan emergencies erupt and, quite probably, how history's sweep brushes aside our grave concerns.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:03 AM   0 comments

 
With Grating Power Comes Grab For More Grating Power
Greendale wants a say in Southridge's future:

Greendale officials want to influence the changes in store for Southridge Mall - the village's biggest taxpayer - as it comes under new ownership.

The village is seeking proposals from two planning firms - HNTB Corp. and R.A. Smith and Associates Inc. - to develop its own vision for the mall's future, Village Manager Joseph Murray said.

Conversations have focused on whether the 110-acre complex, the largest shopping mall in the state, could support mixed-use development, whether housing could be part of that mix, and costs associated with various redevelopment plans, Village President John Hermes said. Talks have been in progress for several months.

How come newspapers never ask the big question, by what right does the government think it should exert influence in private business transactions?

Maybe it's just as well; the answer would be Might, perhaps followed by a little inquisition against those who would challenge the ever-increasing authority.

Don't think we can? No permits for you.
Think we're sliding totalitarian? So, is this your car parked eighteen inches from the curb? I think we'll have to boot it.

And so on, and so on.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:50 PM   0 comments

 
Orchestra Doesn't Think Of Itself As Entertaining
Beethoven's Fifth + 5%: Seeking a refund, orchestra says concerts are educational and shouldn't be subject to sales tax:

Are performances by the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra entertainment or education?

Think carefully about the answer. Millions of dollars depend on it.

According to the state, orchestra concerts are entertainment, and therefore sales tax must be paid on tickets.

For years, the orchestra has been paying the state sales tax on the face value of each ticket sold, and it continues to do so. The money is paid out of general orchestra funds. Now the orchestra wants a refund.

The local sports teams cannot wait to explain that they're big phys ed classes.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:40 PM   0 comments

 
California Regulators Nostalgic For Rolling Blackouts
Remember rolling blackouts in California in 2001? Apparently, so do the power utility regulators, and the Public Utility Commission misses them:

California regulators on Thursday banned the three companies that supply most of the state's power from buying electricity from high-polluting sources, including most coal-burning plants.

The rules are aimed at reducing emissions of heat-trapping gases linked to global warming. While there are almost no coal-fired plants in California, about 20 percent of the state's electricity comes from coal plants in other Western states.

"It represents a significant milestone in our ongoing efforts to address the challenge of climate change," said Michael Peevey, president of the Public Utilities Commission.

Not to mention a significant milestone in ongoing efforts to throttle supply while demand continues to rise. No doubt, though, when the unforeseen consequences (unforeseen by the blinkered green government officials, but obvious to anyone with any insight into economics above the grade school level), the Public Utilities Commission and the California Energy Commission (in California, they need 2 bureaucracies to cover it) will find some corporation that's to blame for people getting trapped in elevators, for server farms crashing, and for elderly people dying from heat.

But rest assured, the costs to the economy and the citizens of California are worth it for some negligible, unproven impact on the Mother Gaea.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:19 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Dirty Work by Stuart Woods (2003)
I inherited this book from my aunt who died in 2005. She was probably not a big Stuart Woods fan, but rather a purchaser of books at yard sales who hoped to make money on them on eBay. Which is good, because this book then doesn't reflect poorly upon her tastes.

The book centers on a series character, Stone Barrington, a lawyer who doesn't work in the courtroom but rather as a fixer. He hires an inept camera man to photograph a husband in flagrante delecto, but the photographer falls through the skylight and lands on the husband, who has been murdered by a superstar assassin. What's more, he's taken the only photo of her known to exist. But Barrington is in trouble for his lackey's presumed killing of the husband.

Well, then we get British Intelligence involved and the New York Police Department (Barrington, former NYPD himself, has a friend on the force who accompanies him through much of the novel). Barrington jets to the Caribbean to retrieve the bail-jumping photog and arranges a face-to-face meeting with the assassin, and re-beds a member of British Intelligence. It's clear we're not dealing with a depth of characterization here, but really a plot that moves along quickly and provides a nice read.

I even pointed out to some people while reading this book that you can shelve some characterization when you've got a well-paced plot that drives action forward. It's forgiveable, I said. It's light reading.

Until....

200 some pages into the book and the story could have concluded. But no, the events had to hinge upon a random event in the Caribbean. Not a coincidence, but a it's sick cousin the contrivance. With this contrivance, the story continued and eventually denouementated in a rather unsatisfying fashion.

I was with it for about 2/3 of the book, and the remainder was painful.

I won't go out of my way to pick up any new Stuart Woods, but I'm afraid I might have another of Woods's work in the pile here. I mean, I am not angry, merely sad, and perhaps another book that handles its plot better would revive my interest. But if you've got a plot-driven book and the plot makes the reader say, "Oh, come on," you're in trouble.

But hey, you can buy it in paperback here: Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:16 PM   0 comments

 
Brian Dump
You might notice, in the next couple of days (as you might notice today and yesterday), a number of longer-than-normal pieces on the old blog here. I've got a hard disk drive full of essays and whatnot that I didn't place in printed publications, so I'm foisting them on you, gentle reader, one by one.

Because I don't want to overwhelm you with my eloquence. At least, not more than once a day.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:31 PM   0 comments

 
Hourly Radio Stock Market Updates
Whenever I catch the midday hourly news on the radio, I can't wait to hear the stock report. Typically, I hear it on my way to lunch or back from lunch. My commute coincides with the final minute allocated to local news on the jazz, country, or greatest hits of the 60s-70s-80s-90s-and-today radio station. I'm always eager to hear the instant analysis of a bored local brokerage functionary or the economic epiphany suffered by the newsreader.

"The stock market is down at this hour..." the deep FM voice narrates. Quite frankly, the day traders who inflated the stock market bubble at the end of the last century didn't rely on radio to make decisions. The Internet allows people to check the instant progress of their individual portfolios. The day traders who are still trading, instead of flipping burgers or bagging groceries, have access to mystical Level-2 quotes, which are somehow better than simple quotes everyone can get on Yahoo! So FM Man is talking to himself, and me, alone in my truck at a stoplight.

"...as investors react to the latest White House pronouncement / War on Terror speculation / forgettable Reality TV Show decision...." The professionally-trained or university-radio-station-warm-body intones. I'm unclear on what authority the newsreader makes this prognostication or diagnosis, but it's probably right. Short-term reactions in the marketplace include short-term investors who react to the slightest jostle in the world marketplace by shrieking that someone has picked their pockets. Employment has dropped to 94.2 percent? SELL SELL SELL! The guy on the radio says the market's down? SELL SELL SELL!

Of course, those who sell on whatever macroeconomic metrics arrive from political, pop cultural, or sociological sources don't consider the nature of their individual investments. They lose sight of the long-term prospects of the companies of which they have become a part and in whose long-term direction they, as investors, can exert some small amount of control. Instead, they try to be the head cows in the stampede into or out of a bull run on Wall Street or Main Street, or wherever investors huddle. These short-sighted investors react to the lemming clarion call of astrological percentages and to the deep, comforting voice on our radios that makes it into a daily catechism.

"The Dow Jones is down 56.75 points and the NASDAQ is down just under 10," the fickle fate of Frequency Modulation reports. These numbers represent a selective representation of how certain big name firms, selected especially for their big names, traded that day. Personally, I don't own anything indexed by Dow Jones or the NASDAQ exchange, so their numbers don't tell me whether I can retire in 40.2 years or 45.9; instead, they tell me something else, of what I am not certain, but the helpful newsreader and his or her friendly analysts will color the results for me, Joe-Six-Pack-of-Guinness, to understand.

That simple hourly report, crammed into five seconds, fails to capture the state of the United States or world economy. Instead, it only represents the latest sports score in the never-ending playoff between the Bulls and the Bears, played on the limited field of the indices. I can chuckle, or cluck, at the purported performance, but I know the current, somber market report has little impact on my ragtag fugitive fleet of bonds, equities, and mutual funds. By the time the announcer breaks for the updated weather forecast, his prognostication for financial well-being will be as irrelevant as it is forgotten.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:30 PM   0 comments

 
Highly Paid Flack Paid To Defend Restaurant Industry Defends Restaurant Industry From Raging Chihuahua
U.S. restaurants blast Kevin Federline TV ad:

A leading restaurant association has called for the cancellation of a TV commercial featuring Britney Spears' estranged husband, Kevin Federline, as a failed rap star working in a fast-food eatery.

In a 30-second ad for Nationwide Insurance, Federline is shown dreaming he is a rap star but then snaps out of it to face reality -- he's working at a burger restaurant.

The commercial is due to be aired during the National Football League's Super Bowl championship on Sunday, February 4, advertising's biggest televised sporting event of the year. Last year's Super Bowl drew more than 90 million viewers.

But the National Restaurant Association's Chief Executive Steven Anderson has written to Nationwide saying the ad leaves the impression that working in a restaurant is demeaning and unpleasant and asking the commercial to be dumped.

"An ad such as this would be a strong and a direct insult to the 12.8 million Americans who work in the restaurant industry," wrote Anderson, head of the association that represents 935,000 U.S. restaurants.

What a stuffed shirt.

Because no one working in a restaurant dreams of a better life; no, says this comfortably office bound and expense-account bearing gentleman, who could dream of something better or who could recognize humor in their situation when working in a restaurant? Not the mindless automatons in the industry.

But his press release got into the paper, didn't it?

And you, consumer, do you think more highly of the restaurant (owners and franchisers) of America that they have chosen this stalwart Dun Quixote to stand up for them (but not their workers)?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:09 PM   0 comments

 
I Forgot, Which Is Bad, Perpetuating Or Mocking Stereotypes?
MLK Party Causes Uproar on Texas Campus:

Authorities at Tarleton State University said they plan to investigate a Martin Luther King Jr. Day party that mocked black stereotypes by featuring fried chicken, malt liquor and faux gang apparel.

"I feel like there is no excuse for this type of ignorance," said Donald Ray Elder, president of the Stephenville school's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

So mocking stereotypes is as offensive and ignorant as actually believing them?

Ah, who cares, let's call the attorneys. Certainly having a sense of humor should be worth some punitive damages to those who do not.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:51 PM   0 comments

 
Unfortunately, The Cognac Didn't Make It
Brandy involved, uninjured in fatal crash


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:48 PM   0 comments

 
Celebrating Diversity
It is a celebration of my people.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:37 PM   1 comments

 
Wallets: A Personal Evolution
Every boy must choose to either embrace the traditions of his father or to throw them off; this dilemma represents the passage to manhood throughout the adolescence that extends into the thirties of American males today. Hence, it's not uncommon for a man in his thirties, like me, to reflect upon the lessons passed on from the paterfamilias and to determine whether to continue abiding by the wisdom of the predecessors or to strike out in a new direction in search of one’s fortune and moral balance. Thus it was in my thirty-second year that I decided that I would no longer carry a trifold wallet, as my sire had before me; nay, I would embrace the bifold wallet.

My father worked as a carpenter and hunted small game on the city streets of Milwaukee to feed his family for years, and then he stacked food on a pallet in a warehouse to feed his new family. Throughout, carried a worn leather trifold wallet. I don't remember what sort of wallet my grandfather carried, but I'd bet trifold. The trifold is shaped for the back pocket, for comfortable carrying by men who bend and lift and nail things for a living.

I got my first trifold in high school, a cheap fabric and Velcro piece of swag or garage sale splendor so that I could carry my student ID and the dollar or so I scrounged from my mother for lunch. It nestled the money tightly and comfortably with the extra security of the Velcro strip, its announcement of money spending rarely heard, for I skipped the cafeteria to gather those dollar bills where I could. I carried the wallet until a Christmas gift certificate let me purchase a real leather trifold wallet.

I wore that wallet and its two replacements throughout college and through the first ten years of my working life, when I acted as a retail clerk, as a shipping receiving clerk, and as a printer to pay for student loans and to keep a cheap car mostly running. I even carried them as my career arc accelerated into the information technology field, I got married, and we mortgaged a house.

The trifold signifies a certain protectiveness about the contents, particularly the money within it. The two flaps envelop the contents to guard and protect the funds from the callous outside world and the temptations it offered. Funds were scarce when I was growing up. One's wallet needed a certain difficulty of access, also, to dissuade one from whipping out gas money or worse, a credit card, to spend frivolously. The trifold represented not only a style of wallet, but a way of life.

However, my life has changed since those hardscrabble days since my life became less hard and more Scrabble; I lucked into a position in the IT industry and became, according to all expectations of my youth, rich. Not only can I pay the student loans, the mortgage, and car maintenance, but I can do it without credit cards. I can get a twenty dollar bill whenever I want, and I can spend it.

The relative affluence combined with a new wardrobe imperative. Instead of worrying about comfort while lifting and toting, I had to worry about the fit of slacks, which meant to avoid an unsightly bulge in trousers. I began carrying my wallet in my front pocket in the world of business casual, and the trifold folded thickly around the security keys, collection of dollar bills, credit cards, insurance cards, and other assorted memorabilia that would somehow not include a picture of my beautiful wife. I wanted something slimmer and thought of the bifold wallet.

Of course, I initially rebelled at the thought, since we have always carried trifold wallets, but the thought returned until I considered it seriously. I liked the idea of a slimmer profile in the wallet, the easier fit into the front pocket of slacks and even jeans. So I found myself looking for just the right wallet in the department store, and in a moment of trepidation and emancipation rebelled against my upbringing and bought the bifold wallet.

The bifold wallet indicates higher class; it's the top hat of men's accessories. Barring the cape, monocle, and walking stick, it adds the élan and aplomb that people who stay or dine at the Ritz afford. Instead of guarding money, the bifold flips open easily, like a Star Trek communicator, so its bearer can effectively commune with the natives and so its bearer can access the lubricant of commerce and acquisition easily. I now bear the power and irresponsibility of relative upper middle class, outer-suburb but not over the-river affluence. When my beautiful wife lets me get that extra twenty dollar bill.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:26 PM   5 comments

 
Book Report: Tarnsman of Gor by John Norman (1967)
As I mentioned in my review for Assassin of Gor, I bought this book at Patten Books to round out my collection of early Gor paperbacks. I paid $3.95 for it, which indicates how much I enjoy the fantasy series so far.

It's fitting, I suppose, that I read this the most immediately after Assassin of Gor, as this book is the prequel. In it, Earthman is grabbed while camping by a spaceship and taken to a castle-like home of his father, another Earthman taken to Gor. He's trained to be a Gorean warrior and is sent to the city of Ar to steal its home stone and to reduce its strength in the eyes of the other city-states on Gor before it becomes the dominant nation.

The book is shorter than the later ones in the series, and it reads almost as a tentative dip into the fantasy milieu. At the end, Tarl Cabot is returned to Earth and wonders if he'll ever see Gor again. Of course, with forty years since the first novel in the series and twenty some years and twenty some novels gone by, we know he will. Still, I found it interesting to see the first try. And I've got number 2 around here somewhere; I know Ko-Ro-Ba, Cabot's home city, will fall and Talena, his love, will be taken somewhere on Gor, but I don't know how. Which is worth finding out.

The new (!) editions below are expensive; if you look around, you can find these books for a couple dollars each in used bookstores (in different editions). Yes, they're paperbacks, but take it from your gentle author Brian J. that there are few authors for whom he'll spend green on the paper. Norman is proving to be one. John D. MacDonald is the other.

Books mentioned in this review:

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

 
Billboard Draws Fire; Headline Alluding to Violence, Not So Much
Billboard where Ladue student was slain draws fire:

A billboard advertising the apartment complex where a Clemson University student from Ladue, Mo., was strangled with a bikini top is drawing criticism for its sexually suggestive images. It shows a young woman in a spaghetti strap shirt smiling, with the word "Reserved" below her. A second photo shows a woman sporting a tattoo on her lower back, accompanied by a pair of fuzzy dice. It reads: "Not so Reserved."

Yes, the billboard is tacky, but really, does the apartment complex have to avoid any mention of sex or bikinis for the rest of its existence to avoid offending the employees of charity where the woman in the murder worked? That's a little too sensitive even for my bleeding little heart.

Meanwhile, AP headlines this story with a cliché based on a metaphor for actual firearm usage with the intent to kill. Do you think they were being clever, tacky, or merely clueless?


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

 
Clarification for Darbo and the Show Me Institute
Compatriot Darbo and I were recently talking about the privilege of working in the city, wherein I get to contribute a percentage of my income to the city's varied featherbedding commissions, initiatives, and giveaways to developers. Darbo thought the payout was .5%, but I maintained it was 1%. I didn't have a pay stub immediately handy to offer irrefutable proof, so we tabled the discussion.

Today's column in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch by David Nicklaus proves us both right:

Unable to think of a better way of raising $130 million a year, St. Louis leaders have treated the earnings tax as a necessary evil. They listen sympathetically to businesspeople's complaints, and then they draw up another annual budget that depends critically on collecting 1 percent of each worker's earnings and 0.5 percent of each employer's payroll.

So Darbo was thinking like an employer, and I was thinking like an employee. Typical.

Nicklaus is talking about some new study that would replace the earnings tax with a tax on land to replace the property tax:

Haslag's study recommends phasing out the earnings tax, and phasing in the land tax, over 10 years.

His model suggests a 10 percent tax on land value, in addition to the current 1.44 percent tax on land and buildings, but Haslag says a lower rate might produce enough revenue to replace the earnings tax.

Over time, Haslag says, the new tax regime would do wonders for the city's economy. The number of jobs in the city would double, and wages and property values would rise.

Wow, coming up with these ideas while on the public dime (the author is a professor at a state university). That's like a whole other sort of featherbedding, but I digress.

Maybe the concept makes sense in the ethereal world of his projections versus the city's projections, but it would never work in the real world, nor will it get implemented. Because face it, it shifts the tax burden from the poor proles who go to work every day and onto the landed barons for whom the city continues to suspend tax obligations and cosign loans.

No, the city of St. Louis will continue to fatten its coffers with the money from the powerless and redistribute it to the powerful. Except for its vigorish, necessary to keep the commissions and development initiatives going and to keep landowners and developers happy.

Of course, I'm just fermenting sour grapes here because I'm one of those faceless workers who comes in from the suburbs, gets a small portion of my fleece snipped, and goes home to a functional municipal government and public school system with actual attending students. Someone who has had the opportunity, or at least the offer, or maybe just the thought offered to buy land in the city, but who vowed to never do so, so I'm out of the running for a good city government rub down.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:34 PM   0 comments

 
A Dozen Of Dimes
For not particular reason, I started thinking of songs that mention dimes. Including:

• "My Hometown" by Bruce Springsteen
  I was eight years old, running with a dime in my hand....
  
  
• "Downtown Train" by Rod Stewart
  I'm shining like a new dime....
  
  
• "Operator" by Jim Croce
  You can keep the dime.
  
  
• "Raspberry Beret" by Prince
  I was working part time at the five and dime...
  
  

Okay, that's not a dozen, but I do have comments enabled here. You help me round out the list, okay?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:33 PM   10 comments

 
George Orwell Smiles Knowingly at the Concept of Space Missile For Peace
The Chinese know how to sound all the right notes: China tries to reassure the world on space missile 'aimed at peace':

China signalled yesterday that its first missile strike against an orbiting satellite was intended to force the US into talks aimed at abolishing weapons in space.

As it faced an international chorus of protest against its test — the first such launch for 20 years — its officials insisted that they wanted space to be free of weapons.

"As the Chinese Government, our principle stand is to promote the peaceful use of space," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. "We oppose the militarisation of space. In the past, in the present and in the future, we are opposed to any arms race in space. Of this everyone can be confident."

Obviously, the Chinese have been paying attention. Blowing stuff up as a precursor to peace plays well to the International Community of media and those who would be easily cowed.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:31 PM   0 comments

 
Senator Durbin and Representative Biggert Support Barrier to Nothern Migration
Undocumented carp:

Senator Dick Durbin and Representative Judy Biggert have introduced legislation that would approve funding for a barrier to stop the spead of the Asian Carp.

[snip]

The carp have no natural predators in the area and threaten Great Lakes species by competing with local fish for food and habitat.

The legislation would authorize the Army Corp of Engineers to finish building a permanent barrier in the Chicago Ship and Sanitary Canal and study options to stop the fish.

Asian Carp: They just eat the grubs that American carp won't. I know, some of you will point out that the nation's carp are all immigrant carp, but that's not important.

What is important is that the Democrats in Congress recognize the danger of unchecked influx from the south.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:20 PM   1 comments

 
MfBJN Offers Its Only Comment on the iPhone
Steve Jobs has certainly recognized, so far, that the products and interfaces that most closely resemble the things we've been conditioned to expect from 40 years of Star Trek win, but I've got two words for him:

Voice Recognition

Touchscreen is nice on this little tricorder thing (what, you scan it in with the camera and run it through OS X applications and you'd call it something else?), but whomever gives me voice-activated wireless communication with my home network and through the firewalls to the Internet will win.

Whether it's an affected A like the television show or a little Windows icon on the RFID on my chest that I tap remains to be determined.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:24 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Robert Frost by Lawrance Thompson (1959, 1963)
Well, this book has certainly held up its cover price well. Sold in the middle nineteen sixties for a cover price of 65 cents, I bought it last weekend at a small book fair in the gymnasium of a small local Catholic church/school for fifty cents because it's a paperback (hardbacks were a whole dollar). Aside from cars and homes from 1959, there's probably not much that would have retained resale value like this volume.

Did I say volume? I meant pamphlet. This particular item represents #2 in a series by University of Minnesota Pamphlets on American Writers. Its chapbook (5.5" by 8") format comprises 41 pages of text, saddle-stapled. So don't think I labored over it for weeks. A couple of nights at 20 pages per night. I probably spent more time on Robert Frost's In the Clearing when I read it (Two years ago? Already?).

Essentially, this volume presents one critical essay that includes some of Frost's life and an interpretation of his work through 1959 (which did not include In The Clearing) in terms of its inherent contradictions between a heretic and his Puritanical upbringing who believes in the design of an angry God. Or at least a God whose workings are limited and inconsistent to the understanding of Man.

A good pick up for fifty cents, particularly if you like or read Frost. As any bit of criticism, it's a level removed from what you get if you directly read the poetry, but if you're like me, you encounter the poetry amongst the maelstrom of daily life and daily stresses--two years ago sometimes. A brief critical interlude, from someone who's only life's work was to read Frost's material in its obra and to comment on it, can provide some additional food for thought. Not that I think it should replace your reading of the original or supplant your interpretations thereof. But it's grist for the mill, or some other metaphor more relevant to the twenty-first century.

Apparently, this Thompson guy (the author) is the real deal, too. A quick perusal on Amazon of his works indicates a large body of work in covering Frost. Most came after this work, but it's the same guy.

It's only this particular volume that came out during the Eisenhower administration and was reprinted until Kennedy got shot. A later edition came out in the Johnson years. Sorry, sometimes I measure these books in their historical context for my own amusement.

Worth fifty cents? Why not? I'm a special sort of consumer for used books, and I don't think I wasted my time or energy on this book. I bought three others in the series, so time will tell what I think of them. But this book did not discourage me.

Books mentioned in this review:

 
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:22 AM   0 comments

 
I Do Not Think That Word Means What You Think It Means
Perhaps they had a problem while jamming: Rolen, La Russa haven't talked since postseason riff.

Rift, maybe; tiff, certainly; but that La Russa and Rolen haven't spoken since a melodic phrase? I don't buy it.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:43 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Kiss by Ed McBain (1992)
This represented the rarest pleasure: An Ed McBain book that I hadn't read before. I've read most of the 1980s/1990s/2000s Ed McBain books more than once. So even if I don't recognize the title, a moment will come when I'm reading the book that I'll click into recognition. And I'll keep reading the book because I like Ed McBain.

This book, again, travels to the 87th Precinct, where a new black mayor has been elected. Of course, this would be the beginning of the Dinkins era in New York. You remember that, don't you? No? Well, Giuliani sort of cleaned the town up and made the city safe enough that it could worry about banning smoking and trans fats. So when I read these books, I tie them to New York history of the time.

The book centers on a woman who has two murder attempts on her life. She goes to the police, and they track down the attempted murderer--her husband's ex driver. In the meantime, the husband has hired an out-of-town private detective to protect her. But when the attempted murderer is murdered, the plot thickens. It looks like the husband might have hired the driver to kill his wife, but if he did, why did he hire an out-of-town private detective to protect her? We all see where it's going, and I stayed on to watch it unfold under the masterful direction of Mr. McBain. I almost got the twist at the end, too.

Meanwhile, Kling has broken up with someone, so we know where the book fits in the sequence from that, and Steve Carella's father's murderer is brought to trial, so we know where it fits in the sequence from that. So even though I hadn't read this particular volume, I still felt in touch with the master narrative.

Frankly, it's encouraging to find a McBain book I didn't read before; it means that not everything on my to-read shelves of known quality is a rerun.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:57 PM   0 comments

 
Government, To Help Students, Reduces Number of Student Lenders
The rah-rah:

The Democratic-controlled House voted overwhelmingly to cut interest rates on need-based student loans Wednesday, steadily whittling its list of early legislative priorities.

The legislation, passed 356-71, would slice rates on the subsidized loans from 6.8 percent to 3.4 percent in stages over five years at a cost to taxpayers of $6 billion. About 5.5 million students get the loans each year.

The short term fix that will have unintended, and startlingly unforeseen, consequences:

The House bill aims to reduce the $6 billion cost by reducing the government's guaranteed return to lenders that make student loans, cutting back the amount the government pays for defaulted loans and requiring banks to pay more in fees.

Let's see, Congress has just:

• Cut the profitability by limiting the upside (the interest) that lenders can make.
• Increased the risk by cutting out the government "insurance" against default. Instead, those defaults will have to be covered with the reduced margin for error (the interest; profitability is just unused margin for error).
• Increased fees that the lenders have to pay to have access to lowered profit potential and increased risk.

That's the sort of fiscal and economic thinking that comes from not having to balance your checkbook.

So in 20 years, when student loans are harder to come by, the poor students will have to enter the workforce with naught but a high school education and, to those who can afford it, an Associates degree. To struggle, not make it very far, and vote Democrat.

Just kidding. The same people who strangle the privatesque solution today will determine that education is a right, like health care, and the government--they--should be the ones to fund it and mete it out.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:35 PM   0 comments

 
Thanks, Hugh
Grant will buy HPV vaccine in Missouri


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

 
Shrewsbury Licks The Tip Of Its Banning Pen
Pet German shepherd kills Affton woman

In response, the nearby municipality of Shrewsbury, the aldermen and mayor whipped out their special banning pen and began crafting an ordinance to ban German Shepherds, Germans, shepherds, and dachsunds (because they have a German name).

Except for police K-9 units, of course. Because the police can be trusted with German Shepherds, and the citizens cannot.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:49 PM   1 comments

 
Wal-Mart Wreaking Havoc On Local Economy
Local family businesses are taking extreme measures:

St. Louis shoppers can expect to see more grocery prices fall as competitors react to Schnuck Markets Inc.'s move to cut what it charges for some 10,000 items.

"We've always been competitive, and we always will be. That's the bottom line," said Greg Dierberg, president and chief executive of Chesterfield-based Dierbergs Markets Inc. "We'll react to any items that we need to."

Are they providing better values for the customers in the region out of the goodness of their hearts or in cutthroat competition between the chains?

Of course not.

Schnuck Markets launched its aggressive pricing strategy on Sunday, ahead of what it sees as rapid expansion of Wal-Mart Supercenters into the St. Louis metro area. Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., has more than 2,100 Supercenters in the U.S., including seven in the St. Louis market [sic, in that the story lacked a period]

Proof again that Wal-Mart is destroying mom-and-pop businesses and ultimately hurting the consumer. But it's so subtle that you can't see it unless you squint really, really hard until the very dust motes before your eyes become capitalistic monsters.


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

 
Book Report: Stanyan Street & Other Sorrows by Rod McKuen (1970)
In July (2006), I read In Someone's Shadow to my son. Since then, we've been working on the innumerable inscrutable complete works of Emily Dickinson. So, to give him a break after a hundred or so, I read him this collection. Most of it, anyway.

Compared to Dickinson, McKuen is a breeze to read. I've done my share of coffee shop open mikes, so I'm familiar with the flavor of easy, first person emotional free verse. I understand the line breaks and can read them aloud with the self-conscious and self-important air of the turtle-necked hipster. That doesn't make the poetry any better. As a matter of fact, it detracts.

Overall, although many of Dickinson's pieces are riven with weird capitals, unfathomable line breaks, and often run to the simplistic, they're built on imagery often whereas McKuen's, like other poems by free versers of the era and all juvenile journaler poets moving into the English programs of today, rely upon the biographical poet narrator saying I did this or I did that or I loved you or I served in Korea. Sure, it's cathartic for the poet narrator and it can speak to a subset of people who share your experiences directly, but the words don't evoke the emotion through imagery. They report it in the idiom of the day.

Ultimately, it explains why so many Rod McKuen books are available at book fairs, I suppose.

(Oh, my, and I bought so many volumes at the Carondolet Y Book Fair this year. It's going to be a long year of poetry-reading, gentle reader.)

Books mentioned in this review:

 
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:00 PM   3 comments

 
Book Report: Grifters & Swindlers edited by Cynthia Manson (1993)
No doubt, I picked this book up because I thought it was a compendium of true cases (back in the old days, I hoped to write for DamnInteresting.com and expected I would need constant pointers to interesting cases). But, no, this book is a collection of short fiction collected from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and was edited by the Director of Marketing for those two brands. Trying to extend the brand, you see, into some hardcover publishing dollars since Ellery Queen aren't churning out the books like they used to.

The anthology collects its stories from a number of decades, so some seem dated (not that I disprove), but others are remarkably contemporary. As you might have noticed, gentle reader, I've returned to a fondness for short fiction because it lends itself to easy truncation of a night's reading when I need to go to bed. Forgive me that I don't enumerate the stories here, but I'm lazy. Overall, the book was entertaining and short and worth the buck I paid for it. There you go. Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:55 PM   0 comments

 
Why Stop At Meddling With NFL Owners?
Hey, maybe Congress, following Diane Feinstein's example, can give the Chicago Bears hope tomorrow:

Durbin unveils legislation to start Griese at quarterback

Sen. Dick Durbin introduced legislation today aimed at blocking the Bears from starting Rex Grossman on Sunday by giving the United States Senat the right to vote on all coaching moves.

The measure, called the Bears Fan Protection Act, would require an exemption from common sense, which the United States legislature seeks to subvert instead of repealing entirely.

Durbin, a Democrat who has claimed to be a fan of the Bears, was furious last week when he learned that the current Bears starting quarterback had admitted to underpreparing for the season's last game, a loss to the hated Green Bay Packers. Some fans had questioned Rex Grossman's ability as a quarterback, given his stunning meltdowns in certain games this year. "This legislation is designed to prevent coaches from inflicting suffering on fans, which leads to the financial and intangible costs of poor decisions," Durbin said. "Our football teams are more than just businesses. They are a common denominator that cuts across class, race and gender to bond the people of a city. They are a key component of a city's culture and identity. The city of broad shoulders should not tie its identity to a young, often injured quarterback prone to utter collapse when the pressure's on. Instead, the city more properly reflects the spirit of a journeyman whose name looks a lot like 'Grease' and who's probably somewhat rusty after a period of inactivity." As an alternative, giving other NFL teams the right to veto an individual coach's decision at least give the government the ability to lobby NFL owners to do what it deems politically suitable for its constituents. "We need to address the real costs imposed on communities by poor coaching that we have witnessed in the past 25 years," Durbin said in offering his Bears Fan Protection Act.

- posted by Brian J. @ 12:19 PM   0 comments

 
Bainbridge on Thompson Bandwagon
Stephen Bainbridge wants to draft Thompson for the Republican presidential candidate in 2008.

But, wait, you say. Hasn't Tommy Thompson expressed interest? How can you draft someone who's expressed interest?

No, silly. Fred Thompson.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:12 PM   0 comments

 
The First 100 Hours: Democrats Nationalize Football League
Hey, Chavez is nationalizing Venezuelan industry and Illinois legislators want to run the electric companies, so why shouldn't the new Democrat-run Congress jump into an industry in which its members have no knowledge and experience?

Sen. Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation today aimed at blocking the 49ers from leaving San Francisco by giving National Football League owners the right to vote on all franchise moves.

The measure, called the Football Fan Protection Act, would require an anti-trust law exemption.

Is it possible that our legislators take themselves too seriously, or is this evidence that they don't take themselves seriously enough?

I mean, seriously, what's the slogan here? "Government out of our bedrooms, out of our wombs, but into our sports"?

UPDATE: Added link to San Francisco Chronicle story about the actual legislation.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:28 PM   0 comments

 
Everyone Wants to Cash In On School Vouchers
Mother's pride as first child to be born from frozen egg starts school


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:12 PM   0 comments

 
It's Not My Job To Cheer You Up
Remember, that worst case scenario you think you're ready for is just the worst case you could imagine.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:58 PM   3 comments

 
Book Report: Dr. Kookie, You're Right by Mike Royko (1989)
Book Report: Dr. Kookie, You're Right by Mike Royko (1989) I bought this book for a buck at some book fair this year. I don't think I've read any Mike Royko since high school. Many people of Internet age won't know who Royko is, as they're steeped in Internet stars like James Lileks, Mark Steyn, Andrew Sullivan, and whatnot. The era of the mega columnist, with a string of syndication papers and inane commentary, left behind those like Royko, who seemed more of a Metro columnist than a humorist or a commentariat.

I mean, who does this any more? Here in St. Louis, there's Bill McClellan and the black guy. I don't know if either of them has written a book, but I tell you something, in 20 years, I won't have ever gotten a copy and I won't read it with pleasure.

Sure, Royko is what some would call a bleeding heart. But it's a very communitarian liberalism. He came from humble origins and kept the blue collar edge in his writing. I can sympathize with blue collar origins in a rust belt city. So although he obviously doesn't like Ronald Reagan, he doesn't alienate readers who perhaps don't.

This was Royko's last collection published in his lifetime. Man, if I had known that would have read this with a sad, sepia overtone.

Recommend it? Yes. Read more Royko. He's amusing, short, and often right even when he's left.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:55 PM   0 comments

 
Slippery Slope?
Compare and contrast:

• Illinois House votes for electricity rate freeze
  
  
  In response to sharp increases in Illinois electric rates this month, the Illinois House voted Sunday to freeze rates at their previous levels.
• Chavez to nationalize companies in move toward 'socialist republic of Venezuela':
  
  
  President Hugo Chavez announced plans Monday to nationalize Venezuela's electrical and telecommunications companies, pledging to set up a socialist state in a move with echoes of Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution.
  
  "We're moving toward a socialist republic of Venezuela, and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Chavez said in a televised address after swearing in his Cabinet. "We are in an existential moment of Venezuelan life. We're heading toward socialism, and nothing and no one can prevent it."

Very different, no? One is a national entity that is controlling electrical rates for the benefit of its citizens and the power-mad people who want the control, and the other is a state government. Also, the national entity will ultimately be responsible for production of the electricity or its decline, whereas the state entity will merely be responsible for holding hearings on why companies go bankrupt when pressed for increasing service for no increased revenue.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:17 PM   0 comments

 
Sometimes Protocol Is Really Just An Obscure Goldie Hawn Movie
Buried in the story of another US submarine colliding with another Japanese merchant vessel (man, those Navy guys are still pissed about Pearl Harbor, ainna?), we get this nugget:

The Mogamigawa was traveling from the Gulf to Singapore and was carrying a crew of eight Japanese and 16 Filipinos. It is expected to arrive in the port of Khor Fakkan later Tuesday, company spokeswoman said on condition of anonymity, citing protocol.

Apparently, it's protocol in some companies that if you leak information about where your valuable ships and their valuable cargo are going and when, you must do so anonymously.

Odd the things those Japanese write into their employee handbooks.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:10 PM   0 comments

 
Taser International Sets Its Scamming On Stunning
Hidden within the story that Taser, International will offer models of its patented drunk killing device to the general public, we see what kind of superscam this really is:

Taser has however said that it will be sold inert, and activated after the purchaser takes part in an online background check.

That is, you, gentle reader, would spend your filthy lucre on a device that won't work until Taser, International, says you're okay to have a working Taser.

The next step, of course, is a Taser-As-Service model, where the self-defense tool only works if you keep up on the monthly subscription fee. Forget to tell Taser, International, that your credit card expiration date changed, and you're in for a big surprise on that underlit street where you encounter a couple ruffians.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:19 PM   1 comments

 
Book Report: Nature Girl by Carl Hiaasen (2006)
Heather gave me this book for Christmas along with a number of earlier Hiaasen novels because she knew that I enjoyed (see also Strip Tease, Skinny Dip, and Basket Case).

This book, however, suffers from the same slow start that stifled Strip Tease. Unfortunately, it has a slow middle and a slow end, too. Whereas the normal whacky Hiaasen characters come out of the Florida backwoods to amuse, ultimately, interact. We have a half Seminole on the run from his own demons and the ghost of an unfortunate tourist whose body he sunk in the swamp; a philandering ne'er-do-well telemarketing salesman and the mistress who's above him; an activist and off-kilter single mother seeking revenge against the telemarketer for interrupting her dinner; a lecherous man lusting for the single mother; the ex-husband of the single mother; a private detective trailing the telemarketer; and so on.

Unfortunately, the book doesn't have a real central plot; instead, we're following along a set of subplots that will intersect on a small Florida key. When we finally got the whole crew onto the key, I thought it would be a quick resolution, but I still had 100 pages left, and I was disappointed.

The book isn't Hiaasen's best, and it's definitely the weakest of the four books I've read so far. Heather was disappointed at my disappointment, but I tried to reassure her that one book had to be the worst. I hope this one was.

Books mentioned in this review:

     
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:12 PM   0 comments

 
Oxymoron Discovered
Come on, I cannot be the only one to realize Dodge Ram is an oxymoron, can I?


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:00 PM   1 comments

 
Earthquake Drill
It's better to be safe than sorry, so Tristan practices what he would do in the event of an earthquake:



When the other cats are flying through the air like extras on the bridge of the Enterprise, won't he be laughing?

Until the gas line goes, I suppose.


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

 
American Dream Alive And Well In Florida
This American Dream?

Briny Breezes is a down-market relic of old Florida, surrounded by glamorous multimillion-dollar homes and splashy high-rise condos.

The Briny Breezes brochure calls it a "self-governed mobile home community of kindred souls." Residents of the Palm Beach County town cruise the narrow streets on golf carts, passing palm trees and tiny, neatly manicured yards. They wave to each other and chat about the next neighborhood outing — water aerobics at the community pool, shuffleboard near the clubhouse, bowling night.

An idyllic place where a hundred thousand dollars or so buys you a trailer on the ocean in paradise, where you can live almost inexpensively through your golden years (whenever you make them)?

That's so 1959. This American Dream:

Briny Breezes' board recently approved the sale for $510 million. The owners of the 488 trailers have until Jan. 10 to ratify or reject the deal. A two-thirds majority is needed to sell. The amount each person would get depends on how many shares the resident owns. Each share is worth roughly $32,000 under the developer's offer. Owners would not get any money — and wouldn't have to move out — until 2009.

Kevin Dwyer, 47, is all for the deal. Dwyer, who paid $37,500 for his trailer nine years ago, would make about $800,000.

"See these pockets? They're empty," Dwyer said, a stack of unpaid bills sitting on a table in his single-wide trailer less than 100 yards from the ocean. "I've nickeled and dimed my whole life. I hit the lottery."

The American Dream of 2007, shared by many individuals and their elected officials, where you can get rich through a small investment and the forced relocation of your neighbors.

Suddenly, I don't think we've learned so much as a nation since the founding days.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:10 PM   0 comments

 
Noggle: 2007 May Be Worst Smelling Year Ever
Scientists predict 2007 May Be Warmest Yet. Well, in that spirit, I'd like to say a few things about 2007:

• It may be the worst smelling year ever if everyone forgets to shower and the dogs run amok and defecate everywhere, leading people to track it into buildings.
  
  
• It may be the coldest year ever if El Padre locks El Nino in his room for not doing his homework.
  
  
• It may be the worst hurricane season ever, or the best, or somewhere in between.
  
  
• It may be the year Prince Charles ascends the throne and orders an invasion of the United States and Canada to restore them to British hands, if he goes completely mad.

I mean, come on, they're scientists. They make predictions that may come true, but they're working off of slightly less incomplete sets of data than Pat Robertson. How come these fellows get a headline more sympathetic than scientists who say man might have actually lived concurrently with dinosaurs? How about those who say the natural world has a greater tolerance than mankind could overcome even if it tried?

Because one might move public policy in a more progressive direction, you think?


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:59 PM   2 comments

 
Good News: Iraq Is No Worse Than Oakland
The Bush administration and its Iraqi policy gets a boost from an Oakland resident, who realizes that the violence in Iraq is no worse than that of a typical American city:

"There have been three drive-by shootings in the past two months on my street," said Miltiades Mandros, whose North Oakland neighborhood was the scene of a feud between rival drug dealers in 2006. "There are bullet holes all over my building from automatic weapons. It looks like it's Baghdad or Beirut."

- posted by Brian J. @ 6:55 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Home Improvement: 52 Weekend Projects by Dan Ramsey (1989)
This oversized book offers 52 individual projects that it claims you can do over a weekend and groups them by season. The difficulty of the projects ranges just about from sweeping your basement to building a summer cottage, but they all run about 3-5 pages, some with illustrations. Most of the projects offer only a high level overview, really, of what you'd do, and most offer pointers to others in the series (also by Dan Ramsey) for further details.

Still, this book is supposed to be an inspirer; you're supposed to get ideas about what's possible and then either try something or get a more detailed set of instructions and then try something. Although I didn't find any projects that fit for my house, the very brevity of the chapters reminds one that it's not that hard to do most of these things. It takes a bit of planning and a bit of time, but it's not surgery.

Recommend the book? If you can pick it up for a couple of silver pieces at a book sale, sure, or if you can borrow it from the library. I don't know that it's worth the shipping and handling for an Internet buy, though, but in case you feel differently, here's a handy link to Amazon: Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:54 PM   0 comments

 
Red on Red
Missouri school districts going to court for more state money:

In a massive case that could put hundreds of millions of state tax dollars on the line, about half of the state's 524 school districts will go to court this week demanding more state education money.

The school districts will attempt to establish that the more than $2.7 billion Missouri spends on its public schools is inadequate to give children a chance at a decent education.

You know, I briefly considered getting an education degree. I'm sure that turning to English and Philosophy instead has left me with inadequate steeping in the esoteric knowledge that transmutes squandering the people's tax money on suing to get more of the people's tax money into a positive value.

But fortunately, I have unelected bureaucrats with more knowledge than me to squander my tax money trying to get more tax money. Heck, I play the lottery; why shouldn't my betters in the government?


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:06 PM   0 comments

 
Microsoft Offers Assistance
Clicking through a link on my MSN Messager, I got the following helpful error message:



Note Microsoft's tips:

1. In your browser, click refresh. But the URL is for a unique landing page, toobusy.html. So refreshing will only reload the error page.
   
   
2. In your browser, click Back, and try again. But since I reached this page without navigation in the browser, the Back button is not enabled.
   
   
3. Wait a few minutes and try again. Bingo.

The screen offers me three options, only one of which I can actually try. In that case, the screen should only offer me a single option.

Such things lead a user to believe that maybe the application, or at least the copywriters behind the interface, are out of touch or incorrect sometimes. That blows a user's trust in an application, or it should.

But me, I am in QA; I don't trust my watch without checking it against my cell phone, the clock on the computer, and the clock on the phone.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:55 AM   0 comments

 
The Controversy That Wasn't
Instapundit links to a post at NewsBusters about ABC News's use of [sic] that might indicate media bias or lack of belief in an afterlife.

NewsBusters says:

Adding religious insult to mortal injury in its coverage of the 3000th US service-person to die in Iraq, ABC seemed to suggest that there was something odd or erroneous in the expression of a traditional belief in the afterlife.

The quote to which ABC News applied the [sic] is:

"You were one of my best friends and I'll never forget you. All my prayers go to your family and I'll see you again." (sic)

Come on, people. There is a grammar error in the sentence, so use of [sic] is appropriate. The second sentence is a compound sentence, which means there should be a comma before the conjunction between the clauses. It should be: All my prayers go to your family, and I'll see you again. Here's a story on ABCNews.com that uses the comma appropriately:

Rumsfeld was supposed to be an honorary pall bearer at Saturday night's ceremony, but bad weather in New Mexico apparently prevented him from making the earlier service.

See? ABC News was noting that the comma was missing in the source material. Not that it's a bunch of godless heathen mocking Christians.

People ought to save their outrage for outrageous things, not inventions based on faulty understanding of grammar.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:20 PM   19 comments