Mainstream Media Under Fire
AP classes face scrutiny in audit

Oops, guess not.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:04 AM   0 comments

 
Don Surber Shouts Out McCain's Problem
McCain’s problem:

Two words:

McCain-Feingold.

The fundamental difference between McCain 2000 and McCain 2008 is that he put his name on a law that forbids people from speaking out against their congressman within 60 days of an election.

That's what I told the exploratory committee volunteer who called me up; I would absolutely not support McCain for president based on the BCRA.

"Even against Hillary Clinton?" she said BOO!

"What's the difference?" I said.

How does that make you feel, Senator? You engender the same response in a former supporter and a former money donor as Hillary Clinton does.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:51 AM   0 comments

 
When 101 Years Old You Reach, Look This Good You Will Not
Someone's attempt at planned obsolescence has gone horribly, horribly wrong:

Six years before the RMS Titanic set sail on its doomed maiden voyage, a Great Lakes steamship was launched, and it's still in operation.

Now called St. Marys [sic] Challenger, it is the oldest ship still in service on the Great Lakes. This winter, the 101-year-old Challenger is docked in South Chicago while a maintenance crew from Milwaukee does minor repairs to get it ready for spring sailing.

No, wait; back in the old days, they built simple things that could run for a long time instead of complicated things that break right away. Because in the distant past, quality was a virtue more important than mere profit to companies and a feature more important than any bell or whistle to customers who had attention spans measured in generations instead of seasons.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:46 AM   0 comments

 
Crack St. Louis Post-Dispatch Investigative Team Reports Contents of Hand-Written Sign On Business
Sign says Allen Cab has gone out of business:

The Allen Cab Co., whose owner was recently found after a seven-day disappearance, appears to have closed.

A makeshift sign hangs on the front door of the building along 17th Street that once bustled with about 120 drivers and 100 cabs. It reads: "Sorry, we're closed. Contact the Metropolitan Taxicab Commission for further questions. Thank you, #321."

In another breaking report, we find that Nelson's Haberdashery is Out to Lunch - Back at 1:15!


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:51 AM   0 comments

 
Who Spiked Bill McClellan's Coffee With Truth Serum Again?
Bill McClellan say he's glad the Post-Dispatch sucks, and now he admits:

Most newspaper reporters are petty. We don't make as much as the TV people make.

Preach it, brother!


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:52 AM   0 comments

 
Get Middle Class Slowly Scheme
John Scalzi tracks his annual earnings from writing science fiction.

As if this wasn't encouraging enough.

(Link seen on Instapundit.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:18 PM   0 comments

 
Home Ownership Is Draining
As I age, I concern myself with subtle imperfections that I’ve ignored for the majority of my thirtysomething years. Blithely, throughout much of my youth, I skipped through life without taking care of things, without worrying how that indifference would lead to consequences later. Now that I am older, sadder perhaps, but wiser, I have learned the importance of proper drainage and water control around a domicile.

Some years ago, when I was an impertinent youth of but eight and twenty, my wife and I bought our dream house of the moment. It looked spectacular in the early spring, with the last traces of the winter’s snow decorating the lawn in the picture. When our realtor walked us through the building, we appreciated the vinyl hardwood-looking floors in the kitchen and foyer, the gas fireplace in the basement den, and the affordable lower Bobo price. Of course, our youthful zeal for home ownership and our overappreciation of the possibilities for the fourth bedroom, we didn’t fully appreciate the impact of a below-grade walkout basement at the bottom of a hill whose sliding glass doors were guarded by a single drain beneath two blossoming crab apple trees.

Fast forward and flashflood two years to a dark and stormy night, where a torrent of water tumbling down the concrete steps outside the basement doors made the exterior look like a leaking fish tank from inside that den with the fireplace. I kneeled in ankle-deep water to bail the blossoms and crabapples from the drain almost as fast as they collected at the base of the vortex. I sniffled in the torrenting chill, man against nature, while my wife frantically sopped the inside seepage with towels and blankets.

We weathered that particular storm with only an extremely damp carpet, and I have learned a lesson. I now spend a portion of each afternoon sweeping the deck above and the concrete steps and drain below free of leaves, cut grass, crab apples, and other assorted detritus. My efforts only ensure my comfort in the hour immediately following my sweeping. I’ll fidget and fuss during any heavy rainfall, looking through the doors frequently to scry how much might accumulate around the drain. Often, I will obsessively or compulsively venture into the rain to clear the drain, removing a crab apple or a palmful of leaves to ensure my own unease of mind. Perhaps I would enjoy the romance of a good thunderstorm more if I only worried about the drain at the bottom of the basement steps. I also worry about the gutters.

One morning, circa 2:30 CDT, I awakened from a light slumber to hear the soothing—or so I thought then—prattle of rain through the downspout. As I listened to the gentle cascade of water, I realized that I heard a soothing cascade undimmed by exterior walls. I slapped glasses onto my nose and hastened to the dining room, where I encountered a stream of water pouring from the dining room window onto the vinyl, but hardwood-looking, dining room floor. For some reason, water rolling from the roof ignored the best-designed systems of man which proffered a downspout at the house’s corner. Instead, the water fell directly against the side of the house. The charming but energy-efficient sliding window track offered a handy cup to collect this water, and when the cup overflowed, it runneth over into the dining room. Once again arming my beautiful and sleepy wife with towels, I ventured into the maelstrom.

Climbing onto a stepladder, I discerned through trial and error, using the flashes of lightning for illumination and the crashes of nearby thunder as motivation for quick action, that the gutter had pulled from the house so that the water from the roof was streaming between the roof and the gutter. When I held the gutter up with my hands, the stream against the window abated. When I let go, the stream resumed. I pondered the prospect of holding the gutter against the house all night, but I remembered that I had a single stalk of wood in my personal lumberyard that I could prop against the window sill to hold the gutter in place and…. Success!

Of course, success in this case meant that I could dry off, but that I would spend the rest of a mostly sleepless night checking both the drain and the kludged gutter brace to ensure that most of my house remained dry. I took a personal day from work the next day to clean my gutters, to bolt the loose section to the house with the largest bolts I could muster, and to place gutter screens on the gutters beneath the two crab apple trees just to be thorough or just because I was in that aisle in the hardware store.

So as I age, and as I own a home, I pay greater attention to the weather and the water falling outside of my house. As Mr. Fix-It might have said in his book, water is a friend, but it’s also an enemy. Perhaps he didn’t say that, or perhaps he was talking about the copper piping through which we invite the beast into our home. Still, you can be sure that when my wife and I move to our next dream house, I will inspect the topography to ensure that the entire neighborhood does not funnel its watershed to my basement door. I’ll also resist the temptation to use the basement (if we don’t buy a home on a sweet, sweet slab of concrete) to store our extensive library or electronic equipment.

Until then, though, I will arm myself with brooms, buckets, and two-by-fours to prepare for the inevitable unexpected, which undoubtedly will require something other than brooms, buckets, or two-by-fours. Ultimately, though, I know I can do little but study the skies like a native, looking for signs that I have personally angered the rain gods.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:13 PM   0 comments

 
A Boy, A Camera, A Dog
It's 1985, and you've just moved to Missouri from the great state of Wisconsin (Snow Be Upon It). You've spent a year in your rich relatives' basement before your poor sainted mother could work her way off of the frozen onion assembly line into a typist (with typewriters!) position with the government and could afford to shelter you and your brother in a 12' x 60' trailer in a semi-rural Missouri trailer park. You're not supposed to leave the trailer as a "latchkey kid," and all you've got for amusement is the Polaroid Instant Camera you got for selling cards adverised on the back of comic books (thank you, Captain Olympic!), a film cartridge you might have earned with some months' worth of fifty-cents-a-week allowance for cleaning the said trailer and cooking dinner every night, a stray dog herded from traffic into your household, and a kid brother. What do you do for fun?

You stage a set of photos illustrating how your dog is a genius. Just like she told you to.

Behold:

Cricket, The Genius

Cricket reading Omni on the sofa of our 1968 Star mobile home.


Cricket reading the financial pages at the table. The cookie there is for later, not to draw and hold the dog's attention while the photograph was taken. It's a real shame we didn't take her advice and short everything in October 1987.


Cricket playing my brother at cards, looking for her stake to short sell everything in October 1987. Unfortunately, preteen children from trailer parks rarely have the scratch needed to impress brokers.


Cricket did my brother's homework. Although she was smart for a dog, apparently she didn't care much for elementary school social studies.


Cricket loved crossword puzzles, but the ones in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch didn't challenge her much.

One of my first short stories, written in middle school, was a little two page bit written from Cricket's point of view. The short story was fittingly rejected by McCall's in my first magazine submission. I've lost that rejection letter, which would otherwise be the pride of my extensive collection.

As a hare-brained money making scheme, I created the official fan club for that dog. For some princely annual sum, you would get a membership card printed on dot matrix, cut crookedly, and laminated with some sheets I bought at the flea market:



Wonder of wonder, I think I actually sold one of these to the kid across the street for a quarter. I even produced the first monthly Cricket fan club newsletter, but then it tailed off to some other projects.

This is where I add a snappy conclusion that leaves you with some bon mot to mull over. I don't got one. All I have is a handful of cutesy dog pictures and a couple of memories to share. Make your own bon mot.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:54 PM   2 comments

 
Google Artificially Assists Divorce Attorneys
Number 19 on Google for republican womanizers?

Damn, how many copies of Google Apps Premier Edition do I have to buy to keep this quiet?


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

 
Book Report: Great Tales of Mystery & Suspense compiled by Bill Pronzini, Barry N. Salzberg, & Martin H. Greenberg (1994)
I can't believe I read the whole thing.

Sorry to be summoning forth the memory of old Alka Seltzer commercials, but zowie, this is a 601 page book. It's an Anna Karenina-sized collection of mystery short stories.

It's a large collection of short stories, to be sure, but it's a very good collection of short stories, so don't get me wrong. It took me a couple of weeks to read it, but that's because even the best book of short stories might be hard to put down, but sometimes they can be hard to pick up again, particularly when they're 600 page books of short stories and you're a fellow who likes to read a couple of books a week.

This collection, though, is definitely of higher quality than some of the collections of short stories I've picked up in the recent past (even better than The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction Fourteenth Series). This book runs a gamut, from serious literary writers like Pearl S. Buck and Bernard Malamud to science fiction luminaries like Robert Silverberg (see my review for Three Survived) to my mystery standards (John D. MacDonald, Ed McBain, Ross MacDonald, Erle Stanley Gardner, Mickey Spillaine, and Ellery Queen).

The styles vary, but the quality is definitely high, and it's worth the buck I paid for it at St. Michael's book fair this winter. Heck, for the dollar, I got a lot of nights' reading from it, which is both good (efficient spending for prolonged reading) and bad (prolonged reading means less clearance of the to-read shelf and too little blog fodder).

The link below lists it as low as $.34 currently (plus shipping). Worth all of those pennies and more.

And when you've read it, explain the Bernard Malamud story ("My Son The Murderer") to me, because I didn't get it. Since it was the last story in the book and the only thing standing between me and logging the book as my 15th trophy of the year, I didn't mind. But I didn't get it, either. Blending multiple 1st person points of view across multiple paragraphs? The intro said there was a crime in it, but I didn't see it.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:50 PM   0 comments

 
The Single Greatest Current Mystery From Lost
What do the numbers mean? Why were those guys at the ice station? What's the deal with Desmond? Why did Locke become paraplegic? Those are all simple, pedestrian mysteries on Lost. No, sir, there's one mystery that surpasses them all given what we've seen or not seen in the last portion of Season 2 and the first half of Season 3:

Who ate the dog Vincent?

Here are the data points:

• We haven't seen him since a late episode in Season 2.
  
  
• His two main contacts (protectors) from the survivors (Walt and that chick) are gone.
  
  
• We haven't seen the survivors hunting boars lately.

The inescapable conclusion is that the either Vincent dog-paddled to Asia or someone has killed and eaten that yellow lab.

Let's run down the possible suspects:

• Jin and Sun: Come on, they're Korean, but that's too obvious and the writers of the television show would not play to the stereotype. No.
  
  
• Charlie: Sure, in a fit of heroin pitique, perhaps he was jonesing for some meat. Maybe.
  
  
• Hurley: Dude needs some calories, but he's more the sort to raid the stash from the hatch. Probably not.
  
  
• Desmond: Dude crazy. Maybe.
  
  
• A polar bear: Hey, why not? Walt got attacked by a polar bear; the recurrence of a polar bear would tie back to other appearances by polar bears and could probably amount to nothing. Maybe.
  
  
• An tribe of native Pacific Islanders: Sure, we've never seen nor heard from them, but why would that stop them from appearing? Maybe.
  
  
• The ghost of Jack's father: Well, ghosts don't eay, but perhaps Jack's father must consume flesh to reincorporate. Maybe.
  
  
• The shark: Sharks eat things in the ocean. Hasn't the dog been known to go into the ocean? Maybe.

As you can see, the possibilities are endless. But you can rest assured, I'll be watching for the clues, such as someone in the background of a shot sucking marrow from dog bones or a character suddenly sporting an Australian rabies tag on a chain around his or her neck. Because I must know.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:57 AM   0 comments

 
That's No Phish; That's An Amphibian
Today, I received this message:



Oh, no, I thought like good little phishbait. I didn't even bid on that.

But instead of clicking through on the e-mail, I go to ebay.com and search for the item.

Well, low and behold, the item number in question was an actual item and it was offered by the seller mentioned in the phish e-mail:



Of course, it's still obviously a phish because:

1. That's not the e-mail address tied to my eBay account.
   
   
2. The e-mail lacks most eBay header/footer details.
   
   
3. The message headers indicate it came from somewhere besides eBay.
   
   
4. The auction that I was "delinquent" for hadn't ended by the time I received an e-mail.

But still, the sophistication of this particular phish is remarkable. It scrapes an actual auction off of the eBay site before or at the time of mailing to make it seem more authentic.

I'm almost afraid enough to vow to never click a link in an e-mail again, but I'd probably get fired.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:40 PM   1 comments

 
New Urbanist Development Not Very New, Not Very Urban
Will city planners and those who've mistaken government service for a real-life game of Sim City take note about this development that, after a number of years, lacks the foot-traffic sorts of business it promised?

At first glance, a trip to the New Urbanist community taking shape on Hercules' bayfront is reminiscent of the neighborhood depicted in the Jim Carrey movie "The Truman Show." Each Craftsman, Victorian and Italianate home couldn't be more perfect, glistening in an array of tasteful pastels.

But at least Carrey's character, trapped in a seemingly idyllic seaside community, could walk to the local cafe for a cup of coffee. Three years after moving into the Promenade section of Hercules' New Urbanist Waterfront Redevelopment District west of Interstate 80, residents still have to drive or take a long walk for items as mundane as a cup of coffee. The bustling just-walk-to-it village, touted as a model of the New Urbanist movement, has yet to materialize.

One of the tenets of the movement is that residents should be able to access essential services without having to drive to a strip mall on the outskirts of town. The idea is to locate retail hubs within walking distance of neighborhoods, or within easy access to mass transit. Currently, the mixed-use, live-work spaces on Railroad Avenue, which are meant to house these shops and services for Promenade district residents, contain real estate offices, finance firms and, of course, a company that specializes in staging homes for sale.

No, of course not; your community leaders know they're smarter than those saps in California, and that their misunderstanding of how urban areas grow from central planning instead of organically based on industry/employment won't make the same mistakes.

Of course, they will. They'll drive out stinky heavy industry to beam down a Star Cups (an off brand coffee shop, because a profitable corporation knows that light residential areas are risky for sustained business operations). Meanwhile, the affluent types who can live in New Urban areas because they commute to higher paid jobs elsewhere or because they're on a trust fund/retirement will continue to draw the sorts of businesses they can support--expensive places that can survive when the customers aren't frequent. Like real estate offices, financial firms, a company that specializes in staging homes for sale, and expensive beauty salons.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:59 AM   0 comments

 
Bill McClennan, Proud His Paper Sucks
Bill McClellan, St. Louis Post-Dispatch proud his paper is hated:

We are not liked. We are a liberal paper, and these are conservative times. What's more, many of the people who you might think would normally like a liberal newspaper don't particularly like us.

It bothers the new owners from Lee Enterprises because they have to keep a business afloat. Apparently, it doesn't bother the actual employees of the Post-Dispatch, though, because they're on a mission.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:51 AM   2 comments

 
Whitney Gould on The Nohl House
Remember when I wrote about the Milwaukee Witch's House? Whitney Gould of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel has an update.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:28 PM   1 comments

 
Personal Relics: The Pink Clipboard
I used my translucent pink clipboard the other day. I had an essay I wanted to proofread, so I detached the clipboard from its underused lined pad and clipped the essay onto it. The lined pad, with its years’ old plans and next big thing ideas, I put back into the organizer on my desk. I have things so well organized in that rudiment of civilization that I hate to take them out. But I needed the clipboard, so it came out.

I am reaching the age where every little trinket in my life has an origin in the mists of my time, and the clipboard originates from my college days. Not so much my college days, but the weekends in between my college days. For a brief period, I gamed with a couple of friends in B—’s basement on Sunday nights. Sunday afternoons, I could use my father’s car, so I would round up the gang and we would spend Sunday afternoon and evening in the basement of the townhouse where B— and his mother lived. The basement had the décor of a middle 20th century rec room, with a tile floor, the old couch, and a card table. On the off-hand weeknights, we’d gather to game or to pretend we could play musical instruments together. But on Sunday nights, we’d game.

A couple of late adolescents, dice, pencils, and paper called for something more, but we didn’t know what. Until B— discovered it. One weekend, he presented each of us with a clipboard to make it easier for us to maintain our personal character score sheets. As he produced them from somewhere offstage, he said he’d been to an office supply store and found a sale. Considering that we all earned a minimum wagesque paycheck at the time, his bounty probably represented a not insignificant portion of his disposable income. Much to our chagrin (and, no doubt, to the office supply store manager who eventually put them on sale), the clipboards were pink. No right-minded young man would use a pink clipboard.

But they were free enough at the time, and no right-minded minimum wage earner overlooks the generous excess of a friend. Particularly when that gaudy and potentially effeminate excess can be enjoyed in a basement where overlooked New Year’s parties, games of strategy, and Ghostriders’ band practices occurred. We accepted the plastic clipboards, no doubt edgy statements at a time where clipboards were still made of laminated chipboard, and we used them throughout those Sunday evenings in our youth.

As I proofread whatever it was I wanted to revise, my attention was split to include the history of the device upon which I was working and those nights long ago. I’ve had the clipboard longer than I’ve had my degree, my wife, my career, my Web log, and my son. Whenever I need a place upon which I want to correct my printed scribblings or, for some reason, to attach tablets which already feature their own hard cardboard surfaces, I turn to this single pink, semi-transparent piece of plastic.

Of all the things I’ve mentioned, it will survive. When these words are forgotten, when my marriage and my line have faded into even greater obscurity than from which they have sprung, when my Internet postings have finally emanated into the ether, when the library has given me much pleasure has moldered into fertilizer for future weeds, some archeologist aeons hence will dust off this pink clipboard from the remnants of this homestead or some landfill. With some thought and study, future historians might regard this one possession of mine and will find it reflective of its owner and his civilization.

A plate upon which this primitive dined, no doubt, with a metal clip to hold upon it the wriggling prey.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:25 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Too Far by Mike Lupica (2004)
Heather gave me this book for Valentine's Day, and I've already read it. So you know where I stand on Lupica. If you don't, here's a refresher course: Wild Pitch; Full Court Press; Bump & Run.

This book, unlike those named above, centers around a crime. A former national sports columnist who retired after the subjective of an investigative story killed himself returns to his hometown on Long Island. A high school student who covers high school basketball games for the local paper comes to the adult sportswriter with a possible clue in the death of the high school basketball manager's death and its possible relationship to a hazing incident with the team.

So there's your setup.

What follows is decent prose and a passable story interrupted too often with exposition about school hazing and its barbarity. I mean, brother, sodomy with a broomstick is enough in its description; you don't have to have two separate characters in a limited omniscient point of view reflect at the page's length about how brutal it is. I mean, we don't get that sort of thing in other murder mysteries, unless I'm missing the entire cockfighting murder mystery subgenre (Well, I wouldn't say I'm missing it, Bob).

The action builds credibly once you get past the editorials against high school hazing and the meticulous recounting of other incidents nationwide (almost requiring end notes). Until we get to the extraordinary double deus ex maquina at the end, where someone else sums up the story and lays it at our investigator's feet and someone else appears to get the investigators out of the climactic jam at the end. Unsatisfying.

However, I still like Lupica and will gladly accept any and all gifts of his work in the future.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:59 AM   0 comments

 
Who Can Take CNN Seriously?
Here's today's CNN.com home page:



Featuring the the Secretary of State as Nosferatu and a headline about the sitting president: Doctor plays whack-a-mole on Bush's face.

Well, I guess the world's first and most self-important news network has to compete with the Daily Show.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:13 AM   2 comments

 
Painted Days and Painted Nights
It's Mardi Gras time here in St. Louis, which means Soulard is putting on its schizophrenic finery wherein it tries to celebrate in a family-friendly fashion the last minute drive to get in as much debauchery as possible before Lent and repentance came due. But that's neither here nor there.

Fact of the matter is, I've worn face paint twice in my life, and neither time was for a sporting event. The first was, in fact, Mardi Gras 10 years ago. A couple of my friends and I decided to go down the Saturday before Fat Tuesday and take it all in. Familiar with the concept of the New Orleans Mardi Gras and its festivities, I said, "Hey, people paint their faces for Mardi Gras, right?"

"Sure," my lifelong St. Louis resident friend said.

So I designed a concept for my motif: On one side, the happy drama mask, and on the other side, the unhappy drama mask. Done in black and white. We went to Johnny Brock's and got some black and white facepaint so we could do the happy side in black on white and the unhappy side in white on black. Johnny Brock's actually had colored hair spray, too, so I messed the hair up manically on the white side and patted it down flat on the black side. My friend and fellow displaced Wisconsinite Walter, an artist by self-definition, actually did the face painting (and signed his initials under my chin). Dressed in black and white completely and wearing a trenchcoat, my Mardi Gras garb was complete:



So my lifelong St. Louis resident friend put on purple mask, and off we went. Once we got to Soulard, I discovered the "Sure" had an asterisk on it. People paint their faces up for Mardi Gras.*

* In New Orleans and Brazil.

I was one of three people in face paint among the thousands thronging the streets and bars. People thought I was supposed to be The Crow, the Joker, or Ace Frehley. Only one young lady correctly identified it; she was a Webster University student and quite probably in the Theatre Department. Somewhere along the line, my lifelong St. Louis resident friend ditched his mask to better blend in with the "beads are the Mardi Gras costume" crowd.

But it was a good night. We drank liquor until the police chased us out of Soulard and ended up at the Venice Cafe, where a bunch of older (mid 40s) women hit on me and kissed on me to my chagrin. My lifelong St. Louis resident friend explained that, at the tender age of 25, I looked like a middle aged hottie. Needless to say, I haven't spoken to that friend since before the turn of the century.

Wow, and I still wear that trenchcoat. Maybe it is time to get a new one.

As I mentioned, I've painted up twice in my life, and both were in that year: 1997. Perhaps one could read something psychoanalytical into that. But the second time, in the autumn, was at GenCon, the roleplaying game convention. My lifelong St. Louis resident friend from Mardi Gras, my best friend from college, and I drove up to Milwaukee to attend. Even though we all had jester costumes, something on the GenCon sales floor triggered my imagination; I think it was some press on fangs. Suddenly, I wanted to enter the costume contest. As the Weresmurf:



I bought some blue face paint and the aforementioned fangs, and my friend sacrificed a t shirt. I plunked down the entry fee and took my shot at fame. The contest featured a bit where you came on stage, and the MC introduced you. You could write your own intro and have the contest leader make special preparations for you. I asked them to lower the microphone and wrote out my introduction.

When my time came, the MC read my beautiful words: "When the moon ripens to fullness, something dark prowls Smurf villiage. It's the Weresmurf?" Actually, I didn't pen the rising inflection at the end, but the MC turned it into a question. With that, I leapt from behind the curtain, ran sniffing and hunched from one end of the stage to another, snarled at the MC, and ran up to the microphone, where I preceded to howl out the Smurf theme, finishing with a poignant "root rooooo!" I then leapt from the front of the stage, ignoring the stairs so carefully pointed out by the staff, and ran up the aisle snarling and sniffing until I was out of the spotlights.

At the time, I was a regular on the poetry open mike/slam circuit in St. Louis and had hopes I could get some kind of thing going where I'd give readings at colleges or whatnot (I'd seen the Nuyorican Poets Live that year, too, so it wasn't out of left field--you know, like painting oneself blue for fun). But the largest crowd I ever performed in front of to that point--and let's be honest, since--my only vocalization was a Smurf howl.

Adding salt to my pretentious wounds, the only national magazine exposure I'd gotten to that point (and, honestly, up until last month) was in the December 1997 issue of Inquest, which had a photo essay from GenCon:



That's right, it took me 10 years to get my name into a publication with a circulation rivaling that of my appearance in blue paint with a humorous dialogue balloon pointing at my mouth. But wow, blue paint really does bring out my blue eyes.

On the plus side, I did win my category, so I came home with a trophy dish and a pair of commemorative d6. Of course, the category was the equivalent of "everything else" and my only competition was a couple of teenaged girls who put bones in their hair and tried a sitcom skit about feuding vampire sisters. So perhaps my resounding victory isn't a testament to my genius or proper sense of the absurd and only reflects that I wasn't as bad as the kids.

But I got the trophy, and I got the Polaroid, and I got the two d6s. I've also got a scannerful of photographic memories of that brief moment in my youth where painting my face seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I don't know that that time will ever come again, but I haven't been to Lambeau Field, either.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:18 PM   0 comments

 
No Hue and Cry; No Hue Or Cry; Very Little Notice
Wow, has this fallen off the front page already? Moscow May Break Arms-Reduction Treaty, Russian General Says:

top Russian general said yesterday that Moscow may unilaterally opt out of a Soviet-era arms reduction treaty with the America, Russian news agencies reported.

General Yuri Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military's general staff, was quoted by ITARTass and Interfax as saying that Russia could pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Reagan in 1987.

Can't anyone muster up some no nuke signs for outside the Russian embassies worldwide?


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:47 PM   0 comments

 
What You Need To Be A Struggling Writer
(circa 1993-1994--how precious! - ed.)

Whenever I meet someone, one of the questions that always comes up is "What are you going to college for?", usually right after I say "Yes, I go to Marquette University". I usually respond with "Eleven grand a year," but I am really going to college to get my Writing Intensive Bachelor Degree. I would have been a Writing Intensive Bachelor without the help of Marquette University, but I would not have had so much fun doing it. After I explain to these newly met people that I am a writer, the proceed to give me what they think is encouraging advice.

The advice is always the same, "Hang in there. Don't give up. Have something to fall back on". Thank you very much, but that advice is generic for any occupation. When people get specific about it, they always tell me that it takes a long time to break into the writing business. Well, no, I'd like to point out (but I am too polite to) that Tom Clancy and John Grisham "broke" into the biz. The rest of us, or at least I, have to worm our way in. I, on the other hand, am a practicing struggling writer, and I decided that if everyone else is giving advice, I might as well jump on the bandwagon.

To help out with all you struggling writers out there, I have compiled a list of things you'll need. Strunk and White, ages of English classes, and last month's Writers' Digest can give you all the technical details. You'll need more than words to make it as a struggling writer in today's competitive market, and here's what you'll need.

1. The Idea You'll Succeed.
   When I started, I wanted to put down "Talent," since that is pretty important to make it as a writer, but it's not actually necessary when you start your jaunt as struggling writer. You can pretty much start with "The Idea You Have Talent" because your writing will get better as you write, so if you think you have talent, you will write more, and it is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Then I thought of some cheap fantasy fiction and pulp detective stories. Some of the stuff I have read has been so bad that I don't think the writer could have thought they had talent. All they could be running on was self-confidence and the dollar signs they must have been seeing, so to succeed as a writer you just need the idea that it can be done, and not much else, but if you do have talent, so much the better.
   
   
2. Something Written.
   When I told a professor my freshman year of college that I was going to be a writer, he asked me if I had written anything. At that point I had written innumerable bad poems, a few bad short stories, and most of a bad-but-hopefully-salvageable novel. I almost laughed, but you never laugh at a full Jesuit or a full Doctor, so I merely said "Yes, sir". Since he asked the question, I can only assume he had run across people who were going to be writers who hadn't written anything, but that's what they were--people who were going to be writers. You're not qualified to be an official Struggling Writer unless you've written something--and don't give me that old "Writer's Block" excuse. That's like saying you're on the disabled list without ever having picking up a baseball. So if you haven't written anything, you might as well not read on.
   
   
3. A Lot of Stamps.
   I mean a lot of stamps. What they say is true, you should receive quite a few of rejections before you get published anywhere. If you don't, well, I don't want to talk to you any more. I must have gotten your share of rejections, too. And at four stamps on the envelope to the magazine, four for the SASE (for short stories and articles mailed flat), that works out to $2.32 per submission. It's more than a lottery ticket, and this should illustrate that you do need the idea you'll succeed (if you want to get lucky, go to Vegas) and a lot of stamps.
   
   
4. A Stiff Upper Lip.
   And, as you receive a lot of rejections, it might hurt. You might wonder as you stare at your ceiling as the shadows of the tree outside your window dances in the wind because you can't sleep why you bother going on when all you get are a few compliments from your friends who are probably lying anyway and form letters that were probably written by the same insensitive clod with Rejection Forms Incorporated from every magazine you ever submit to and you might be tempted to give it all up and get into a respectable and lucrative racket like flipping burgers at the local McDonalds, or maybe that's just me. Keep a stiff upper lip, though. It just takes a while, and once you're in somewhere, it'll get easier. Or so they tell me. Keep trying, and if you want a bit of my personal technique, try a dash of arrogance. Remember that that poor overpaid pencil-pushing mousy looking illiterate moron of an editor wouldn't know a good piece if it was shot through his or her window with a flaming arrow. It's an immature response beacuse deep down I'd like to project the failure onto the poor editor rather than the quality of my writing. If you can rationalize it, use it. It works for me.
5. A Paying Job.
   By no means confuse this with a REAL job. I realize that being able to support yourself without writing takes much of the authenticity out of the poverty-stricken living-on-the-streets romantic image of the struggling writer, but if you can almost pay the bills, it's easier on the stomach lining. Besides, the real world experience you gain will give you ideas for stories and characters, essays and articles, and you will have the expertise to carry it off. The things I have learned as a produce clerk will be invaluable when I start my great novel featuring tomatoes and overripe watermelons as main characters.
   
   
6. A Sense of Humor.
   A sense of humor is helpful in any profession, and it is completely necessary for a writer. Not only will you be able to laugh heartily at lawsuits ("I plagiarized WHAT? I slandered WHOM?"), but you will also look at old things in new ways and give you endless material. Plus, Reader's Digest pays $300 for short anecdotes, and you don't have to write them well, and if you're shifty enough, you don't even have to live them--just don't tell them I told you so. A sense of humor keeps me going--I have a collection of my rejection slips that I have kept, and I take pride in showing them off to friends. No, wait, that isn't a sense of humor, that's masochism. Maybe I should have added "A Sense of Masochism".

Well, there you have the official Brian J. Noggle method to becoming a struggling writer. To become a good writer or a published writer is something else entirely, and I'd give you advice on either of the above subjects if I had experience with them. Heck, if you find a good list or magic potion that will give you either of those two powers, give me a copy or mix me up a batch.
- posted by Brian J. @ 4:43 PM   0 comments

 
Margin For Error
The common assumption that you're fairly safe if you're worth more alive than dead to your peers and family overlooks a slight margin for error available in the equation. The incorrect equation:

Aw > Dw

that we think keeps us from being killed for our insurance benefits pits that value (Dead Worth, or Dw) against potential for future earnings and the future unrealized monetary value of the goods and services rendered as a friend or husband (Live Worth, or Lw) keeps us feeling pretty safe that we won't get bumped off as long as we remain productive. However, this equation does not capture the slight margin of error represented by the transitional cost. Because we're actually alive right now, a certain amount of fiscal impact would occur in the transition. That is, we need to add to the Aw a certain expense involved in the actual death, whether it's $10,000 for a contract killing, a couple dollars for some poison, a couple cents for a bullet, or the trouble of changing the pillowcase after the smothering. Ergo,the correct formula should be:

Aw + CoK > Dw

That is, you can remain comfortably safe if your Dead Worth remains lower than your Alive Worth and the Cost of Killing you.

And that, my friends, is what passes for optimism some days in the mind of Noggle.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:20 PM   1 comments

 
Book Report: The MENSA Genius Quiz Book by Marvin Grosswirth, Dr. Abbie Salny, and the members of MENSA (1981, 1990)
I picked this up at a yard sale or at a book store cheap, much like the MENSA Think Smart Book that I read in 2004.

This book is the same schtick, with chapters on different kinds of puzzles. Unfortunately, this book's previous owner had penciled in a number of the answers, which really rather spoiled it. I mean, I was trying to prove or disprove those answers instead of answering them myself.
So it's worth a quick read and a couple pieces of silverage, but for Pete's sake, open it up and make sure it's unmarked. Don't fall prey to the same problem I did. Unfortunately, the next time I pick up one of these books used, I'll not remember to do that, ultimately proving that I am not MENSA material.

Books mentioned in this review:

 

- posted by Brian J. @ 7:26 PM   3 comments

 
Police Encourage Driving While Distracted
Police: Cell phones a weapon against drunk drivers:

Many drivers in Missouri and Illinois are armed with an important device to combat drunken driving: Cell phones.

With cell phone use on the rise, drivers are being encouraged to report vehicles that show the telltale signs of driving under the influence, such as swerving into the shoulder and crossing the centerline.

For safety's sake, take your eyes off the road and dial.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:58 AM   0 comments

 
Swapping The Good For The Citizens For Good For The State
Missouri bill would trade casino loss limits for a tax:

A Senate leader proposed a new twist Monday in the long-running debate on loss limits in Missouri casinos.

Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, wants to remove the $500 loss limit per two-hour period and impose a 1 percent tax increase on casinos. Money generated from the changes would be directed at a new scholarship program available to all high school graduates attending a public or private Missouri higher education institution.

You see, they placed this artificial cap on spending to make sure that the casino clients had to fritter their savings away on the riverboat "cruises" (that's what the two hour periods represent, time when the boats would be "cruising" the river; quaintly, riverboat gambling was supposed to take place on boats, not on buildings in an inch of picturesque river backwaters engineered to appease the letter of the law).

But never mind artificial tips to concern for the citizenry; there's money to be made on it.

Coming soon: decriminalizing murder for hire and replacing it with a licensing fee structure, permit requirements, and an excise tax.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:52 AM   0 comments

 
He's Already Denied Links To "Hard" Money
McCain denies links to 'soft money'

His ill-guided support--and passage of--campaign finance reform (aka "make the trained monkeys dance faster when the fundraising organ grinder plays so they can gather smaller peanuts and empower the * Congressional/Senate Committee or Unattributable Issue Advocacy Groups) has ensured I won't support McCain for president this time around, his attempts to deny candidates access to any money now is misguided.

Or maybe I misread the headline.


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

 
Post-Dispatch Comments Inappropriately On Performers' Weight
Dixie Chicks are big Grammy winners

Hey, now, that's just inappropriate. I realize Natalie Maines has run a little more voluptious than most contemporary magazines would idealize, but must the Post-Dispatch add disproving adjectives to their headlines?


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:07 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: High Profile by Robert B. Parker (2007)
Oh, my God, they killed Rush Limbaugh.

Well, maybe it's not really supposed to be Rush, but a national radio/media figure is strung up in Paradise, Mass, and that means Jesse Stone has to figure out who did it. It's a decent enough crime fiction piece, but it's padded out with the Stone/Randall era Parker relationship musings.

Unfortunately, whereas the Susan Silverman/Spenser stories have 30+ years of real novels to work through, where the relationship was often secondary and vividly lived in Spenser's adventures, in the Stone series the Jesse/Jenn Stone issues are actually co-hosts (and, apparently, the Sunny Randall/Richie issues are special guest stars). Stone, his lovers, his shrink, his co-workers, and pretty much all of the eastern seaboard represented in this book spend an awful lot of time talking about not understanding what's wrong with Stone and his "love" for his ex-wife.

Which almost ruins a decent crime fiction story.

You know, if it evolved as small portions of the books or if the crises were lived out instead of talked out, I wouldn't mind so much. But these Stone novels really do amp up the worst portions of the Spenser novels. As though the fans were saying, "More psychobabble, less detection."

But I still buy all the latest Robert B. Parker books new.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:07 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Fields of Wonder by Rod McKuen (1971)
Man, no one can make the quest for sex true love seem as banal as Rod McKuen over the course of several books. I had nice things to say about In Someone's Shadow; I endured Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows. But this book? Blech.

I started reading this to my poor son, but his mother heard the first couple of lines of the first poem:

I began by loving nobody.

Then nobody's face
became the face of many
as I traveled not to Tiburon or Tuscany
but battled back and forth between the breasts and thighs
of those who fancied for a time
my forelock and my foreskin.

Well, I guess that is a bit graphic. But it's not sexy; it's the banal wanderings of a poet narrator beginning the 1970s hangover to the era of free love. Worse, it's the pseudo-stylings of a longing romantic who seems to be longing for a collection of faceless body parts in his quest for real love or real feeling.

The clever turns of phrase I thought were present in In Someone's Shadow? Nothing. Sure, these poems are as accessible as regular prose without the line breaks, but I didn't want to.

Worst of all, I have a couple more of these books left.

Oddly enough, the course of these books makes me more tolerant of Emily Dickinson's misfires. Over the course of the 1,775 poems collected in the volume I've been wading through for over a decade, Dickinson's pieces run the gamut from simplistic to inscrutable to wow, but her average seems slightly better than McKuen at this point.

Which is why she was taught, almost, in college in the early 1990s, some 130 years after she wrote most of her poems, and Rod McKuen was not, some 20 years after he became an industry unto himself.

Books mentioned in this review:

 
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:59 PM   0 comments

 
The Field of Dreams Development Strategy
If you build thousands of lofts downtown, will thousands of loft dwellers appear from the corn fields? Maybe not:

Even the strongest supporters of downtown growth say that, at least in the short term, demand isn't likely to keep up with the supply of new units.

"I don't want to be naïve about it," said Jim Cloar, executive director of the Downtown St. Louis Partnership. "There's quite a bit coming online in the spring, and there will be a natural drop-off (in occupancy numbers). But in the next few years, it will get better."

Demographics, however, suggest it could get worse before it gets better.

In all, 834 rental and 471 for-sale units are under construction downtown. Another 2,669 rentals and 865 for-sale condos are proposed or planned over the next five years.

If all of the proposed units are built and occupied, the downtown population would increase by about 9,800 people in less than five years. That would be a 50 percent increase over the growth rate from 2000 to 2005, based on the downtown partnership's estimates.

The culprit for this glut? The Keynesian flat tire:

But many developers keep going because projects are being driven by tax incentives, such as historic tax credits, rather than market demand, said Dan Woehle, first vice president for CB Richard Ellis, a commercial real estate services company.

"It would be better if the units come online as the demand builds, but developers are scared that the incentives are going to go away," Woehle said.

Kinda impedes thoughts of the downtown revitalization, eh, Williams?


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:44 AM   0 comments

 
Earthlink Parties Like Its 1997
Wow, sending free CDs for a dial-up Internet service:



Dude, when someone comes to you with a marketing plan exhumed from a time capsule, it's for historical perspective, not implementation.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:41 AM   1 comments

 
The Wrong Use For A Parachute
Golden parachute cradles Harrah's CEO

Some people, even "professionals" can hurt themselves with metaphors.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:23 PM   0 comments

 
Waiting For the Mail
Sometime in my younger days, when I was living with relatives in St. Charles, Missouri, I got it in my head that receiving mail was a grown up thing, and that it was prestigious to get something in the mailbox with my name on it. Particularly if it said "Mr. Brian Noggle" on it. My Uncle Jim got stuff all the time like that, and I hoped he was impressed when I did. Hey, I was twelve years old, and it was seemed like a good idea at the time.

I managed to mail away for some anti-abortion arm bands that Jerry Falwell was sending out, and once you're on Jerry's list, you can plan on being Jerry's list for a long time. I also found a religious magazine, the Plain Truth, that mailed out free booklets on request, so I got a good helping of those sorts of things. For a while, I was reading quite a bit of religious material. Strange, when you look at my general lackadaisical religious attitude these days, that I was quite a conservative little guy, almost, at one time.

Well, through my various machinations and an abortive flirtation with subsidy publishers (I was going to send in my first volume of poetry by December 1984, I seem to recall--I was still twelve years old, but ambitious), I managed to get myself onto a number of mailing lists. Hopefully my uncle was impressed, but then I moved out of his house and my love of receiving mail followed me to Murphy, Missouri. I was still getting stuff from The Moral Majority, but eventually they realized I was broke and/or disinterested so their trickle ceased altogether. Somewhere along this time, I sent my first short story, "Cricket: A Dog's Life" to McCall's magazine, or maybe it was "A Walk in the Park" to Hitchcock's, but the transition began.

Soon the only things coming in the mail were the usual money-bearing cards from relatives for holidays, but when I started to send my works into magazines, there started a new flow of --well, rejection slips for the most part, but with each article in the mail, there is always the hopes of publication, and those self-addressed stamped envelopes could be the bearer of wonderful news. The beauty of this, I suppose, is that the possibility of money from heaven (or at least the Postal Service) all year round, but then it is based on my ability and not the duty of relatives--and so far, the return has been so nil that I often question my ability. But, with each new piece and each new mailing, there is new hope, so I continue on.

There is a half hour to go until today's delivery. What could it bring? Well, it is the end of the month, so at least there won't be any bills--which, as a full adult, I have come to recognize as a majority of modern mailings. I even look forward to bills, probably for some deep philosophical reason that they affirm my objective existence or something. I could, in theory, get an acceptance letter from a magazine--I currently have several submissions on the wing, er, on the postman's back. More likely than not I shall receive at least four rejection slips, which would be fine, too. I only have a rejection slip from one of the five magazines, and the other four would be wonderful additions to my rejection slip collection.

I could, in theory, get a letter from one of my friends or my brother in Hawaii, but I just visited Missouri in June of 1993, and so no one would be writing me this soon. The possibility exists, though, and anticipation is tickling my stomach.

I could also get some little catalogue of something strange and wonderful- -such as the Firebird Arts and Music Catalog that I get every season even though I have not actually purchased anything from them in five years or one of the computer catalogues that have discovered me. Probably, though, if I get anything, it will be a notification of the urgency of a sweepstakes entry or the application for an American Express card--if there is one constant through life, it is junk mail. It has lost its relevance in my life, but it keeps on coming.

But, I must say, it makes me feel like a grown up, and an objectively existent one at that.


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

 
Althouse Embraces The Marabel Morgan Lifestyle
Maybe not, but I read her post yesterday that invoked Marabel Morgan's The Total Woman, and I recalled my book review.

Who knew I would be that far ahead of the curve in its defense?


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:28 AM   0 comments

 
Name That Muzak
Heart, "Alone", Bad Animals, uh, Capitol Records, 1987. No, I don't think years of working in the retail industry has changed me at all. I mean, I have come up with maybe a few, A-ha, "The Sun Always Shines on TV", Hunting High and Low, 1984, Warner Brothers, character tics.

Like playing Name That Muzak. I realize it might not be the sanest thing in the world, but I like it anyway. To relieve those long hours of tedious, repetitive hours of labor on a sales floor (unless, of course, my bosses are reading in which it was challenging and intellectually satisfying, of course), a couple of associates and myself might have taken to playing guess the song that's piped in to the store.

Our store doesn't have the variety with, "Passionate Kisses", Mary Chapin Carpenter, lyrics, so it always poses just that little bit of mental work that gets us through the day. There's nothing like hearing some strange thing done on a piccolo and determining it to be, "These Eyes", The Guess Who, it's on These Eyes, a re-release I own, a song you know. It impresses your friends anyhow.

The rules are simple. Just take, Denise Williams, "Let's Hear it for the Boy", Footloose soundtrack, the next song that comes onto the Muzak wherever you have to suffer through Muzak. It's always better if there's someone with you so that you don't go babbling off titles to yourself in a crowd of strangers, though. Try and place the melody and name it.

The points are scored for naming the song, the artist, an, "Three Time Loser", Dan Seal, album the song appears on, the year it was released, the record label, and any covers of the song since then. Points are also given on how well you lie if you don't know any of the answers, but can quickly spiel off an answer that might really be it. Easy tips for this are to pick the song title or the artist's name as the album title, and hitting one of the big players for the label. That way, "Life in the Fast Lane", the Eagles, Hotel California, 1976, Asylum, you can get points and not even need to be right. A knowledge of music helps, but is not essential.

No points are scored during the Christmas season, however, because there are only so many Christmas songs to go around. Points can be scored, too, if you can name the artist that is doing the Muzakal rendition, but if I come across anyone that does, I won't play. I can't stand losing to people who are either that big into Muzak or who can lie that much better than me.

Contrary to popular belief, "You Belong to the City", Glenn Frey, Miami Vice Soundtrack, this innocent pastime does not become a compulsion, and you will not find yourself blurting out random titles and singers in restaurants, elevators, malls, or other public places. Even if, "Don't Fear the Reaper", Blue Oyster Cult, it does, they can't put you away for it.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:26 PM   2 comments

 
Putting Too Fine A Point On It
Robert Isenberg writes a piece called Private Eyes Exposed wherein he looks at some of the plucky and adorable gumshoes of television private eyes. Here's his list:

• Jessica Fletcher (Murder, She Wrote)
• Columbo (Columbo)
• Monk (Monk
• [Hercule] Poirot (Poirot)
• Cagney and Lacey (Cagney and Lacey)
• Matlock (Matlock)
• Dr. Mark Sloan (Diagnosis Murder)
• Perry Mason (Perry Mason)

Come on, doesn't everyone see the problem here? A list of private eyes from television, and we've got:

• Author
• Police detective
• Police consultant
• Detective
• Police detectives
• Attorney
• Medical doctor
• Attorney

Even at our most giving, only two of these characters can be considered true private detectives.

What about:

• Cody Allen, Nick Ryder, and the Boz (Riptide)
• Spenser (Spenser: For Hire)
• Sonny Spoon (Sonny Spoon)
• James Rockford (The Rockford Files)
• Thomas Magnum (Magnum, P.I.)
• Rick and A.J. Simon (Simon and Simon)
• Laura Holt and Remington Steele (Remington Steele)
• Maddie Hayes and David Addison (Moonlighting)
• Mike Hammer (Mike Hammer)

Now those were some television private eyes. I guess it's also apparent the decade in which I did most of my television watching.

What about you? What are your favorite television private eyes that were actual, you know, private invesigators?


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:57 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Mortal Prey by John Sandford (2002)
So here's a book about an elite assassin named Rinker coming to St. Louis to settle some old scores. I can relate to that.

So this is the second book in a row featuring a female assassin out to avenge the loss of her family (see also Dirty Work). In this case, it's a woman whose boyfriend and the father of her child are killed in an apparent hit in Mexico. As he belonged to a crime family, the common knowledge is that he was the target, but the woman bolts and returns to America. She, an elite assassin, was the target. Now that she's lost the baby and her lover, she wants to end the war her way.

So she makes her way to St. Louis, where she had been a hired gun for some organized crime figures. Since she had once danced with Lucas Davenport (in an earlier book, no doubt), he comes to St. Louis to help the FBI track her.

She goes on a pretty good tear, shooting her enemies and hanging out in my current environs, but then she kills an FBI agent, and they turn serious.

Come on, I was reading the book not so much for the plot at that point, but to see how well Sandford did with St. Louis. He spent some time here, that's for certain, because he gets most of the details right. Th better he did, though, the more the game became to spot the inaccuracies. Like when Davenport talks about the town of Ladue, as though the municipality were anything but a suburb. Or when he continually capitalizes the C in Laclede's Landing. Or, most egregiously, when someone rushing out of Soulard gets onto I-44 instead of I-55. Silly Minnesotan!

So it was more fun than playing pin-the-fakery-on-the-Randisi.

So I liked the book enough; as you know, gentle reader, I'm becoming a minor Sandford fan. However, like the aforementioned Dirty Work, the book ends somewhat poorly. There's a murder at the Botanical Gardens, an improbable escape and recovery, and then even more of an improbable final act that ends in the death of the elite female assassin. But it won't stop me from reading further Sandfords, which is fortunate; this book represents the earliest of the three or four my beautiful wife gave me for Christmas, and I have to read what's on the shelves.

Books mentioned in this review:

   
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:42 PM   0 comments

 
Home Depot Tries Jedi Mind Tricks On Its Customers
I caught the headline of the pad of entry forms as I stood in line to buy nine volt batteries, and I didn't think it was legal, but closer examination told me that the Home Depot had it covered:



Spend $100 and Enter, No Purchase Necessary

Maybe that's more Subliminal Man from Saturday Night Live. I don't know. I do know, though, that Home Depot was hoping to push those $95 spenders into buying an additional hardback book or bunch of candy to make up for it. I feel bad for those taken in by it, particularly on the day I was in the Home Depot and saw the forms. February 4. Over a week after the contest ended.


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

 
Okay, That IS Creepy
Embedded within a story entitled Coroner kept man's heart after autopsy -- mom wasn't told, we learn about a family's victorious litigation that forced health officials to turn over the heart of the young man. And what the family did with it:

The couple keeps his heart in a polished, inlaid wooden box in their bedroom.

Imagine that burglar's surprise when he goes for the jewelry.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:21 PM   1 comments

 
Making Like Yin and Yang
Dominique and Tristan:


Click for full size


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:13 PM   0 comments

 
Well, It Was Only A Derringer
Come on, like you've not accidentally let a small pistol slip through:

Lambert Field police never found what appeared to be a pistol that slipped through an X-ray screening machine Friday night at the airport.

Five flights were delayed and a sixth bound for Toronto was diverted to Detroit so that officials could re-screen the hundreds of passengers who had filed through Concourse A to the flights.

The incident began about 6:30 p.m. when a Transportation Security Administration screener reported what was believed to be a double-barreled derringer handgun on an X-ray monitor.

Airport police arrived within two minutes, said Chief Paul Mason. But the suspicious item and the man who brought it through security had left the area. Investigators reviewed surveillance video of the area but could not identify the man who may have been carrying a the weapon.

I'd expect it wasn't really a two-shot derringer, but the fact that they could not immediately identify it, where they saw it, or the person whose luggage in which they saw it troubles me a great deal.

No doubt more inconvenience and government employees would help avert this situation in the future.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:54 AM   0 comments

 
Into the Memory Hole
Man was arming for 'war,' FBI says:

A St. Charles man obtained fully automatic weapons and tried to buy as many explosives as possible in preparation for what an associate called "war," the FBI says in court documents.

He bought three rifles and a Claymore anti-personnel mine and negotiated for a case of hand grenades, documents obtained by the Post-Dispatch show.

His name wasn't Devlin, otherwise we would have heard about it for three weeks.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:38 AM   0 comments

 
I Suggest A New Strategy
Let the Wookiee win: not just a strategy for holographic chess knock-offs.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:27 PM   0 comments

 
Finally, A Medical Product I Need
Today's unsolicited offer:



You know, I have been lonely ever since I got rid of those lice.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:22 PM   0 comments

 
Morale Spy

Covertly Uncovering a Company's Employee Morale During the Job Interview

When you go on a job interview, common advice reminds, you interview the company as much it interviews you. Remember, just as you might exaggerate that you have ten years' experience developing .NET on Linux, the company might embellish its resemblance to a happy television family. Whether the company represents the Cosbys or the Bundys, participants in your four-hour interrogation will concur that the company represents the Panglossian best possible workplace. Managers want to fluff the company's stock price. The proletariat wants more proletariat to share its burden. If the company demands twelve hour days or offers daily browbeatings, no one will tell an outsider. You would only learn true company morale after you started unless you conducted a little reconnaissance during your interview.

To gauge employees' true attitudes toward a company and its working environment, you can reconnoiter two locations in the building: the kitchen and the bathroom. In most cases, no professional employee bears the task of cleaning these locations during working hour. Contrast these areas with conference rooms, such as the one wherein the company will grill you, which the company keeps fastidiously clean and presentable for interviewees, roving executives, and venture capitalists. The regular grunts in the trenches don't spend that much time lounging in conference rooms. On the other hand, many non-executive employees use the kitchenette and the bathroom, and you can glimpse their corporate pride and morale in these utilitarian locations.

During your interview, ask for a tour wherein you can see the kitchen, or at least the coffeemaker alcove. If the company doesn't offer a coffeemaker for employees, politely but quickly end the interview and flee. When the interviewer breezes you through the kitchen, pay attention to the counter around the coffeepot and the sink. Dirty dishes on the counter can indicate bad news. Coffee stains might indicate that the poor souls working for the company are too overworked to wipe up after themselves. The company has too few resources for what it does, and you better not have personal plans on Saturdays. Untended spills might also indicate that the employees here delegate cleaning to, or worse yet assume it will be done by, underlings or the new guy.

A clean kitchen indicates that the other employees handle their spills and mistakes. Or they want to make a good first impression on the employees who might wander in after them. Such ambition and drive is good. Or maybe they're just decent, clean people. Regardless, a clean countertop bodes well.

You can apply the same observation to a bathroom used exclusively or predominately by employees. If the company has its own campus or building, look for a bathroom behind the receptionist's desk to provide the best intelligence. Ideally, you could review such a facility before your official interview begins, but don't be afraid to ask the HR person to whom you hand your official application about the nearest bathroom before he or she hands you off to the real interviewer.

While you're straightening your tie or fixing your makeup, check for paper towels on the floor. They can indicate that employees have creases a little too tight in their pants to bend over and pick up what they drop. You can also examine the counters for excessive water/soap residue. If the employees don't wipe up after themselves, who will? Look for graffiti on the stall walls, urine on the toilet seats or, worse, vice versa. If the employees show less concern for their workplace than for a tavern, they'll probably show you the same tenderness they show a beer-scented conversationalist in that same tavern.

Regardless of the company line during the interview, nothing describes the other employees' care and attention to detail, as well as their overall job satisfaction and pride, as how they treat those corporate spaces for which they have no direct responsibility but in which they can, and often will, make individual messes. Your surreptitious health inspections represent a quick and dirty way to find out how quick and dirty the company operates. The snap judgments you make are no less valid than the snap judgments that the company will make about you based upon the color of your slacks and the length of your hair.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:58 AM   0 comments

 
Jim Doyle Embraces Precursor to Tourism Decline
Governor on-board for $13 rental tax:

Gov. Jim Doyle will back a $13 increase in the rental car tax to pay for new commuter trains connecting Milwaukee to its southern suburbs and to Racine and Kenosha, a Doyle spokesman said Wednesday.

The three-county increase was recommended Tuesday by the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Transit Authority. If the Legislature approves, the RTA's portion of the rental car tax in Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha counties would rise from $2 to $15, in addition to other state and county taxes that total up to 22.6% of each car rental.

Local officials love to fleece the visitors to their fair locales. And when the tourists stop coming because they don't want to be fleeced any more, local officials spring into action to expend tax dollars to promote tourism.

Because the source of all goodness is also the goal of all goodness. Tax money, thy symmetry is holy. Amen.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:28 PM   1 comments

 
Devlin Also Cleared In Murders In Whitechapel, 1888
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch doesn't fail to get its headline with Michael Devlin's name in it today: No ties confirmed between Devlin and other missing children:

No definite links between Michael Devlin and other local cases of missing children have surfaced in a two-week investigation of the accused kidnapper, authorities said today.

But Sgt. Al Nothum of the Missouri State Highway Patrol, spokesman for the multi-agency task force performing the probe, said the investigation had just begun.

- posted by Brian J. @ 5:13 PM   0 comments

 
Post-Dispatch Headline Needlessly Savages White House Press Secretary
Snow: Just enough to mess things up

Now that's not called for.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:10 PM   0 comments