Musings from Brian J. Noggle

This actually happened to a friend:

On Sunday evening, we attended a gospel concert by a group from a college in New York, a group that includes my children’s babysitter from when they were babies and toddlers. We agreed to host her and another group member overnight, which meant that we were treated to a dinner at the hosting church. My children, at the prompting of their father, traveled through the gym to get the members of the choir to autograph their programs, and they eventually cajoled the tour bus driver to sign as well.

As a reward, after the dinner, the bus driver let them sit in the bus driver seat and honk the bus horn. Now, this is a full touring bus, not a school bus. The sort of vehicle where you have to start the engine to get the horn to work. A truck horn kind of horn.

The older boy sat in the seat and tootled the horn, at least as much as one tootles and industrial-grade noisemaker that blasts out a 100 decibel chord.

The younger boy, freshly five (which means he can be tried as an adult for noise violations, I understand) hopped into the seat and played that truck horn like a percussion instrument, beating out a tempo not unlike the one a choir member had tapped out on a conga drum during the concert.

And how he grinned. Beamed. He thought that was the highlight of his young life, and he might be right.

The bus driver joked about the neighbors calling the police, and we dispersed to treat the young ladies in our charge to an Andy’s Frozen Custard and a night’s sleep.

The next morning, we discovered the neighbors called the police.

But the memory of that grin–of course we didn’t take pictures or film it, that’s evidence and requires a degree of foresight we lack. But I will never forget that smile of pure joy in simple loudness and power to make that loudness that the boy shone. Even though he probably will.

It’s worth whatever fines the driver has to pay or years taken out of his life in prison.

What a cool story for my friend to relate. Would someone look up the statute of limitations on noise violations for him?

KMOV anchorman Larry Conners posted on Facebook that he might have been targeted by the IRS for asking a tough question of President Obama during an interview before the election.

For posting on Facebook this sort of musing, his television station pulled him from the air and stifled him with a gag order:

Longtime KMOV (Channel 4) anchorman Larry Conners is “off the air” until further notice.

The station is examining Conners’ recent allegations that he was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service after interviewing President Barack Obama.

“He’s not suspended. We just all thought it made sense (for him) to take a few days off,” news director Sean McLaughlin said Thursday.

“We take this very seriously, and we don’t expect this to drag on. We’re still looking into the situation and weighing our options,” he said.

That’s the story from yesterday. On Monday, the inquisition moves forward:

A meeting between KMOV (Channel 4) executives and anchorman Larry Conners — who is off the air until further notice — has been set for Monday.

The station is examining Conners’ recent post to Facebook alleging he was targeted by the Internal Revenue Service after interviewing President Barack Obama.

Today, Conners’ attorney, Merle Silverstein, issued a statement saying Conners “is barred by corporate from making statements, posting on Facebook, or participating in interviews on the IRS issue.”

Silverstein’s statement concludes, “That is the only reason for his silence.”

The story is all full of the Sanctity of Unbiased Journalism:

Michael Valentine, a vice president with Belo Corp., KMOV’s parent company, told the news website BuzzFeed that Conners “owes a duty to our viewers to report in an unbiased manner.”

“His Facebook post and his Twitter posts, as a result, were inappropriate,” he said. “And we don’t condone personal posts that jeopardize the journalistic nature of our business. It’s really that simple.”

How cynical am I? Let’s peel back the layers of cynicism:

• I wonder if Belo / KMOV minds if its on-air reporters speculate off-hand in an approved fashion, which might be pro-government. Because we’ve all seen how the papers and news stations have pretty much become lick-spittles for government at all levels, whether through multi-part and seemingly multi-annual booster sessions for additional government children’s programs (Springfield News-Leader, do you recognize anything about yourself here?) to promoting government largesse on sports facilities to approval of government incentives for redevelopers of downtowns or new developments of strip malls to strip sales from existing, full tax-freight paying businesses (unless, of course, the new development will have a Walmart, which is viewed with skepticism to say the least). Would he be on the air today if he’d mused that he thinks this is all blown out of proportion? Come on, cyn with me.
   
• Is KMOV and its parent Belo afraid of what this now-viral musing of its anchor might mean to future access to the powerful or–dare we say it–corporate relations with the IRS?
   
• Larry Conners has been on the air in St. Louis for a long time. Undoubtedly his salary is pretty good (from his perspective). Is it bad from KMOV’s persepective? Is Belo / KMOV looking to dump an anchor fondly enjoyed in the St. Louis area because he’s old and expensive, and they have seized upon this as a reason to do it, to make it Conners’ fault, and to seek the approval of the hipster/Washington Avenue loft demographic?

I guess we’ll know more on Monday, but regardless, this is a poor, poor reflection on KMOV and Belo.

St. Louis man convicted after firefight with police

In my day, people who were engaged in writerly arts, especially professionals in the field, had some expertise with these crazy preposition things and tried to use the right ones to accurately convey whatever knowledge or propaganda they were trying to pass on to the reader.

I see from reading the story that the fellow was convicted of charges stemming from the firefight, so I guess he could be convicted for the firefight, but he’s convicted after the firefight just in the same way that he was named after me.

I also see this firefight occurred because

[He] had a history of misdemeanor convictions related to marijuana possession when a SWAT team went to his Shreve Avenue apartment on March 5, 2012, to execute a search warrant on a tip that he was dealing it.

Lovely. A SWAT team going for a small-time drug dealer. The gunfire at the SWAT team justifies the SWAT team going after small-time drug dealers.

A little word game we play involves guessing words based on the starting letter and clues.

At least, until I asked:

What starts with M and has five letters in it? Read more »

This time, it’s a grammar test.

It’s from the UK, so it’s got some extraneous U’s in it. But still.

(Link again via AoS.)

Today’s lesson in the Swedish language: Ogooglebar means unGoogleable; that is, something you cannot find on the Internet using a search engine.

Or maybe not.

I’m not really sure how useful the word really is given that most things are, in fact, discoverable on the Internet.

And, yes, I am a little behind on my Wall Street Journal reading, but I’m almost caught up. At which time I can begin blogging about the hot stock tips from last year’s Forbes.

I took Pew’s short Science and Technology online quiz because I like quizzes, and:

Of course.

The problem with the quiz, of course, is the wording of some of the questions. Also, the repetition of global warming as scientific consensus.

When the question is, “Most scientists agree,” one must recognize that most scientists are not specialists in the field under question. Which goes triple if you include ‘social’ scientists.

(Link seen on AoS ONT.)

This book is not an Cole/Pike book. It’s more along the lines of Demolition Angel, wherein the book focuses on a member of a branch of the police force that’s not your ordinary detective or street cop. In Demolition Angel, it was a member of the bomb squad. In this case, it’s the K9 unit.

A patrolman is shot and left for dead after being in the wrong place in the wrong time. His dreams of joining the SWAT are out the window, but he remains on the force if only to find the people who killed his partner. He joins the K9 unit and learns the ways of dogs and partners with a former Marine bomb-sniffing dog from Afghanistan and together, they piece together what’s going on.

It’s an engaging read, happily free of political asides that only serve to remind me that the author would rule me if he could, but there are still a couple of knocks. The shifting points of view include anthropomorphizing the dog which seems a little unserious to me. Also, the ending is very abrupt and cinematic.

But Robert Crais is still one of the few living authors I can read.

You’re forgiven if you think I’ve reviewed this book before. But that was Suspects, which I read back in 2006.

Books mentioned in this review:

I don’t know how election to the United States House of Representatives represents salvation, return to righteousness, or proof of repentance and proving one’s return to goodness in spite of one’s past sins, but I am not a political reporter for Gannett:

Disgraced ex-South Carolina governor Mark Sanford won his bid for redemption on Tuesday night, defeating Democrat Elizabeth Colbert Busch for his old seat in Congress.

Me, I would have used the term election or office in this case, but I am an old fashioned fellow who doesn’t see theological or apotheosis implications in mere service as a representative of one’s constituents.

(Link seen via Instapundit.)

This book is the third in the Executioner series and the earliest I have (and one of the last I got). In it, Mack Bolan is fresh from his big LA expedition that left his team dead or in jail, and he’s still in California. He turns to an old army associate to give him a new face as the old one is widely known. The Mafia catches wind of his plans and learns where he went, but not before Bolan infiltrates the local den as a freelance headhunter looking for Bolan.

It’s standard fare, pretty good for the Pendleton books. It introduces Hal Brognola to the series. It has events that later books refer too–and most of the later books refer to the events of these first few books a lot, and then the later books a little. I wonder what Pendleton must have thought about these books and series and how long they would have gone on. Could he have expected to write thirty-something of them over a decade? It might have made these early books a bit tighter in their universe. Or maybe I’m making that up.

At any rate, one more down, seventy-seven (of the Executioner series alone) to go.

Books mentioned in this review:

In a column preceding Cinco de Mayo, local Springfield columnist Richard Thompson argues the importance of civilian gun ownership:

Cinco de Mayo celebrates a great Mexican military victory in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862. On that date, 4,000 amateur Mexican soldiers armed primarily with old rifles and machetes defeated 6,000 heavily favored French troops, well trained and well armed. Indeed, at that time the French army was arguably the most formidable fighting force in the world. The last time France had lost a battle was at Waterloo, Belgium, in 1815. Napoleon I’s defeat there is enshrined in our language. “He’ll never win this one; he’s met his Waterloo.”

Of course, if you’re familiar with Mr. Thompson’s other columns, you’re recognize he is unlikely to mean to make that point. But he does.

The owner of the Chicago Cubs has unmet publicly funded stadium needs, so of course he threatens to move the team:

Cubs Chairman Tom Ricketts caused a stir Wednesday when he said publicly for the first time that he would consider moving the team if moneymaking outfield signs central to his Wrigley Field renovation plan failed to win the city’s blessing.

Oh, for Pete’s sake. You can try this with the newer expansion or transfer teams, with their mercenary up-and-down fair-weather-fan fan bases (and I include the St. Louis Rams, almost twenty years in town now, among these younguns), where perhaps a transfer from Pensacola to Tampa might yield enough financial rewards to merit the move, especially if the fan base in the originating city is not very deep and tends to not notice the team when it’s not winning.

But when you take a historic, storied franchise and threaten to move it, we know you’re bluffing. You can’t move the Yankees to Sacramento, you can’t move the Cubs out of one of the largest markets in the country to Tulsa (or even Gary, Indiana, same media market but not a good location for traditional fans). It would make no long-term financial success. The team owners know it. The elected and unelected city officials should know it.

But it’s part of the dance. It’s political cover to roll over and spew public money for private benefit or the team will move. Now that the picadors have finished their work, the public treasury can be gored theatrically.

But note to Chicago Cubs owners: You could not get the ticket sales over the long term by moving the team to another city with a bigger better publicly funded stadium, you would not get the instant merchandising fan base from a move, and, besides, no other city wants your stinkin’ Cubbies anyway. Well, maybe there’s some pit in New Jersey that would take them, but no where in civilization.

If Paul Rodgers and Yngwie Malmsteen formed a supergroup, they could call it Rodgers and Malmsteen. I’d by an album on the name alone.

Yes, there’s snow in Springfield today (and ice floes in my swimming pool, word). It’s a day of some records with interesting implications, we can infer from this Springfield News-Leader story:

The Ozarks broke a record today in measurable snowfall. According to John Gagan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Springfield, the last time the Springfield-area saw measurable snowfall this late in the spring season was May 2, 1929.

But that’s not the only record expected to be broken today.

The last time there was even a trace of snow in May—meaning flurries, but no accumulation—was May 6, 1944.

The temperature will also be significant. Currently, the record low for the coldest day in May was May 4, 1935 at 43 degrees.

So.

One must infer, then, that on May 6, 1944, and on May 2, 1929, it snowed when the temperature was 44 degrees or warmer, must one not? If May 4, 1935, was the coldest low temperature on record, then these other recorded days must have had higher low temperatures, ainna?

And computer models (!) based on data with this precision is exactly why we must return to subsistence levels. QED.

All right, so I read a book on Swedish history, which led to my new taste for lingonberries and then to commenting on Swedish news. When will it end? When will Brian J. cease with this little blog goofery fixation on Sweden?

Not yet.

So I mentioned I went to the Friends of the Clever Library book sale this weekend; I didn’t say that I avoided the Friends of the Springfield Greene County Library sale, although I sort of did.

Because I knew I’d buy a bunch.

But I did not avoid it entirely; instead, we went on Saturday, half price day, twenty minutes before they closed and about seven minutes before the volunteers started checking the charges on their cattle prods. The limited time frame, I knew, was all I could count on to limit myself, and I headed right to the LPs.

Where I scored:

Apparently, this is the 1966 album that started it all for the Samuelsons, who together or separately have released albums together or separately as late as 2005 (although Rolf, the older, passed away in 1981). Or so I kinda glean from the Swedish Wikipedia page.

The album is mostly in accented English, although a song or two are in Swedish. I’ve only listened to it once, but it’s not bad, and I’ll listen to it again although gospel is not a native genre for me to follow, I seem to be acquiring a couple LPs here and there, especially when they’re in a foreign language.

Oh, what else did I get? A Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass album (….Sounds Like…), a couple of Doc Severinsen albums, a couple Mood compilations (one for dining, one for sleeping), a Longines Symphonette Society Christmas collection, and a collection of music from Brazil. The sorts of things I listen to on my hi-fi. I keep meaning to bore you with a regaling of my listening zones where I listen to music and the different kinds of music I listen to while I’m in that zone. One of these days.

On Friday, I volunteered at the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library semi-annual book sale. So you might think I would then go on Saturday to the same book sale. But ah, my foes, and ah, my friends, that’s the way one gets too many books.

Instead, I went to the Friends of the Clever Library Book Sale, which is held in the firehouse down there and only has six or seven tables of books. That way, I would self-limit on my purchases.

Oh, how the best laid plans of mice and men and so on. Because I did not take into account that one of those tables might be almost completely filled with Mack Bolan / The Executioner related Gold Eagle titles. Read more »

A pair of Russians who had lived in Japan for a number of years are willing to invest $500,000 to get US citizenship so their daughter can attend school in the United States:

That’s because the Russian immigrants came to the U.S. through the EB-5 visa program, a federal initiative that allows foreigners to earn a green card granting them permanent residency – and a path to citizenship – in return for investing at least $500,000 in an American business and creating at least 10 jobs.

For Anikeeva, she knew after spending her junior year of high school in Savannah, Ga., that she wanted to one day call America home.

The student’s return to the United States was not immediate or certain. She went home to Vladivostok, attended college, then spent seven years in Japan with her husband and daughter, helping run the family’s luxury automobile export business.

But as their daughter grew, Anikeeva and her husband decided they wanted her to have the advantages that come with an American education. And they were willing to pay to make it happen.

But…. but…. I thought people trotted out all kinds of statistics about how dumb American students are when it comes time to pony up other peoples’ money for teacher pensions?

But when it comes time for international-conscious people to decide where to raise their child to have the best opportunities, they come to the United States.

(Link seen on Hot Air.)

Back in 2011, I mentioned I was starting to dress up a bit (Going Grant). I still am, although I got away from it for a while, but how does one fit a smart phone into blue jeans? I have no idea.

At any rate, here’s a bit about Why Cary Grant is Mandatory for the Manosphere, which talks about how you should act like Cary Grant (not just dress like him).

Quite so.

(Link via Ed Driscoll, whose Silicon Graffiti videos you should also watch and emulate.)

The Other McCain has the story of a guy who tried to get naked pictures of women on the Internet.

McCain quotes another blog:

[A] recently-unsealed complaint in the Eastern District of Michigan . . . alleges, essentially, that a New York man — Adam Paul Savader — used a variety of Google Voice numbers to text women under the monicker “John Smith.” ”Smith” told the women that he had nude photos of them (or, in one victim’s case, her mother) and that he would post more online if they did not send more nude photos. [Emphasis Added]

Where have I heard that before? (Warning: clip includes F-word, so don’t play it at work if you work in a library.)

I was wandering around the library, minding my own business, when I caught sight of this book. At first, I thought the title was Call of Cthulhu something, as if Chaosium was releasing a set of new novels with based on the Cthulhu mythos and its roleplaying game. Then I saw it was not, and the title is what it is, and I thought all the better.

The books is about a young man who, as a college student ten years prior, but down a sorority house of vampires and rescued a young lady. The event wrecked his psyche, and he’s been a barrista, mostly, since that period, and he clings to the woman he saved. She’s joined the FBI and is in the Boston office, looking for Whitey. Their relationship is friendship-only since she doesn’t have a lot of respect for him and because she’s a lesbian.

One day in his coffeeshop, a bad customer leaves behind a MacGuffin, a computer disk, that the man pockets. While he delivers coffee to his FBI friend, the bad guys shoot up the coffeeshop looking for the disk. It contains login information for a Second-Life sort of virtual world where the guys are working together to piece together a working incantation to awaken Cthulhu, and they’re going to try it at a mall near a power center.

It’s an amusing book, and I enjoyed it. It’s not a thoroughly professional job, as the pacing is just a little meandering at times where some excess is not trimmed–who am I to talk? It’s got a bit of an X-Files vibe going on and a touch of Odd Thomas in it, albeit in the third person. By that, I mean it’s conversational, and there’s really no sense of menace to it. You don’t think the characters are in real peril–who am I to talk?–and the climax, such as it is, doesn’t really seem like a climax and there’s a second subadventure climax in it.

Still, I liked the book enough that after I finished reading it and returned it to the library, I ordered it in paperback just so the author could get his buck-three-eighty.

So now that that’s out of the way, it’s back to H.P. Lovecraft: The Complete Fiction. Only 250 pages to go.

Books mentioned in this review: