Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Speaking from Experience
I speak from experience when I say that Ms. Parton states the obvious here:
- They let your dream
Just to watch 'em shatter
You're just a step
On the boss man's ladder
But you got a dream he'll never take away
Did I mention how many years running I got the Boss Man of the Year award? No?
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:44 AM 0 comments
Monday, October 29, 2007
Lindenwood University Launches Successful Recruitment Drive
They sure know how to recruit male students, don't they?
- She is a freshman at Lindenwood, as are six Miss Missouri Teen USA finalists. Also among the student body are Amber Seyer, Miss Missouri Teen USA 2007; and LaTasha Lawrie, Miss Kansas Teen USA 2005. In total, the school says it has about 30 winners or top finishers in beauty pageants.
A program like this, however, might have altered the equation.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:42 PM 0 comments
Explaining the Joke
Enormous steel sculpture lifted 12 stories:
- A massive steel sculpture installed Sunday on the side of a South of Market building tells a story of humanity's past and its uncertain future, says the Seattle artist who spent two years on the project.
The five pieces of stainless steel, obliquely titled "Artifacts from a Coal Mine" and weighing well over 10,000 pounds, were affixed as public art to the outside of a contemporary brick and concrete condominium building at 177 Townsend at Third Street.
"They evoke a lost world and the uncertainty of climate change," said artist Mark Stevens, pacing Townsend Street as one giant sculpture after another was hoisted 12 stories up by a 200-foot-high crane.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:40 PM 0 comments
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Book Report: Like I Was Sayin'... by Mike Royko (1984)
In January, I read Dr. Kookie, You're Right!, so I guess you can take it to heart that I've read another one of his books this year. I mean, I won't even mention both names in a sentence, but this guy probably would think he's like Royko, but he ain't.
This book collects a number of Royko's columns from the Chicago Daily News, the Chicago Sun-Times, and the Chicago Tribune. When the Daily News folded, he went to the Sun-Times; when Murdoch bought the Sun-Times, Royko went, breach of contract and all, to the Chicago Tribune. He didn't like Murdoch and he didn't like Reagan, but I still can enjoy Royko's columns.
Maybe it's because he came from a different era, although the columns that talk about Reagan trend toward the snotty. Perhaps it's the selections of his columns that ensure that the more universal or the less context-centric column inches make it into the book, but I think Royko hearkens back to an era where the political wasn't personal, and where you could get together with people on the other side of the political divide for beers after the day was done. Besides, he excoriated Daley I, Bilandic, and Byrne as mayors, so he's proven he's not a Democratic party lapdog. I think he'd have mocked the netroots and maybe even Hillary Clinton (mostly because he'd be an Obama man, but still).
Royko's collection of 30 year old columns are worth reading just to give you perspective about how little things change. He talks about hipsters on the lakefront, the sort of people who a generation later sport iPods and Starbucks cups. He gets a Bronco to cope with the Chicago winter and deals with the fuel-mileage conscious people who drive the little Japanese imports of the era. Oddly enough, the unchanging nature of these picadillos gives me hope, because I sometimes wonder if our lifetimes will run as smoothly (in retrospect) as theirs did. If the problems and whatnot are simply ongoing and are not cataclysmic as they seem to someone living through them the first time, maybe so, maybe so.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:34 PM 0 comments
4.5 Years of Personal History
I've been on this blog for almost half a decade, and sometimes that's brought back more vividly.
Like when I was doing a bit of research for the post that appears, chronologically, above this one, and I came across a joke I relayed.
A joke that was originally told to me by the aunt from whom I've inherited the pile of books whose reports I've been meting out. She's been gone almost 3 years now; she would have told me that joke right before she'd learn about the cancer.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:25 PM 0 comments
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Me and Andrew Sullivan
I removed Andrew Sullivan from my blogroll a couple years ago, probably about the time he was advocating that the Federal government overtax the rubes in the big states who need gas to travel between points on the vast maps, unlike our betters on the East Coast who trip on a coffee table leg in Connecticut and their elbows strike the floor in New York.
However, the intern in charge of putting together the Kansas City Star's Blog Bits section has us together in Friday's edition.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:15 PM 0 comments
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Here Come Rubber Roads, Guard Rails
Girl falls off bike while riding in the road, parents sue road builders:
- The mother of a girl severely injured in a bicycle crash in 2005 is suing the people who designed and built the road where she was injured, saying her medical expenses are likely to exceed $25 million.
- a combination of a road that was too steep, and dangerous wooden posts
The face that an attorney has found a large number of defendants (6) for the maximum number of out of court settlements is now matter of course. It's not even sad on its own any more, just one more pixel in a sad portrait of personal irresponsibility in modern America.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:36 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Book Report: Hoaxes! Dupes, Dodges & Other Dastardly Deceptions by Gordon Stein and Marie J. MacNee (1995)
This book is what one would expect. Culled from a larger work (Encyclopedia of Hoaxes), this book presents a Reader's Digest kind of sumamry of a selection of hoaxes from history. It is what it is, which is shorter and more whitespaced than an actual Reader's Digest anthology, but worth a couple bits if you can find it cheaply.
I don't know that I gleaned any real new knowledge from this, but it certainly reinforced some trivia I knew. Well, maybe the story of Dupont's painting will make it into a historical essay one day.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:43 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Book Report: Vienna Days by Kim du Toit (2005)
When I imagined this book report, I was going to make some cracks about how Mr. du Toit once called me a wanker, way back in the old days. I thought perhaps I would make a comment about how polite the book reports are when you know that the author is better armed than you are. But a funny thing happened on the way to that facile line celebrating my own cleverness: I liked the book too much to fall into the normal patter.
The man has an admitted fetish for Thomas Hardy, and it's easy to see the influence of the English writer and the sweep and scope of old literature in this book, and as it clocks in at 300 pages of modern English, it's a better read.
It's set in 1890ish Vienna and deals with a lawyer-turned-artist who has it all: a beautiful fiancee, a promising career, and all the trappings of youth and wealth. But he's not happy because he's an artist at heart, an existentialist one who sees beneath the veneer of bourgeous sentiments to the rotting core of humanity. So he loses the job, loses the fiancee, and pursues a detached, unreachable woman. He then ascends to a cartoonist career, gets the girl, and throws it all away.
I have a lot of sympathy for the character, but he's a complete cad who wastes what he's given and then wastes what he earns. He's got a sort of intellectual hubris common of artists and intellectuals: that he and a few others can see the true meaning of the human condition, which is squalor. Whereas some of the insight into the artifice of interhuman contact is correct, ultimately it sees beyond to nothingness which doesn't offer a much better alternative.
So I liked the book, and I am considering buying du Toit's other book, Family Fortunes as well.
Vienna Days
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:03 AM 4 comments
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Your Grandfather's Kajira
Funny, I don't see any of your grandparents' Sioux-City-Suean lifestyles banned (unlike Gor-simulation lifestyles) from Web hosting services, but this song from 1945 is not unlike the Kajira:
- 'Cause I come from Nebraska to find Sioux City Sue
I'm gonna rope and tie her up, I'll use my old lasso
I'm gonna put my brand on my sweet Sioux City Sue
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:05 PM 0 comments
Well, If You Save Money On Cheap Funeral Arrangements, Maybe
I have to wonder if perhaps the adjective realistic is applied incorrectly in this advertisement:
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:09 PM 3 comments
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Post-Dispatch Headline Writers Fail Spelling Saving Throws
What, don't these guys even care anymore? Perhaps they're not reflected in the paper itself, but here are two egregious errors today:
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Electronic payments can save you $150 a year, lots of aggrevation
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Man accussed of 29 counts of child sex abuse in custody
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:54 PM 0 comments
Friday, October 19, 2007
Book Report: Unfair and Unbalanced: The Lunatic Magniloquence of Henry E. Panky by Patrick M. Carlisle (2004)
The cover of this book compares the author to Dave Barry on speed; if that's the case, that explains why this author outran the funny.
The book is a collection of humor pieces that depend upon continual tropes of drug use, sexual situations, bashing conservatives, and....well, that's about it. If you cannot buy into the voice, you don't get into the mirth. I didn't buy into the voice, so I didn't really care for the book.
The less said about it, the better, I guess.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:35 PM 0 comments
Book Report: Lori by Robert Bloch (1989)
You know, this is the same fellow that was the contemporary of Lovecraft and whose representation was slain in the Lovecraft story of "The Haunter of the Dark." I picked the book up because I recognized the name. It's also the fellow who wrote "That Hell-Bound Train", which I read as part of some anthology or another in the past.
However, this book is nothing to write home about.
It's a quick enough read, but it's because I skimmed some of it and read some of it while watching a hockey game (!). So that tells you something about how engaged I was with the language and the plotting.
It probably would have made a decent short story, but it's inflated to novel proportions with digressions and time wasting. Let's see: Lori's having bad dreams. And some voices. Her parents are killed on the day she graduated from college. She has what appear to be memories/dreams/visions of a medical facility. And people are dying when they become involve in the mystery.
Ultimately, the resolution is a head slapper. Not unpredicted, but without some resolution and without the certainty that the author wanted you to think about some of the things and wonder. More like the sense that stuff just got dropped thoughtlessly.
There's better Bloch out there. From my current point of view, it's all better.
Hey, look, a link where you can buy it:
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:48 AM 0 comments
Brian's Nightmares
Bad:
- SWAT officers expected to find a victim shot to death, drugs and a belligerent armed suspect when they surrounded the home of an unsuspecting couple, but found they were only a part of a false emergency call caused by a teenager who hacked into the county’s emergency response system, authorities said.
As officers swarmed the home with assault rifles, dogs and a helicopter, a Lake Forest couple and their two toddlers inside their home slept unsuspectingly.
On March 29 at 11:30 p.m., authorities allege, Randall Ellis, a 19-year-old from Mukilteo, Wash., hacked into the county’s 911 system from his home and placed a false emergency call, prompting a fully armed response to the home of an unsuspecting couple that could have ended tragically.
- The National Defence Force is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:47 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Shirking My Duty
Study: Parents avoid vaccinating young children.
Like most, I, too, avoid vaccinating my young child, preferring instead to have the pediatrician do it.
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:47 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Every Murderer Has Means, Motive, Opportunity
In this case, one suspect lacked motive, so we could eliminate them from the whodunit:
- Authorities had no motive for the shooting.
- posted by Brian J. @ 4:37 AM 0 comments
Pronouns Without Antecedents
Police, teens split on need for them
The need for police or the need for teens? Silly reader, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch headline writer is relying on the often overlooked grammatical precept of the implied antecedent, in this case, "curfew."
- posted by Brian J. @ 4:35 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
I'm Shocked, Shocked I Tell You
Sunset Hills project wants tax break:
- The Sansone Group has proposed constructing an office-retail complex to replace the 35-year-old Holiday Inn motel-Viking banquet center on the northwest corner of Lindbergh Boulevard and Watson Road in Sunset Hills.
The developer is seeking $12 million in government assistance for the $48.2 million project. The aid would be via tax increment financing and transportation development and community improvement districts. Each district would levy one-cent sales taxes.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:19 PM 0 comments
St. Louis Post-Dispatch Hedges
Story: Alorton police chief grazed in shooting.
Hedge:
- Police chief Robert Cummings was grazed in his arm by a bullet apparently fired by another man during a drug stop, Illinois state police said today.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:17 PM 0 comments
Book Report: Treasures of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism by Earl A. Powell III and Florence E. Coman (1993)
It's a stretch to claim I read this book, since most of its contents are postage-stamp sized (almost) representations of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art, but it has some introductory text that explains the background of the movement and its exhibitions in Paris in the 1880s. So I gleaned that bit of knowledge as well as determining that my second favorite Impressionist, far behind Renoir but still second, is Mary Cassatt.
So if you're into Impressionism, it's a good little book to show some of what's included in the National Gallery of Art's collection.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:14 PM 0 comments
I Warned Her
In this blog's very first post, I warned about the provisions in rescue group contracts that you signed to take a pet from them:
- When my wife and I wanted to adopt a rescue dog, we had a hound visit our house, mainly to see if it wanted to eat our cats. The rescue volunteer provided a packet of information about dogs and a contract we would have to sign to take possession of the pooch. The contract included house inspections at will of the rescue group. It could also take the dog back at any time if it found our conditions “unsuitable, which includes but not limited to…” a non-exclusive litany. If we lost the dog; we’d pay the rescue group a thousand dollars, even if we “lost” the dog ten years hence when it died and we did not notify the rescue group in 1 (one) week.
- Ellen DeGeneres is in the doghouse with a pet rescue agency after giving a pooch away to her hairdresser because it didn't get along with her cats.
The talk show hostess and her partner Portia de Rossi adopted Iggy, a Brussels Griffon mix, on Sept. 20. But when things didn't work out, DeGeneres gave the dog to her hairdresser.
In doing so, DeGeneres violated an agreement with the Mutts and Moms dog rescue agency by not informing them of the handoff.
When the agency called DeGeneres to ask about Iggy, she said she found another home for the dog. The agency sent a representative to the hairdresser's home Sunday and took the dog away.
- DeGeneres went public about the situation Monday while taping an episode of her show to air Tuesday. She admitted she didn't read all the paperwork involving the adoption.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:27 PM 0 comments
Monday, October 15, 2007
Book Report: Raiders of Gor by John Norman (1971, 1982)
This is the sixth book in the Chronicles of Counter-Earth series, and if you've been reading the blog for the last year, you'll know that I've read the first five somewhat out of order. Also, if you've been paying attention, you'll have noticed that I have read 51 books since the last Gor book I read (Outlaw of Gor, May).
I enjoy these books because Norman puts a rich tapestry into them; I don't know if he's keeping the details correct from book to book, but he has layers and layers so that sometimes the books trend into the academic about Gor. But these digressions make the fantasy world a tapestry upon which the action takes place. And, oh, the action. Plots move forward, the pacing keeps one reading one more chapter even after the sane have gone to bed.
In this book, Tarl Cabot becomes a slave while headed to Port Kar where he's supposed to meet a slaver there who serves the Priest-Kings. The slavery experience causes him to question himself as a Warrior, and he forsakes his honor to become a pirate captain. Then Gorean things happen, slave girls dance, and war occurs.
Really, the books seem to fall into Tarl going somewhere in the guise of another caste so he can view the world differently and Norman can show us different aspects of it. But they seem to work.
This book has some passages that are notably the same as earlier passages; that is, a couple sentences of exposition here and there reappear. Also, the book alludes quite a bit to people and characters from earlier books. Personally, I'm having trouble keeping up, what, with reading a pile between the books; I can't imagine what it was for someone reading these as they came out some year or so apart.
But I'll continue reading; I have 4 more to go in the first 10.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:28 PM 0 comments
Everything I Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, Noggle Edition, I
Hit the kids who are bigger than you from behind with a Six Million Dollar Man lunchbox full of dirt.
A tactic that I employ often to this day.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:01 PM 3 comments
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Some Animals More Equal Than Others, Poor Things
Stunning finding reported in Reader's Digest:
- A February report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that taking antioxidant vitamins actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.
But in 47 randomized trials involving almost 181,000 adults, researchers found that taking vitamins A, beta carotene and E, alone or in combination, actually increased a person's risk of dying by up to 16 percent.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:19 PM 0 comments
Good Book Hunting: October 13, 2007
This week, we stopped at only 3 sales because we had prior commitments. However, I found something.
Click for full size
- Firefly; it cost $10, which is more than I would normally spend on media at a garage sale, but all the cool kids like it.
- The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation; some Christmases ago, Heather bought me the second season for Christmas and we watched it together. Now we can continue that tradition, probably sometime after our next generation is done.
- Metropolis on videocassette; I've never seen it and it's supposed to be something. I want especially to see if Fritz Lang anticipated a lot of unemployed computer contractors and a declining economy after the non-event of a computer bug.
- Guerilla PR Wired; anyone who can combine wires, Kalashnikovs, and marketing must have something interesting to say.
- Six Sigma; I can read this and review it on my other blog. Maybe you've heard of it, QAHatesYou.com?
- A pair of history books from the 1930s, Origins of the American Revolution and The Growth of the American Republic; it was odd to see these amongst bins of cartoon, animation, and film books, but the seller said they'd been his father's.
- The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethus; If I'm going to use and abuse books, I should get some consolation, should I not?
- English Literature to 11660, a textbook; bought from some former teacher/professor who was unloading a pile of text books and original materials. If they had been hardbacks, particularly the original texts, I would have bought far more.
- Gangbusters by Michael Stone; a true story about a NYPD Homicide Unit took down a gang.
- Quick Lit: Plots, Themes, Characters, and Sample Essays for the Most Assigned Books in English and Literature Classes--Written by Students for Students; of the 35, I've read 27. And, truth be told, I don't have trouble telling apart the Great Literature I've read; instead, I could use a resource that helps me keep track of the various and sundry genre fiction I read. Oh, right, that's this blog for the last couple of years.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:55 AM 0 comments
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Good Book Hunting: October 6, 2008
Last Saturday, I did not go book hunting per se; I went to my mother's yard sale and spent all day down there, talking to the little old ladies (and my mother) and whatnot.
However, I did get a handful of material that I bought from others, received as gifts, or reclaimed instead of donating:
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The stack to the left represents some children's books for the boy; the center stack, which I will not enumerate here, includes the aforementioned magazines, craft books, and home improvement materials I've reclaimed. Since they've been mine since the early part of the century when I was an eBay seller, I'm not trying to convince you they're new. They haven't been in the household for a couple of years, though.
New material includes:
- Orvieto, a book about the city of Orvieto. Because I hadn't had one before, you know.
- From Gold to Grey by Mary D. Brine, an 1886 collection of poetry given to me by one of the women at the garage sale because she knew I collected old books.
- The Path of Vision by Bessie Mona Lasky, a collection of musings and paintings given to me by the same woman.
- Richtofen: The True History of the Red Baron, mostly because I had been thinking of the song "Snoopy and the Red Baron" and its sequel "Snoopy's Christmas" by The Royal Guardsmen, and I need something to give me the real story.
- A pair of Nat King Cole audiocassettes.
- A pair of noir films, The Big Combo and Raw Deal (not the Schwarzeneggar film).
- A Cary Grant three pack on VHS, including His Girl Friday, Charade, and Penny Serenade.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:38 PM 0 comments
Friday, October 12, 2007
Another Day, More World Points
Today's mail contained 2 Bank of America World Points credit card offers with the same nonprofit group branding:
The only difference is the free gift offered.
The next step, of course, is five credit card offers in a day with no difference whatsoever! Since I'm not interested, perhaps someone who'd steal my identity by stealing my mail or taking advantage of a misdelivery will!
This even beats my last batch of credit card offers.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:32 PM 0 comments
Metaphish
A phish disguising itself as a warning about phishing scams. Brilliant!
Although this phising scam warns the recipients that Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS users have been the target of phishing scams containing misspelled words, it obviously does not note that phishing e-mails often contain weird capitalization or lack punctuation, but then again, valid e-mails often contain these problems.
To be really helpful, it would include a tip about checking your status bar (that bottom line of text in some e-mail clients) or the mouseover text (in some e-mail clients) to make sure that the target of the link is the same as the link text, or it would explain that subdomains with legitimate-looking text are irrelevant if the actual domain, that is, the last thing before the .com, is not what it's supposed to be (such as vbv75.com).
But that would sort of spoil the phishing exercise, wouldn't it?
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:12 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 11, 2007
When Rec Room Furnishings Go Bad
Spanish Lake bar sold cocaine, police say
I understand the jukebox was running numbers, too.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:14 PM 1 comments
Book Report: The Case of the Fiery Fingers by Erle Stanley Gardner (1951, ?)
This is the second Perry Mason book I've re-read this year; the first was The Case of the Cautious Coquette in April. This volume is published by Walter J. Black, the same fellow that does the Classics Club and Dickens editions I've been collecting; now that I look at it, they use the same binding. No doubt these were inexpensive books sold as part of a Perry Mason book club, and the fact that I see so many of these titles in the wild indicates they were probably early volumes in the series.
In this book, celebrating its 56th anniversary this year, Mason consults with a nurse who wants to prevent the murder of her charge by a husband after her (the charge's) property. Mason can't do much for her, but gets roped into defending the nurse when she's accused of theft. Then the charge actually dies, and Mason must defend the accused--the dead woman's sister who also consulted with Mason with an incomplete hand-written will.
A quick read and a good mystery. There's a reason Mason was popular in fiction and on television for fifty years.
- posted by Brian J. @ 4:12 PM 0 comments
That's How The Army Meets Its Recruiting Goals These Days
Corvette goes airborne, lands on a mobile home in Swansea.
Chevys in the 82nd. What will they think of next?
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:46 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Obvious Solution Eludes Government Officials, Sycophants
Late tax payments rise again in county:
- Milwaukee County, including some of its most affluent suburbs, had a double-digit increase in the percentage of property owners unable to pay their tax bills in 2007, a trend that began last year with a 26% surge in the value of tax delinquencies in the county's suburbs alone.
In all, 17,960 Milwaukee County properties were delinquent as of September on taxes levied for the current year, up 14% from 15,754 as of September 2006. The City of Milwaukee and 14 of its 18 suburbs posted double-digit percentage increases in delinquencies, representing almost $37 million in unpaid taxes this year.
Much of the blame has been levied on the mortgage crisis, in which a proliferation of nontraditional mortgages and predatory lending practices over the last two years have put many buyers - even those in higher income brackets - in over their heads.
But economists and credit counselors point to numerous pressures in a weak economy where minimal wage gains are being eaten away by the rising cost of everything from food and utilities to mortgages and taxes. Since late summer 2006, ground beef prices have risen by 6.7%, chicken breasts by 6.9% and whole milk by 26%, and the federal Energy Information Administration on Tuesday predicted an 11% increase in Midwest winter heating bills.
- A few dismissed the notion that rising tax bills played a role, though Milwaukee County taxpayers owed at least $35 million more in taxes this year than last, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
"The tax bill doesn't go up enough to cause that problem," said Chris Swartz, village manager in Shorewood, where delinquent property owners owed an average of $6,600 a parcel, second only to River Hills.
No doubt the municipal officials are ready to pillory private industry for forcing people to choose to spend their money on non-essentials.
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:21 PM 1 comments
In Lieu of Payment, She'll Take Children's Kittens
Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned:
- In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn't breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow.
Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall.
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:15 PM 0 comments
Taste the Condescension!
Man, I love the anthropological-style essays about hipsters who move to suburbia and report their shocking findings!
- The second morning after I moved into my first officially "owned" home, I woke up to find my somewhat decrepit mailbox bashed in by vandals.
I was rattled. As an Asian, I thought perhaps the bashing was meant as a kind of message to me: You are not wanted here - or something to that effect.
Home ownership was, to me, a strange thing. You'd think it would give you a sense of belonging, of security. But for me it was a foray into territory that as a woman, and half Chinese, seemed off-limits, even though I was born here.
It didn't help that my new next-door neighbor flew the flag in his front yard well past the Fourth of July and, I would discover, straight into winter.
I live in Santa Cruz, so my initial reading on the mailbox bashing seemed improbable. Still, I was shaken. The neighborhood was suburban style, and filled with a lot of folks of retirement age who had lived in the city since before it had become "progressive" - since before anyone had heard of the word at all.
Later on that day, as I was strolling along my block, I noticed that almost every one of my neighbors also had their mailboxes bashed in - except for those who had taken time to hand paint their mailboxes with flowers or hummingbirds, or who had added accessories to make their mailboxes into caricatures of cats or frogs or sharks or what have you. I mused that at least it was nice of the (I supposed) teenagers with the baseball bat to grant some forbearance for attempts at mailbox aesthetics.
And she could have reported how the people in this tribe walk their children, fly flags with strange foreign emblems (giant green and gold Gs), and refuse to mow their lawns religiously.
Somewhere, somehow, hipsters are all caught by surprise by the revelation that people who live in homes instead of condos, lofts, or urban apartments are people, too!
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:08 PM 2 comments
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
Book Report: North Webster: A Photograpic History of a Black Community by Ann Morris and Henrietta Ambrose (1993)
Like the preceding books Webster Park: 1892-1992 and How To Research the History of Your Webster Groves Home, I borrowed this book from the library; unlike those, however, it is still publicly available for purchase at Amazon.com, so I might get a copy.
This book tells the story of North Webster, a small community in the northwestern part of Webster Groves that is mostly black in racial makeup. The book traces its origins as a couple of freedmen's houses in the middle of the 1800s to its annexation by Webster Groves in the middle 1900s and its integration into the community.
Of course, the best part about this book is the moments and tidbits it provides: Douglass High School became the first black high school in the county, and Carl Sandburg spoke there. The book tells about the young men from the town that joined the 92nd in World War I and their participation in the dedication of the World War I memorial on Big Bend and Lockwood--a war memorial that has since been moved so that the contemporary right-minded folk don't have to think about the sacrifices and participation in war, but can soothe themselves with a giant sculpture designed to rust.
The book is about 50 pages of text with a large number of names of residents throughout the years (I suspect that much of the narrative comes from family remembrances) combined with eighty pages of photographs from the local residents.
An interesting piece; I've added it to my Amazon Wish List, not that you gentle readers are obligated to show me the love you have of this backwater blog with gratuitous gifts.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:42 PM 0 comments
Monday, October 08, 2007
Book Report: State's Evidence by Stephen Greenleaf (1982)
I picked up this book because I liked its cover and its book jacket flap blurbs. Of course, now that I look more closely, the cover is kinda weird:
Okay, so the hard-boiled detective, series character Tanner in this case, is supposed to find a model who witnessed a hit-and-run where the hitter was a local crime boss and the hitee was really a hit. That's what the flap says. Inside, the Tanner character and his Greenleaf author try to throwback to Chandler and Macdonald (Ross)--the detective even mentions reading those authors at one point. The language is seriously over-the-top riven with metaphors, sometimes two to a sentence or five in a paragraph. It made for some slower reading.
Then, after a bit, the language didn't jar me, so I thought perhaps this Tanner fellow was hard in the line of the greats. The book, set in El Gordo, California (literally, The Fat Man) uses the California landscape prevalent in the classics, and the book plays in the elements of the idle rich, gangsters, and mixed-up youth.
However, ultimately, it's not up to the level of the names it tries to invoke. The plot gets just one not too twisted and the resolution is a little too tidy.
I won't dodge others in this series, but I'm not ordering them all right now. It's below Robert Crais and Robert B. Parker but not completely unworthwhile.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:34 PM 0 comments
Neighboorhood Activists Agitate For Blackouts
Given how easily the power has gone out over the last year or so, you would think that residents would agitate for the local power company to do something. Actually, you're right. A series of "show trials" where the power company officials had to do some 'splainin before the elected officials and their hangers-on, the press.
And when the company, AmerenUE wants to do something, what does it get? You bet! Residents agitating that AmerenUE is doing something:
- Pam Schnebelen realizes that AmerenUE officials are going to have a tough time deciding on a route to build miles of transmission lines through Jefferson County.
But, they better not come through the LaBarque Creek watershed area in northwestern Jefferson County, she said.
"They are not going to build in this watershed," Schnebelen said. "They'll have to take any landowner to court to get an easement, because they can't compensate in dollars for the environmental impact involved."
Schnebelen, 57, Judy Browne-D'Amico and Bob Coffing, 68, all members of the LaBarque Creek Watershed Landowners Committee, recently invited the Journal to see the LaBarque Creek watershed area. The area includes private property as well as public lands and is located off Route FF near the St. Louis County line. It covers about 13 square miles.
- posted by Brian J. @ 12:33 PM 0 comments
Friday, October 05, 2007
Mail Call
In yesterday's mail:
Special thanks to the development departments at the last two for selling my name in vain and to Bank of America for its unsolicited and unwarranted come-ons.
In the mail for BOA the day after tomorrow: three post-paid envelopes containing nothing but the cardmember agreement.
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:55 AM 0 comments
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Almost Like A Geek, But Pays Less
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:18 PM 2 comments
Book Report: Eight Black Horses by Ed McBain (1985)
I've read this book before, so I knew how it was going to end. I read it again anyway. That's what I like about McBain. That I like McBain. Or something.
This book is one of the Deaf Man books, which you know what that means if you know McBain. The 87th Precinct series are pretty straight ahead police procedurals, but a number of the books center on the heist designs of the arch criminal of the series, The Deaf Man. These books deal less with the investigation of a realistic crime than the heistalistic stylings and clues and eventual accidental collapse of the schemes. In this book, he begins sending clues to the 87th Precinct that usually indicates the heist he's going to pull. If he's playing fair. Oh, yeah, there's a dead body found in Grover Park, too.
The Deaf Man subseries aren't the best introduction to the series if you haven't read them before, but if you're familiar with the series, they're a understandable diversion. McBain must have had fun with them.
So I've read it more than once, and I'll probably read it again someday. The next time I find another copy on my to-read shelves. Which could be as early as December.
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:15 PM 2 comments
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Book Report: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861, ?)
I got this book in the Reader's Digest purty edition instead of the Walter J. Black Classics Club/Classic Editions (as is Oliver Twist and some of the other Dickens I have). Hence, instead of $1 or $4.95 I would have paid for it, I paid $30 or so (plus shipping and handling). There was a phase I was going through when I thought it would be neat to have matching editions of books in my collection, before I came to my senses and started amassing matching editions that only cost $1.00.
At first, I thought I would like this book much better than Oliver Twist for two reasons: first, the book uses a double-effect first person narrator. Now, to those of you not up on those terms, it means that the voice telling the story is an I (I did, I said). The double-effect means that the voice is telling a story from the past, so the events of the past convey not only what happened and what the narrator thought of them as they happened, but the greater wisdom of interpretation from a later time. This allows some offhand foreshadowing as well as a certain wryness.
Secondly, with a first person narrator, I figured that flaw I found in Oliver Twist, that things happened to Oliver, a passive participant in his own story, wouldn't happen. Well, therein I was incorrect. For although things happened to Oliver, in Great Expectations, Pip spends a lot of time doing nothing.
For a quick synopsis: A young orphan, raised by his sister and her blacksmith husband, finds an escaped convict in the graveyard where his parents are buried (the child's, not the convict's). Forced to help the convict, the orphan brings him a file and some victuals. The convict is captured the next day, but the child never lets on he helped the convict. After time passes, the child (Pip) grows a bit and is selected to visit a reclusive wealthy woman who has stopped her clocks at the time she was jilted by a con man some years ago. Pip meets her ward as well, a young woman who is attractive but cold. Apparently, the woman is raising the child to be a man-eater to exact revenge on the gender. Suddenly, the woman's attorney--and a criminal defender of some reknown--comes forward to tell Pip he has "great expectations"--that is, someone has given him an allowance for education and he might come into some property when he turns 21. Pip turns from an earnest, lower class fellow into a shiftless upper class snob, continues to pursue the beautiful but cold Estella, and waits to learn the name and nature of his benefactor.
So, ultimately, while Oliver Twist had a lot of things just happen to Oliver, Great Expectations has a first person narrator who does little but kill time. Overall, the book was too long building with a lot of paragraphs spent on the things Pip did while passing the time, but the nut of the story could have been told in 200 pages. This is the nature of Victorian literature, I guess, filled with passages and "comic" moments that really aren't that funny to a modern audience.
Worth your time if you're into literature, but there are better things to read.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:57 AM 0 comments
Monday, October 01, 2007
Good Book Hunting: September 29, 2007
Another week, another set of yard sales. At the first one we visited, I carried the boy instead of putting him in the stroller, so I didn't browse too closely the inexpensive books or videocassettes. At the second one, we deployed the stroller, but I was being very selective--as in not looking too closely at all--until I saw the price: 50 cents for hardbacks, 25 cents for paperbacks. Then I went bonkers, because who knows when I might need several books covering Triumph automobiles?
Here's what we got:
Click for full size
- The Confessions of St. Augustine, because, um, it's learned to have it.
- A Set of Six by Joseph Conrad, some novels and novellas that do not include Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer.
- Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen because I wasn't sure if I owned it or not.
- Castles and Keeps of Scotland, a Barnes and Noble edition so the book must be pretty famous and out of copyright protection.
- Missouri Trivia. It's questions and answers, but I'll learn something to astonish my friends and family.
- The Global War on Guns, written by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. Has anyone told him how French his name sounds? Seriously, Wayne is probably his Americanized way of spelling Jacques. The book probably condenses the last year's worth of America's First Freedom, but it was only fifty cents.
- It's Pat: My Life Exposed. A book based on an unfunny Saturday Night Live series of skits. At least I haven't seen the movie. That is to my credit, I believe. This was a quarter, though, with no additional royalties encouraging the participants.
- The Illustrated Triumph Buyer's Guide. I told you so.
- TR for Triumph. I meant more than one.
- Sunset Best Home Plans. Back when I was eBaying, I found home plan books went surprising well. Now that I am not eBaying, I like to look at them and kind of dream. Plus, I think I will accidentally find myself collecting old Sunset books one of these days.
- Disco Dancing. A book showing you how to disco. I shall use it to train my son.
- Disco. I think this is some sort of coffee table book. I picked it up because I'd already picked up the disco book above, and when you get the chance to get more than one book on a topic in a week, you take it. See also "Triumph" in this blog entry.
- New York at Night, a collection of photographs. Probably better than Detroit, but probably there isn't much that is not.
- Ulysses by James Joyce. If there's ever a reason I want to punish myself, this is the method I will choose.
- Momisms, a little greeting card sort of book. It was cheap, and I was in a frenzy; don't you know what that means yet?
- Panati's Parade of Frauds, Follies, and Manias [sic]. As you should know by now, gentle reader, I like to grab these compendia to get ideas for essays. Sometimes, it pays off (watch this space!).
- The Triumph TRs. I meant I got a bunch of books on Triumph cars. Just in case. I better start collecting them to make this book purchase meaningful.
- Opening Nights by Janet Burroway. Some 15 years ago, my college fiction workshop used a textbook written by this author. This is the first I've seen one of her books in the wild. Let's see if she knows what she's talking about. Of course, in the 15 years since I took that class, I've forgotten anything I might have learned.
- A Celebration of Poets. Another collection of poetry to read aloud, although I've sort of fallen out of the habit of doing that
towith the boy. - Training African Grey Parrots. Once upon a time, I was going to get one. Well, I thought about it. Now I have a book that will teach me how to train one.
- The Dead Zone by Stephen King. This will replace a book club edition already on my to-read shelf. And by "will replace," I mean will sit on my to-read shelf until I inadvertently read both of them.
- Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook by Scott Adams. Now that I am not actively managing any more, this book won't do me as much good as it would have, but it will prove amusing nevertheless.
- Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. Also a replacement. Also subject to doubling.
Heather bought her regular collection of books, cassettes, and records pictured, as usual, to the right.
So I bought 23 books when I started out uninterested in buying any. The worst part is that, although I bought 3 books about Triumph automobiles, I passed up 2 books on historic Mobile, Alabama. Given my recent drive to read this sort of historical material in my own neighborhood, I do regret, lightly, passing over them.
All told, the feast you see before you cost less than $40. I gloat a bit, but I also mourn that this much knowledge is worth so little in the contemporary marketplace.
UPDATE: Frequent commenter gimlet suggests I start my new collection with this.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:35 PM 1 comments
Book Report: How To Research the History of Your Webster Groves Home by Ann Morris (1980)
This old book is more akin to a pamphlet as it weighs in at 20 typed-and-photocopied pages, but since the library counted it as a book, I will, too. Like Webster Park: 1892-1992, it provides insight into the history of the region in which I live, but it's not much. The book provides a little text describing how to look for information about your home from the city of St. Louis (if your home was built before the city threw out the county lo, those many years ago) or St. Louis County. Additionally, it provides a couple of maps showing some of the early subdivisions of the land, so I now know who owned the land my house was on from the time the Spanish crown deeded it to a fellow named Sarpy to the time it was parcelled into 40 acre lots. It's not far, really, for me to draw up a line of owners all the way to me if I were so inclined. Perhaps someday I might.
The book precedes the Internet, though, in that it includes a couple of forms that you can photocopy and fill out to take with you to the government. Of course, from what I know of the government, it still precedes the Internet, so perhaps those will come in handy.
Worth the hour I spent browsing it just for the maps.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:52 PM 0 comments
Beware of Neocon Foreign Policy Wonks You Meet in Bars at 1am
Columnist Don Corrigan in the Webster-Kirkwood Times
- •Failure to pay for the war with Iraqi oil profits, as was promised.
- posted by Brian J. @ 12:10 PM 0 comments
Land Developer Quotes St. Augustine
Is St. Louis building blocks or back breakers?:
- Fresh off cinching a blockbuster downtown deal that relies heavily on taxpayer support, developer John Steffen said he hoped there would come a time when projects like his wouldn't need tax breaks.
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:17 AM 0 comments
When a "Sobriety Checkpoint" Is Just A Checkpoint
Searching for drunks triggers a backlash:
- Orange traffic cones. Police officers with flashlights. Tow trucks idling.
The sight of a sobriety checkpoint is supposed to be — well — sobering.
But frequent roadblocks on a short stretch of Natural Bridge Road and at least one of its major cross streets this summer have triggered complaints that police are more interested in writing tickets than catching drunks in that part of north St. Louis County. During one Pine Lawn checkpoint in August, for instance, officers wrote 133 tickets — none for drunken driving.
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:10 AM 0 comments
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Neil Steinberg,
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Kim du Toit,
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"Brian J. Noggle apparently forgot that the proper design for a tin foil beanie calls for the shiny side out."
Robb Allen,
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