Book Report: Webster Park: 1892-1992 by Wilda H. Swift and Cynthia S. Easterling (2003)
This book wasn't even on my to-read shelves; I went to the library and actually checked it out. Since we moved to Old Trees from our twenty-year-old incorporated-out-of-convenience suburban municipality to an older town, I grew interested in the history of the area and whatnot. It's an interesting set of neighborhoods with homes that don't all look the same, and so I borrowed a couple of books.

This particular one deals with a land development that's now a neighborhood not far from here and details the first 100 years of its existence with an essay about its origin and early years, an essay about the governor and the Nobel Prize winner who lived here, some early maps, and an inventory of the homes and when they were built.

I enjoyed the book, which was a quick enough read and lots of pretty pictures. It's given me some architectural insight (I know what a gambrel roof is) and some historical knowledge (I know how Big Bend got its name). These are the sorts of things that make people wonder how I learned the trivia I know, and these are the sorts of books I read to get that knowledge.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:51 PM   0 comments

 
Trash Talking While I Can
The Rams are so low in the football standings that, if they lose another game, they'll fall completely out of the football standings and be in first place in the NHL Eastern Conference.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:12 AM   0 comments

 
One of These Things Is Not Like The Others



- posted by Brian J. @ 11:04 PM   1 comments

 
Critical Mass To Celebrate Anniversary, Beat Helpless Drivers
Here's a nice, friendly fluff piece on tonight's Critical Mass bike ride in San Francisco: Critical Mass celebrating 15 years of free-form bicycle advocacy:

Tonight's Critical Mass in San Francisco marks the 15th anniversary of the rebellious rolling ride that locally has propelled the bicycle movement into the political mainstream and globally has been copied by hundreds of cities.

I guess that means the regularly-scheduled automobile driver story will be tomorrow, then.

And "free-form" activism means "violence," kinda like "activism" does nowadays. Check.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:43 PM   0 comments

 
Headline Presents Passive Voice That Frees Authorities from Responsibility
Notice the difference between the headline and the actual story: Last of roaming bulls found dead:

The bull was initially spotted in the 3800 block of Gasconade Street in St. Louis. People who spotted the bull called 911 and dispatchers alerted animal rescue workers.

The bull nearly ran onto busy Interstate 55, but crews were able to coax it away from the highway. The bull then took off and ran for about two miles south along railroad tracks. Crews pursued but the bull eventually stumbled down the steep embankment.

Crews tried to free the bull which had its legs twisted and wedged between boulders but the animal quickly went into shock and died.

"It's very disappointing," said Roger Vincent of the Missouri Emergency Response Service. "We were hoping to save him and send him on his happy way."

Oh, you sent him to a better place all right. These Animal Welfare Experts chased this livestock down a hill to its death.

If they were not Animal Welfare Expert Crews and were just normal people, do you think they'd be charged with animal cruelty?

I'm not saying they should be; I'm just saying that they probably could, unfortunately for those of us who are not experts.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:29 PM   0 comments

 
From Downtown, It's All High Ridge
Aged woman pulled from High Ridge fire:

An elderly woman who could be heard screaming Friday from inside her burning mobile home moments before firefighters arrived, has died.

High Ridge Fire District Chief Mike Arnhart said a neighbor called 911 and said she could hear the woman, who was in her 80s, screaming from inside the structure in the Brookside Estates trailer park in Fenton. Firefighters arrived around 2:21 a.m. and found the woman near a side door, Arnhart said.

Word to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Brookside Estates is not in either High Ridge nor Fenton. The region between Valley Dell Road or perhaps even Sugar Creek Road to the west and the St. Louis County Line is Murphy, or as my mother got into her head sometime Murphy Flats, although the area is not very flat at all.

The town of High Ridge is several miles to the west, although the border was generally considered Little Brennan or Sugar Creek Roads. Fenton, on the other hand, is a town inside St. Louis County and not in Jefferson County. It is, however, just over the hills from Brookside Estates.

And how do I know these things? Because for a number of years, I lived in Siesta Manor Mobile Home Park across Delores Drive from where this woman died, and in those years, that little mobile home park was my whole world.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:18 PM   1 comments

 
Lost/Stolen Computer Tapes Only An Issue If Thief Wanted To Steal Computer Tapes
In the worst calming commentary I've ever seen, some computer person comments that the theft of computer backup tapes is really only an issue when the person who steals the tapes knows how to get the information from the tapes.

Which means you're okay if the thief mistakenly thought the backup tapes were DVD players or something else you can sell for easy cash to any fence in the city.

Okay, then.

The danger in stolen computer tapes only happens when the burglar knowingly steals computer tapes.

All clear.

And I feel better.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:24 AM   0 comments

 
Coming Soon: Municipal Fines for Zoning Violations
Vick Indicted on Dogfighting Charges:

Michael Vick and three co-defendants were indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on state charges related to a dogfighting ring operated on Vick's Virginia property.

The grand jury passed on indicting the Atlanta Falcons quarterback and two of co-defendants on eight counts of animal cruelty, which would have exposed them to as many as 40 years in prison if convicted.

Vick, who already pleaded guilty in federal court to a dogfighting conspiracy charge and is awaiting sentencing on Dec. 10, was indicted for beating or killing or causing dogs to fight other dogs and engaging in or promoting dogfighting.

Double jeopardy? No, ha ha! It's different jurisdictions! So he's being prosecuted for the same action, with the same crime name, but it's not unconstitutional!

Ah, the innovations in the legal systems since our founding fathers put quill to paper. Not for our betterment, but it does wonders for prosecutors' conviction rates.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:56 PM   2 comments

 
Because It Doesn't Have An Annoying Dog Laughing At You
That's not a duck hunt. This is a duck hunt.


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

 
Zombie Accelerator
You know the phrase "wouldn't be caught dead in"? Doesn't that phrase really identify the garment in question as some sort of zombie accelerator? I mean, seriously, if you're planning your life-after-death, I guess it's worthwhile to think what sort of outfit will make you faster and all, but I have better ways to spend my time.

Like making long almost-puns that amuse no one but myself.

(This musing based upon this post.)


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

 
Surveillance Cameras Add To Security....Of Police
In Britain, the land of the night of 1000 eyes, 80% of crime goes unsolved. Apparently, the police over there don't use them to dispatch actual officers to dangerous situations, either:

A SCHOOLBOY has been caught on CCTV brandishing what appears to be an AK47 machine gun on a railway station platform.

The youngster, aged about 15, and a friend got the gun out of a bag and then allegedly aimed the weapon at a terrified crane driver working on the opposite side of the tracks at Newton Station in Hyde, Greater Manchester.

Driver David Wood rang his boss who filmed the incident on CCTV cameras and called police.

But after officers failed to turn up promptly, the youngsters disappeared.

So what are the cameras there for, if not to help solve crimes or to allow the police to dispatch officers to trouble spots immediately?

It's all about budgets and shiny things for government bureaucracies.

(Link seen on The Other Side of Kim.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:21 AM   0 comments

 
The Skrulls Attack!
Alien foe imperils KC conventions:

When the mayor named a 73-year-old grandmother to the city's park board -- which considers issues like off-leash dog areas and outdoor party permits -- the move might have gone largely unnoticed.

But Frances B. Semler's appointment could now cost the city millions of dollars because she is a member of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a group that advocates vigilante patrolling of the Mexican border and reports illegal immigrants to authorities.

Her membership has drawn sharp criticism from the National Council of La Raza, the nation's largest Hispanic advocacy group, and the NAACP. Both groups are threatening to show their displeasure by canceling conventions scheduled to be held in Kansas City.

Well, that's disappointing; instead of a real alien foe, we've got the normal victim groups threatening Armageddon over a secure borders advocate, both of which call her a racist no doubt with no self-consciousness that their very groups work to isolate and elevate particular races by name (Colored People and The Race).

I almost wish it were the Skrulls, because at least they shape shift instead of forcing everything else to change shape to accommodate them.


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

 
Good Book Hunting: September 22, 2007
Good Book Hunting: September 22, 2007 This week, we went exclusively to yard sales and the local elementary school PTO rummage sale. Here's what we got:
Click for full size

• A box of 94 comic books, including a number of Marvel mutant titles and GI Joe issues from the middle 1980s. They were marked a dime each or fifteen for a buck; how could I choose? I didn't; I took the whole box, including the duplicates. I blame it on the fact that I watched Mallrats last night.
  
  
• Zobmondo!, a collection of those silly question things to share with your partner.
  
  
• The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy, because I am on a sudden 19th century British lit kick.
  
  
• Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens, because I am on a sudden 19th century British lit kick. Honestly, I'd rather have handsome hardbound editions of both of these books, but if I need to read them first in paperback, so be it.
  
  
• Test Your Lateral Thinking IQ; a quiz book for a quarter. Maybe it will feed my ego, maybe it will teach me something, but at worst it will only have cost a quarter.
  
  
• A Guide to the Star Wars Universe; sure, it's not the Star Wars portal on Wikipedia, but it's a book, so I'll be able to geek out after the apocalypse.
  
  
• Babylon 5: The Coming of Shadows; I have seen like five minutes of Babylon 5 in my life, and I'm buying a book tie-in? I blame it on book-acquisition-drunkeness.
  
  
• Stealing From The Rich; apparently, a true story of some financial skullduggery in the oil industry. I'll learn something, surely.
  
  
• Fabricated Man, a textbook on the ethics in creating life/genetic engineering and whatnot.
  
  
• The Most of George Burns, a collection of several of George Burns's books. I've not read any of his work, oddly, but I found his television show to be riotously funny half a century after it appeared on television.
  
  
• Manhunt, the story of the twelve day hunt for Abraham Lincoln's killers. I think I read an article, excerpt, or review of this book in a history magazine this year.
  
  
• Winston & Clementine, Winston Churchill's letters to his wife. Given his life, these must be very interesting. Still, I should probably read some of his formal writing that I have lying around here first.
  
  

Additionally I picked up a VHS copy of Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame to satisfy my own morbid curiosity, DVD copies of Independence Day and Stargate (at $2 each, but for charity), and a CD collection of Sarah Vaughan. Heather got some CDs (at a quarter each, we probably should have bought them all and just tried the other stuff out) and some cassettes. The boy got, through our agency, a number of Choose Your Own Adventures.

Well, that should hold me for a couple weeks scattered across the next couple of decades.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:36 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: The Sum of All Fears by Tom Clancy (1991)
Wow, this book is 16 years old now and its subject matter is as relevant as it was then. The plot, as you know, deals with a set of terrorists who get their hands on a lost nuclear weapon and smuggle it into the United States. That's the first half. And if you didn't know the rest of it, stop reading now.

Then they blow it up at the Superbowl in Denver, and the United States president thinks it's the Russians, so the thing escalates into the brink of a nuclear war. Meanwhile, Jack Ryan struggles with the bureaucracy in the CIA and at the top levels of the government. Those struggles, and the inside baseball that goes with it, comprise much of the weight of this book.

The book compares with some of the classical literature I've read this year (The Three Musketeers particularly and somewhat with Anna Karenina) in that its cut scenes deal with a war and with a large cast working within and without of the government using intrigue and whatnot. However, this book is frightening in its possibility. Brother, after September 11, 2001, I had trouble watching the movie True Lies because it dealt with nuclear weapons smuggled into the US, and it's not entertainment if it plays to my deepest fears.

But the book moves along well, and Clancy is a master at torquing up the tension, although the ultimate climax really goes on too long with the heated exchanges between the US and Russian presidents. Also, the book refers quite a bit to A Clear and Present Danger, which I have yet to read, so many of these allusions were lost on me. But a good thriller if you're into that, and if you want to have nightmares about it.

I italicised Denver above, because the movie version set the Superbowl and the detonation in Baltimore, which holds with my thesis that terrorists could take liberty with pretty much anything between the Rockies and the Appalachians and nobody would care; obviously, Hollywood thought Denver was bucolic and backward enough that audiences wouldn't feel the tension and the shocking sense of loss that Baltimore, on the east coast, inspires. Also, apparently, the movie changed the terrorists to Nazis or something. Although there's an element of freelance non-Middle Easterners in the plot, make no mistake, it's Palestinians who blow up the Superbowl. But I've only seen Patriot Games and The Hunt for Red October as movies and I'm not in a hurry to rectify that "oversight."

I do have more Clancy on my shelves, comprising many shelf inches, so I'll get to them sooner or later, and I don't dread the prospect.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:08 PM   1 comments

 
In Unrelated News
Now that New York, the state, is planning to issue driver's licenses without proof of residency:

They were celebrating outside the governor's office Friday as Eliot Spitzer handed a landmark victory to a half-million illegal immigrants.

The state will no longer require proof of citizenship for driver's licenses.

"We're changing our policy with respect to getting more people out of shadows and into the system so people don't hide they're here," Spitzer said.

Can New York be far off from requiring drivers' licenses to vote?

Seriously, Spitzer is obviously in favor of the national ID card and passing off the costs the state should fund to the federal government.

Worse, states across the country tend to recognize other states' documents, but as we're seeing with this and with the gay marriage thing, states are starting to make infantile decisions that will eventually require national initiatives (like national ID cards) to cover things that states could handle. Some decisions by individual states are completely incompatible with federalist principles.

The good news, if there is any, is that Eliot Spitzer will, like Mike Bloomberg, never rise above a city or statewide office in that lunatic asylum on the Eastern seaboard.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:21 PM   0 comments

 
Advice to Police Officers in St. George Found Lacking
St. George officers get polite reminder:

Police Chief Scott Uhrig has given his eight officers a reminder about courtesy — and some words of warning — after one of his sergeants got fired for berating a motorist on tape.

"They know to be polite and courteous," the chief said, "and they've been advised, 'Stay on your toes. We don't know how many other Brett Darrows there are out there.'"

Not, "Don't be bombastic, treat citizens of other municipalities passing through our tiny one-stop light, city hall is just another house in the subdivision municipality-of-convenience as though they're the people you're supposed to serve and protect."

Just, "Don't get caught when being bombastic and not treating citizens of other municipalities passing through our tiny one-stop light, city hall is just another house in the subdivision municipality-of-convenience as though they're the people you're supposed to serve and protect instead of the mainstay of our city budget and outlets for your own egos."

Good work, Chief.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:33 AM   0 comments

 
Good Book Hunting: September 15, 2007
This weekend, we hit a couple of garage sales around our municipality, and we had a better result. For starters, it was less annoying; even though our occasional neighbors in Old Trees have signs proclaiming support for drawing and quartering the head of the nation, they're less frequent than the "we control the horizontal; we control the vertical" nature of the signs in Kirkwood. Also, I found more books, including:


Click for full size

• The Warden/Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope. Because it was an old edition, and I remember the name Trollope from something. Maybe I was thinking of Lionel Trilling, come to think of it. Oh, well, what will it hurt? I mean, other than these are the first two in a series of books set in Britain in the 19th century.
  
  
• Finch's Fortune and Wakefield's Course, two novels in a series about life at the Jalna homestead, home of the Whiteoak family, which take place in Canada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
  
  
• Mazo de la Roche of Jalna, a book about the author of the preceding books. Apparently, I have the fruits of one of de la Roche's two American fans.
  
  
• How to Read a Poem, in case I have been doing it wrong. I suspect most academics would tell me I have.
  
  
• London in Dickens' Day, a book that should help ground the Dickens books I'll be reading. As you remember, in my report for Oliver Twist, I lamented that all pre-20th century books' historical details kind of blurred.
  
  
• The Sociopath Next Door, so I can learn if I am tipping my pitches.
  
  
• Spanish Step by Step, so when I go on a refresher kick, I'll have one more textbook to read.
  
  
• Rhineland: Winter in a Missouri River Town, a low print run, very local history sort of book just because I could.

Additionally, I bought three VHS tapes to watch on a tiny 25" screen where the quality won't suffer (yeah, verily, I said 25" was tiny, because in the 21st century friends, it's iPod screens or what we used to call "Big Screen" televisions). These include:

• Mallrats, which I think is probably Smith's second best work (after Chasing Amy); reviewing this will help firm up or reject that thesis.
  
  
• Dirty Work, Norm MacDonald's finest work excluding the Hardee's star voiceover work.
  
  
• Kentucky Fried Movie, which I have never seen even though it's Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film.

Also, I got two record albums of jazz and big band sort of music and two CDs of the University City (Missouri) Symphony Orchestra. I didn't even know U City had a symphony orchestra.

Tomorrow is another Saturday, so no doubt I'll be trolling for a couple more books.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:13 PM   2 comments

 
Excellent News for Canadian Hockey Teams
Canadian Dollar Trades Equal to U.S. for First Time Since 1976:

Canada's dollar traded equal to the U.S. currency for the first time in three decades, capping a five-year run on the back of booming demand for the nation's commodities.

The Canadian dollar rose as high as $1.0008, before retreating to 99.87 U.S. cents at 4:16 p.m. in New York. It has soared 62 percent from a record low of 61.76 U.S. cents in 2002. The U.S. dollar fell as low as 99.93 Canadian cents today. The Canadian currency last closed above $1 on Nov. 25, 1976, when Pierre Trudeau was Canada's prime minister.

Because as we all know, the Canadian teams sell tickets in Canadian dollars but overpay their stars with American dollars. If this trend continues, the Stanley Cup will return to Canada where it belongs instead of states like Florida and California.

All economic news is good news for somebody. Funny how half-empty the press is with economic stories where it's half-full with stories about how criminals and other mal-intentioned people are really just like you and me.


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:23 PM   0 comments

 
So Which Animals Are More Equal Than Others?
Leonard Little, defensive end for the St. Louis Rams, kills a woman while admittedly driving under the influence (BAC .19) and is sentenced to 90 days in jail for involuntary homicide.

William Anderson, nobody in particular, kills a police officer while allegedly driving under the influence (BAC .154) and is sentenced to 7.5 years in prison for aggravated DUI.

Just so we plebes are clear, did Leonard Little get a lighter sentence because he was a football player, or did William Anderson get a heavier sentence because the victim was a police officer instead of a suburban mother?

Because these "nuances" of the law kind of look like special treatment for someone.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:07 AM   0 comments

 
Will No One Rid Me Of These Turbulent Property Owners?
Disingenius!

But Conrad wasn't able to acquire the properties targeted for development.

"The city put out the request without having control of any of the land," [Conrad Properties President Craig] Saur said. "We couldn't get key parcels under contract at a reasonable price. Sellers wanted higher prices than was economically feasible for us to develop the project."

He didn't want to use eminent domain to acquire the land, Saur said.

"We want to be in places we are wanted," he said. "If the city could get control of the land, they would probably have a lot more developers interested in the project."

Surely Saur doesn't think the city can make a better cash offer for the land. What does he expect them to do, use the Scooby Doo method? No, he's saying that he won't call for eminent domain, it would just be nice if eminent domain just happened.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 PM   0 comments

 
The Blink Tag in the Wild
Use Firefox and marvel at the wonder that is the <blink> tag!
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:09 PM   0 comments

 
Too Important Not Too Use For Cheap Political Maneuvering
The headline on the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel editorial? Editorial: Too important a job.

The lede?

Retired federal judge Michael Mukasey's credentials seem to make him ideally suited to be the next U.S. attorney general.

The but:

Mukasey reputedly has an independent streak, but administration officials probably liked what they read in an August op-ed article he wrote for The Wall Street Journal.

In it, he seemed to sympathize with the need for broader investigative detention of suspects (beyond holding them as material witnesses) and the unlawful combatant designation and wrote that a separate national security court deserved scrutiny.

That responsibility for scrutiny now falls to the Senate. It should determine precisely what Mukasey had in mind in that op-ed but mostly whether he is the independent-minded attorney general this country so desperately needs at the moment to guard against excesses from any quarter.

That's right; it's an important job, the nominee has the credentials, but the Senate should conduct its regularly scheduled witch hunt to tar or feather this nominee because he thinks differently than the Senate majority party and the editors of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

After all, the associative property would seem to indicate that when the political is the personal, then verily the personal is political, and man cannot hold private (or publicly expressed) opinions and still do a job objectively according to the law of the land. Because the personal conscience or lack thereof is the highest law that some people can imagine.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:55 AM   0 comments

 
So Much for Doing It for The Children
Well, when it comes down to The Children or the uptight property owners in a "historic" area, we know the "grown ups" favor:

It might seem strange that a new playground would cause controversy, but this one is in the middle of Lafayette Park, a 170-year-old park that's the heart of a well-organized and active historic neighborhood south of downtown.

To some, the brightly colored plastic structure with a big red fish-shaped tunnel as its centerpiece doesn't seem to fit in one of the oldest parks west of the Mississippi, surrounded on all sides by Victorian homes and a restored wrought-iron fence.

"It looks like a McDonald's Playland," said Larry Dodd, 51, who has lived in Lafayette Square for 25 years and is a member of the Lafayette Square Restoration Committee.

Children must not be exposed to bright, fun colors if it doesn't fit in with the aesthetic sense of prigs. Right, then.

Coming soon, we shall also take away their smiles because their gleaming teeth hurt our eyes and shrieks of joy hurtses our precious ears.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:23 PM   0 comments

 
A Priori
Art review, St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Unless, like Rip van Winkle, you've just awakened from a 20-year nap, you know that the planet is ailing. Even deniers, such as those who put profits before people, have come around to admitting that human activity is responsible for most of the decline in planetary well-being.

Sometimes, it just takes an art critic to settle scientific debates once and for all.

A real shame, though, that the first paragraph put me into a 20 year fit of apoplexy and made me unable to read the rest of the review.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:06 PM   0 comments

 
Fred Thompson Vaults Wall of Death, Fights Mutants
It's kinda dry reading, but this summary of a study indicates that older men who procreate are serving the interests of the human race, not themselves:

Evolutionary theory says that individuals should die of old age when their reproductive lives are complete, generally by age 55 in humans, according to demographer Cedric Puleston, a doctoral candidate in biological sciences at Stanford. But the fatherhood of a small number of older men is enough to postpone the date with death because natural selection fights life-shortening mutations until the species is finished reproducing.

"Rod Stewart and David Letterman having babies in their 50s and 60s provide no benefit for their personal survival, but the pattern [of reproducing at a later age] has an effect on the population as a whole," Puleston said. "It's advantageous to the species if these people stick around. By increasing the survival of men you have a spillover effect on women because men pass their genes to children of both sexes."

. . . . Human ability to scale the so-called "wall of death" -- surviving beyond the reproductive years -- has been a center of scientific controversy for more than 50 years, Puleston said.

Only one of our presidential candidates fits that description. Fred Thompson: selflessly vaulting the wall of death to ensure longevity for the children and our children's children.

(Link seen on Dustbury.)


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:34 PM   0 comments

 
Public Service Announcement
The ch sound is not the same in the words lich and lichen.

Do not expose yourself as a former or current roleplaying gamer to respectable members of society by making this mistake!


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:21 PM   1 comments

 
Also, Copy Change Changes Its Name to FedEx Diverse-Alternate-Not-That-Theres-Anything-Wrong-With-That-Lifestylos
Coffee Chain Changes Name Over Concerns It's An Ethnic Slur:

small but growing coffeehouse chain is changing its name amid concern that the moniker meant to celebrate the seed of its main product also is a disparaging term for Hispanics.

Beaner's Coffee, based in East Lansing, Mich., on Friday informed franchisees and employees at its 77 stores in Michigan and eight other states that it would become Biggby Coffee, effective Jan. 31.

"That just doesn't really fall within our mission to have a name that is derogatory," Bob Fish, 44, Beaner's chief executive, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "We felt it was important to do the right thing and change the name."

Also, doo-wop music shall henceforth be known as doo-biggby music.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:12 PM   2 comments

 
Sylvester Brown Wants His Barbara Ehrenreich Merit Badge
St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Sylvester Brown wants an authenticity merit badge, since he's gone slumming with the plebes:

Sometimes I forget that I'm a 50-year-old fuddy-duddy who should give more thought before doing things on a whim.

On Monday, I decided that I would ride the bus to work. It might be interesting to hang out with the nondrivers.

Oh, for Pete's sake. I would fisk the rest of the column, but why waste the mental energy when I could be reading to come up with material for the book reports you don't bother to read, gentle reader?

Oh, but I must.

I had to be at Ranken Technical College on Finney Avenue, a bit north of the Central West End. Kingshighway is close to the area and runs near my home. A reasonable person might have checked the routes before leaving. Not me. I just trekked toward Kingshighway.

Real people have places to go; columnists on self-directed assignment can just wander in and out and be authentic, hanging out with the non-drivers on the buses.

I guess the bus driver, who grunted her answers, wasn't used to newbies holding up her line to ask about fares.

Neither were the passengers on the bus.

I was a bit dismayed after she told me a "multiuse transfer" ticket that I could use for another connecting bus, if need be, cost almost 3 bucks.

No doubt, multiuse transfers like the one he used are expensive; they're tourist traps. Real commuters buy the monthly or weekly passes and can ride whenever they want. If you're plunking down that much in change for the right to take one or two more buses in the next couple of hours, you're a tourist, or you're having an emergency. In any case, the quasi-government thinks that's a good time to charge you a premium. Not gouge you; that's what evil businesses do.

Heck, double that amount and I could buy a couple of gallons of gas. Isn't public transportation supposed to be cheaper than driving?

Ah, therein Mr. Brown fails his roll to understand the economics of the situation. $60 a month for a bus pass means you have to come up with $60 once a month. Buying a car means coming up with a larger sum, several hundred dollars probably, all at once and then come up with probably more than $60 a month for gas and maintenance (usually, a lot of maintenance if you've only paid a couple hundred dollars). Plus licensing and whatnot, if you do it legally.

Bus transportation is inexpensive, and it's pay as you go.

Monthly or weekly, though, not trip by trip.

Back when I was a daily bus rider, the bus pass was the first thing I did when I cashed my paycheck at work (which also sold bus passes) because that way I was guaranteed transportation even if I spent every last nickel in my pocket, or just enough so I didn't have the buck for the white and green limousine.

Still, I highly recommend riding the bus. There's something energizing about total strangers, scrunched together, engaging in random conversations.

Brother, when I was riding the bus, the last thing I wanted was to be energized by stranger engaged in a random conversation. Because he was drunk, stoned, and/or insane.

The writer in me saw potential stories — the already tired-looking woman in the blue worker's uniform; the bicycle rider in Spandex, who hoisted his bike on the front end of the bus; the woman in the electric wheelchair, scooped into the bus by a powerful mechanical lift.

Brother, I don't see stories; I see garments and handicaps. A blue worker's uniform? Do all proletariat wear the same uniform, unlike the Intellectuals who ride the buses whenever they're running dry on column ideas?

Then there's the story of Mattie, a missing dog. Among the ads on the bus encouraging prenatal and diabetes care, there was a posting that offered a $25,000 reward for anyone who found Mattie, a little, fluffy white dog who disappeared in 2006 after someone stole the out-of-town owner's car with the dog inside.

The best part of the story, because that is what a bus rider thinks about.

Fearing that it would take me miles from my destination, I got off. Luckily, a friend saw me walking and offered a ride.

That's almost how real bus riders do it, too; all except the not knowing where you're going part. But if someone offers you a lift, you take it.

After work, the reasonable me called Metro to find the best route from downtown to my home in south St. Louis.

Real bus riders get the schedules and route tracts and use them as a guideline. Metro even puts out a big guide that lists all routes and they give them away to the public, so you could consult one of these to plot where you need to go.

Unless you're a newspaper columnist and are used to getting people on the phone.

If I caught #94/Page bus at 7:43 p.m., then transferred to #90/Hampton at 8:15 p.m., "I'd be just fine," the operator explained.

Why would I head north to go back south, I asked.

"That's what I have here, sir," she said cheerfully. "Good luck."

There you have it. A functionary who knows she only has to make an effort, and the fool who follows her.

I had to catch the first bus behind St. Patrick Center, an agency that serves the homeless. As I walked, a young man sidled next to me. I slowed, he slowed. I quickened my step, so did he.

Ah, there you go, one of the noble people whom you meet while waiting at bus stops. I've met a few and have many stories to tell, but then again, I rode the bus more than once for a column.

The ride on #94 wasn't as comforting as my morning commute. Most of the riders seemed tired and kept to themselves. An elderly man got off the bus in his wheelchair and quietly rolled down a dark and eerie street. It wondered if his journey home would be as depressing as his surroundings.

This matches my experience on buses running through the city. The expresses buses that run you right out to the suburbs have shiny people on them, shiny suburbanites. But people who don't ride their buses to get to the park and ride lots--that is, people who have to ride the bus--tend not to be chipper. Or maybe that's just me.

When I got off at my transfer point, the poorly lighted intersection of Page Avenue and Goodfellow Boulevard, an alarming question crossed my mind: "Don't people get shot around here?"

Because Sylvester Brown is black, he can ask that question in print. If a white columnist had asked that, he would greet a firestorm of racism charges for equating crime with a black neighborhood. Even a black neighborhood that has a lot of crime.

The ride home on #90 again stirred my imagination. For most of the ride, it was just me and the driver, a broad-shouldered, friendly man with a big, black Bible positioned within reach on his dashboard. I rode through Forest Park, my hands cupped to the tinted windows, glancing at the grassy hills and spouting fountains.

I might have missed this beauty in my car.

Brother, I have driven through the Central West End and parts of Forest Park during rush hour. You don't have to miss the beauty because the traffic backs up at all the stoplights throughout the park. You actually get more time driving during rush hour to enjoy the beauty than you would riding a bus at street speeds later at night.

It was after 9 p.m.. I would have been home hours earlier in my car. But I have no regrets. I moved through the city and met some interesting and engaging riders and drivers. I learned that riders should always know their routes and that Metro bus #94 can be a bit intimidating at night.

And he got a column out of it, a condescending bit of hanging with the real people kind of stuff that grates on my nerves. Fortunately, the next day, he drove to work no doubt to get started on his next column back in his normal grounds, black people are shortchanged by white people.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:29 PM   0 comments

 
Something's Missing
What's missing from this Google image?



Right. A leg of lamb.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:56 AM   1 comments

 
When I Was Your Age
Rocket Jones leads me to contemplate:

What will today's youth tell tomorrow's youth in When I Was Your Ageisms?

My first shot:

When I was your age, radio came over radio waves.

Ah, I got nothing.


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

 
Good Book Hunting: September 8, 2007
Well, it was okay book hunting. We hit some yard sales over in Kirkwood, where books were overpriced and lawns were cluttered with fascist lawn signs "No More Tear Downs" and "Preserve Our National Historic District" and "Taller than downtown" signs protesting an old folks home (that is, all your property rights belong to the communitariat, comrade).

In a smaller, less historic neighborhood that housed those other people (the lower classes), where construction occurred without protest, I bought a six volume set of the complete works of George Bernard Shaw for $3 and a copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey for $.25 (as previously noted. At another yard sale holding a freshly minted English degree (selections included anthologies, paperback copies of classics, and Marxist theory textbooks), I bought the Barnes and Noble edition of a Lovecraft biography and a little book of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. The capitalist pig wanted $2.50, but I offered the ultimatum of $2.00, higher than I would have normally paid but I know she's got a hard life ahead of her with that sort of degree.

So here's the results, $5.25 later:


Click for full size

I don't expect we'll race back to Kirkwood anytime soon for the pickings. Apparently, the communitariat is too busy protesting its neighbors to read anything worth reading.


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

 
Book Report: Seawitch by Alistair MacLean (1977)
Like the other MacLean books I've read this year (Puppet on a Chain and Santorini), this book represents more "modern" MacLean (that is, up to date when he wrote them; in this case, the late 1970s). Unfortunately, like the other modern books, this one is a little thin relative to the action in, say, The Guns of Navarrone or Where Eagles Dare.

This book details two MacLeanesque heroes who help out a rogue oil billionaire whose revolutionary oil platform, parked in the Gulf of Mexico, is under threat from a bad man employed by the traditional oil cartel. Weapons are fired. However, there really aren't any plot twists to keep it going. It reads like a television or movie script.

Still, a bad MacLean book is average suspense, so it's not as though it's a bad book; it's just not the best in the MacLean oeuvre. Books mentioned in this review:

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

 
Book Report: 2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke (1968)
I bought this book this weekend for a quarter, a super bargain since it's a two-fer: It's the first printing of the Signet movie tie-in edition (with the book review from the New Yorker cut out and tucked in as a bookmark), and I bought the next two books in the series last weekend, so I needed to get this book, too. I guess there's a fourth in the series, but I might hold off buying that that until I see how the first three go. After all, he did ruin the Rama series.

The book, written in conjunction sort of with the screenplay for the Kubrick film, fills in a lot of the gaps of just what the heck was going on. It adds plenty of detail to the monkeys scene and to the ending to make sense of what only served as stunning images in the movie.

The plot revolves around the appearance of the monoliths, strange stones that man has found which have an age of 3 million years. When one is found near a moon base, it blasts a radio signal to Saturn (Jupiter in the movie). A ship is sent to it, and Hal the computer kills everyone on board. Even that is explained better in the book. And it's all tied together.

I've seen the movie once and I saw 2010 a couple of times when it was on Showtime and I was stuck in rural Missouri in the 1980s, so I'll be a little familiar with the continuing storyline.

Although I don't know how much I'll appreciate Clarke and his reputation after I am done. I mean, Childhood's End was okay, this book was okay, Rendezvous with Rama was great until Clarke ruined it in the 1980s with its sequels. But that this fellow is held up with Asimov, Heinlein, and Niven as one of the greats in the field. Meh.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:42 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Panic in Philly by Don Pendleton (1973)
This year, I've read pulp novels from the Killmaster, the Enforcer, and Matt Helm series, so why not try one from the granddaddy, Don Pendleton's The Executioner? It has the most books published about a single character, some 200 or 300 of them. So I found one at a book fair, cheap, and checked it out.

The other two series offered more depth. Sugar's "The Enforcer" has weird sci-fi elements and Objectivist speeches; the Killmaster gets the chicks; and Matt Helm channels Dean Martin, whether intentionally or not. The Executioner just runs around and kills Mafia.

In this book, he goes to Philadelphia to take out a branch of the Family. He blows up a compound that used to be a bordello and then works his way into the home of the don. He kills a "specialist" that's come to take care of the problem and then sets elements of the mob against each other while having a hand in, I dunno, 60 deaths? 70?

On a side note, The Executioner (one of the main inspirations for Marvel Comic's The Punisher, by the way) was a Vietnam veteran. Many characters from the pulp of the era and television of the next decade involved Vietnam veteran characters who were not suicidal nutbars or whatnot; instead, they were tough, efficient crime fighters of one sort or another. Where are the veterans as honorable crimefighters these days in popular culture?

This book reads like a television script (and the book says they're a major motion picture series coming!) with about that much depth of character (I know, it's pulp, but this guy isn't much more than a name holding various guns). I guess that's what you get with a series written by dozens, but this is only #15, when Don Pendleton himself was writing them.

Of all the series I've sampled this year, this is the least likely for a return visit; that's not to say that it's bad pulp, but it's the worst of the pulp I've read this year.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:31 AM   0 comments

 
Keeping Pace with Charles G. Hill
Now that Business 2.0 is going belly up (no word if they'll transfer our subscription to Fortune or Sports Illustrated or will just forget about us), I'm tied with Charles Hill for number of magazines to which we have subscribed that have ceased publication this year.

One would think that magazines will purge us from their mailing lists for subscription come-ons designed to look like overdue invoices since we're obviously a kiss of death.

Or perhaps one, me, would hope.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:40 AM   0 comments

 
I'm Just Going To Say This Once (Probably)
Green Bay Packers tied for first place in the NFC North!


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:25 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Broadway Bound by Neil Simon (1987)
This book rounds out the Brighton Beach trilogy, and although it's been decades since I read Brighton Beach Memoirs, I read Biloxi Blues just this May. Ergo, I am sort of up on the characters and storyline. Bottom line? This play was probably the weakest of the bunch and only made its way onto stage and onto the television screen because Neil Simon was all that. As a stand alone drama, it's a little lacking. You have to be invested in the characters already from the previous works to really care, and the piece doesn't offer an overarching goal/conflict that needs to be resolved; instead, you've got a subplot in the chance Stan and Eugene have to make it as comedy writers, a subplot about the grandmother offstage moving to Florida, and a subplot about the breakdown of the Jerome parents' marriage. Even lumped together, it doesn't stick.

On a side note, I find that the actor who played Eugene Jerome in the movie Brighton Beach Memoirs, Jonathan Silverman, reprised the role for the Broadway debut of the play; however, in the made-for-television treatment (as opposed to the other two plays' movie treatment), Silverman plays Stan Jerome, the older brother. He's lost the part of Eugene to Corey Parker, who played Epstein in the film Biloxi Blues; as you know, Matthew Broderick played Eugene Jerome in both the Broadway and film versions of Biloxi Blues. Both Silverman and Broderick played Eugene Jerome on Broadway in Brighton Beach Memoirs; so when you're watching the movies in order, you get some cast switching in odd ways. Kind of like when Lee Van Cleef was two different characters in For a Few Dollars More and The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

So it's good to read the play if you need to close out the trilogy, but if it's your only insight into the Jerome mythos, you might want to pass. Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:17 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Versus by Ogden Nash (1949)
Ogden Nash didn't take poetry too seriously; the verses are light things with rhymes and runon lines used to comedic effect. I don't know what else to say about it; they were fun to read aloud and amusing, which is what Nash was no doubt going for. He tortures spellings to get rhymes and tacks on couplets with the punchline to long enumerations, but I liked them well enough to read more.

Which is a good thing, since I bought four volumes at once.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:17 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Sight Unseen by David Margulies (1992)
I saw this play staged in 1993 or 1994 in Milwaukee at the Milwaukee Rep or one of the subsidiary theatre groups that shares the space down on Wells; at the time, I thought it was the best drama I'd ever seen on stage. I still do, but unfortunately I'm not going to the theatre as much as I did when I was a poor college student making $6.60 an hour and paying tuition. I don't know how that happened. So my experience hasn't gotten much broader since the middle 1990s.

This book tells the story of a successful artist, Jonathan Waxman, who visits the home of his collegiate flame in England on the eve before the opening of his first European show. There, he finds a painting from his student period that captures something of his innocence before he became famous and rich and a self-made producer of commodity art. Or maybe it's his meeting Patty again, a woman whom he dumped unceremoniously because she was not Jewish and who's now married to an English archeologist whom she does not love.

The play is told in a series of scenes told non-chronologically and in as varied of places as the English house where Patty and her husband live; Jonathan's boyhood home; the college where they went to school; and the opening itself. When the Milwaukee Rep staged it, I didn't get the correct sense of the scenes between Jonathan and his German interviewer were at the opening, so I lost a bit from it.

But I got a bit out of reading it that I wouldn't have if I hadn't seen it first; perhaps that's the way to do these plays, unlike movies. Watch them live first and read the book after to see what you've missed.

At any rate, I liked the play and I liked the book.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:10 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: My Poems from the Heart by Pam Puleo (1992)
This book is a chapbook; that is, a small collection of poetry published probably at Kinko's and often sold for a nominal fee. Back in 1994 and 1995, I did a couple of my own, although I forked out for the double-sided printing and the saddle stapling instead of the single-sided tape bound print job evidenced in this book.

Not too long after this book's publication, I met Pam on the open mike circuit in St. Louis, so this represents I suppose the first time I bought a used book from someone I know and reviewed it herein. Ergo, I am going to offer a sunnier, more encouraging review than I'd give to someone I never knew. Be forewarned.

Puleo has a good sense of rhythm and sense for how words sound; I could read these aloud without stumbling or trying to determine the cadence in stride. She's also fair enough with her eye for imagery.

However, this book shows her as an underachiever. She relies on too much repetition that provides little effect and enjambs a lot of lines that could have been better served with line breaks and punctuation.

She's somewhere above Rod McKuen. Maybe tied with Sylvia Plath.

As a bonus, here's a book review I wrote about her in 1995:

Bonus Book Report: St. Louis Jazz by Pam Puleo (1995)

This review first appeared in the Fall 1995 edition of the St. Louis Artesian, a free little pickup literary magazine I published 1994-1996. Puleo gave me a copy of the book, so I reviewed it because, frankly, the hardest part of putting out the magazine was coming up with enough literary stuff to fill it.

Puleo Plays Jazz

Pam Puleo titled her new chapbook St. Louis Jazz, and the title fits her style. Puleo's well-developed voice binds her poetry like a slender thread woven throughout her works. The voice of wisdom, of been-there, done-that, somehow blends into a softer shade of poetry, into a velvet purple by her continued, although muted romanticism.

Puleo packs many songs into this volume, most describing the search for love in a world that is neither cold nor hot, but only room temperature. The poet's brief epiphanies and occasional insights we can share as she grows older, grows wiser, but never grows hard not bitter.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:31 PM   0 comments

 
One Well, Many Buckets
Old Building Needs Repairs: Kirkwood Public Library will ask voters for a 12-cent hike in the residential tax rate:

After November, Kirkwood Public Library Director Wicky Sleight hopes duct tape won't be needed to hold the aging library's heating and air conditioning systems together.

On Nov. 6, Kirkwood voters will be asked to approve Proposition L, a 12-cent tax increase. The current residential tax rate, approved in August, is 16.7 cents per $100 of assessed valuation, down from 19 cents in 2006.

The Kirkwood Public Library Board of Trustees on Aug. 15 voted unanimously to place the tax levy before voters.

Residents Say District To Collect More Taxes Than Needed: School board OKs tax rate for year:

Despite concerns of some residents that the Kirkwood School District is not exhibiting fair financial practices, the Kirkwood School Board on Aug. 29 approved tax rates for the 2007-08 school year at $3.75 per $100 of assessed valuation.

In 2005, voters approved an operating tax levy ceiling of $3.85 per $100 of assessed valuation.

. . . .

Board Member Ben Clark said the board could be shirking its responsibility by not taking the $3.85 limit set by the voters.

Each of the government's priorities get siloed into independent taxes/tax districts and each of them want more, more, more. When it comes down to a single issue, who could say, "No, don't fix the libraries; no, don't give the police a retirement plan; no, don't put air conditioners in the schools."

Back in the old days, I think they had individual elected officials who made the decisions on the priorities for the town. Now each piece of the town sets its own priorities that never conflict with the priorities of other portions of the government. After all, they can always ask the residents to pay more taxes, even if it's more than the government needs.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:42 AM   0 comments

 
That Says It All
So have you ever gone into iTunes and typed anit because you wanted to listen to Anita Rosamond's CD Timeless and found Ms. Rosamond in some odd company?



Or am I the only one this happens to?


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:07 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Dear Americans: Letters from the Desk of Ronald Reagan edited by Ralph E. Weber and Ralph A. Weber (2003)
This book collects some of the handwritten letters sent by Ronald Reagan during his presidency to people he knew, government officials, and the general public who wrote him. Apparently, the editors were noodling among the former president's library and uncovered this collection written in his own hand, which they felt gave it a personal touch that would get to the heart of who Reagan was or something. They picked some of the best from each year, add an introduction to each year that details what was going on at that time, and let her rip.

Of course this book reflects the best of what remember from Reagan: his optimism, his faith, and his conservative beliefs. These letters, often written in response to common person critics who wrote to him, do reinforce the man's impression. How cool is the thought, though, that if you had written Ronald Reagan, he might have dashed a couple lines off on his stationery in response. That's fascinating.

I worked on this book for a month or so, which explains my recent acquisitiveness of Reagania.

I've only read two or three books of letters in my life; this, Raymond Chandler's, and maybe Ayn Rand's. This one is the most accessible because I have direct memory of the events to which he refers and because the letters are very brief.

Recommended.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:43 PM   0 comments

 
Milwaukee, Having No Budgetary Concerns, Moves Into Unsecured Lending
City to fund part of office building repairs:

The owners of a downtown Milwaukee office building will receive city financing to help with repairs - even though the comptroller's office questions whether the funds are needed, and even as some aldermen fret that their decision could encourage other building owners to ask for cash.

"We're setting a very dangerous precedent," said Ald. Michael Murphy, one of two aldermen who opposed the financing plan.

Supporters say the project will make one of downtown's oldest office buildings more competitive, while also breathing new life into an adjacent building that's been empty for several years.

Oh, for Pete's sake. Correct me if I am wrong, but aren't these sorts of "initiatives" coming faster and more frequently these days? Are our municipal leaders that eager to hasten the death spiral of their cities finances? Yes, as long as the ultimate crash comes after the municipal leaders have moved onto state or national leadership positions, where they can control bigger economies and initiate bigger five year plans.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:07 PM   0 comments

 
Well, It's A Single Standard At Least
Not that it's a good standard, but a black comedian has been censured for using the word nigger:

A standup routine by black comedian Eddie Griffin was stopped after he repeatedly used the N-word, a magazine's spokesman said Wednesday.

Griffin, who has appeared in movies such as "Undercover Brother" and "Date Movie" and the TV show "Malcolm & Eddie," was performing at a Black Enterprise magazine event in the Miami suburb of Doral on Friday when he was cut off after using profanities and the N-word, said Andrew Wadium, a spokesman for the publication.

So I guess the whole black people say it and nothing happens canard is done, so everyone who used it instead of saying what's the point in taking offense at a single word so much that it becomes a magic word? ought to feel vindicated. But they won't. And they shouldn't.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:02 PM   2 comments

 
Priorities, Priorities
Good to see Missouri has its priorities in order.

1: Funding private development that will turn empty land into empty buildings:

Of the $387 million construction cost, public aid is projected to account for $116 million, with the state's share at nearly $30 million and the rest coming from the city and special sales tax districts.

2: Critical repairs to infrastructure:

State highway officials have barred large trucks from a mid-Missouri bridge over the Osage River after an inspection prompted by the fatal Minnesota bridge collapse revealed a badly deteriorating steel beam.

. . . .

The entire 1,000-foot bridge is scheduled to be replaced in 2010 at a cost of $9.4 million.

- posted by Brian J. @ 1:45 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Detroit by Dale Fisher (1985)
Well, I'm counting this as a book I read even though it really is a picture book. Aside from an introduction and an acknowledgments section, the book contains photographs, mostly taken by helicopter, of Detroit and its environs. The selections include a number of corporate headquarters (Ford, GM, K-Mart, American Motor Corporation), a couple of old churches, some of the new developments and high-rises constructed to handle the 1980s resurgence of Detroit predicted by Detroit boosters, a couple shots of Tiger Stadium (Home of the 1984 World Champion Detroit TIGERS!), one picture of the Pontiac Silverdome (where a football team and basketball team played, or so I hear), and a several shots of nearby farms/neighborhoods/and so on.

The only thing I'll remember from this book, aside from the obvious lesson in urban "resurgence" promised year after year by urban moneyspenders, is a catch phrase. The book also sports a number of thumbnail photos of collections of vehicles taken from the helicopter which sport the phrase "as art." A bunch of schoolbuses in a parking lot, a number of automobiles outside an automotive plant, a number of train cars in a train yard. The caption is "School buses as art" or "Transport containers as art."

From this day forward, "as art" shall verily apply to any collection of common goods that I want to elevate to the heights of pretentiousness. Think of this blog, for instance, as "English words as art."

A quick look at Amazon shows that the photographer did later editions of this book, perhaps with later photographs. But this is the 1985 edition, worthwhile not because the city of Detroit is worth anything, but because of the hysterical historical significance.

Man, I am glad this guy didn't express his affection for Milwaukee this way; otherwise, I'd have to examine and review the book earnestly.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:44 PM   0 comments

 
Subscription Rate for Hipness: $100 / month
He's Steve Jobs, bitch!

"But we want to make the iPhone even more affordable for even more people this holiday season," Jobs continued. "So we're going to do something about that today. We're not going to sell it for $599 anymore."

Instead, as a giant screen behind him vaporized first the 4GB version of the device, then the price of the 8GB model, he dropped the bomb. "We are going to price the 8GB iPhone at just $399."

For being the first people on the block to have one, you've paid an additional $200. How do you like them Apples?


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:50 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: The Adventures of Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (1841, ?)
This is actually the first of the Walter J. Black Classics Club/Classic Editions books I have completed; not bad for a fellow who's been accummulating them for a couple of years now. However, the Dickens Classic Editions volumes (with the green stripe on the spine instead of the red for the Classics Club books) are fiction, and I've been tearing through it this year, particularly "classic" literature, so I nabbed this bit.

First, a word on the editions. The printing's cheap, as it's rife with printing mistakes like double impressions, some lightly washed out inks, and whatnot. But these editions aren't fine leatherbound things; they're designed to sell cheaply to the masses from magazine ads, mail order. So why am I collecting them? Because I inherited four from a grandfather, that's why! Not Classic Editions, though; the Dickens works I have are just gravy. Perhaps I'll evolve a rationale for collecting these instead of fine leatherbound editions that centers around defense of the middlebrow and the middle class. Give me some time.

Now, onto the story, which I did not particularly care for.

In his defense, this was Dickens' second work (or so Wikipedia tells me). But the title character is a passive spectator in his own life. In his defense, Oliver is a child; however, if you're going to title the book after someone, it might be more interesting if that character plays a role instead of plays the prop.

A poor orphan falls in with a bad crowd and participates, unwillingly and sometimes unknowingly, in a couple of crimes in between bouts of highbrow people being taken with him and helping him out, keeping him like a pet. Then all the loose threads are tied up. 541 pages later, the end.

Like many of the classical literature things I've read this year, the book really begins to move about 60% of the way through it; in this case, that's somewhere in the 300s. Modern audiences don't tend to have that attention span, I expect; if you're going to have a lot of pages, a clown demon better rip a boy's arms off in the first chapter.

Additionally, I have to wonder about what reading all this classical literature does with my sense of the past. Of the four big ones I've read (Anna Karenina, The Three Musketeers, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and this) all take place in the past, but the actual centries vary widely. However, as far as I am concerned, the time periods aren't that different; horse and buggy days, the aristocracy and the poor extremely different, and so on and so forth. Has the last century been that radical that its very decades were different epochs akin to the centuries or millenia of old? Or am I just confused by my own life experience, where I can tell the differences easily because I lived them?

That's a bit heavy for a simple book report, but I'd like to see those who hit this post for a Google search for oliver twist book report defend that unread and pasted assertion.

Books mentioned in this review:


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

 
Verizon Agrees To Have Its Customers Pay Tax
That's not what the headline says; it says Verizon agrees to pay utility tax. However, we know that's the result; apparently, it began collecting the tax, under protest, on bills a year ago.

But here's the howler of the article:

Municipal officials contend the companies don't have to make the customer pay.

"I do think it is confusing," said Tim Fischesser, executive director of the St. Louis County Municipal League. "We would prefer if the companies paid it."

Haw haw! And you know what, municipal officials? You don't have to collect the tax money and blow on silly schemes, either. But you do.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:01 PM   0 comments

 
Tip of the Ice Cube
Newly released documents indicate WIDESPREAD TROOP ABUSES!!1!! according to the ACLU and its PR firm, AP:

Newly released documents regarding crimes committed by U.S. soldiers against civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan detail a troubling pattern of troops failing to understand and follow the rules that govern interrogations and deadly actions.

A troubling pattern of bajillions millions hundreds of thousands tens of thousands thousands hundreds almost dozens of incidents:

The documents, to be released today by the American Civil Liberties Union ahead of a lawsuit, total nearly 10,000 pages of courts-martial summaries, transcripts and military investigative reports about 22 incidents.

The system is at fault because it made the soldiers do it:

They show repeated examples of soldiers believing they were within the law when they killed local residents.

Believing/insisting. Ah, how the truth is merely felt:

In the suffocation, soldiers covered the man's head with a sleeping bag, then wrapped his neck with an electrical cord for a "stress position" they insisted was an approved technique.

Defense is gospel, unless of course, it's the military defending itself from a lawsuit designed to....I dunno, make the military look defensive? As a defendant?

I'm glad we live under a system where this sort of thing is possible. I wish we lived in a culture where it was not so pervasive.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:23 AM   0 comments

 
The First Mandatory
Jonathan Edwards identifies the first government diktat he would issue with a government-run health plan:

Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said on Sunday that his universal health care proposal would require that Americans go to the doctor for preventive care.

"It requires that everybody be covered. It requires that everybody get preventive care," he told a crowd sitting in lawn chairs in front of the Cedar County Courthouse. "If you are going to be in the system, you can't choose not to go to the doctor for 20 years. You have to go in and be checked and make sure that you are OK."

Prepare yourselves to submit yourself to an annual review by a government bureaucrat of some sort, whether it's a government-paid "doctor" or some paper pusher at the bureau.

Better yet, prepare yourself for the unstated list of government prohibitions that will come when "public health" is funded from the government leaders' pool of available pork money. Probable prohibitions will include:

• Tobacco.
• Alcohol.
• Junk food.
• Dangerous hobbies.
• Places in the home where you can fall.

Trending toward the absurd? What is absurd in contemporary American public policy? Certainly not building sports facilities while bridges collapse or school districts are taken over by the state; certainly not people rallying for "single payer health care" or nationalization schemes who have thought out what it means other than fewer health care checks written in their handwriting.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:06 AM   0 comments

 
Beckham Tries To Make It Look Like Hockey
Perhaps David Beckham is building interest in Soccer in America the old-fashioned way: He's making it look dangerous:

So much for David Beckham's debut season in America. It's all but over now that the 32-year-old English midfielder is out six weeks with a sprained right knee, to go along with his famously injured left ankle.

Wow, he plays like one game and comes out of it with an injury? Here, I thought soccer was a sissy sport, just a bunch of Europeans in shorts slapping at each other and maybe making dour and superior faces at the other team. Apparently not. Beckham hurt his knee in tackle:

The 32-year-old midfielder sprained his medial collateral ligament in a tackle during the Galaxy's loss to Mexican team Pachuca on Wednesday night. He was expected to be out about six weeks while he rehabilitates behind the scenes.

Maybe I'm mixing my European hooligan sports up. Is soccer the one where they have the one where they give a football-like ball to one guy, and then everyone jumps on him and starts gouging him and whatnot? In that case, I am with Bernie Miklasz: Damn the fiscal responsibility, build a whole new complex in the middle of nowhere, funded with tax dollars, for a soccer team that will fold in a couple months. Because all the soccer teams in St. Louis that have failed in the last decade or so (the Steamers, the Storm, the Ambush, the Steamers again) made one critical mistake: they played their games in population centers, where both fans who wanted to go could easily come to see a game. A publicly-funded soccer stadium deep in Illinois, at the very edges of the St. Louis "Metropolitan" area (which covers pretty much from Indianapolis to Columbia, Missouri, according to boards that want to extend their unelected taxing power over the same). Hell, Bernie, if you build it, they will come. Both St. Louis soccer fans. Me, I'll watch the eye-gouging highlights on the television's promotions for its highlights program when they interrupt a hockey game.

Wait, this just in: Apparently, tackling in soccer is just stealing the ball from another European in shorts who's making dour and superior faces. Jeez, Beckham. Stealing a ball in soccer? How dangerous is that, unless you're using a handgun to do it? Given that you're British, I don't think you know what those two words--hand and gun--mean together.

Rub some dirt on it, Becks.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:33 AM   0 comments

 
Dan O'Neill Offers News Analysis In Sports Column
Hey, coach, let's play, too:

The Rick Ankiel story has put a little life into this otherwise lackluster baseball summer in St. Louis.

Where the latter topic is concerned, the Cardinals lost Chris Carpenter on opening day and things never have gotten a whole lot better. While the recent "surge" may have been slightly more encouraging than the surge in Iraq, it may not be any more effective.

Considering that the eighteen remaining subscribers to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch only get it for the sports pages, maybe writing the sports pages like the rest of the paper isn't a good idea.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:07 AM   0 comments

 
Good Book Hunting: September 1, 2007
No book sales this weekend, but what do you know? One of the garage sales proclaiming that it had books had some books. And some videos. And some records. So for $16.25, I got:


Click for full size

• The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh. I read this book in college after discovering it was the source of Leslie Fish's song "The Pride of Chanur", it's about a cat race who have a naked man hide out on their ship after being captured by a trading partner. Heather has since heard the song, but has not read the book. Now she can, after I reread it.
  
  
• 2010: Odyssey Two and 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke. I saw the movies out of order; I saw 2010 several times while it was in heavy Showtime rotation and I was a poor young man confined to a trailer in rural Missouri. I saw 2001 a couple of years ago when Heather got it on Netflix. Now, with only the last two books, I can finally figure out what the monoliths meant. I hope it's not screwed up like Rama was.
  
  
• After Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer. I read the first book, When Worlds Collide, in middle school or high school.
  
  
• Songmaster by Orson Scott Card. Because he's supposed to be good or something.
  
  
• Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut. Now that he's dead, I see a lot of his old hardbacks for sale. Perhaps with the master dead, the spell is broken? I haven't yet read one, so I wouldn't know.
  
  
• All of the Star Trek movies on videocassette except Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
  
  
• Clue on videocassette.
  
  
• To Our Children's Children's Children and On the Threshold of a Dream by the Moody Blues on vinyl.
  
  
• Softly, As I Leave You by Frank Sinatra on vinyl.
  
  
• Chariots of Fire on vinyl.

I thought it was going to be a greater deal, as I'd heard the little old lady running the sale that videocassettes were fifty cents, which meant I could not pass up the almost complete set of Star Trek films; when I got to the checkout, though, she charged me a buck each. I am a weak man; I cannot quibble over $4.50 to a sweet old lady who was probably selling off stuff her grandchildren played with and read, ungrateful grandchildren who never call or visit and leave her to eke out a living selling junk to afford the tomato sauce she can cut with water and call soup for dinner every night. So I bucked up and paid the nine bucks for the lot. Come to think of it, she must have charged me a dollar a piece for the albums, too, instead of the fifty cents they were marked. I'm an easy mark, apparently.

Still, one does what one can to keep the library growing to keep up.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:08 PM   0 comments

 
Fool, Money Reunited
Waukesha man loses pants, but not his shirt:

The worst part wasn't that Mark Stahnke woke up Monday morning in the patio chair of some neighbor he didn't know.

Or that his pants were missing.

The worst part was the contents of his missing pants: a cashier's check for $41,093, which he meant to give to his son, and several hundred dollars in cash that he had gotten from the bank.

Stahnke still doesn't know what happened between the time he left a bar Sunday night and the time he woke up in some stranger's backyard Monday morning, but thanks to an honest citizen who found the missing pants and returned all the contents to the local authorities, Stahnke retrieved his valuables Friday from the Waukesha Police Department.

He got the pants back, too.

- posted by Brian J. @ 3:28 PM   0 comments

 
Consumers Union Targets Texters, 12 Year Olds With New Magazine
A magazine with an emoticon in its very name?



That's not synergy between the print world and the online world. That's juvenile. I mean, seriously; when you get a communique in e-mail with emoticons in it, isn't your first response to junk it?


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:22 PM   2 comments