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Musings from Brian J. Noggle
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Thursday, June 28, 2007
Book Report: Spare Change by Robert B. Parker (2007) Robert B. Parker phones in another Sunny Randall novel. I can't say it any better, especially after this:
"Smith and Wesson," he said, "revolver..." He bent over to look at the barrel opening. "Thirty-eight." He leaned forward onto his hands and straightened his legs and did a kind of pushup so he could smell the gun. "Been fired recently." He eased out of the pushup and got his feet under him and resumed his squat. "But not in this flower patch," he said, "unless he bothered to clean up the brass." "I'd look over there," Belson said, and nodded at the swan boat dock. Quirk continued to sit on his haunches, looking at the flower bed. "Stay with this, Frank," Quirk said. "I'll get some crime-scene techs over here, but I want you to be the only one touches the gun, okay?" Belson nodded. "You bag it, label it, take it to the lab, stay with it, wait for it." "Okay, Marty," Belson said. "Nobody but you and the lab guy touches it." "Okay, Marty." "I'll get some divers to look in the water for the shell casing," Quirk said. "It's good," my beautiful wife said after she read the book first because I was mired in Anna Karenina. "It's focus is on the crime and not Sunny Randall's life." Oh, but no. We have the extraneous chapters on Sunny meeting with Dr. Silverman, her therapist; chapters on Sunny reconciling with her ex-husband; chapters on Sunny interacting with her dysfunctional adult family and recognizing the dynamic about how it revolves around her father; and chapters on a sideplot about what a mess her friend Julie is. Oh, and the crime. A serial killer returns after 20 years. Sunny knows immediately who it is and then has to prove it. The case turns on a discovery that, when thought about after the end of the book, is quite poorly handled as a means of moving the plot along, and we get the same sort of ending as in Shrink Rap: Sunny puts herself in danger with one of the father figures in the background ready to save her, but she saves herself in a redemption of you-go-girl violence. Sadly, I'm reading the Sunny Randall series (and probably the Jessie Stone series) out of habit now. I look slightly more forward to the Spenser books and the Westerns, but. But. Book Report: Lake Shore Journal: Jim Marshall's View from the Bridge by James R. Marshall (1999) I bought this book as part of the "Everything you can fit into the bag is $1" sale at Christ the King church earlier this year. Since I only found five things I wanted, size of the bag be condemned, I paid $.20 for it. It's signed by the author and inscribed, and it came with a flyer from a Lake Superior nursery (the plant kind) as a bookmark, so it's quite a deal, especially since I liked the book. The book collects a number of Jim Marshall's columns from the Lake Superior Journal in the 1990s. The columns touch on the history of the lake and area quite a bit with a number of stories about friends and running his boat, the Skipper Sam II, on that inland sea. The book offered me a number of ideas for essays and whatnot about the region and a strong urge to visit. I mean, I'm from Wisconsin and all, but I'm from southern Wisconsin. The book also reminded me that we don't have white birch trees in Missouri. Might not have red squirrels, either. I swear, there are red squirrels in the northern part of Wisconsin and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan. Those previously forgotten and almost fantastic memories of my youth. So pick it up if you're interested in the region or if you just want to do a little exploring from your chair. I liked the book so much, I'm considering subscribing to Lake Superior Magazine, although Jim Marshall died last year, so I won't enjoy more of his stories. It looks like there are another six or seven years of the column online, though. What an excellent ambassador for the region. This book, too. That's Not What I Call A Slam Dunk As some of you St. Louis hockey fans might know, the St. Louis Blues "traded" for exclusive rights to negotiate with Keith Tkachuk:
This morning, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch runs a story fed to it by sources that the Blues have made a contract offer:
Friends, I'd hardly say this is a slam dunk. Releasing the story and turning up the huzzahs as a negotiating tactic indicate Tkachuk isn't jumping at the deal. Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Book Report: Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (1877, 1992) Well, in my book report for From the Corner of His Eye, I said:
Well, after making that crack about the Koontz book, I decided to pick up the Tolstoy again to see how it compared. Well, it was certainly longer than the Koontz, and it took me three weeks of almost nightly reading to complete it. But it was still time better spent than From the Corner of His Eye. Where Koontz drops in a chapter for nothing more than melodramatic foreshadowing, Tolstoy adds a theme. So it's better than the Koontz book, not that anyone had any doubt. And in case you're wondering, pages 287-600 are a string of Anna Karenina moments, but I have more patience and discipline now. For those of you who haven't read it or its attendant summary documents, the story revolves around several threads in the Russian aristocracy circa 1870. Mr. Oblonsky has a dalliance with the help, and his wife Dolly is put off by it and wonders what she'll do. Anna Karenina, Mr. Oblonsky's sister, talks to her. Meanwhile, Mr. Oblonsky's friend Levin, a country gentleman, has come to ask Dolly's sister Kitty to marry him. She, though, is flirting with Vronsky, who's a flirt and has no intent to marry her. But when he meets Anna Karenina, he's smitten and leads her into an adulterous relationship that will last hundreds of pages. The book follows two main story arcs: the illicit love of Anna and Vronsky and Levin's search for happiness and faith. The subthemes, of course, deal with the relationships of the aristocrats to each other and to the peasants and their children. There's something for everyone, someone to whom everyone can relate, and plenty of heft in case you need the hardback for self-defense. An interesting bit about the translation: It was translated by an English person who often threw in British coinage to make the denominations more relevant to the English reader. So when you're talking whole bills, you hear about roubles, but when it switches to kopecks, suddenly you're talking about shillings or farthings. Which is really weird to an American reader. Or even an English reader some years from now when they're using Euros or Rials in Britain. It's a book that provokes some thought because it's classical literature, and it makes me want to write a paper on it. Does Levin really become a Christian? How would I match these heroes up to The Fountainhead characters? That sort of thing. But, although I own War and Peace, I'm not diving right into it. I have a pile of books to read, and knocking down to a 17 per year pace won't clear my to-read shelves. A Good Deal, But The Shipping from Sudan Is Expensive An eBay auction for a lot of 10 Female Christian Artists. Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Central Planner For Rent: Cheap Here's a fellow who thinks suburban development is over and that the American public doesn't know it yet:
American expansion, of which suburban expansion is the latest and most myopically pooh-poohed by those who look down upon single family homes, starts before even Manifest Destiny. People who came to America came here to escape crowding or busybodies telling them how to live their lives. Most of America still doesn't like those things. Those who do are welcome to the decaying urban cores and the artificial mixed use developments in the suburbs. Instead of recentralization into urban cores, I expect we'll find alternate means of transportation to and from our strip malls with their excessive retail space (more retail space = more choice for consumers, but some people don't think average people need choices; those elites think the average person needs diktats). With the Internet and technology serving to decentralize workplaces (and even provide decentralized shopping), I think the trend toward stretching out and thinning population density will continue. But don't tell those elites who want to live in crime-ridden, mismanaged urban centers that. They need their pipe dreams. Would You, As A Friend, Tell Me? Am I bruchleidend? ![]() I saw this ad inside the back cover of the Milwaukee America Kalendar 1924 I bought this weekend, and it asked a question we all must ask ourselves daily: Bruchleidend? Because if I am, I definitely need to send off to a far away city to get a set of four suction cups I can wear around my waist to help with my bruchleidend condition. Heather informs me that I cannot suffer bruchleidend, as those are obviously a woman's hips in it. Google's translator tells me that bruchleidend means "break-suffering," which I sometimes have been known to feel (if bruchleidend means "Dreading the last minutes before you have to punch back in after scarfing a submarine sandwich and a quart of orange juice in 7 minutes"). Given the language barrier in addition to the archaic nature of the advertisement, I cannot be clear whether this was an actual, outdated, treatment for something, snake oil of some sort, or some mechanism to part German immigrants from their American dollars. As a matter of fact, given that it appeared in the back of a magazine and has a tarty line drawing, perhaps I've blown my PG-13 rating on my blog by including it. Monday, June 25, 2007
Hmmm. So Greenville, Illinois, home of FCI Greenville: ![]() Has a realty company named: ![]() Does anyone else find that a bit peculiar? My Kind of Legislator Democratic Party attacks on Fred Thompson identify a feature:
Apple Growers Fear "China," A Euphemism For Loss Of Federal Money Apple growers fear China: Lower wages make it difficult for U.S. to compete:
But the growers who have made this mountainous region the core of apple-growing in Pennsylvania worry that they face a new challenge that may be too big to overcome and could change their way of life. Like farmers in the bigger apple-producing states, they are becoming increasingly anxious about the prospect of China flooding the U.S. market with their fresh apples - an event many believe is inevitable, even if it could be years away. They saw what happened in the 1990s when Chinese apple juice concentrate made it into the United States. Prices got so low, some U.S. juice companies were forced out of the U.S. market. Growers could no longer afford to grow apples just for making juice. No, let's identify what the apple growers fear today:
UPDATE: Jay Tea isn't afraid of Chinese apples. Sunday, June 24, 2007
Good Book Hunting: June 23, 2007 How far will we drive for a book fair? Well, friends and readers, that answer now stands at 65 miles one way, as Saturday we travelled to Greenville, Illinois, home of FCI Greenville and a small contingent of housing on the Illinois prairie. Heather found a book fair listing on BookSaleFinder.com, the only nearby book fair for any number of weeks, so we packed up the baby for his first long car trip and went. Heather printed out a set of directions from MapQuest and failed to actually retain names of the location of the book fair or the name of the group hosting the book fair. Still, I won't knock her navigational abilities nor the wisdom of working from MapQuest directions too much since we did actually get there alive. We got there about 30 minutes after the starting time, and no one was in the gymnasium of the church. Apparently, the ad said the fair would include 40,000 books, and perhaps it did; however, nothing really tempted me, and for the first time, Heather bought more books than I did: ![]() Among my choice purchases:
Probably about my commentary on her navigational abilities. Nancy Pelosi Fails QA Well, not Nancy Pelosi herself, but her Web site has gotten the wrong sort of attention on the blogs recently (here and here and so on). It's a simple Macromedia Flash presentation embedded within a Web site, but it has a number of problems that a trained eye would have caught. First and foremost, whomever created the presentation used stock imagery in the most sloppy manner; they chose, to represent a story on American military medical care, a stock image of someone with a uniform featuring an epaulet talking to a doctor. Unfortunately, that epaulet said "CANADA": ![]() Her political opponents (of which I am one, don't get me left) were quick to seize upon this as something more than a failure (or lack) of quality assurance, but they're just looking for something to make noise about anyway. Still, someone who reviewed this with any degree of exactitude would read all text and identify any extraneous logos within stock photography. And someone would have read "Canada" and said, "Uh, no....." This particular failure has been remedied, as the slide that offended the bloggers no longer appears. However, the site still fails QA in the following manners. At the change of each slide, the text from the first slide ("Green the Capitol") displays during the transition. Now, unless you're actually trying subliminal advertising, perhaps you don't want this to occur. Perhaps you want a smooth fade of the words and the fade in of the new slide. Still, unrelated text shouldn't appear: ![]() Next, the embedding of the Flash object is faulty. It gives the user too much control over the behavior of the object, including the ability to zoom so that the images appear pixellated or the text displays outsized. Since the Flash object has a certain set size, only a portion is visible, like this: ![]() Finally, as you should know if you build Web sites for a living (or pretend to), Macromedia Flash Player is a plugin whose presence should not be taken for granted on the user's Web browser. Any time you provide animation or other documents through plugins, you should provide a handy mechanism so that those users without the plugin can get them if needed. Does Nancy Pelosi? No: ![]() Instead of a static graphic or a link to Macromedia Flash Player, we get empty space. That Other America that I'm always hearing about, the one without Flash, gets left behind. I am tempted to go into metaphors about legislators whose Web sites aren't checked before they're put up and the implications for legislation, but I'll save that for another blog post and will point out that a couple of hours' worth of time of a trained Quality Assurance professional would have ferreted these issues out before releasing it to the public, sparing embarrassment and also sparing someone the "emergency" of fixing it. But, hey, if you don't want to spend that money or budget on quality assurance, you roll the dice. Sometimes they don't come up snake eyes, but when they do, you'll pay for it. Users, Consumers Find Web Technologies To Be Mere Tools In a stunning turn of events, the components of the Web 2.0 phenomenon are seen by users as mere tools, and those users have very little loyalty to particular tools:
James Joyner (past client of my company Jeracor, just so's you know) sums it up thusly:
One Fewer Check or Balance A legislator tells an unelected member of the executive branch to change the law:
That was the whole point. But if you cede responsibility, you can cede the blame. So long as you keep the fat paycheck and the "prestige" (single digit approval rating), I guess. (Link seen on Dustbury.) Unfortunately, He Killed On Double Count Thursday Either the reporting's incorrect, or there's some serious end-runs around double jeopardy in play here:
Book Report: Suspension Bridge by Rod McKuen (1984) Spare the Rod and spoil the child, that's my new motto. I continue reading Rod McKuen poetry at my son (at because he's often only in the room when I'm reading poetry to him these days; he's at an interim age where he's too engaged in moving around and his own projects to sit quietly on one's lap for reception of book knowledge or storytelling). I do so even though I'm really unimpressed with most of McKuen's work past the middle 1960s, and my positive impression of the remainder of his work only moves him from bad poet to mediocre poet in my estimation, but I'm not Allan Bloom, so you don't have to take my word for it. There's so many Rod McKuen books floating out there you can probably pick one up for a quarter somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised if you could find them for free in a mass landfill buried with old Atari E.T. cartridges. This book refers back to Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows with the additional reflection of fourteen years' elapsing. The poet has endured a number of relationships moving on in that time, so all the poetry is extra-sepiaed. A particularly devilling tic in the book is its name-dropping; a large number of the poems are dedicated to someone and many more use names as shorthand for the passage of time. Frankly, it doesn't work for me because I don't know who he's talking about. Unfortunately, McKuen suffers additionally from my recent reading of Carl Sandburg. McKuen comes out better when I've just bitten off a chunk of Emily Dickinson than when I read someone who's enjoyable and deep. One more down, several more to go. I also have this weird sense I am going to try to get a complete set of McKuen's works just because I can. That, friends, is the drive of a diseased book collector. Friday, June 22, 2007
Found Poetry The sad, lonely life of an unrequited lover recounted using the date due flap of an obscure academic tome as the metaphor: ![]() Thursday, June 21, 2007
A Clarification and Defense of Masculinity When my wife came home from a recent evening event, she saw that I was watching Alex & Emma on DVD. "You're watching a chick flick!" she said. "I am not," I defended, "It's an author flick." Allow me to justify my behavior. Although I concede that it has all the earmarks of chick flick feminine wish fulfillment:
Ho Hum: Art, Curator Expect to Make Squares Uncomfortable Again Another art exhibit exalts itself in making the hoi polloi uncomfortable. Just like the last untold number of "art" exhibits:
Gallery owner Philip Hitchcock expects the "Body/Building" display to unnerve a few people, but he hopes to accomplish more by challenging the status quo. "If people are uncomfortable with those images, and they ask themselves, 'Why? What chord does that strike in me?' If they go that far, then as an artist and a curator, I have done my job," Hitchcock said. I prefer art to be evocative and uplifting. That sort of thing takes insight into the human condition and talent. Shocking me only requires the artistic equivalent of a Taser. And guess which sort of thing I buy. The More The Merrier On the other hand, the netroots activism of the Democratic party might be better for the Republicans than expected. I mean, look at the potential Nader ponders run, calls Clinton 'coward':
The only way this could be better would be if Markos Moulitas himself ran, too. The Republicans could almost elect Mark Foley in that field. (More on Instapundit and Outside the Beltway.) Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Litigious Culture Imperils Doctors The litigious nature of our society is again imperiling our access to health care and doctors: Mo. doctors to sue over midwife law:
The measure was approved by lawmakers last month as part of larger health insurance bill signed June 1 by Gov. Matt Blunt. Most of the bill won't take effect until January, but the section on midwifery becomes effective in August. Opposition to the midwifery provision is led by the Missouri State Medical Association. The organization's lobbyist, Tom Holloway, said the group expected to file suit to block the provision next week in Cole County Circuit Court. Doctors suing to keep health costs up so that they can continue to receive their rates for delivery and hospital stays or whatnot. I'm not going to argue about whether it's better to have a child in the hospital surrounded by expensive scientific instruments unneeded in most deliveries or at home, chanting in a Gaia circle with a midwife. You know, that's where freedom comes in. People can choose the stupid or the merely less ideal. But not if this collective of Missouri doctors has its way. Republican Party Improves Slightly NYC mayor leaves GOP amid White House speculation:
Frankly, that the Republican Party would have him in spite of his political views was an early indicator of its ease of sacrificing principles just to have one more official with an (R) behind its name. Monday, June 18, 2007
Headline Offers Cheap Psychological Evaluation Paranoia grows over Google's power Reuters headline writers were unavailable to surmise how people concerned about the reach of Google's data depth and related data mining actually went crazy, but Reuters headline writers did not have the time to work up a complete mental profiles. They had only time to diagnose that those people suffer from a delusional disorder or perhaps schizophrenia. Post-Dispatch Finds A Land Developer To Dislike The front page of the Sunday St. Louis Post-Dispatch and an Flash-enhanced online rendition finally take a land developer to task. Well, no, not "finally," since this land developer is only guilty of urging lawmakers to pass a tax incentive package that he'll take advantage of. The Post-Dispatch wets itself in joy whenever a developer throws citizens out of their suburban homes using eminent domain or when a developer strong arms the city into co-signing a loan from which the developer can (and often does) walk away. To say nothing of tax incentives, which the Post-Dispatch thinks is a good idea to lure any private retail, condominium, or sports endeavor to the city. I don't know why the paper decides to unload on this developer who acquired all the properties legitimately, although not obviously. Because he's one man who's white buying land in poverty-stricken areas? Because he live in St. Charles and hasn't made the proper show of buying a downtown loft? Who knows? All I know is that it makes all other Post-Dispatch pieces that laud crony capitalism absurd and hypocritical. Caption Contest Normally, I don't do this sort of thing because the paucity of responses is bad for my ego, but here's a photo begging for a quip: ![]() Here's my best shot: Think you can do better? Leave it in the comments. Remember, if there are no comments, I will win by default! You don't want that on your conscience, do you? Found Lost Mysteries Sawyer spends Father's Day grilling (for his daughter Clementine by Cassidy? For his son by Kate?)? Also, who is the mystery woman with the salad bowl, and how is she related to Sawyer? Man, it's going to be a long year. Saturday, June 16, 2007
All Right, All Right, I'll Post It That's the sound of me finally giving into myself. I saw this video on Ace of Spades and have watched it over and over: It's a nice tribute to Bob Ross of The Joy of Painting. I recollect catching Bob in his early years (ca. 1986-1988) and watching him on the local PBS station, broadcast over the air if you damn kids can believe it. I was twisting the knob, which was how we changed stations between the three to seven stations we could get with antennae, and I found his show early in my late middle school to early high school period, watching the grainy television from the top bunk in a bedroom in a mobile home sized to fit only a television, a bunk bed, and a dresser. I liked how easy he made painting landscapes look, and I watched it a couple weeks running. He tempted me to try some painting on my own, using stray watercolor paint set gift packs and the only canvases I had handy--the glazed tops of doughnut boxes my mother brought as our special Sunday treats from the local U-Gas. The doughnuts were the treat, not the boxes, you dang literalists. Man, I can picture one of my self-portraits in my head even now, wherein a rudely-depicted blond young man reclines under a tree. Fortunately, that picture reclines in a landfill somewhere now. Even if I could post it, I probably wouldn't; let's leave it at that. The year after I graduated, I was shipping/receiving clerk for an art supply store, and the shop carried a small set of the Bob Ross line of products. I remembered him fondly and probably caught an episode or two of his show for the then-kitsch value. He died while I was working there, a stunning blow that no doubt the sales staff, local students in art programs, brought to the back room with a combination of sadness and smugness. Based on the quality of my art work, I didn't have youthful superiority to spare, so I was only sad. The aforelinked video touches me with nostalgia and a hint of that sadness, but also pleasantly amuses me with the music and with the sense that maybe, yes, Bob Ross would have felt that way about the message his laid-back style conveyed. Friday, June 15, 2007
Book Report: Harvest Poems 1910-1960 by Carl Sandburg (1960) I read this collection of poems at my son. I say "at" instead of "to" because he's getting mobile and is no longer a captive audience. Still, I pick the book up and read it at him as he plays so he can hear my voice. Wow, I've read McKuen, Cohen, Dickinson, and L'Engle in the last couple of years. I've also worked on a small survey of John Donne (yet to be completed). In doing so, I've really missed out on good poetry with rhythm. These poems by Sandburg direct your cadence and really are fun to read. The turns of phrases make me pause and remember them so I can say them aloud and sound smart. As a matter of fact, I've used several lines from Sandburg as IM statuses, so that indicates how clever and insightful I think they are. As its title suggests, this book collects poems from over 50 years, but most of them come from before the depression, when the poet lamenting war was still referring to World War I. Sandburg's themes include a sort of homily to the common man in the Midwest, a distaste for war, and a belief in God. The charged themes are handled lightly enough that they're observations and not proselytization. So they're palatable where we differ. As I said, this is a collection taken from several books, so it's a step up from the poems from an author you'd find in an anthology (Yes, "Grass" is in here as is "Fog"). So if you've liked Sandburg from the anthologies, check this book out and see if you like the rest. Me, I liked this work so much that I'm going to look for the complete collections from which these poems were selected, and I'm also almost inspired to actually write more poetry. Thursday, June 14, 2007
That's Not A Bug Centene ruling may have 'chilling effect':
"The decision will have a chilling effect on any community government thinking about invoking eminent domain," Case said. Bloodthirsty Blog Don Takes Another Life I was shocked today to read that Mr. Wizard had died (via Instapundit). How many more generation X celebrity icons must fall to this madman before we resist? (Aw, but who can resist an Instalanche? Not me!) Wednesday, June 13, 2007
One Thing, Unfigured Out I read an article from Bizjournals.com about varied job backgrounds because, brothers and sisters, I was not just born the pestilence onto software that I am. So this article tries to tell me how to use that: A diverse background isn’t necessarily a problem, but two things struck me. One, this quote:
[holds up one finger] Curly: This. Mitch: Your finger? Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don't mean shit. Mitch: But, what is the "one thing?" Curly: [smiles] That's what *you* have to find out. ![]() Well, I guess I have found my one true thing, the story to tell my future interviews and clients. Sometimes Blight Means, You Know, Blight Missouri courts block expansive definition of blight, disgruntling land-rustling developers and their greedy municipal sidekicks:
The upscale city failed to prove that property in the 7700 block of Forsyth Boulevard was blighted, the judges ruled in a 6-1 decision favoring landowners who fought condemnation. City officials began the process to take the land in late 2005 as a site for a $210 million office-retail complex whose future is now in question. Under the ruling, developers who seek to use condemnation to take land from other private owners will have to give proof that the property is not only old or of obsolete design but that it impacts health and safety as well. And for the kids in the Mystery Machine, this is also good news, since it will force developers to once again rely on the trick of convincing land owners that the property is haunted, and hey, that made for great cartoons. One Stop Shopping As Jack Travis said in Lethal Weapon 3:
Officials are still trying to determine how much dynamite, C-4 and other explosives were taken and exactly who was responsible.
They were stored properly in the federally approved storage magazine, which resembles a large construction Dumpster, Schmitz said. In the novel or screenplay I build from this, the crooks/terrorists/bad guys will just use a construction truck that hauls away large construction dumpsters to pick it up. Maybe I'll even make the bad guys disgruntled land developers. They'd have access to that sort of thing and a strong urge to blight an area. Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Just Watching It For The Commercials I've found myself watching YouTube renditions of various and sundry commercials and "viral" advertisements lately. Once a series grabs me, I like to watch a pile of them, which makes them amusing if not effective. Brand awareness and affinity? You bet. First, thanks to a post on StLRecruiting.com, I started watching the "Making Things Right with Pete and Red series" for Haggar: These represent an extended version of some television commercials. You can find the HaggarFilms list on YouTube here and on the Haggar site here. And, if you search around on YouTube, you can find others and the 30 second cuts that appeared on television. Makes me want to go out and buy pants. Secondly, when Carl's sued Jack in the Box for its Angus commercials, I went right out to review the advertisements in question. Here's one: Using YouTube's related suggestions and search mechanism, I found a number of other of the commercials I liked. I watched some that I'd seen on television. Particularly "The Intern," which I watched again during the creation of this post. Carl's probably made a mistake bigger than hiring Norm MacDonald to voice its star. So then I went to find an old Bud commercial with the beavers because every now and then I think the tagline Naughty little beavers and want to use it in professional conversation but I cannot without it sounding, well, worthy of a call to HR. But I'll embed it here because the more it becomes known, the less chance I'll have to think of euphemisms for "fired for sexual harrassment" to use in job interviews for "Why did you leave your last job?" Or the "Willy! It's go time." commercial: Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't drink Budweiser if I was drowning (which, ultimately, makes no sense). However, I like the commercials. What's my point? Oh, yeah, if you're all slavering to get into Web 2.0 advertising--that is, to save money on actually distributing/running your adverts, you probably ought to spend money on the production of them and make them amusing and funny enough to warrant further watching. Sure, it's cheap, but so's a blog, and if this blog serves any lesson for you it's that you can have a steady Web presence, but just because you put it out there doesn't mean you're doing your clients any favors or garnering any attention. And here's the only YouTube commercial I have ever bookmarked: Folger's Happy Morning: The last coffee I bought was Folger's, partly because I was trimming expenditures from the $20 a pound stuff but partly, perhaps, because I enjoyed an amusing video that I could watch over and over again for the same set of amusement. Monday, June 11, 2007
Must Be An Al Qaeda Cell Bogus storm reports probed: FBI joins search for fake warning source:
The service began getting the reports in mid-April through an online form on its Web site. The areas affected by the reports have included Milwaukee, La Crosse, Chicago, and Lincoln, Ill., said Tom Schwein, chief of the National Weather Service's systems and facilities division for the central region in Kansas City, Mo. "We've been detecting a regular pattern of a person who has been submitting false severe weather reports that are constructed in a way that seem very realistic," Schwein said. "Whoever this person is seems to have knowledge of severe weather reports. When they send in reports, they seem very plausible."
Sopranos Ending Comment Tony flying back and forth across the Pacific, whacked out on OxyContin, hoping to get back to the island? I mean, that sucked. Maybe She Should Have Shot Her Husband Dead Let your child drink at home: 27 months in jail:
Today she begins a 27-month jail sentence imposed by courts in Virginia – where drinking is banned for people under the age of 21 – for "contributing to the delinquency of minors". On the less serious end of crime, we have shoot your husband dead, 210 days in jail:
A judge sentenced Winkler to three years of split confinement in connection with the shotgun slaying of her husband in March of 2006. Of that, she's been ordered to serve 210 days in jail. Respect for law and order continues to erode as society contemplates how serving liquor to teenagers is considered a far more serious offense than shooting someone in cold blood. (Links seen on a big victory, Dr. Helen.) Sunday, June 10, 2007
That's An Expensive Twinkie A blow-in from Capper's offers something less than a deal: ![]() The headline implies that the issues are $14.95 each, which is $179.40 for a year's subscription. Somewhere, a proofreader or QA professional might have indicated that the headline was unclear, but this was overruled by someone in a hurry to get the proofs off to the printer. No one would get that impression and mock the magazine/its brand for the headline. Oh, how wrong you are. Mock. Mock. Good Book Hunting: June 9, 2007 As promised, my beautiful wife and I attended the St. Charles Book Fair this year for the third year in a row. Last year, my beautiful wife was also my very pregnant wife, so this marked the first time we ventured to the convention center was a trio instead of a duet. The book fair is apparently becoming more popular, as it was more crowded this time out. A large number of people stopped to socialize with each other in front of the tables of books, too. Popularity and population make book fairs annoying. I mean, what's with the people who review these tables from left to right. Don't you realize it's easier to read the spines if you move from left to right? I jumped large sections of tables when encountering the meandering throng of people after something in particular instead of avaricious book hoarders like me. I mean, when you want something for sure, go to eBay or something. Don't spend hours lingering over the mystery table hoping you'll find a first edition of A is for Alibi. You probably won't. The selection was good, though. Perhaps slightly too good. The volunteers continued to put out books as space opened on the tables. As you know, this discourages the seriousish collector in me, as I will automatically assume I've missed stuff and accellerate my browsing when I see that no matter how dilligently I review all titles, I will have missed something by the dint of its addition after I passed. Brutha, that's too much like professional software quality assurance, my day-to-day existence, for me. Still, I found a pile of middle McBain era books (Heat, Tricks, Bread, Mischief) and an Evan Hunter crime novel (Criminal Conversation). I picked up two John D. MacDonalds (More Good Old Stuff, a second collection of short stories in hardback and The Lonely Silver Rain, a late Travis McGee novel I bought because it was a 3rd printing and although I suspected I have a 1st printing, at $2 a hardback, it cannot hurt to be sure). I picked up some unknown bit (State's Evidence because it had a cool cover and I already had picked up a box I needed to fill), the sequel to The Total Woman, a couple of Neil Simon's plays (but I didn't buy the one by Tom Stoppard that I saw), a couple of mysteries by old school mystery writers Ellery Queen and Rex Stout, a nonfiction book by Mike Lupica, a book of predictions for the next 20 years written in 1980, a book on how to fix audio and visual equipment, a Where Are They Now book written in the late 1960s which could better be cast as Who Remembers These People in the 21st Century (James Lileks for one and perhaps me in a couple months), and a book entitled Overlooked Treasures about collectibles that few people collect. You can see I was somewhat discriminating in mysteries, but once the box started filling up, my threshold for purchase dropped as it usually does. I limited myself to one box, fortunately. The book fair offers dollies, and if one of the volunteers had seen me schlepping 40 pounds of books and offered me another box and a dolly, well, let's just say the stacks below would have been taller. Here's the result, $67 dollars later: ![]() That's 27 books for me, 10 for Mrs. Noggle, and a collection of 10 cent audiocassettes that will provide our iTunes with a massive influx of 80s music (and, judging by the presence of an Eric Carmen tape, plenty of flashbacks for me). So this weekend I bought half as many books as I read this year. Which means that I'm somewhere like 60 books in deficit now. Personal Chart History My beautiful wife got me a set of musical reference books from a garage sale or book fair. The titles include The All Music Book of Hit Singles which compiles the top 20 singles by month from 1954 through 1993 and provides the results in monthly charts for the United States and the United Kingdom on opposite pages so you can compare the two. Each page has three such charts and 3-4 bullet points of trivia for the quarter. I thought I could go through these charts as my nightstand book, a book I read in very small snippets in the 10-15 minutes preceding sleep on the occasional nights where I am in bed and the lights are on for those minutes. Ultimately, it wasn't a good choice, because I found myself opting for sleep rather than reviewing historical charts (I only made it to 1959). So as I took the book from the nightstand and removed the bookmark, I flipped it open to the late 1980s, a time period where I was more directly related to the music on the charts. The book fell open to July 1988, and suddenly I was there: ![]() I don't mean I was suddenly at the page, because although I was suddenly on that page, that's not worth commentary. No, friends, suddenly I was in July 1988. It's late at night. We only got to stay up until 9pm (well, we had to be in our rooms at 9pm, but the de jure 9pm evolved to de facto 10pm or thereabouts) on school nights (in high school, no less). In July, 1988, we've moved from the mobile home in Murphy to the single family home down the old gravel road (Ruth Drive, or Route 5 alternately but less so at that time). The house was far into a valley from the nearest two lane state highway (MM, which runs from House Springs through Otto and onto Antonia); if we were so inclined, we could walk about 30 minutes to that T intersection where Heads Creek Road met MM, but rarely did, since it was another 40 minutes to Otto or an hour or more to House Springs on the two lane, no shoulder highway. At the time we moved in, the valley offered spotty television reception from St. Louis and did not have cable television. Or private telephone lines. At the end of Ronald Reagan's presidency, we still had to pick up the phone receiver and make sure none of our neighbors was using the line before placing a call. Party lines, they called them. But I didn't have to worry about that late at night. Or much during the day, either; we weren't the most popular children. Our mother took great pride in moving us way into nowhere where she could afford $40,000 worth of house on over an acre of land, most of which was flat. We had trees, we had a lawn that it took 3 hours to mow with push mowers (not reel mowers, thankfully), and we had a shady spot with poisonous snakes. We even had one or two kids who didn't want to beat the snot out of us on sight. The house itself was a ranch with an attached two car garage and a full unfinished basement. Three of the bedrooms were bedrooms, and a fourth room that could advertise as a bedroom (with basement access) served as our computer room. A grey computer desk held our Commodore 128 (yes, that desk). I spent many nights that summer seated on the wooden folding chair in front of that grey/beige keyboard, typing programs in from Ahoy!, Compute's Gazette, Run, and Commodore Power Play into memory and saving them onto old floppies. While I typed those old programs in, a shelf audio system with cassette deck, turntable, and tuner played the songs from that chart. It would have been Y 98; 103.3 KHTR had already changed to oldies a couple years before. Y 98 hasn't altered its format that much and still uses the KYKY designation, so it's probably due to change to smooth jazz any time now. I can almost close my eyes and remember the bookshelves to my left, the battered metal office desk to my right holding an ancient Remington electric typewriter and a 1960s styled electronic word processor that could save your documents to cassette and could print them on rolls of paper. Even then, once in a while, a feeling of future nostalgia would wash over me and I would press the sounds of the trees outside the window and the stillness of the house into my memory for someday. Somedays like today. My brother was just turning toward the harder rock, so he would have favored "Pour Some Sugar On Me". "Make Me Lose Control" and "The Flame" both acutely remind me of that particular era and, indeed, the particular selfshot of me at the computer, trying to proofread typos or to enjoy the always disappointing simple little games that resulted. Late at night, me and that Commodore 128 after everyone had gone to bed. Until the cable company pulled its lines and private phone lines behind it, I wouldn't even have Bulletin Board Systems again. Just me, that radio, and the Miami Sound Machine or the soul of "Terence Trent D'Arby", whom I mocked then and continue to mock now. Some years later, I would have disposable income and would own a number of those songs on cassette or 45, but then I only had the radio and the endless time of youth in the summertime, nights to spend typing from magazines and dreaming of a future whose days and nights matched those, but better. And here I am. Saturday, June 09, 2007
Congressional Hearings To Follow Milk price to take jump:
Driven up by high transportation costs, an increase in feed prices and even a drought in Australia, the price of milk is likely to rise by up to 40 cents a gallon over the next few months, dairy market forecasters say. Cheese prices could go up by 60 cents a pound. If the increases occur, a gallon of whole milk would cost an average of $3.78 nationwide, based on the U.S. Department of Agriculture's monthly survey of milk prices in 30 metro areas.
That's My House That's how we used to call it, back in the housing projects in my youth. We'd say, "That's my car" or "That's my house" when we saw something particularly snappy. Like this house, whose description in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel says:
How it works: A section of a built-in bookcase is a door set on vertical piano hinges, which keep it upright as it rolls open on casters. The media room sees a bookcase, and the bedroom sees a door. Image here. Unnecessary Program Must Continue, Program's Budget Recipients Say Few Francis Howell high schoolers test positive for drugs:
A little more than 2 percent of mandatory random tests of Francis Howell District high school students were positive for drugs, administrators said Thursday. Jim Joyce, the district's director of communications, said 16 of the 660 random drug tests came back positive, finding marijuana, amphetamines or cocaine. But obviously, the program must continue because parents are clamoring for it:
Coming soon, a Rapid Response Counseling Team equipped with surplus military gear and no-knock warrants to make you understand drugs are bad! Friday, June 08, 2007
Can't Get Enough Book Reports? Well, if you can't get enough book reports from this blog, you could always go to Tiny Little Reading Room, which is Tiny Little Librarian's book review blog. Thursday, June 07, 2007
History Made, Old School Hockey Fans Weep For the first time in history, a hockey team named after a Disney children's movie has won the Stanley Cup. Hoping for a comparable result, Art Davis has changed his team's name to the Oakland Little Mermaids. Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Book Report: Dirty Linen by Tom Stoppard (1976) Perhaps this was a funnier play in 1976 in London. Maybe it was written specifically to get Luan Peters into lingerie onstage. But it's about dalliances of Members of Parliament that are threatening to diminish the public's respect for them and a select committee designed to deal with it. Except all the members of the committee have dallied with the clerk who's supposed to take notes for them. There's an interlude that's called a second play (New-Found-Land) designed to shout out to a London theatre luminary at the time. Overall, to British and sort of dated. Which is why I wouldn't expect to see it as is onstage any time soon. But no doubt someone in America would be able to adapt the theme and ride Stoppard's name for a production of it. Book Report: From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz (2000) I cannot believe I read the whole thing. This book clocks in at almost 600 pages, overwritten the whole time as though Dean Koontz single handedly has to support a struggling simile factory in southern Georgia. He layers his similes like an onion; even when you peel away all the layers of the metaphor, it's still an onion. To Stephen King's Shakespeare, Dean Koontz is not even Ben Jonson; he's that other guy they don't even offer survey courses for. Let's see here, there's a plot: a guy murders his wife for no reason (no, it's because he's a psychopath trying to broaden himself by killing the woman he loves); he becomes obsessed with the name Bartholemew. Also, he raped this one underage girl, who has a baby girl. A woman who's pregnant has an auto accident on the way to the hospital that kills her husband; his last request is that she name the boy Bartholemew. The underage girl dies giving birth, so an aunt raises the girl. The children are prodigies who can also go other places. The boy goes blind. A cop chasing the psychopath gets left for dead by said psychopath instigates psychological warfare against the psycho. And the psycho kills people. Meanwhile, Koontz dedicates many pages to similes, many paragraphs to minor characters with only roles as extras, and we navigate through several plot lines ultimately related but whose relationships are not too compelling. Then, after 500 pages, we get a three page sudden climax, and then we can roll over and go to sleep for the 40 page denouement that is supposed to tell the rest of the story about the kids and their powers. But come on. I could have almost read Anna Karenina by the time I was done with this book. I liked Odd Thomas well enough, tolerated Mr. Murder passingly, and just read Forever Odd. However, this book really has me dreading reading any of the other Koontz volumes on my shelves, and that's not a good kind of dread for a horror/thriller writer. It spills over to the unread John Saul books who are painted by being too close to the Koontz books. Don't bother with this book. Let me be a lesson to you. Also, Your Dogs Must Now Be Trained To Sniff Explosives Everything you own, citizen, is at the government's leisure and at its disposal. Or some government officials think:
Putting hazardous material sensors in commercial cell phones has been discussed in scientific circles for years, according to researchers in the field. More recently, the idea gained support among government agencies, and DHS said publicly in May that it wants businesses to start coming up with proposals. Not to worry:
I have no problem if this becomes a netcentric program like SETI At Home, but the government and its cronies in corporations don't play like that. Because the government knows what's best for you! Don't Forget To Cut the State-Funded Violins Announcing Each Program Cut The San Francisco Chronicle laments the death of a wasteful tax-funded project:
At least, that's been true for the last two years under the pilot Fresh Start program, designed to steer kids away from obesity and diabetes and toward healthy foods. But Fresh Start is in jeopardy just as preliminary reports are showing its initial success. In an effort to cover a $366 million funding gap in the education part of the state budget, the Legislature recently cut the $11.1 million that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger proposed to keep Fresh Start going in the next school year and make it permanent. The cut incensed child nutrition specialists and advocates. Tuesday, June 05, 2007
Passing On Left Parking Lane Apparently Okay With complicated rules expressed on road signs lacking punctuation like this one: ![]() Deconstruct and do what you want. Monday, June 04, 2007
Free E-mail Marketing Campaign QA ![]() Dude, your variable name is showing up in the subject line. If your replica watches are of the same quality as your QA, I'll pass. Besides, I have a real watch, I don't need a bracelet with numbers and hands painted on, thanks. Things I Can Do That My Father Cannot Blogs are getting a lot of pixel inches out of an essay entitled I Can't Do One-Quarter of the Things My Father Can, which plays into an Instapundit narrative about the loss of traditional male skills. In my defense, I'd like to point out that I know how to do a number of things that my father can't do. These include:
Fighting Words Threshold Lowered China says U.S. warning on toothpaste irresponsible:
"So far we have not received any report of death resulting from using the toothpaste. The U.S. handling (of this case) is neither scientific nor responsible," China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said in a statement posted on its Web site over the weekend. In some quantum universe, this is one of the beginning shots in a war between China and the United States. When its exports collapse because the Chinese Administration of Quality Supervision (motto: Good Enough For Government Work Is Good Enough For Everything) doesn't actually stop the country from exporting poisonous substances as consumables and customers die, China's economy collapses. To save face amongst its preening ruling elite, the country makes its desperate gamble for Taiwan and thar she blows. Part of my gift as a writer and a paranoia shidoshi is the joy of extrapolating the worst possible scenario from a bad press release. Fun With No Parking Signs (II) If you're driving around looking for something, it's good to have a marker to know where to turn: ![]() Since this sign is in Old Trees, the historic suburb in which I live, it's possible that we're looking at an historic no parking zone that tourists might want to visit. Fun With No Parking Signs (I) Here's a little personality test for you: ![]() If you look at that and think, "Wow, couldn't they have said that with a single no parking any time sign?", you obviously are one of those people who see the world in black and white, in parking and no parking. You cannot wrap your mind around the shades of grey, the layers of nuance between No Parking Any Time and No Parking Here To Corner. But then again, not everyone can go to college and get a ::sniff:: humanities degree. Sunday, June 03, 2007
Coming Next Weekend If you want a preview of next weekend's Good Book Hunting segment, John Sonderegger identifies the primary target. Saturday, June 02, 2007
MfBJN's Water Conserving Tips Instapundit linked to a list of Top 10 Great Ways to Save Water. This list was useless to me for the most part because it was geared to water wastrels in the first place. Criminey, here's the list:
You want to conserve water? Here's the MfBJN list for you, short form:
But I Am Not Fully Adjusted To The Life-Altering Segway Human Transporter Yet Reader's Digest hyperbolically identifies 25 Products That Will Change Your Life. The list includes:
Unfortunately, they've only changed my life by removing the couple minutes I spent skimming the article. At least I got a blog post out of it. Overheard In Old Trees Coffee Shop, Saturday Morning This morning, while out taking the morning constitutional with my boy, we stopped at an Old Trees coffeeshop for a pastry and caffeinated beverage. In the sofas by the window, four of the eight Republicans in Old Trees had gathered, even though we know we should avoid grouping in one place because we're easier targets. Because let's face it, Old Trees is not a Republican enclave. The upper six figure and lower seven figure houses often sprout INSTEAD OF WAR, INVEST IN PEOPLE and NOT IN OUR NAME signs more frequently than dandelions in the lawns and many cars still bear Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers or the resulting sour grapes quotes like "So Many Republicans / So Few Jail Cells." But the group was out in force, speaking loudly and excitedly. A partial transcript follows:
Friday, June 01, 2007
Someone Would Hit It This post is getting a lot of hits for Jessica Cutler today, apparently because she just filed for bankruptcy. Which helps traffic since I'm not posting anything much this week. |
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."
"I will." Heather L. Igert, angelweave.mu.nu "Genuis." Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times "Some wanker." Kim du Toit, on the Noggle Library. "Brian J. Noggle apparently forgot that the proper design for a tin foil beanie calls for the shiny side out." Robb Allen, Sharp as a Marble. "I'm weeping openly right now. Thanks for hurting my feelings, pinhead." Bob Rybarcyzk, St. Louis Post-Dispatch Instapundit Protein Wisdom Ace of Spades HQ Wizbang! Outside the Beltway Robert B. Parker Dustbury Damn Interesting Michelle Malkin Radley Balko's The Agitator Exultate Justi The McGehee Zone Signifying Nothing The Jawa Report Master of None Dr. Helen The Anchoress Electric Venom Kim Du Toit Belmont Club Little Green Footballs Overtaken by Events Rocket Jones Boots and Sabers Triticale Ann Althouse The American Mind Ravenwood's Universe Asymmetrical Information Boondoggled VodkaPundit Professor Bainbridge Virginia Postrel Ken Jennings Joanne Jacobs Faster Than The World Dilbert Blog Junkyard Blog In DC Journal IMAO Baldilocks Powerline Q and O Hugh Hewitt Buzz Machine Daniel Drezner Roger Simon American Digest Blackfive The Volokh Conspiracy Cold Fury Captain's Quarters Tim Blair Chequer-Board Emperor Misha Just One Minute Blame Bush Inaniloquent Trey Givens OverLawyered Suburban Blight Another Rovian Conspiracy Angelweave Bad Example Rachel Lucas View from the Porch StL Recruiting a big victory Spector's Hockey Fark /. TechDirt F*****d Company CNet News Joel on Software James Lileks Mark Steyn Bob Rybarczyk Richard Roeper Neil Steinberg John Kass Steven Chapman Drudge Report Ananova Slate Reason's Hit and Run Best of the Web Today National Review's The Corner Tech Central Station Fox News CNN Washington Post Washington Times Chicago Tribune Chicago Sun-Times Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel St. Louis Post-Dispatch San Francisco Chronicle New York Post Shepherd Express Riverfront Times New York Observer ScrappleFace Bob from Accounting The Onion Top Five List David Letterman's Top Ten BBSpot U.S. Constitution Declaration of Independence Snopes.Com (Urban Legends) Dictionary.com Internet Movie Database Complete Works of Shakespeare Marvel Directory Blooberry HTML Reference
Visualize World Hegemony
Cog in the Machine
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