Book Report: Downtown by Ed McBain (1991)
I originally heard this book on audio book about a decade ago, when I spent a lot of time in my car. Ergo, I remembered the conceit of the book, but not much about the plot. I guess that happens, the details (that is, the whole plot) falls from your memory faster from audiobooks than from books you read, but that's because reading is more engaging than listening while you're doing other things, such as avoiding other people on the roads not content to merely listen.

This book is similar to Candyland in that someone who's not a native New Yorker gets caught up in the crime-ridden life in New York. Instead of a randy architect, we get a mild-mannered orange grower up from Florida who has some time to kill before his flight leaves for home, so he talks to a woman in a bar. The woman is a con artist who, along with an accomplice, steals the contents of his wallet. A sympathetic ear at the bar listens to his story, and then steals his car. After he talks to the police and gets subway fare to the airport (in the days where you didn't need ID to fly, apparently), he fights back in a mugging and is confused for the agressor by a cop. He flees, following the would-be mugger to a Chinese gambling den and catching a news upate that indicates that a film director, the sympathetic ear from the bar, was murdered in the car stolen from the protagonist and that the protagonist's wallet was found on the scene.

So it's a tour de force, absurd bit, but it drags you along.

It's a good book, as you might guess would deem a McBain novel. Again, it's a departure from the police procedural bread and butter, but it's amusing as long as you take it as sort of a camp. You cannot help it, which attests to the skill of the writer. And although I enjoyed the audiobook, I probably enjoyed the actual book more. Hopefully, I'll retain the plot a little longer in my memory.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:49 PM   0 comments

 
Juxtaposition
In Sudan, give a teddy bear a name, go to jail and fret as thousands demand your execution. This is widely condemned in the blogosphere.

In America, call a person a name on the Internet, and you will soon go to jail. This is widely applauded in the blogosphere.

Responding to a tragic incident with knee-jerk legislation will lead to unintended consequences. Don't we know this by now, or don't we care? And at what point do the consequences stop being merely "unintended" and start being "willfully negligent"?


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:43 AM   0 comments

 
That's Not Where I Keep My Knives
A highly-paid master of metaphor at work. Marvel!

"If I'm going to get punched in the stomach, I'm going to take a knife out and get you right back," said John Lapp of the consulting firm McMahon, Squier, Lapp and Associates.

Lapp considers himself one of a new breed of Democratic ad-makers who don't hesitate to hit hard in the ad war.

"I'm going to use every single weapon I have in my quiver."

The gentleman has a way with words. A bad way.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:26 AM   0 comments

 
Was Hiding Out In Argentina, Living Under Assumed Name
Israeli Says Elusive Biblical Wall Found.

After all, to be elusive, something must actively elude; I mean, your car keys aren't eluding you if you've just forgotten they're in your coat pocket.


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

 
A Moment of Strength, or Weakness
I was looking for an old car radio in the dimly lit basement storage room. Amid the archived esoteric computer peripherals and old gaming systems, I found a stack of magazines. It wasn't a surprise, really, because I have binders filled with an assortment of old magazines, including: old computer magazines with programs you could type into your Commodore 64 to turn hours of hunting and pecking and troubleshooting typographic errors into minutes of fun with primitive games; decades' old copies of Writers' Digest that contain the endless loop of advice that magazine provides; several varieties of home handyman magazines to provide me with fantasy projects that I could handle but wouldn't want and projects that I would want but couldn't handle; and myriad single copies of magazines I picked up on newsstands while telling myself that they're research for my writing career. No, instead of those semi-useful magazines, I found two years' worth of Spin.

Sometime immediately after the turn of the century, I got an unsolicited invitation to subscribe to Spin for two years. As it was, I wasn't hip to the latest music, and I'd just turned 30. So, with some lottery-ticket hope of recapturing some of my youth, I took the chance and sent the ten bucks, and the magazines started coming. Each issue showed some different group of unwashed kids revolutionizing everything about music. The White Strokes, the Activisions, Dashboard Light, and so on and so on and Scooby Dooby Dooby. Frankly, the magazine didn't give me the urge to increase my budget for CDs based on the say-so of some music-industry spit-shiners, so I let my subscription lapse. Besides, my music-buying habits in my salad days centered upon buying two dollar cassettes from the racks at Walgreens or Camelot Music and sometimes finding something I really liked, albeit several years and a couple of albums beyond the group's hits (a-ha and Cutting Crew, for example) and sometimes finding something I played once and then forgot (76% Uncertain et al). So Spin couldn't help me recapture a youthful musical hipness I never had in the first place.

Still, I browsed the magazines and then threw them into a box. Did I intend to keep them in case I needed them for research in the future? Did I keep them in case they became collectibles some decades hence? I'm not even sure I needed that much excuse, as I'm somewhat of an accumulator of things (see also that list of electronic esoterica). However, when I rediscovered this particular stack of magazines, I decided that I would never actually use them for research. They probably wouldn't be worth anything as a collectible as the next generations, to whom these would be collectibles, won't actually collect things. And the bands covered within the magazine are probably just flashes in the pan whose names I obviously cannot get correct even now, three years removed from the musical revolution and whatever passes for hits in the iPod world.

So I stacked them in a box, but I didn't throw them into the recycling bin. Perhaps I gave myself a cooling off period to ensure that I did not act rashly in my discarding the valuable-because-I-have-them clutterica. Perhaps my hands were too full (of nothing since I didn't find the car radio). Whatever the reason, the magazines took up residence in the box on the floor instead of stacked atop binders of more valuable magazines.

A couple of days later, I returned to the storage room and found the box of magazines. Now, I could certainly carry the collection to the recycling bin. However, as I looked at the box, I thought perhaps I could list an eBay auction composed of the “collectibles,” but my eBay sense tingled danger, and I knew that I'd only lose my auction fees. Then, I thought about saving them for a yet-unplanned garage sale in the future or using them as a donation to a sale of some sort, but ultimately I'd mark them a dime each and no one would even paw through them. No one pawed through the collection of magazines at our last garage sale earlier this month. So that foolish dream or rationalization too died.

Anti-climactically, I carried them out to the recycling. Ultimately, it was that easy; simply lift with the legs and not the back, ascend the stairs, open the door, set down. Once I got the habitual mental hang-ups out of the way, I did it without fanfare. I got rid of something I had no use for but that was only taking up space in our store room. But, contrary to the hopes and dreams of my wife, that doesn't mark the beginning of a trend in my behavior. These were just Spin magazines, after all, and not a sixth Commodore 64, a box of uncleaned and thoroughly played with G. I. Joes from the middle 1980s, or boxes of comic books that haven't been out of their plastic bags for fifteen years. Those things have intrinsic and obvious because-I-have-them value.


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

 
More For Band Geeks Than Me
A video-game themed band half-time show.

It's upside down, though, so I had trouble deciphering it. Your mileage may vary.

Thanks to long-time, occasionally when I haven't peeved him, reader Cagey.


- posted by Brian J. @ 1:37 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: The Handyman by Penelope Mortimer (1983)
Well, with a title like that, one would expect it to either be a bodice-ripping romance or a horror book. This book is neither.

It deals with a recent British widow who decides after her husband's sudden death to move to a small cottage in the British countryside. She does so and discovers its environs are mostly owned by a land-grabber who has a number of ruffians about. There's also a faded writer nearby. She moves in, deals a bit with her two children, and then engages a handyman to do a little work on her cottage.

Well, the handyman is a louse, ultimately, and his lousiness triggers a change in the widow and her son, and the characters move on that event. The book ends in tragedy, though, which saddened me, and the author goes for the Nausea ending:

A memorial, then, to both of them, extinct as they are, foolish, fond, courageous and insignificant.

That is, in spite of the meaninglessness, the writer character decides to tell the idiot's tale for us. Marvelous.

I'm probably a better person, slightly, for going outside the normal comforts of genre fiction. The book isn't a bad read, although a trifle slow and slightly alien for a middle-aged American male.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:36 AM   0 comments

 
Not Much Happening Here
But I have been posting regularly at QAHatesYou.com.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:53 PM   0 comments

 
Sometimes You're The Whopper, Sometimes You're The Whoppee
Useful information in case you need to whop the product:
Click for full size

Needless to say, given the quality of the documentation, I do want to whop the product since it doesn't appear to work.

I could have lived my whole life without seeing "u" used as "you" in technical material of any sort and been happy.


- posted by Brian J. @ 4:12 PM   2 comments

 
Early Adopter
Now that's a pioneer!

On the other hand, I was one of the first retailers to have a presence on the Web. I've been doing it since 1988 or 1989, and I've been reinventing. That's gotten us a head start.

- posted by Brian J. @ 8:05 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: New York at Night by Bill Harris (1983, 1985)
I bought this book on September 29, 2007, and as I suspected, it's better than the other city-themed picture book I've read this year, Detroit. Whereas that book focused on helicopter shots of the buildings in the city, this book covers New York at night. The text is a bit affected with first person sort of you-are-there visitations to New York City in 1983, the photos display a variety of things: people on the job in staged portraiture, buildings, streetscapes, and slice-of-life snapshots.

Of course, everyone is wearing that hair that occurred as the 70s transistioned the the 80s, and most of the buildings have bars on the windows before the renaissance of the 1990s, but it's an interesting artifact and collection of images.

With no random quotes, unless you count the introductory essays.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:25 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Tales from the Coral Court by Shellee Graham (2000)
I borrowed this book from the Old Trees library's local history section, a section that I will probably completely consume by the end of 2008. This book covers, as the title might indicate, the Coral Court motel, a motor court built in 1941/1942 that was not only a mainstay on the Route 66 circuit, but also proved instrumental in founding the municipality of Marlborough, a former speed trap town (that has since disbanded its police force and has slid from the St. Louis County consciousness as a result) and provided St. Louisians with something about which it could giggle behind its hands (the fact that each unit had a garage that opened into the bedroom led itself, led itself from the realm of the modern into the realm of the merely seamy once the Interstate built some miles to the north removed the middle class tourist from the client list).

This book fits more into the In Retrospect mold, as it provides some text about the original owners, the architecture style, and the evolution of motor courts and motels in America, but mostly relies on quotes from random St. Louisians (and some poetry, heaven forfend) about the motel. Still, the author took a number of photos in the period between the closing of the hotel (1993) and its demolition (1995), and the author gathered some other photo material from people who'd heard about her project.

In a couple years, no one will remember the place, since its heydey came in the Greatest Generation years and its ill repute came in the Boomer years, so this book's novelty will pass but its usefulness as a historical document and collection of photos will live on.

Full disclosure: in that same period before the demolition and the raising of the Oak Knoll subdivision where the motel used to stand, I was dating a photographer and got the opportunity to do a little trespassing for photography purposes myself. So I remember the Coral Court from first hand experience, although not from the authentic Coral Court first hand experience. And that first hand knowledge is what makes this book resonate, so as I said, I suspect it will only be a curiosity in a couple years when that resonance is gone for most people.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:56 PM   0 comments

 
Interesting Contrast
Spot the contrast:

St. Louis County Councilwoman Colleen Wasinger, R-Town and Country, plans to scrutinize next year's county budget to find ways to save enough money to avoid a tax increase.

St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley has proposed a county budget of $505.4 million for next year. It includes a property tax increase of 2 cents for each $100 assessed valuation. Dooley estimates that will raise slightly more than $4 million.

Where's Dooley's D?


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

 
Not So That You Noticed
But Diane Duane, the author of the book I reported on earlier this week, appears in the comments for the post to discuss the book, her library, and writing Star Trek novels.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:20 PM   2 comments

 
Book Report: In Retrospect (I) edited by Kathy Condon (1975)
This book, the result of a high school project, came about when Wilda Swift (co-author of Webster Park 1892-1992) started a class to explore local history. Students interviewed a number of residents of the community who could remember life before 1914 and put the book (more of a magazine in a library binding) out.

As such, its quality is what you might expect; it looks as though it was typewritten with some photos pasted in. What a high school class could do 30 years ago before desktop publishing became available, then easy.

The book doesn't get into narratives; it just drops little sentence or paragraph excerpts from the interviews organized around topics. So it's more of a quilt than a cloth. Still, interesting enough to get details and a flavor.

Books mentioned in this review:

In Retrospect
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:56 AM   0 comments

 
Book Report: My Enemy, My Ally by Diane Duane (1984)
Well, I hadn't been in much mood to read for a number of days, which explains why it's taken my 10 days to complete another book not written by Tolstoy or Hugo. Instead, to get myself back into the game, I picked up one of the Star Trek novels I bought at some time in the past en masse; the others include the novelizations of the first few movies.

Now, I'm not the Star Trek book guy, so this was my first dose of that part of the canon (the Blish short stories based on the series episodes are a different thing entirely; see also Star Trek 5, Star Trek 6, and Star Trek 10 among others).

The book was written after the first and second series (I count TAS!) had ended, the first two films were released, and appeared about the same time as the third movie; ergo, it's historical in its canon. Since it's a book and has no special effects budget, we get a lot of alien races serving on Federation starships and some descriptions of them. We also get insight into the Romulan way (a sequel to this book, I assume, is called that).

But the main thrust of the book is like a television episode with a lot of exposition. The first half of the book details the plot: a Romulan commander, exiled for unpopular views, is set to die in a mission that will foment a Klingon-Federation War. She learns of the existence of a secret Romulan plan to give Romulans the same mentalist abilities that Vulcans have and knows that this will destroy not only the Federation, but the soul of the Romulan empire. She convinces Kirk, on patrol in the Neutral Zone, to act as though she's taken the Enterprise prisoner so they can go to the research facility and destroy it to save the universe.

I don't want to ruin it for you, but in the last 80 pages, they do. It reads like a filmography and relies on the normal tricks of the showm pseudo deus ex machina and timely reversals, to climax and then a film-friendly denoument.

I mean, it's not a bad book, but it's not high art; one wonders if the authors of these books write these like movies in hopes of getting the extra dough out of having a movie adapted from it or if that's just the way they imagine the stories. Or maybe I'm generalizing based on a single data point.

I'll read the rest of what I've got and won't purposefully avoid the series, but jeez, lots of tentacles and an awful lot of characters laughing uproariously at only partially humorous lines don't compel me to read more right away. Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:10 PM   8 comments

 
Good Book Hunting: Early November
Well, it has been a while since I told you about what I've bought as far as books go, but that's because we spent Saturday mornings in the latter part of October looking at sport utility vehicles and minivans because although one can sort of fit a single child seat into the back of a Mitsubishi Eclipse with only slight discomfort for the passenger, two child seats would be impossible. So for a span of a couple of weeks, I bought no books.

Fortunately, though, on Sunday, November 4, my mother and I found an estate sale in Lemay. Within a tiny house in one of the older parts of Lemay on a street that ultimately connected to a newer part with larger homes and lawns, some assorted odds and ends remained from a household recently and fairly suddenly emptied. However, in the basement, several boxes of books, mostly paperbacks, lay unpriced. The assortment was rather eclectic; romance novels, 60s detective pulp, philosophy, literature, and some of those paperbacks your grandfather used to keep hidden.

I picked a couple out:
Click for full size My selection includes a couple of Matt Helm novels (I read one earlier this year and watched the Dean Martin movies in the last two years), the first of the Enforcer novels (I read the third earlier this year), a Richard S. Prather Shell Scott novel (I singlehandedly drove blogger Robert Prather from the Web by commenting every time he guest posted on myriad blogs that I loved the Shell Scott novels), and whatnot.

You want the full list? Click and look. The stack to the right are some theologically-flavored tomes I bought for my beautiful wife.

It was only when I got to the counter, manned by the daughter of the fellow who had to take a book everywhere, that I discovered that paperbacks were a dime and hardbacks were a quarter; it's a good thing I didn't know earlier, or I'd have had boxes of smoky and musty pulp to show you.

Then, last weekend, we actually hit some yard sales in our suburb. Global warming is pushing garage sale season into November; now that we have a full SUV, I am driving it up and down the block to help push garage sales in Missouri into January.

At any rate, here's what we got:
Click for full size I'm not saying that reading Farnham's Freehold affected my thinking at all, but I did find my basic skills reference works lacking. So I bought, for $25, a seven volume set called The Science Library, a 27 volume set called The Complete Handyman Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia, and 11 of 12 volumes of the Popular Mechanics Do-It-Yourself Encyclopedia; oddly enough, of the latter, I lack volume 11. My mother has this set, too, and she's missing volume 11, too. Hmmm. I wonder if that's where they put all the neat do-it-yourself nuclear things.

The fellow also threw in the free sample starter pack of the Easy Home Repair binder series. These were sold by packets you could stick into the binders, kind of like those old boxes of recipe cards. I only got the first set, still in its plastic cellophane, and the binder. That's okay, though; my mother also owns the complete set of these, and I'll own them all myself far too soon.

Additionally, I bought a book called TV Closeups, a 1974-1975 book produced by Scholastic or some other children's book publisher that ties into television and a copy of Sinclair Lewis's Cass Timberlane. And a copy of the 1984 game Ambush, a solitaire war game.

So I've added a pile, but not much for my to-read shelf. Regular garage and estate sale stuff has resumed. Thank you, that is all.
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:40 PM   0 comments

 
Career Advice
Courtesy of Rob Preston of Information Week:

If you long for a Leave It To Beaver world where life is simple and jobs are secure, watch Nick at Nite and take the civil service exam.

Word.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:05 PM   0 comments

 
A Very California Solution
Problem: Neighbor downhill from you has a metal roof reflecting its light into your sensitive eyes.

Missouri solution: Sue the fellow, the metal roofing company, the neighborhood association, the township, and Hephaestus, probably followed by fines and potential condemnation by the local government.

The California solution: Put some glass insect sculptures on the roof to make it pretty colors.

Everyone note that the California solution, if applied in Missouri, would meet with the same response; namely, art on your property is cause for lawsuits and legal action.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:10 PM   0 comments

 
Because There's No Defense Like A Good Offense
The Crossbow Project lives:

The world's most powerful airborne laser capable of shooting down a ballistic missile is being re-assembled by Northrop Grumman and the US Missile Defence [sic] Agency (MDA).

The laser is being integrated onto MDA's Airborne Laser (ABL). High-power system testing will follow completion.

As they said at Ace of Spades:

If you can burn down an incoming missile, you ought to be able to burn down some miscreant 50 miles away too, right?

And make a lot of popcorn.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:04 PM   0 comments

 
Google Maps Shows Moving Day
How many of you can say what you were doing the exact day when Google Maps snapped your house? Well, in my case, I was moving out:



That's our old house with the moving truck backed into the driveway; the second moving truck sits at the edge of the cul-de-sac, awaiting its turn at carrying away the Noggle library. Heather's car and my truck are parked out on the main street to make room.


- posted by Brian J. @ 8:04 PM   2 comments

 
No Word On Left Handed Hunter Accident Rates
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel finds a truth in statistics:

An estimated 650,000 hunters, many with high-powered rifles, will saturate the fields and forests of Wisconsin when deer-hunting season opens Saturday. They will track game at a time when hunting has never been safer in Wisconsin.

But a Journal Sentinel analysis shows the percentage of accidents caused by hunters 21 and younger in 2006 was the highest since 1999. And in the past five years, those young hunters were more than twice as likely to cause hunting accidents than all other hunters.

Fortunately, judicious use of a calculator has given the paper its needed anti-hunting trope.


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

 
Recognizing that One Is No Longer a Part of the Target Demographic
As a matter of fact, I do own a shoe horn.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:27 PM   2 comments

 
Book Report: One of Us Is Wrong by Samuel Holt (1986)
I wanted to say that it's been twenty years since I read the second book in this series, but I'd be misstating my own longevity as well as warping the former Clinton presidency into a longer period than it was. I only read it the book I Know a Trick Worth Two of That probably in 1990 or 1991; I suspect I picked up the copy I had of that at a paperback exchange in Milwaukee the summer before I began college. I don't know why I remember it that way.

So I recognized the naming scheme/"author" when I found this book probably earlier this year, and the memory was such that I bought the book. And you know what? Worthwhile endeavor.

This book sets the tone for the series: a former policeman/basketball player/television show star Samuel Holt has to deal with his celebrity but also finds himself in a situation where a crime has been committed and where he, the man who played PACKARD, must find out who or what is going on.

It's a light read from the 1980s featuring Arabic terrorists plotting an attack on American soil. Really, though, that's secondary to the voice navigating the LA scene suffering from the cancellation of the television series that made him a household name and identifiable celebrity. The Samuel Holt character drives the book, and the missteps, mistakes, and typographical errors are forgiven. After all, Donald Westlake, who wrote this book and the four-book series under the pseudonym of the main character (a la Ellery Queen), churned out a pile in the 1980s.

Friends and readers (and by "Readers," I mean "Deb, CG, and Gimlet"), I'll look for the remaining two books in this series. So if you're into light mysteries, you might want to check these out, quirky as they might be.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:17 PM   0 comments

 
Personal Relics: The Good Bookmark
   You can tell I’m a serious reader, not one of the rank amateurs who merely picks up the latest mass market paperback for airplane or beach reading or who parrots lines from the latest hot talk show host book club’s recommendation so I can sound smart at card parties. No, it’s not the fact that I carry snapshots of my library instead of my children to show to random coffee shop patrons. My continual enumeration of the books I read each year and my easy answer to questions of what I’ve read lately don’t give me away. The identifier that signals my serious pursuit of letters, which can often include mass market paperbacks and hardback thrillers amid the serious highsnoot stuff, is my good bookmark.

   Make no mistake, I own more than my share of the common paper bookmarks that blizzard any book buyer. I have colorful, bag-stuffing scrips of paper with the names of the large chain bookstores and the large Internet bookstores. I have many folded, worn used bookstore bookmarks from shops I have visited in myriad cities across the country. I even have several from used bookstores that I’ve never visited that came with books I bought elsewhere. I have a couple of bookmarks enclosed with unsolicited fundraising appeals; I didn’t send money, but I kept the bookmarks. We even have one or two congratulatory bookmarks given for elementary or middle school achievements floating around here. All get their usage between book covers.

   During my reading lifetime, I’ve not been particular about separating the pages where I last imbibed the language with a piece of refined bookmarkery. I’ve used envelopes, receipts, the odd note page, napkins, smaller books, and other varied materiel to let myself know where to resume and to mark for the world exactly how many pages’ worth of wisdom I bore. When one is away from home, one must make do with what nature and its descendent civilization provide. When I am at home, I prefer to use a real bookmark, and for the main book I am reading at any time, I use the good bookmark.

   I speak its very name with reverence, as one speaks of the good china. This good bookmark bears my last initial stamped into the top and looks to be brass. The front side shines brightly, and the rear displays a handsome sheen of green paint. Like all good things, it is formal and practical at once.

   I received this particular bookmark as a graduation gift when I matriculated from high school. No doubt, my distant aunt bought the bookmark at the bookstore when she was buying my gift certificate and impulsively added the five dollar’s worth of finery to my gift. Regardless, it not only bore my initial, but it became mine.

   Almost twenty years later, the memories of most gifts from that era have faded after the utility or quality of the gifts faded or failed. I’m sure I spent the accumulated capital on used books as I bought reading material for the interim summer. I wore the clothes, played the harmonica a couple of times, and I forgot the thoughtful or thought-free presentations of friends and family. But the bookmark lives on.

   The bookmark retained some of its mint condition by spending much of the 1990s in a complete collection of Emily Dickinson’s work, somewhere in the middle 700s of her numbered list. A few years ago, during one of the periods when I continued my trek through the wilderness of poor capitalization, I swapped out the good bookmark for a pair of bookmarks—one to tell me where I am, and one to tell me how long I had to go to finish the hundreds of poems Dickinson wrote in 1865.

   So while those bookmarks spend the next decade in the Dickinson, I use the good bookmark now for my primary reading material. It lends a certain air of class to my reading, elevates my place marking. Anyone who invests in or continues to use an actual piece of metal to mark a place in a book obviously plans to mark a lot of books with a permanent artifact.

   I’ll have to remember again to thank my aunt, long after she has forgotten the gift.


- posted by Brian J. @ 10:55 PM   2 comments

 
A Headline You Would Not Have Seen In 1960
Hoffa to announce Teamster support for Nixon

Put that in Back to the Future IV and have Marty call it "Heavy."


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:16 PM   0 comments

 
That's News?
Headline: Police officer tasers woman, 82. However, if you're doing anything but scanning the headlines, you get a slightly different story:

Chicago's Police Department is investigating an officer's use of a Taser last month on an 82-year-old woman who was swinging a hammer when police arrived.

You're forgiven if you thought cops were tasering another 82 year old woman.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:58 PM   1 comments

 
Book Report: The Black Hole by Alan Dean Foster (1979)
Sometimes, when you've seen the movie, you compare the novelization to the movie. However, I've not seen this movie. I did, however, have the activity/coloring book when I was much younger, so I do have a means of comparison, and at times this novel suffers in comparison.

Hey, I like Alan Dean Foster (see also Cyber Way, Midworld, Codgerspace, and even The Dig). I liked his novelization of the movie Outland, for crying out loud, which I read way, way back in the day.

This book runs about 200 pages, and the first 70 lead up to the docking with the mysterious space station. You see, the Palamino is a scientific discovery vehicle which comes across a 20-year lost space station-sized vessel, the Cygnus. Its expensive mission was similar to the Palomino's, but it was recalled to earth and never came back. Once the crew of the Palomino is aboard, things start to happen: they find that only one human remains, a meglomaniac scientist who wants to fall into the Black Hole to see what's on the other side, and the Palomino just wants to go home.

Calamities occur, and the ending differs from the comic book and probably from the movie (from what I read on a fan site). This time, the book goes all Space Child and the movie has a better resolution.

So it ran a bit long in spots and probably didn't do the film any justice, since the film probably relied on a lot of visual effects not carried over. I forgive Alan Dean Foster for the effort.

And I liked it so much that I've added it to my Amazon wish list along with another DVD of the same title that's apparently set in St. Louis. In case any of you cheapskates has any money left over after donating to the Fred Thompson campaign through the widget in the sidebar to the right.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 12:27 PM   1 comments

 
Gravy Train Turf Battle
A senior Congressman sees fit to inject his office into oversight of televangelism:

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee has launched a wide-ranging investigation into the financial dealings of six TV evangelists, including Joyce Meyer, the popular preacher who has built a $124-million-a-year empire headquartered in Fenton.

On Monday, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Meyer to provide his staff with documents detailing the finances of the Joyce Meyer Ministries, including the religious group's compensation to Meyer, her husband and other family members, as well as an accounting of their housing allowances, gifts and credit card statements for the last several years.

Congress shall make no law doesn't say a thing about fishing expeditions into religious organizations, does it?

Update: James Joyner links to another article that describes other targets of the investigation and applies the adjective mundane.


- posted by Brian J. @ 11:59 AM   6 comments

 
Compartmentalization at Work
So KMOV TV runs this commercial barking about its INVESTIGATION! into the fact that our government is woeful on its obligation to maintain highways and bridges so that they don't, I don't know, actually collapse into the Mississippi River. However, it's good to see some homeowners have their priorities in order:

Nearly 100 signatures have been gathered from residents whose homes sit along Interstate 270 in Kirkwood, calling for a study to see if a sound wall should be constructed to shield residents from traffic noise.

Whenever you see stories about people who bought homes along the interstate suddenly confronted with noise and who now clamor for government-funded remediation, remember that every last study conducted to see if it's necessary and every last dollar spent on making their backyard decks more enjoyable is less steel and concrete to make sure the highways safe for everyone.

I don't want to hear breakdowns of city/state/government funding or dedicated resources to these sorts of things because that same city/state/government funding could and should be dedicated to the basic repair of the roads.

I speak as someone who bought a house on an interstate. I got a better price because of the noise; I'm not going to expect you to make my cheap property more valuable nor to improve my lifestyle. Period. Especially not at the expense of vital infrastructure maintenance.


- posted by Brian J. @ 7:42 PM   0 comments

 
In St. Louis, Even The Police Headquarters Is A Hoodlum
Drive-by shooting by police headquarters injures 1


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

 
Book Report: Now & Then by Robert B. Parker (2007)
This is the latest Spenser book. In it, Spenser gets tasked with finding out if a woman's cheating on her husband; she is, and after Spenser reports to the husband, both the husband and wife are murdered. Spenser suspects he's captured more than the infidelity on audiocassette, he's determined to find out why.

Amazon reviewers give it a pretty good rating; Heather did not. I think it's toward the lower half of the middle of the pack Spenser novels. Sometime in the middle 1980s, probably with Taming a Seahorse, Parker got very recursive with his Spenser novels. Suddenly, the plots are repeats or continuations of old cases, April Kyle, Paul Giacomin's family, Gerry Broz, and whoever start cropping up with new problems, and the series folds on itself. This book, too, fits into that as events within the book are constantly referred back to A Catskill Eagle as motivation for Spenser, as if he needed more than the normal private eye impetus.

Aside from that, which I can sort of overlook, there's a lot of background that's not covered or only supplied as a prop. The main bad guy in this book is a violent radical out of the 1960s who uses violent means to fight the power. Which seems to mean Spenser, sort of, here. It's a fairly stock now for the Spenser universe (see also Early Autumn, Looking for Rachel Wallace, Back Story). I mean, dang, I would love a little scam out of sheer greed.

But Dr. Parker's getting up to 75 these days, so I guess I'll take what I get.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:32 PM   0 comments

 
Book Report: Webster Groves by Clarissa Start (1975)
This book has a sort of double-effect twist going on; Clarissa Start, a former columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and former resident (as of the writing, she had moved to High Ridge, Missouri), wrote this book at the behest of the city government in Webster Groves as part of its bicentennial celebration. That means it's a history book that's 30 years old.

So I got a glimpse of the past from the past. The tone of the book is very exceptional, so Webster Groves has a hint of Lake Wobegon to it. Of course, a book written on the government dime would explain that the citizens are the best and the town is the best and everything else. I guess I cannot knock some exceptionalism in history, but when it's applied to a small town, it's odd. Also, the book ends with several chapters of Webster Groves at 1975, with a demographic study and the high school commencement speech. I just skimmed these.

Still, the book details the area at the turn of the twentieth century very well and explains the events that precipitated the incorporation (a mugging/murder), the resistance to a layer of government and its eager taxation, and a bit of perspective to the current complaints and how far back those tensions existed.

It brings the book forward, as I mentioned, and the conversational tone tells you what replaced the old blacksmith shop and early businesses downtown. However, 30 years later, the Farmers Home and Trust Bank is gone as well as the IGA grocery store, and those things seem quaint now. But I didn't buy it for contemporary insight, I bought it for its discussion of the old times, and I got it.

More trivia for the cranium, and things that I can tell the child as he grows up so he will think I'm very smart. Fooling the children, really, is the secondary use of all knowledge that comes to the fore after you've succeeded in the primary use of all knowledge, fooling women into thinking you're smart so they will mate with you. One, anyway.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:19 PM   0 comments

 
Not What Taco Bell Had In Mind
A Taco Bell commercial apparently ran during the newscast near the story about university porn club captured here. As a result, the Taco Bell commercial freeze frame displays with the headline that probably doesn't build the brand equity Yum brands wanted:



Double funny: the commercial features the character on the left air-whipping the fellow on the right while Devo's "Whip It" loops.

Triple funny: The pull quote says entail. Heh heh heh. Heh heh heh.


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:44 PM   0 comments

 
That Must Make For Awkward Moments At Cocktail Parties
No, not the death threats; the spouse:

Ms Whitney, a CIBC analyst who is married to the former World Wrestling Entertainment champion Death Mask, prompted a near 7 per cent drop in Citigroup’s shares on Thursday, after suggesting that the bank needed to raise more than $30 billion to restore its capital cushion.

- posted by Brian J. @ 2:41 PM   0 comments

 
Probably Not In That Order
F-15 fighter crashes, pilot ejects


- posted by Brian J. @ 3:53 PM   1 comments

 
Book Report: Farnham's Freehold by Robert Heinlein (1964)
Unlike some, I haven't read much Heinlein. As a matter of fact, as I review a list of his books on Wikipedia, I can't say I'm sure I have read any, although some of the titles sound familiar from my middle school Del Rey paperbacks-in-library-binding days.

I can't say that now, certainly, and I do have a couple more on the to-read shelves, so I'll get my old school sci-fi thing going on.

This book, ca 1964, revolves around a nuclear conflict and a nuclear family plus a friend who duck and cover into the father's bomb shelter when the bomb comes. The family has its problems, from a headstrong son with Oedipal issues to the hard-drinking suburban wife, but the confident and resourceful father holds the family together with the force of his will. A third nuclear strike on a military facility near the home sends the bomb shelter to another place or time.

So the first forty-eight percent of the book details the family's survival in an unspoiled world, the next forty-eight percent of the book details what happens when the family discovers it's 2000 years in the future, and four percent of the book at the end details a denouement or dedeusment of sorts.

The prose is lean and the plot is definitely event-driven, so I enjoyed it, but I guess one could knock it for thin characters. However, if you're a growing lad, this is good science fiction to get you in the mood for the release of Star Wars in fifteen years.

So it's not as hard science as Niven, but it's not as dense as some of the stuff of his I've read, and it's not 500 pages either.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:40 PM   0 comments

 
The Things I Remember
Jack, of Jack in the Box restaurant fame? His wife's name is Cricket.

From some commercial probably 5 years ago, I remember this.

What a waste of brain cells.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:00 PM   3 comments