To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
The Life of Greece, p426:
Mnesiochus defends Euripedes on the ground that his worst sayings about women are visibly and audibly true, and are mild compared with what women themselves know to be their faults.
Mnesiochus, the story goes, was dressed as a woman at the time and had infiltrated a meeting of women who were plotting revenge upon the playwright Euripedes.
So I guess the Western tradition about not being allowed to say that women and men are different goes way back.
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So after a sleepless night, I decided to dust my office for the first time in…. Well, let’s just say that the condestruction dust fell upon a layer of pre-existing dust and leave it at that.
But in doing so, I decided to get rid of a few things. Not many, and not big things, gentle reader, but baby steps. Baby steps.
You know, I think I just cleaned up/straightened the hats atop the Arkanoid; perhaps after my trip to Florida in May when I had a new hat to put up there. It seems like I got rid of some hats, but not enough. I’m going to box up two old black fedoras, three (!) grey fedoras which I never wore, three of four NRA ball caps, a couple of Springfield Cardinals caps (although they might be collectors’ items now that the team is at least pretending to change the name to the Ozarks Springbirds (Really? Really?)), a Green Bay Packers hat (youth size), a John Deere “Owner’s Edition” ball cap, and a couple of old paper hats. Although: When it came time to plan for a trunk or treat this year (canceled due to construction because there’s a lot of we can’t even going on at Nogglestead these days), I lamented discarding the straw hats from the garage which we could have used for our scarecrow costumes. Now, I’m about to give away two we could use for it. If we decide to do scarecrows next year. Time will tell, I guess, if I retain those anyway.
Also on the pile: The old Re-elect Mickey Owens notepad; the Unique “Dependable” Typewriter thing I bought at an estate sale in May 2025; an empty memo pad holder that I got from the funeral home which accommodated my sainted mother and generations of her family before selling to the chain which is on the cover; a pen holder bit of swag from an employer over 25 years ago; a YMCA keychain; and so on.
I think about looking at Ebay to see if anything is collectible (a search for Mickey Owen indicates his baseball cards still sell), but I cannot be arsed to list anything now. The whole “you have to spend money to maybe make money, but probably not” business model doesn’t work for me these days.
An old little book for holding business cards. I thought I would need/use this more than I did. Most of the cards in it are from 20-25 years ago. I’ll review them, reminisce a bit maybe, and see if my oldest, who is a business mover and shaker, might want it.
I also cut a couple of notebooks out of a mostly hidden stack to see what might be in them and I even threw out a couple of things. I had a few Gladware containers of computer cables which I’m not sure why I had them–perhaps to go with the little LED lights and switches that I have. I also have a red flashlight that I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. I had thought I would make a toy laser gun out of an old line trimmer handle–I even went so far as to spray paint the handle–before discarding that project. I tossed an old, bent metal Slinky and a couple of 3D printed animal miniatures that were tokens of a sort at the Hartville Renaissance festival earlier this year.
So, again, not a lot of cubic footage of crap I’ve got about, but steps in the Marie Kondo direction.
But I am coming to regret kicking up the dust.
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I bought this book directly from the author, gentle reader, at a 1,000,000 Cups meeting four or five years ago. He is a successful real estate agent. I got on with his brother better, though, and had long conversations with Tom, who was (is, I hope) a former technical illustrator for the aeronautics industry up in Kansas who was working in his retirement as an artist and teacher. But I’m not sure if he wrote a book.
So I see Iron John (the Robert Bly book) blended with some business lessons. A Bearded Man comes out of the woods (well, he’s on a walk in a park), and he meets a young man with his son in the park, and he gives the young man who has stagnated a bit some life lessons. Basically, Coleman (with Hanke) extends the 80/20 rule, indicating that 5% are free thinkers and innovators, 15% are early adopters, 30% are steady, and 50% go along with the majority, to oversimplify. Of course, the book is life lessons for the free-thinking 5%, which seems to be a self-identified bunch, and more importantly, for selling to the 5%, and….
Well, it’s not bad. A short book, what I was looking for in these dark and expensive days and fireless nights at Nogglestead. I guess you can get some things from it, but mostly it would be reinforcement of things you’ve heard elsewhere. Coleman really tried to build a community around the 5% concept–although I did not see him present at 1,000,000 Cups here in Springfield, I understand he traveled the country and presented the the book and community to a lot of cities. And…. Well, I don’t know if it really took off.
I see on LinkedIn that he’s keeping busy using LLMs to make music, and he has another book out. So he’s still working. Hopefully because he loves it.
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How Wisconsin’s political divisions have grown since the 2018 midterm
I canna read it. But since Scott Walker literally was Hitler and Republicans literally were the devil, I guess the superlative got even superlativer.
Or one side has gotten more shrill and violence prone when simple stunts and sit-ins weren’t getting the madness normalized.
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I must have gotten this book in a bundle of chapbooks from a Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale before I bothered to enumerate the chapbooks in the bundles. So it’s been floating on my to-read stacks for some time, and that time apparently was this interim where my lower level is tented, I am perpetually agitated, and I cannot focus on reading longer books. So, as I have been the last week or so, I am focusing on the shorter books in my stacks. And I have plenty, although I have plentier thicker books, and reading thin books does not make room for me to tidy up the stacks.
So: This is a short (~45 pages) biography of Margaret Tobin Brown. Born in Hannibal, Missouri, she married a man who made a bundle in the Colorado oil boom, and although she really, really tried to break into high society in Denver, they rebuffed her. She kinda separated from the husband, traveled a bunch, survived the sinking of the Titanic, and by this grace of God became something of a cult hero, especially after A Night To Remember came out and especiallier after The Unsinkable Molly Brown came out. Afterwards, she was allowed into the society she craved although probably more as a pet than a member in good standing.
Oh, and she was called Maggie by those who knew her, not Molly; the author says there’s a class distinction, where high class women named Margaret get Molly, but I’m not convinced that’s true.
So: Interesting, and better than learning the story by sitting through a musical.
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The Life of Greece, p375:
He [Pindar] worked painstakingly, composing the music for each poem, and often training a chorus to sing it. He wrote hymns and poems for deities, dithryambs for the festivals of Dionysus, parthenaia for maidens, enkomia for celebrities, skolia for banquets, threnoi, or dirges, for funerals, and epinikis, or songs of victory, for winners at the Panhellic competitions. Of all these only forty-five odes remain, named after the games whose heroes they honored. Of these odes, again, only the words survive, none of the music; in judging them, we are in the position of some future historian who, having the librettos of Wagner’s operas but nothing of the scores, should list him as a poet rather than a composer, and should rank him by the words that once attended upon his harmonies. Or if we picture some Chinese scholar, unfamiliar with the Christian story, reading in one evening, in lame translation, ten Bach chorals divorced from their music and ritual, we shall measure our justice to Pindar. When read today, ode after ode, in the silence of the study, he is beyond comparison the dreariest outpost in the classical landscape.
Well, I didn’t find him that bad, although I suppose someone has to be the dreariest, and I’m not the one to measure who is most dreary in the ancient canon.
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Ah, gentle reader. It was just last-last month (September) when I made a thing which was essentially cutting the logo off of an old sweatshirt and putting it into a shadowbox and putting it on my office wall. I explained the inspiration:
So, inspired by something my mother-in-law did for my oldest, who outgrew a child’s gi. She cut the logo from the back of the jacket and framed it. He still has it in his room somewhere–he has inherited an instinct for cluttercore interior design from his father, so it might not be visible at first glance, but it’s somewhere in there if I recall.
I have had the equivalent gi from my youngest in my master bedroom closet for a damned long time as well, thinking I would do the same for him. As part of DeReifiedPotentialation, I’ve been working through some things in the closet. I’ve donated some, but DeReifiedPotentialation involves a lot of throwing things away. But the gi logo for the youngest? Since I am somewhat of a shadowboxer, I am tempted to do the same thing for my youngest. I’ve spared the gi jacket for now, moving it into my office for now, until I DeReifiedPotentialate my office again.
I am kinda torn about it. He’s been away from Martial Arts USA for six years now, preferring BJJ when I cosh him on the head and drag him to it (not a lot during the current uncomfortableness). He’s not sentimental. It would not be something for his grandmother, just his dad.
I’d cut out not just the logo, but a bit of fabric to capture his achievements. The school awarded stars to the really young kids for good behavior in and out of the school and then patches with words on them for certain achievements. He was the last kid to wear a gi with stars because he was small for his age, and we got him a big gi, so he was still wearing the same jacket for a long time after the cut-over. Note how some of the patches have fallen off–the stars were sown on by his grandmother, but many of the badges were attached with adhesive which did not handle years of laundering well.
So I’m tempted to spend another $10 on a shadowbox just in case. Will I? I’m not sure if I’ll mention it on the blog if I do. Is it worth two blog posts?
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I picked this book up in May 2023, likely as part of a bundle of chapbooks such as the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library proffers for a dollar (fifty cents on Saturday). It looks like the other two Hallmark Treasures books I bought that day–The Magic of Children and What Is a Friend are hidden somewhere in the stacks of Nogglestead. They’ll be pleasant bits to read and to pad the annual total as this one was.
I picked it up on Thursday night to “read” whilst watching the silent Packers game. Its poems and excerpts definitely fit into those long gaps between plays, as most are four to sixteen lines long laid over photographs. The excerpts include Whitman and Wordsworth, and some of the full poems are then-contemporary greeting card poets (I presume–I don’t recognize the names).
And, let’s be honest: This really is just an extended greeting card. Inside the front cover, we have a greeting card sentiment (“With best wishes for today and every day”), and this particular volume was given on a birthday in 1967. In the past, they gave little bits poetry as quasi-gifts. In the past, people could read.
So, not quite chapbook length. A pleasant read. A pleasant reminder of Wordsworth (more than Whitman). And a whole book as far as my annual reading total is concerned (currently: 82 books–a prolonged construction project bisecting my lower level and rendering me incapable of focusing on weightier books has been a boon to my annual read list).
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Ah, gentle reader. I had thought that I was going to go to Relics to see if they have any booths available in the back portion of the facility, the “flea market” part where things don’t have to be old.
I plotted a course taking me past the Target so I could return the faulty soap dispenser pump albeit in a different bottle since the bottle that I bought attached to the pump was full of soap and had a replacement, albeit differently colored, pump in it. And, believe it if you can, gentle reader, but I felt a little guilty and conflicted about it because, as I mentioned, the pump from this bottle (and this bottle) were differently colored because they did not have the clear/chrome combination when I was last up there, so I was not returning the actual thing I bought, and I was not even returning a properly matched item since I was returning a green bottle with a chrome pump instead of the, what, brushed nickel pump that worked? You know, I would feel a little less like I was committing some sort of fraud if the pump was matched to a bottle with which it sold. Also if I were a little less Catholic in my guilt setting. But I got my $14 back and blew it all on media.
Well, not exactly; I thought I would go to thrift stores looking for some dress clothing since a lot of mine is getting worn and broken (and bound, soon, for a thrift store). My path took me to the Salvation Army Super Store on Campbell; the Thunder Thrift store benefiting the high school which is almost across the street from the Salvation Army Super Store; and Red Racks on Battlefield which is almost just across the street from Relics. But when I was finished with the larger Red Racks location, I was about done with people and things, and Relics looked to be having an event that filled its parking lot (according to its calendar it’s the Higher Minds Metaphysical Fair).
So, at the thrift stores, I got some things.
At Thunder Thrift, I got several DVDs:
At Red Racks, I got some records and a videocassette:
I did, however, pass on any of the 3 copies of the Doctor Zhivago soundtrack they had. Because I am not a completist.
I assure you I did buy a pair of trousers ($6) and two blazers ($22) total. And right before I got home, I filled the tank and spent more on gas than I did on clothing and media.
At any rate, I will have to hit Relics sometime soon for Christmas shopping. Brian J., you say, why do you insist on buying secondhand things for Christmas gifts at an antique mall when you could by secondhand things cheaper at thrift stores for Christmas gifts? An arbitrary rule, I suppose, but you find different kinds of things at the different types of venues. More quirky and decorative things at the antique malls and more useful staples at thrift stores. Both sell videos and records, though, which is where I get my blog content.
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Boy, mister, if you’re ever looking for an MLM (multi-level marketing) book with a Christian bent, have I got just the thing for you. This book, which I picked up at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale in May 2021 (that is, I just bought it recently), bears the subtitle / cover text of A 3-Step Plan for Filling Your Plate While Working from Home, so one might think it’s a broader business-building kind of thing, which it sort of is, but the author’s business is “network marketing”–that is, multi-level marketing–where you’re a representative of a product line but to really succeed you have to recruit other sellers so that you get a portion of their sales proceeds. Selling the product is not the point; recruiting is.
So the book has two parts: Right Thinking and Winning Habits, and each part has several short chapters in them showing various traps / “syndromes” which lead to failure, such as Impossible Dream Syndrome (keeps you from starting), Mañana Syndrome (procrastination), Superman Syndrome (trying to do it all on your own), and so on. Each chapter then has a set of three techniques to try to overcome it and a summary/bottom line.
And, yet: Although the book does focus on the “network marketing” business and recruiting other members of your video game clan down-line, a lot of the lessons can be applied more generically about growing your business network and, basically, just getting out and meeting people. The focus on sales is not so much pressure to close, but rather informing the mark person about the benefits and letting the other person decide. Which makes sense when you’re selling selling more than closing on a product–you can pressure someone to spend on something, you can close on that deal and book that revenue, but when you’re selling the person on selling the product (or, better yet, building his or her network of salespeople of whose sales you would also get a commission). If you pressure someone into a decision he regrets, he won’t perform for you in the future. Selling a product, that’s okay; the one-time revenue and commission are booked. However, if someone accidentally applies that lesson to actual sales and building relationships, all the better.
So if you read the book, you’ll learn some of the “network marketing” lingo: up-line, down-line, warm market/cold market/meet market, but you can also find some nuggets that apply elsewhere and in other businesses. As I mentioned, the book has a Christian slant (the publisher is Promise Books), so it has supportive biblical quotes and quotes from other sources, including literature (including the famous American [sic] poet John Donne), business books, and pop culture (although a bit trailing since this 2011 book refers to the film City Slickers and kinda misses the point of what Curly meant when he said there’s only one thing in life). The book also refers to eating the frog which refers to doing something that you’re likely to put off because of its difficulty or just its magnetic repulsion to your personality for some reason–my beautiful wife has often used this metaphor, so perhaps it’s common in books of this type. I wonder how much of the information is recycled and repackaged from other sources. But never mind–it’s packaged in a readable, chunkable, and interesting way to be an intro to business self-improvement if that’s not a genre you’re familiar with.
So: Better than I expected when I started it, and worth reading. Apparently, I have another book by the author, The Reluctant Bachelor, around here somewhere. I’ll keep an eye out for it.
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So, as I have mentioned, I like to read a little poetry before bed. Sometimes, instead of a collection of poems, I look through literary magazines, including old college literary magazines or, apparently, high school magazines as well, such as the 1969-1970 issue of Implosion from Affton High School.
Which is odd; most likely I bought this book in a bundle of chapbooks at a Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale in southwest Missouri. When I lived in Old Trees, I was just two St. Louis suburban towns from Affton, and before we looked at the Old Trees house, we had included Affton in our search area and were kinda tempted by a house there with a wrought iron fence and kitchen counters a couple inches higher than normal. But its office(s) were below grade, and we were trying to avoid it (and our home in Old Trees did until we had a second child, driving my office below grade–and both offices at Nogglestead are below grade as well, so look how that turned out). So, in another world, my boys would have graduated from Affton High School.
As I was flipping through it, I came to a “short story” called “Alone” which seemed very familiar.
I feel like I’m in The Twilight Zone here:
I found myself running down a road. I didn’t know why I was running or who I was running from. I wasn’t scared, but I had a terrible feeling that I didn’t know who I was or what I was doing here. As I was running, I ran straight into a small town in the middle of a valley. It looked as though the town was still asleep, for it was early and the sun was just rising. I slowed to a saunter when I saw a nearby cafe and went into it. There were eggs cooking on a griddle and coffee simmering in a pot. “Hello,” I called, “Is anybody here?” Nobody answered, so I helped myself to some coffee and sat down to think. It was a terrible feeling. I couldn’t seem to remember who I was or what I was doing here. All my mind could draw was a blank. It was a haunting feeling of loneliness and desperation.
I went out in back of the cafe to look for the owner, but I couldn’t find anything. I called again, but with no success. I put some money on the counter and took a doughnut and went outside. The sun was now climbing high in the sky and I realized that I had unknowingly spent the whole morning in the cafe. As I looked around the town, it seemed eerie and lifeless. I went to several stores with no confrontation with any local population. I was totally stumped, considering the possibility of a deserted town, yet there were eggs and coffee in the diner. I was getting more afraid every minute, not of any tangible, but of loneliness.
I started to run away from this loneliness and desertion. I was running through a town full of life, but void of people. I spent most of the afternoon running from house to house, looking for people and signs of life. Everything indicated life, yet I could find none. While I was looking through a hardware store, the unbearable stillness was broken like a cannon shot by the sound of an automobile horn. I ran like a wild man, my heart full of anticipation, toward where I thought I heard the car. Off on one side of the street was a panel truck. I started talking as fast as I could and didn’t even give the lady in the truck a chance to answer. She didn’t answer but sat there like a dummy. I nearly fell off the truck for a closer examination showed that she was a dummy. But the horn had sounded, hadn’t it. A sign on the side of the truck said Acme Mannequin, but the horn had sounded, or had it? I was now torn into a million pieces by a force I couldn’t control. The town was empty, but alive. I could not comprehend anything and ran off into the darkness that was overtaking the city.
As I ran, I found a phone booth and cried out in desperation for help. I dialed operator and every other number I could think of and all I could get was the metallic recording saying the line was not in service. I was struck by a wave of desperation and reduced to a sniffling child afraid of the dark. I cried and cried and hammered on the coin return in desperation.
No, wait, it is in The Twilight Zone. That’s a recounting of the pilot/first episode “Where Is Everybody?” Told in the first person and passed off as an original short story twenty years after it appeared on black and white televisions. Presumably, the high school student saw it in a rerun and was not, in fact, twenty-something years old.
But I caught you, kid. Who is old enough for social security by now. I wonder how many other readers caught it and whether he got into trouble in high school for the “joke.”
If you had told these kids in 1970 that someone would be reading their poetry in 2026, I bet they would have been very pleased indeed.
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Driverless truck crashes into Berryville, Ark., antique shop:
A driverless pickup truck crossed four lanes of traffic Thursday morning before crashing into an antique mall coffee shop, leaving damage to the storefront.
According to Berryville police chief Robert Bartos, dispatch received a call around 6:30 a.m. at Hidden Treasures Antique Mall off of South Main Street.
“A pickup truck had pulled into the White Oak gas station just up the street. And the individual had gotten out to pump gas and left his truck in gear,” Bartos said. “And the vehicle rolled down the hill and ran into the antique store.”
In the 21st century, we expect a driverless truck to be something different entirely.
Ah, and I am stripped of the quip I was planning when I saw the headline, which is That Tesla must have had it in for the antique shop to cross four lanes of traffic to attack it. Maybe next time!
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I don’t know where I came up with this saddle-stitched little pamphlet; I have to assume it was in one of the bundles of such things plus poetry chapbooks that I buy for fifty cents at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale.
At any rate, this is a collection of seven very short stories by known literary authors (Guy de Maupassant, Voltaire, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, et cetera). The stories are very short–a couple of pages each–but: The stories are presented in column format in four different languages (Spanish, French, English, and German). So if you’re learning another language, you can try reading it in your new language and then compare to the English translation. The stories themselves are fairly simple in structure and tone, of course, to make it easier for you to comprehend the translations.
I would say that this might be the “book” I am most likely to re-read as I quiero practicar el Español–I am hearing strangers speak it a lot at my home these days–but I have thousands of other books to read, so I’ll probably bag this book and put it with other similar books on the shelves together (if I can reach them). Because although this book is only slightly younger than Nogglestead, it is falling apart a touch faster.
Apparently, Quinto Lingo was a periodical which ran from 1964-1980 to help people learn new languages (you can find a bunch of them on the Internet Archive). Probably better than Duolingo. Maybe even better than Babbel (I haven’t tried it). Which means this particular booklet, which does not have an issue/volume number, was a giveaway to subscribers. Which makes two such publications in a row that I have read. Will I keep up the streak? Tune in next week!
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In addition to the fireplace replacement saga (current status: waiting for an estimate on chimney work tomorrow, and it’s supposed to rain all next week, so our best case might be twice the estimate and done by Christmas), a couple of other things have recently gone sideways at Nogglestead this month.
It did not work. It’s not rebooting several times a day now, but it is still rebooting. This would be more of a problem if I were doing anything worth anything at the computer, but I’m mostly not right now. It wouldn’t be a problem at all, really, as when I built it, I reset my previous troubled computer which made great wheezing sounds at times and which took forty minutes or an hour to reboot. And the reset seems to have fixed the problems. So I could reduplicate my needs on it, but: The Microsoft authentication system (Entra?) is, pardon my French, merde. I am not sure what account my things are tied to, and I am not sure if I can even log into them since I deleted Microsoft Authenticator from my phone because I didn’t know what I used it for. To log into my Microsoft account, which I do, what, every couple of years? Not any more. Eh, one of these days, I’ll have to do something, because someday I might have a video interview or a job or something where that becomes important.
So I went back to Target today to pick up another one. I figured I’d swap the pumps and return the new dispenser with the faulty pump. But, of course, they did not have any more clear ones. So I bought a green glass one, but: The pump is a different color.
I think we will roll with it because the damned thing works. Now, do I return the other one? It’s $14.05 with tax, an hour round trip up US 160 out of our general routes to our general destinations. In the olden days, I would have said no, but $14 is more than I make in an hour right now, so….
I don’t often get sick, gentle reader (knock on pressboard). Once every couple of years I’ll feel punky enough to put on a stocking cap during the day, and this was it. Overnight on Tuesday I developed a sore throat and some difficult in swallowing and a cartoonish voice. Although, with the throat clearing, I talked a little gravelly voice. Which lead me to announcing to my cats several times, “I have been, and always shall be… your friend.” as well as extolling Utilitarianism. Which is how the cats knew I was sick. Ah, you know, nobody here would get the reference. The local cinema had a deal to celebrate Star Trek’s anniversary to see Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, and Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home back to back for $20, and I didn’t go. But I didn’t have to to remember the quotes.
Fortunately, it looks to have been a 24-hour virus; I’m already feeling better. Not sure that I want to go to martial arts classes just yet, but maybe Saturday. Unfortunately, my dying Spock impression is no longer so good, but my dying tauntaun impression remains spot on.
Sometimes, it just feels like the whole saddle blanket is burrs. But what a metaphor that is; it’s mostly unpleasant for the horse, not the rider.
Eh, I have meat, I have a roof over my head (someday, maybe, to be a new roof if we have any money left), I have books to read, and I have to believe someday I’ll be able to kindle a fire to enjoy.
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Ah, gentle reader: This is a little, 62-page book without a UPC published by Bottom Line Secrets. Since it has no point-of-sale information and because I do not see it on a Good Book Hunting post anywhere (and I don’t tend to pick up financial books at book sales anyway), it’s entirely possible that I received this as a free gift for subscribing to the newsletter. A newsletter it was: On paper, a couple of pages, brief items likely cribbed from somewhere else back before blogs were a thing. I vaguely remember the newsletter; perhaps I subscribed to it briefly when I was planning to be fiscally responsible, or perhaps my sainted mother did and I inherited the book from her.
At any rate, that’s what the book is: Short, blog-sized bits of different financial advice grouped into chapters like Retirement, Taxes, Investing, Saving Money, Business Smarts–well, I guess like is not operative here as those are the five chapters presented not in the order in which they appear in the book. It’s more of a time capsule than advice that’s applicable today–even though this book might have come out in 2003 (it also lacks copyright information, but all contemporary references are to the dot-com crash and tax years are in the G.W.B. administration).
I mean, one of the tips in the saving money section is to take advantage of double coupon day–and to start and present a petition to the grocery store manager to have a double coupon day if your local store does not. The snippets talk about pensions, which I’m not sure even historians know what that word means any more. Tips range from things you would find in Mary Ellen’s columns from the 1980s to great esoterica in the tax code that probably only were operative for a couple of years before they got re-legislated or re-interpreted.
I think the target audience would have been older boomers and maybe the previous generation (which I resolve no longer to call “The Greatest Generation,” Tom Brokaw’s flattery be damned) who probably handled their accounts themselves and were upper-middle class or striving to be there (as I strove, was, and strive again).
But there’s not a lot of applicable advice for today. No Don’t eat out twice a day (limit yourself to twice a week). It does say maybe to not lease a new car every two years–my mother-in-law and father-in-law actually bought new cars every few years, and we’re driving her last new car these days (circa 2008). No Don’t go to Starbucks twice a day (advice I would not have taken circa 2006 when that was an option, and livin’ was easy). No Don’t burn fires every night because they will damage the fireplace whose construction cut corners forty years ago, and you’ll have over a month of increasing costs including to maybe rebuilding the whole chimney from scratch–just let it be and let it be the problem of the next owners or let it fall when Nogglestead is razed for a subdivision (advice I probably would not have taken either).
But the book did provide me with one bit of amusement. A bit of advice on investing:
[The bondholder] Dies early in the year. The accrued interest on the bonds maybe be taxed at low rates if the dececedent had little or no other income in the year he died. Reason: In the year of death, a decedent can claim a full standard deduction (if not itemizing deductions) and a full personal exemption–no proration required.
C’mon, man, don’t make the decedent work that hard. Let him rest. Not quite The Wall Street Journal’s Lifetime Guide To Money‘s ever-lovable euphemism “your retirement ends.” But up there.
So: Well, the strategy of knocking out short books is working–I am able to focus at least this long (well, over a couple of days) while my home is bit by bit going through demolitions of varying degrees, and I might just hit 100 books this year yet.
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The Life of Greece, p176:
Even today, in Mediterranean Christianity, it is not God who is worshiped, so much as the saints; it is polytheism that sheds over the simple life the inspiring poetry of consolatory myth, and gives to the humble soul the aid and comfort that it would not venture to expect from a Supreme Being unapproachably awful and remote.
As a reminder, Durant stands outside of Christianity and also the American ethos/mythos and uses that distance to critique both within the texts. “Mediterranean Christianity” means “Catholicism.” I should have looked to see what Protestantism is called, if it’s ever called anything.
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I updated my app Goal-Task-Chore:
New features include:
Of all the apps I have written, this is the one I use the most.
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I picked this book up in Florida in May and put it into the stacks, hoping that by seeding the stacks with a bunch of Christmas books in various locations that I would be able to find a Christmas book when I was in the mood for my annual Christmas book reading. I suppose I could organize the stacks, but…. Nah, I would need a lot more stacks for that. Kind of like the extra space we had to organize my library when we moved to Nogglestead, which was then overrun by things I have bought since. At any rate, since I have decided to read shorter books while my lower level, spot of my nightly reading, is torn up and tented off, I went looking for the Mannheim Steamroller Christmas book which I had just had in my hands last week when selecting one of the shorter books I have already reported on. But, of course, the Mannheim Steamroller (sorry, Chip Davis) book is lost in the stacks for another couple of years, and this book came to hand. I recounted how I heard of Rodrigue and the Blue Dog in the linked post about how I bought the book, but I’d been in his gallery before this book came out.
The book is a tie-in to a series of…. Prints? Featuring the Blue Dog in Christmas settings, including as the angel atop the tree, in the snow, and so on. The art itself is very simple and pop-art–I know I mark myself as hoi polloi or bourgeoisie when I say I prefer Kinkade or Hargrove’s more realism. Here’s a sample of Blue Dog I posted in 2012 when I mentioned misstating his name in a conversation with my beautiful wife (note that the sample is not from the Christmas series):
Not really my style of art. But I remember it and the artist.
The text is not fiction; rather, it’s a bit of memoir about the artist’s Christmases in his youth in rural Louisiana and the joy he felt, underlining that he had two dogs at the time. But then he grew up, went to school, the dogs died, and as an adult he lost the feeling of Christmas until he became a successful artist, his adult dog died, and he found Christmas joy in being able to put Blue Dog in a bunch of paintings. That’s the arc of the story, but really it’s about putting some text and dog memories beside prints in the then-contemporary series.
A quick read upstairs away from the rustling plastic and masonry dust. I don’t think I’ll count it as my Christmas book, but we will see if I can find another one in the next two months.
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Ah, gentle reader, you might have seen some asides in other posts about how we’re having a fireplace replaced, and that it’s not going well. I was going to write a wrap up post after it was done, documenting the stages, but…. it definitely feels like it will never get done.
You remember the fireplace from happier times.
Also, perhaps luckier times. Continue reading “Fireplace Replacement: The Saga So Far”
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I’ve added a couple of things to the donation boxes:
I got the Braun shaver twenty-some years ago when I went into the office every morning downtown. I figured if I got an electric shaver, then I could shave while reading blogs before work. However, I switched back to disposable razors probably twenty-some-minus-three-or-so years ago, and it’s been gathering dust in my closet ever since. Looking at my Amazon history, I bought twelve cleaner refill packs in 2009 and I used two of them. So I guess I was using the electric shaver at Nogglestead, but not for long. I remember from my Ebay days that a lot of estate sales had electric shavers available. Well, not mine.
I took a glance at Ebay to see what Braun shavers are going for, and…. I dunno, whole kits go for a hundred or two hundred dollars, I suppose, depending. Should I get back into the lifestyle or rent a booth at Relics? Sometimes, things like this make me wonder.
Next to it, also from the closet, is a little clear plastic container and a six pound box of colored sand for sand art projects. I might have bought the equipment after reading Sand Art in 2012. Perhaps I even thought it would be a good project to do with my boys. Ah, how many art supplies I bought and thought I’d do projects with them, but I only did it a couple of times. I remember cutting out pieces of construction paper and making mosaics with them, and another year we made little Sculpey Christmas ornaments that were so thin that I glued them to a painted plaque instead. That plaque is still part of our holiday decor, although bits of the thin ornaments are breaking off now. Ah, what did I fill my days with then? Reading blogs and posting on 24thState.com (now defunct, a long time gone), probably. And then they were in school. But maybe they remember some of it, but not sand art.
I spend a lot of time on this blog writing about the books and records (and swords) I acquire; I guess I’ll spend a little time musing on the things I let go from time to time.
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