Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Monday, June 30, 2008
Greetings from Snobopia
The lack of culture is showing:
- At a recent ‘launch’ of the out-of-this world project, Edwards showed up in a space suit, complete with Moonrise Hotel flag and the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyessey blaring in the background.
Ah, who am I kidding? American cinema is the pinnacle of artistic expression and cultural significance.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:58 PM 2 comments
Anti-Obama?
Fla. vandals tag 60 cars with anti-Obama messages:
- Police on Sunday were investigating vandals' spray-painting of dozens of city vehicles here, some with disparaging messages about the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama.
- They even left business cards on the vehicles that disparage both the Illinois senator and his rival, Republican John McCain. The cards voice support for Sen. Hillary Clinton, Obama's former opponent.
- Mike Lowe, a videographer working for The Associated Press, first told police about the damage. He saw three cars with anti-Obama messages, while the others were just heavily painted.
Can't anyone report the events without "hedging" the language into utter falsehood?
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:17 AM 0 comments
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Don't You Hate It When That Happens?
Ever find yourself wandering down the street, unable to name the three members of Exposé?
I mean, I got Gioia and Jeanette Jurado, but I forgot Ann Curless's last name. For Pete's sake, I used to have a poster of them on my wall, and I bought the special cassette single version of "What You Don't Know" just for that poster.
I must be getting senile.
I'll leave it to you to determine whether my lapse in memory is evidence or the fact that I freaking care 20 years later.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:30 PM 2 comments
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Everything Is Better In Wisconsin
In Wisconsin, the sky is bluer, the grass is greener, and the flood waters are browner. And the clouds, they are bigger:
Click for full size photo
Still. I'm not kidding about the sky, by the way. The St. Louis area must have extra haze or something, because it has a slightly greyer cast to its sky than home.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:35 PM 0 comments
A Wedding Toast
Instead of making off with the rings and with the cash used to pay off the peripheral wedding personnel, I stayed and made this toast as best man:
- To B---- and H----. One a dreamer, one practical. Jane Austen would have called this a good match. Fortunately, we didn't have to suffer through 300 pages of Victorian prose to celebrate with them today. Yesterday was the first day of summer, but today is the first day of their spring. May they have many seasons, many fruitful seasons, together.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:21 PM 0 comments
Good Book Hunting: June 28, 2008
Today J1 and my sainted mother and I hit some garage sales and estate sales because she desperately needs an Elvis on Velvet in the next week. The whole thing took on the feel of a weird MMORPG side quest, with this strange character wandering around asking all of the villagers about a Velvet Elvis, even when the people only displayed baby clothes and toys in their shops, as though the parser hearing the words would trigger them to tell my mother what cave to go to or would offer a special deal of the Elvis directly from their wall for a sum of silver. The only way it could have been more so, I suppose, was if she was asking for Velvet Elves.
Amid all of that and a bit of a spat between an estate sale "professional" and an estate sale buying aficionado over a mispriced bit of shelving, I found like four books for me and one for the Js inclusive:
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That includes:
- Two books in the Isaac Asimov Foundation series, I think; as you know, I read a couple of these on my honeymoon, lo those many years ago. I've forgotten how far into the series I got, so I'm gathering a bunch on my to-read shelves because I'm afraid I'll skip a book or read them out of order. Maybe when I have the whole set I can begin again.
- A biography of Ian Fleming.
- Old Possum's Practical Book of Cats by T.S. Eliot. My wife informs me that she already owns a copy of that book. However, as you know, our books remain separate, so I don't care what she owns. I own it now.
Not a lot, but reading is at a slow pace these days (backed up books to report on disbursed rapidly could lead to a different impression).
Or maybe I am saving myself for the Carondolet Y book fair coming later this year.
No Velvet Elvis, though, so my mother is probably going to fail her quest. I think she ought to get some XP just for trying, though. Next week, the world will be lousy with them.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:53 PM 1 comments
Friday, June 27, 2008
Ruining It For Everyone
You know the AFLAC duck?
Voiced by Gilbert Gottfried.
And you used to like those commercials, didn't you?
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:40 AM 2 comments
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Book Report: Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837, 1989)
You know, once might have been enough.
Fresh from reading The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Tales, I jumped right into this book by another American author to see if my thesis that I could read American vernacular with more pleasure than the British was true. Apparently, it's not unflinchingly true, as Hawthorne's stories are more allegorical, high-faluting, and educational rather than enjoyable.
I read it slowly. At the beginning, I thought the style was overwhelming. Then, I amused myself in snickering at double entendres that would have made Hawthorne blush if he'd known how they'd sound to 21st century ears, such as the first paragraph of "The Maypole of Merry Mount":
- BRIGHT WERE the days at Merry Mount, when the Maypole was the banner staff of that gay colony! They who reared it, should their banner be triumphant, were to pour sunshine over New England's rugged hills, and scatter flower seeds throughout the soil. Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire. Midsummer eve had come, bringing deep verdure to the forest, and roses in her lap, of a more vivid hue than the tender buds of Spring. But May, or her mirthful spirit, dwelt all the year round at Merry Mount, sporting with the Summer months, and revelling with Autumn, and basking in the glow of Winter's fireside. Through a world of toil and care she flitted with a dreamlike smile, and came hither to find a home among the lightsome hearts of Merry Mount.
So I guess I got some secondary pleasure out of it.
Less fun than the aforementioned Irving though, and only a bit more enjoyable than the Stallone but at greater investment.
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:22 AM 0 comments
Book Report: Clash of the Titans by Alan Dean Foster (1981)
You remember the movie with the L.A. Law guy? No? Damn kids. This is the novelization, essentially a recasting of the Perseus myth with a bit of modern (ca. 1981) costumery.
I like Alan Dean Foster, as you know, and he got a lot of this sort of work. He adds some allusions within the text not found in the movie, but some of the off-script scenes sound completely different, as though a couple pages of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead were accidentally grafted into Hamlet.
Still, it serves its purpose: reminding me I need to watch the DVD of the film I bought some years ago. Actually, I think the real point was to make me go buy something related to the film to add to its bottom line, but I don't think the lunchboxes still add to MGM's bottom line 30 years later.
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:05 AM 0 comments
Book Report: Contrary Pleasure by John D. MacDonald (1954, ?)
This is a Fawcett reprint of the original book, so you'll have to forgive the back cover's references to patterns of violence and evil lurking beneath the surface. Instead of a crime novel, this book depicts a decadent family in a milltown in New York that has a week wherein their lives break out of the rut into which they'd fallen. It's a character study of each and the events that change them.
The patriarch, 50 something Ben, runs the mill he and the others inherited, but his progenitors allowed it to run down, so he's barely holding it together. A major financier comes along to buy the mill, and Ben has to determine what's best for the family.
Ben's son Brock has been expelled from school after falling in with a bad woman and stealing from another student to support her. He has to deal with his father's sanction, but he meets another girl who draws his attention.
Ben's daughter Ellen is dating an older boy and hangs with some older kids, college students now, but she thinks that they've changed or she has.
Ben's half-brother Quinn, a vice president at the mill, is intimidated by his robust and energetic wife. He doesn't work for his salary and keeps a woman on the side.
Ben's half-sister Alice married a construction man and deals with frigidity.
The construction man used to build good homes, but now speculates with his construction, cutting corners and using cheap materials.
The youngest brother of the family marries a strong woman in Mexico City, where both work for the State Department, and they return.
Over the course of the week, Alice has a sexual awakening of sorts, which causes the construction man to reevaluate his life and goals and stop doing shoddy work. Ellen's boyfriend stumbles through a rape attempt, and she grows up. Ben tells off Quinn, who must be the evil guy as he engages in the pattern of violence--beating his girlfriend to death (he thinks) and then killing himself. Brock regains his father's trust as he helps the patriarch with the crises. And Ben decides not to sell, even though it might drive him to an early coronary, because he likes keeping the mill--and the family--together ultimately.
A decent character piece, a bit awash in characters though, more like MacDonald's business books than his crime fiction. But a good read nevertheless.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:45 AM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 25, 2008
Book Report: Paradise Alley by Sylvester Stallone (1977)
After almost winning an Academy Award for writing (Rocky, which ties Stallone with the number of almost Oscars as Roger L. Simon and puts him only one ahead of me), Stallone unleashed this book in bookstores before turning it into a film starring Stallone. Unlike Rocky, which dealt with boxing, this book deals with wrestling. And it's set in the 40s, not the present day (then), so it's completely different.
It's wooden, it's written pretty specifically in scenes for a movie, and it uses concrete poetry style arrangements of words to make points. But ultimately it didn't suck as bad as some novels movies are based on or some novelizations of movies.
Plus, I get to say I read Stallone's novel. It's mixed in with Austen, Dickens, and Hardy this year, but jeez, any kid in college reads those. I alone read Stallone.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:22 PM 0 comments
Book Report: Bread by Ed McBain (1974)
I passed up a couple of copies of this at the St. Charles Book Fair because I knew I had a copy of it at home. The copy I have is an ex-library copy, so because I wasn't that attentive, I passed up a chance to upgrade. One of these days, I should really add my to-read shelves to my database and run a comprehensive report before I go so I know what to look for and what to buy. But that's more organized than I pretend to be.
This book is a 1974 87th precinct book, which means you'll not find it as easily in the wild (St. Charles Book Fair notwithstanding) as you'll find the 80s-00s books, so I'm glad I got it regardless of the edition. One finds that McBain's quality remained pretty steady throughout his career.
This book deals with an arson fire that destroys a shipment of toys, putting a company's owner in a bind. Investigating leads the 87th Squad to find some dubious investment schemes and a series of related murders that indicate something more than toy selling was going on.
It's a good book, and it's dated a bit. I mean, pushers want bread, dig? But still a worthy read.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:18 PM 0 comments
I Thought That Was Illegal
Craig Morgan, in the song "International Harvester":
-
I'm the son of a 3rd generation farmer
I've been married 10 years to the farmer's daughter
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:51 AM 1 comments
Junior Undersecretary, US Department of Truth Tryouts
A small newspaper's editor comes out in favor of nationalizing the oil industry:
- Here is one question: If the free market is the answer, how come gas at the pump is far, far cheaper in countries where governments run the oil business – Russia, Venezuela, Indonesia. Please, I am just asking a question. I am not a commie.
Perhaps Corrigan would like to talk about how cheap microwave dinners are in Cuba, since that worker's paradise is only now giving its citizens conveniences we've taken for granted for decades. I would guess the same sort of dynamic holds true for cars; only a small percentage of people have cars, and even those who do tend to use them to try to escape to America and its high gas prices.
On the other hand, perhaps Corrigan hopes nationalization will save his industry, as newspapers are in precipitous decline as a business model (link via Instapundit).
- posted by Brian J. @ 6:54 AM 1 comments
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
A White Guantlet Thrown Down During A Snowstorm
"Lady Willpower" is my favorite song by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. You probably don't even have one. Because you're a sissy.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:41 AM 5 comments
Karaoke Revelations
As some of you Atari Party attendees know, we have kept up with the Karaoke Revolutions series by Konami. I'm not a very talented singer, but I'm pleased that I have scored perfectly on two songs:
- "Take On Me" by a-ha
- "More Than A Feeling" by Boston
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:11 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 23, 2008
Urban Sprawl, Advance Team
As I told everyone I saw this weekend, Milwaukee is very odd in that its metropolitan area is small and drops off abruptly into farmlands. You can drive from the south end of the area to the north end of the area in a little over 30 minutes on the freeway. In St. Louis, by contrast, just starting from downtown (which doesn't include the eastern suburbs because they're in Illinois and although they like to pretend they count, they don't), you can drive for well over an hour one its freeways and still travel through well-developed suburbs.
However, in that sprawling farmland just beyond the reaches of Milwaukee's metropolitan area, there are signs that the development juggernaut is coming. This photo, taken along US 60 just outside of Jackson proves it. I passed fields, tractors driving on the side of the road, tractors for sale, and a sign:
Click for full size
It isn't the farmers moving into CONDOS in the middle of nowhere.
Based on my experience with the St. Louis area and how my former area in northwestern Jefferson County has grown, I expect the way of life of those people in Jackson and in Richfield and in Hubertus and around those parts will change drastically in the next 20 years. If Milwaukee has the population to support it.
It's progress, I guess, but I'm still sad. Perhaps I should be like John D. MacDonald, Carl Hiaasen, et al, and write poetic crime fiction novels to lament it.
- posted by Brian J. @ 5:36 PM 0 comments
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Just When You Think You Know A Place
So I'm out in the backyard the other day, and I come across a strange sight that almost indicated I was suddenly in an alternate universe. I've lived in this house for over two years and have mowed the back yard at least twice in addition to various child play activities, gardening bits, and whatnot. So how come I never noticed this six foot strand of wire sticking up before?
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The back corner of the yard used to have a garage or workshop at one time; there's still a bit of a gas pipe sticking up from heat or whatnot and I'm always digging stuff out of the ground nearby. But I can't have not seen this six foot strip of wire in two years, can I?
The one end of it was firmly buried, and the other was kind of bent up and hanging out; it wasn't there last Saturday when I mowed the lawn, and the sod is not chewed up as though it had recently been dug up. I mow it short, too, so I would have seen it if it was lying on the ground for two years.
So how does six feet of wire spout out of a hole in the ground all at once? Is it like a volcanic thing? Or was it really not an electric wire leading to the old garage, but a phone line, and if I'd hooked in a phone, I would have been the first to communicate with the great Underworld Land Of The Eternal Sun?
'Cause, brother, these things mess with you.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:37 AM 2 comments
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Mystery of the Teleporting Terrorists
They might have fooled everyone else, but they have not fooled Senator Obama:
- "These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the war in Iraq at a time when we could have pinned down the people who actually committed 9/11," the presumed nominee told reporters aboard his campaign plane.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:59 AM 1 comments
Monday, June 16, 2008
Pairings Are Important
What chardonnay goes with a Charter Arms Pink Lady? Now you don't have to guess!
Just head on over to the NRA Wine Club and find out! Every wine purchase helps fund the NRA and helps to protect the second amendment.
I, on the other hand, will pass, thank you very much. I'm holding out for the NRA Whiskey Club.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:26 PM 0 comments
Book Report: Sweet Savage Heathcliff by Geo Gately (1982)
You know, Garfield gets all the attention these days, but back in the old days, Heathcliff was the cat. Of course, his cartoon was a single panel, not a strip, so his humor had to get to the point, and it did. Instead of lazy, Heathcliff was a helion. Instead of liking lasagna, he eats the remnants from trash cans. In other words, he's a scrapper where Garfield is a dilettante. No wonder I liked Heathcliff more when I was younger. Also, the daily we got had Heathcliff, but not Garfield, which could explain it. Heathcliff even had a cartoon before Garfield did.
This book collects a number of strips, mostly around the motif of Heathcliff's love for Sonja. Given that, though, the book really identifies how Geo Gately used a limited number of ideas for a lot of cartoons. Another cat looks at Sonja, and Heathcliff does something to him; Heathcliff steals the fish; Sonja's woman owner asks the man why he doesn't do for her what Heathcliff does for Sonja; and so on. I hope that over the run of the series, the cartoonist spread these repeated bits out a little more than you can within a book limited by this theme.
Ultimately, I guess this might explain why Garfield would ultimately eclipse Heathcliff.
And although there's no Heathcliff without Heathcliff blog (unlike Garfield, there is the Heathcliff Explained blog which echoes sentiments expressed above with some profanity and daily cartoons.
Can't anyone else in the 21st century just enjoy the cartoons, or just look at them?
- posted by Brian J. @ 12:53 PM 0 comments
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Good Book Hunting: June 14-15, 2008
Saturday: The St. Charles Book Fair
Saturday represented our third year in a row at the St. Charles Book Fair and our first attempt at a book fair with two strollers of children. This particular trip was disappointing because the combination of the crowd and keeping a grabby nigh-two-year-old from the books left me unable to effectively browse. Unless I'm in the right mood, I don't go wild, and the factors didn't put me in that gluttonous mood. As a result, the book purchases were far lower than I expected:
Click for full size
I got:
- LA Secret Police, some sort of nonfiction bit that will fit right into my paranoia.
- The Frumionous Bandersnatch by Ed McBain, a later 87th precinct book that I might not have already.
- Shadows over Baker Street, a collection premised on a combination of Sherlock Holmes with H.P. Lovecraft. How could that go wrong?
- 50 Great Horror Stories, a collection, obviously, of horror, obviously.
- Arson Detection and Investigation, a nonfiction book about police techniques regarding arson. The typeface indicates this manual might be out of date, so I expect it includes pyromancy or something.
- K-Pax, the book that inspired the movie. Because I get those books, as you know.
- Kim, by Rudyard Kipling. Now that I am looking for Reader's Digest editions of these books, they're unavailable at book sales. The only other volume they had was Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne, which I almost finished at the time. Now that I have actually finished it, you'll get the book report.
- Homecoming by Bob Greene, which I probably already own.
- The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh. First thing when I hit the first table, a volunteer asks me what I like. When I said McBain, he asked me if I'd read Wambaugh. Of course, the only Wambaugh I'd read was The New Centurions when I was in high school, and I said as much, so the volunteer pushed this book onto me. I don't know what it was about this trip and the gabby volunteers or if a small child overcomes my normal prickly look, but I got into a lot of conversations (2) with the volunteers. The other started when I told my charge on wheels that the Romanian-English dictionary was almost tempting because I don't own one; the volunteer stepped in to tell me about the languages her kids were taking for fun, and she not only tried to get me to buy the dictionary, but encouraged me to take on a couple of language on tape courses available with the audio goods. I declined both, but I got the Wambaugh. It was the first book I picked up, but it didn't trigger the normal frenzy.
- Something by John Stossel, which will be worth the read.
- Great Books. I think I already have this one, too.
Sunday: Antiquarian inheritance from my aunt
On Sunday, I lamented about not buying many books, and my sainted mother took pity on me and gave me a stack of antiquarian books from my aunt, whose inheritance to me includes a number of titles already reviewed upon this blog.
My aunt bought these books, like so many of the others, at garage sales and was going to sell them online. Ergo, she bought them because they were old, not because of their subject matter.
Here they are:
Click for full size
They include:
- Abridged Treasury of Prayers (unknown), which includes a postcard, a photograph, and a letter within as well as an inscription.
- William Zorach: American Artists Group Monograph Number 15 (1945). Signed by the artist. Includes a newspaper clipping on the artist's death in 1966.
- The Science of Human Life or Eugenics (1920). The original textbook on it. As I said, my aunt bought this book because it is old, and I have this book because it was my aunt's. So if you come to see it on my shelves, please understand why it's there.
- Gainsborough Masterpieces in Colour (unknown). A collection of works by the artist.
- The Lilac Lady by Ruth Alberta Brown (1914).
- We Came In Peace: The Story of Man In Space (1969).
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:16 PM 0 comments
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Meta-Twist
Instapundit links to a couple of The New Republic takedowns of the new M. Night Someguyan movie The Happening, saving me a couple bucks on seeing a film that ultimately would have cheesed me off. Go head, click here and here, read the spoilers, and know why I'd have been peeved.
However, in the biggest meta-twist of any career (and I'll guess that Shyamalan's career is officially over now), the finally movie suggests that the protagonists of his earlier films were actually the bad guys. That's right: The Sixth Sense's burglar, Unbreakable's Mr. Glass, Sign's aliens, and that mermaid film's anti-mermaid contingent were actually the good guys, doing the work of the Trees.
- posted by Brian J. @ 11:27 PM 4 comments
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Late Night CMT Musings, Delayed
1: Taylor Swift. Day-um, that is a pretty girl.
I mean, I'm from Wisconsin, but this young lady has altered the geographical center of my swearing accent.
That's the kind of girl I would have gotten stupid over at age 20. Come to think of it, she does remind me a little about my high school crush. I only went out with her twice, as I got stupid about her my senior year and didn't get the nerve to ask her out until spring. She then went on to date a close friend, which would become a recurring theme in my younger days, and after she graduated college, I hear she married a local boy known for impregnating his step-sister, whom he'd dated before their parents married. I am from Wisconsin, but by high school, I was in Jefferson County, Missouri, where such things are not unheard of.
But back to Taylor Swift. Blonde, pretty blue eyes, and a sweet voice, ruff.
Speaking of Taylors, here's another from back in the day, also blonde here:
2. Hey, I've always liked Billy Ray Cyrus.
Actually, I was fortunate to get exposure only after the whole Achy Breaky thing, so that was something I had to forgive him for after I liked him. Here's the current video, where he looks like a fat Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, unfortunately:
Here's something from the olden days, his second album entitled It Won't Be The Last. To some of his critics' surprise, it wasn't. You'll have to click through to see "Some Gave All" because Universal Music doesn't trust me with the embedded video because if you can see the video here for free, you won't go buy a $50 Blu-Ray Billy Ray video collection.
What, country music videos in the middle of the night? Well, after four weeks of the late shift, I've gotten a bit tired of SportsCenter and Hannity and Colmes or Greta repeats, and sometimes the classic movie stations are running Hope Floats marathons. Watching the country videos makes me a bit nostalgic, as you can see.
- posted by Brian J. @ 12:32 PM 0 comments
Someone Suffers From This Portrayal
Game on for DiCaprio:
- The word bounding out of Hollywood this week is that "Titanic"-star Leonardo DiCaprio is intent on doing a gaming-related pic about Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari and the Chuck E. Cheese’s pizza chain. DiCaprio would star as the entrepreneur and, Game Guy presumes, bring a little of the on-screen spice he demonstrated in such flicks as "What’s Eating Gilbert Grape" and "The Basketball Diaries."
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:27 AM 0 comments
Monday, June 09, 2008
Government Counters Begin Counting, Rationing Health Care Beans In Oregon
Previously on State Run Health Care Lost:
- State-run health care in Wisconsin begins denying coverage to the most vulnerable, i.e., expensive, "clients"
Now, another state with universal health care begins its rationing:
-
Treatment of advanced cancer meant to prolong life, or change the course of this disease, is not covered by the Oregon Health Plan, said the unsigned letter Wagner received from LIPA, the Eugene company that administers the plan in Lane County.
"Taxpayer dollars are limited for publicly funded programs. We try to come up with polices that provide the most good for the most people. Most cancer treatments are high priority on the list," Shaffer said.
But the intent of the list was to exclude coverage of treatments that are futile, or where potential benefit is minimal in relation to expense.
Note to the Kansas City Star: I am against government health care, not for more expensive programs throwing greater amounts of confiscated citizen money after diminishing returns. Thank you, that is all. (Link seen on Dustbury.)
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:26 AM 0 comments
Thursday, June 05, 2008
Words to Live By, Sadly
Life is like an Eddie Money song: Short and not unpleasant when you're listening to it, but mediocre and obscure and ultimately forgotten when it ends.
- posted by Brian J. @ 10:06 PM 0 comments
Wednesday, June 04, 2008
Good Book Hunting: May 31, 2008
Last weekend, we hit a couple more garage sales and got a couple more books. Color you shocked, I say (if I can mix metaphors and allusions).
Here, we have:
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- Instant Replay and Distant Replay by Jerry Kramer. I've read the first, but the copy I read didn't have a dust jacket. So one of these books is a replacement. The other: To Read.
- A field guide to Missouri Wildflowers.
- A couple of books by Eric Flint and Harry Turtledove, faves of the cool kids.
- The Better Homes and Gardens New Garden Book, sort of like the red checkered cookbook, I hope.
- Confessions of a Hooker, a book I'd bought the week before in softcover, but this is hardback, you see.
Actually, this was the Concordia Lutheran Church sale, not last week. Sorry, in the immediate post-event period, time gets a little confusing.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:31 PM 3 comments
Good Book Hunting: May 24-26, 2008
The Memorial Day weekend provided us with our first post-event chances to add to our library, and we took advantage. By we, I mean, me, mostly.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
On Saturday, we hit a couple of yard sales, including one at Concordia Lutheran Church in Kirkwood, Missouri. This last stop (of 3, as we ease ourselves back into it) had excellent prices (and half off by the time we got there), but the book selection was light, and this is all we got:
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- A little book of love sonnets.
- A collection of Heathcliff cartoons. He was almost as big as Garfield once, wasn't he?
- A second copy of On Man in the Universe by Aristotle, Classics Club edition. For a quarter, I had to pick it up as insurance. I'll pass it onto someone.
- All Quiet on the Western Front because it will bring back fond memories of John Boy getting it.
- Test Your 80s Cultural Literacy, some quiz book Heather picked up for me.
- Rumbles, a nonfiction work by William F. Buckley, Jr.
- Favorite Houseplants in case I ever run out of cats and can grow houseplants.
- All About Pickling in case I actually harvest something this year.
- How to Shop Wisely, part of the Vanderbilt Success Series for Women. I could learn something from it, surely.
- A couple other books whose titles are obscured and I'm too lazy to go check.
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Actually, there's this house on Reavis Barracks Road down in Lemay that has a yard sale on Memorial Day and Labor Day Weekends, so I was going here by habit on Sunday morning. A number of years back, I bought my initial set of Gor paperbacks for a quarter each (and sold them on eBay for gonzo money before trying and liking the series myself). This year, the books for sale were heavy on the Light His Fire titles. I'm sure one could probably make a convincing case on the evolution of that marriage, but I'm not going to.
I got a couple titles for a buck total:
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- Confessions of a Hooker, a book by Bob Hope on golf. Paperback. Which will become relevant in my next post, which you've already read.
- Unsolved Murders and Mysteries, a compendium sort of idea book.
Monday, May 26, 2008
Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Heather uncovered an unused Barnes and Noble gift card that we'd bought at Christmas as an extra gift we could give to an unexpected guest that we could use if no such guest appeared. She wanted me to use it on magazines, as I often go into a bookstore and come out with $60 in magazines that I thought looked interesting. However, when I have a gift card, I cannot find any interesting magazines. And since the Barnes and Noble music department had no Aaron Tippin or Sammy Kershaw, I found myself in the Fiction section, letter H.
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- Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill in mass market paperback.
- A collection of short stories by Langston Hughes.
- posted by Brian J. @ 8:45 PM 2 comments
Know Your Limited Rights
St. Louis Magazine has a balanced piece on the creation of the trash districts in the county. Well, it twitches a nod to balance anyway by writing about a hauling company that will go bankrupt when it loses its share of a free market (although the author uses his creative writing chops to even tilt the verbiage against the free market solution in this portion of the story) and then, on the other side almost, adoring licky love to a sales manager for a recycling company (who gets more money from the mandated, unfree, forced recycling program, so he's in favor of more county-mandated income for his company).
What really got my dander up, though, was this insight from constitutional scholar and unelected bureaucrat in charge of the county's Solid Waste Management Program John Haasis:
-
Again, the phone started ringing in Haasis' office: "We don't want you to pick who our hauler is. It's our American right. It's our right from God to pick who hauls our trash." Haasis sighs again. "Last time I checked," he says, "it's not in the Bill of Rights."
And fear your government and its disciples.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:25 AM 0 comments
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
A Cati Mind Trick
This is not the bookshelf you just brought into the house to spread out your library.
Click for full size
This is a cat play toy.
Move along.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:45 PM 0 comments
That's Not A Flyer; It's A Broadsheet
Even if you haven't seen this cat, you're going to get educated:
Click for full size
Here, allow me to help:
"Picture of Dorian Grey"Eventually, the author gets to the point about how and when his cat was lost and what to do about it.
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:38 PM 0 comments
Monday, June 02, 2008
Congress Keeps Using That Word. I Do Not Think It Means What They Think It Means.
On May 31, 2008, we received our "economic stimulus" check from the US Department of Treasury for $1,500.
On June 16, 2008, we shall send that $1,500 plus some back to the US Department of Treasury as our quarterly estimated earnings tax (we're self-employed, you see).
Thanks, Congress, for spotting me a little cash flow to pay the government.
If the whole country had to file estimated earnings taxes quarterly, I'd think we'd see a much smaller annual budget.
- posted by Brian J. @ 7:37 PM 4 comments
Book Report: The Job by Douglas Kennedy (1998)
I picked this book up a couple years ago at Hooked on Books in Springfield for 33 cents. It's taken me until this month to get to it simply because the title was so, well, bland.
The book centers on Ned Allen, a regional sales director for a computer magazine who finds out he's in a jam. Seems a major client has decided to pull a promised insert at the time the magazine is being acquired by a German publishing company. The Germans are going to replace the magazine's publisher with the regional sales director, effectively putting him in the position of climbing over his mentor to the big time. However, things go awry very quickly when Ned twists an arm to save his job, but effectively loses it and finds he's made enemies that will keep him from working in his field and maybe even New York again.
The book sort of struck me as a fun mash-up between And Then We Came To The End and Lloyd, What Happened? for their high-flying corporate business ways and Vienna Days for its compelling central character who, through weakness, tends to make poor decisions and is perplexed a bit by the consequences.
However, about 2/3 of the way into the book, one screw too many turned, I thought, and then suddenly the book departed into a crime-suspense novel with a murder, blackmail, and a resolution out of a Spenser novel, where Ned Allen talks down the big bad level boss and makes a free-wheeling deal to extricate himself and others from danger while giving a bad man his comeuppance. The character's name could even have been Tony Marcus, for crying out loud, or that guy in LA.
The book, then, really seems like two different books stitched together a bit unsuccessfully. A pity, really. I still rather enjoyed it, but my praise is not unqualified.
I'll probably keep my eyes out for another Douglas Kennedy book, though. What the heck, I've given David Morrell (of First Blood infamy) another shot.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:31 PM 0 comments
Book Report: Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling (?, 1978)
This is a collection of fantastic stories for children, which explains why not many brown people were oppressed in the book, although the book does include the word nigger in it. I'm sure one could go in depth to find language structure and plot points to identify how Kipling wanted to use this book to indoctrinate the young in old England to believe in their cultural superiority and need to overrun the heathens. I think many have.
However, it's probably best just to enjoy these stories for what they are and for the language within them.
Please note that this children's book represents the 49th book I've read this year. I don't count the board books, but things over 100 pages, especially Rudyard Kipling, count in my annual reckoning.
- posted by Brian J. @ 2:12 PM 2 comments
Book Report: Red Zone by Mike Lupica (2003)
As you know, I'm a fan of Lupica's fiction (Wild Pitch, Bump and Run, Too Far, and Full Court Press), and I've even read some of his nonfiction Mad As Hell). So of course I was very, very happy to find this book earlier this year.
It's a sequel to Bump and Run. Unfortunately, it's also mostly a repeat of that book. Jack Malloy, having secured ownership of the New York Hawks NFL team, dissipates a bit and sells half of his share. He has seller's remorse and tries to get it back, particularly after the paper billionaire who bought it begins edging him out of the life he loved. Before dissipation.
The characters are fun, the plot moves quickly, and it's not a bad read at all; however, it does seem to be a simple recasting of the original novel. I'd hoped for a little more.
- posted by Brian J. @ 1:56 PM 0 comments
Irony That's Lost On A Technical Recruiter
Classic Craigslist job listing: VAX VMS/COBOL (St. Louis):
- We are a Fortune 1000 company with 60,000 employees globally and 2.5 billion dollars in revenue. We provide software solutions and business consulting to global corporations, using some of the world most sophisticated and advanced technologies.
Work Experience requirements:
Minimum 5 years programming experience on VAX/ALPHA Machines
Minimum 3 years experience with COBOL/OPEN VMS
Must have hands-on experience in Datatrieve, CMS, COBOL, DCL, RMS and DecForms
Experience with usage of System Service and Run-Time Library Functions on Open VMS
- posted by Brian J. @ 9:05 AM 0 comments
Sunday, June 01, 2008
Without A Drought, Papers Find Way To Lament Problematic Weather
When life gives you too much rain to write about a drought, a plucky journalist finds a way to lament the rain.
Contractors wonder when the rain will go away:
- A year-to-date record of nearly 28 inches has been a headache shared by a range of local construction-related companies, including developers, general contractors, concrete pourers, bricklayers and other subcontractors.
The rain delayed several projects, required overtime work and cost developers extra money. And even though the sun reappeared most of last week, companies say the water problem will not evaporate soon.
- A cold, wet spring put crop planting weeks behind schedule across much of the U.S. Corn Belt and drastically slowed growth where corn is already in the ground.
Now, farmers in parts of Iowa, Illinois and Indiana are replanting corn that either sat under water in flooded fields too long to germinate or can't break through sodden, compact soils. And the cool, soggy weather continues, the last thing a heat-loving crop like corn needs.
"It's starting to look like a very difficult year," University of Illinois agronomy professor Emerson Nafziger said.
- posted by Brian J. @ 3:16 PM 1 comments
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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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