Musings from Brian J. Noggle
Saturday, August 01, 2009
 
New Catch Phrase
I'm going to start working "Is that oak?" into normal conversations with normal people.



BECAUSE I AM NOT NORMAL!


- posted by Brian J. @ 2:43 PM   0 comments
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
 
The Quickest Way To Get Henry Gates, Jr., To Insult Your Mama (If You're Not A Cop)
Call him, respectfully, Mr. West.

Nothing gets an academic hotter than being confused with a competitor in his field of study, I reckon.


- posted by Brian J. @ 9:53 AM   0 comments
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
 
There Are M'F'n Snakes In The M'F'n SUV!
Driver tells Conn. police snakes led to SUV crash:
    Police say a driver blamed a car crash in Hartford, Conn., on two pet baby snakes that he said escaped from his pants pockets as he was driving.
Fortunately, no one aside from the driver was injured, so I don't feel as ghoulish when I laugh.


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:24 PM   0 comments
Sunday, July 26, 2009
 
Book Report: The Goodbye Look by Ross MacDonald (1969)
This is another of MacDonald's hardboiled detective things. In it, Lew Archer has to help a family find their son, who has had some mental problems. Of course, it opens into a can of worms wherein the boy might have killed his real father when he, the boy, was eight; people who change names but not skeletons in their closets; illicit love affairs during the war (World War II, remember) whose sins are avenged in the present, 25 years later; and so on, and so on.

You know, while reading this book, I was stricken with insight into why you don't tend to see a lot of these sorts of plots in the twenty-first century: people move around a lot, particularly the people in larger communities and places where writers live. You don't tend to get several generations of different families sharing the same space. Maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe I'm projecting. Maybe I don't read enough contemporary fiction to know what I'm talking about. But a lot of newer books have different sorts of crimes and not so much sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons vibes.

At any rate, a good book. Worth reading and/or rereading.

Books mentioned in this review:


- posted by Brian J. @ 5:06 AM   0 comments
To say Noggle, one first must be able to say the "Nah."