To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Roger Freeman, gossip reporter, does the previously unthinkable and always the unpalatable:
He suggests a Billy Joel duet with Dido.
Noooooooo! The Piano Man with the….the founder of Carthage? Whatever will this trollop be known as in thirty years other than the Trivial Pursuit answer to the question about Stan?
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Virginia Postrel, commenting on David Brooks’ recent New York Times column (registration required), asks and then answers her own question:
The column, which deserves reading in full, leaves unanswered a rather important question: What’s the point of Republican political power? Nothing more than job security for a different clique?
Well, yes.
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This weekend, I didn’t get to post because I went home (Wisconsin, that beautiful northern state that’s also home to Harvey, Owen, and DC) to help my brother move from Milwaukee to LaCrosse. It’s the other side of the state, but fortunately the short way.
It was good to be home. It’s easy to forget the experience of being in Milwaukee during winter football season, wherein a full fifteen percent of the population wears apparel bearing the Green Bay Packers logo. I am not kidding. It’s one thing to remember it abstractly, but to see it firsthand is always somewhat shocking.
And they think they have football fans in St. Louis.
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I saw children standing on the corner waiting for the bus. By themselves. In 20 degree weather.
Here in tropical Casinoport, Missouri, children don’t wait on the corner for the bus. They wait in running SUVs that crowd about the corner. When it’s sixty degrees.
Must be the small town life, or hardy Northern stock.
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On the way home from LaCrosse, I passed through Madison, Wisconsin, and I had the urge to stop to Ann Packer’s house. It would be the proper way to express my appreciation for her book, and if she had her Christmas lights up already, it might lend a spooky ethereal effect if they blinked through streamers of Charmin.
Silly me! I remembered then that she lives in Northern California and only writes “authentic” novels about Wisconsinites who only come alive when they leave Wisconsin for cosmopolitan locales. Maybe I could have thrown a perfect Brett Favre spiral and one-hopped a roll to northern California if I bounced it just right in Colorado, but odds were it’d hit the eastern side of the Rockies and flutter hopelessly down, leaving her home unscathed.
It was a long drive home. I had a lot of time to think.
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My brother moves to LaCrosse, and the God-fearing people begin their flight.
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Oh, yeah, secure your gear. Office creepers aren’t something from a horror movie crossed with Dilbert. They’re thieves who prowl office buildings, often during work hours, who hoover up unsecured wallets, purses, and electronics. I have warned you time and again.
(Link seen on Techdirt.)
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Courtesy of the Everquest players who killed Kerafyrm, The Sleeper, an “unkillable” monster designed to be the end of the EverQuest world or something. Players should not have been able to kill it, you see. Seems that the Sony development team gave the beast 10 billion hit points, a bunch of invulnerabilities, and an unbelieveable regeneration rate, and 200 players teamed up to do the impossible. Much to Sony’s chagrin.
Lessons to be learned:
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