June 2018 – Page 2 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

I Was Just Telling My Child About Recycling

June 6, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

He was slowly dumping a bottle of old soy sauce into the sink while I was trying to do dishes, so I grabbed it from him, put the cap on, and tossed it in the trash.

“But recycling!” my children chirped as they’ve been taught.

So I gave them a little talk about how recycling consumes resources and produces a recycled product of dubius utility.

This was last night. Today, a story reiterates what those of us paying attention and concerned with actual economic costs instead of simple absolution rituals already know: Some Inconvenient Truths About Recycling:

It has become an article of faith in the U.S. that recycling is a good thing. But evidence is piling up that recycling is a waste of time and money, and a bit of a fraud.

The New York Times recently reported that, unknown to most families who spend hours separating garbage into little recycling bins, much of the stuff ends up in a landfill anyway.

Penn and Teller had a program on in the old days called “Bullshit!” that had an episode on recycling. The whole thing doesn’t look to be on YouTube, but a small sample is (Penn language warning):

Me, I recycle just because otherwise I might have to pay for another garbage cart to be picked up weekly.

(Link via Instapundit.)

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It Makes Me Feel Like I Live In The Country

June 5, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

The neighbor calls me up; she has a message for her son, could I drive down to the back pasture at the Jones place where Warren is raking hay and give it to him?

I did, of course.

Even though I live in the country, I spend a lot of my time in my home office connected to a computer or driving into Springfield and doing things in the (small) city. So I forget where I really am.

I must need to sit on my back deck a couple more nights and watch the luciernagas or the wah-wah-taysee at sunset, when it’s quiet and the wildlife come out. Although clearly I’ve done that, since I learned the word wah-wah-taysee from “The Song of Hiawatha” when I was reading it last night at sunset. Luciernaga I learned some time ago.

Both words mean “firefly.” But the one from Sesame Street is not my favorite firefly song, as you might guess.

What was my point? Probably that I shouldn’t be sitting connected to a computer right now.

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“In Game Purchases Are A Waste Of Money,” I Said.

June 4, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Trying to teach my children about the value of things you buy, I strongly discouraged my child from spending money on something in a game that would help him out. A game that he would probably not be playing in six months.

This, from a man who as a boy spent plenty of money on these:

Probably more than my son wanted to spend on his latest in-game need. Which he could use for however long he plays the game at the level where the purchase would be helpful, which is far longer than the twenty seconds it took me to play each card.

Still, I encourage him to buy personal relics which can trigger memories, unlike soon-to-be-forgotten collections of algorithms on his borrowed video gaming device.

(Earlier musings on video game cards here.)

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This Montaigne Is Aging Nicely

June 3, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

I’ve reached an age where decades are a drop in the sink beneath the mirror in which my face suddenly sags. You know, a couple years ago (six being “a couple,” where ten is “a few”), I started a category on this blog called DeRooneyfication, which covers projects I’ve completed after the passage of time. It’s not a very big category, sadly, as so many projects remain incomplete.

But what’s rather striking to me today is the copy of Montaigne’s essays atop my dresser.

You know when I set it there?

I carried that book on one of my trips to Kansas City the beginning of last summer. I read a couple of the essays in the beginning, and then I laid the book aside for later reading.

And a year has passed. I’ve moved the book to dust (infrequently), but it’s been atop my dresser for a full year. It sits there with the rotating cast of carry books that I put in my gym bag when I make my (infrequent) trips to the martial arts school, (weekly, mostly) trips to church where I can read the book over the Sunday School hour, or to various sports practices where I sit in the bleachers while my child or children run around. A book of poems that I take out to read on the deck sometimes at night joins the stack. But the Montaigne? That’s been a year.

I don’t know what it says that books that I pluck from my shelves to read sometime languish on side tables or dressers for years before I pick them back up or, in a fit of cleansing, put them back on the to-read shelves. But a year.

The vertigo of passing time that I get from these realizations might explain why I don’t open my nightstand drawer. Within it, a couple of poetry books I started to read to my children when they were very young, when I would read poetry to them while they played their toddler games, reside. Pablo Neruda and Ogden Nash en media res. I haven’t lived in this house for a decade (yet), but these books might make it a decade in the nightstand before I find them or before an estate sale appraiser looks them over and marks them fifty cents.

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An Unfortunate Banner

June 2, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

417 magazine has a cover story this month Your Guide to the Best Swimming Holes in the Ozarks.

Although it’s not the magazine cover image, here’s the banner on the Web site:

The magazine hit the stands this week. Also in the news this week: High cliff jump into Buffalo River breaks paddler’s neck:

Nearly 40 feet high on the side of a cliff, [redacted] knew instantly that his double backflip into the Buffalo River wasn’t going right.

“When I turned backwards on the cliff I started falling backwards,” [redacted] remembers. “I over-rotated on the way down and I didn’t land it well.”

I’m not from around here, so I was not aware the cliff jumps were a thing. I grew up in the projects, where we went wading in the storm water basins, and nobody was going to dive from the overpass into a couple inches of water over concrete. But apparently it is.

Although it’s not illegal to jump from cliffs in Buffalo National River Park, ranger Casey Johannsen advised against it because of the risk for injury.

“We have signage in the park that strongly discourages it,” Johannsen said Friday. “My recommendation, always, is don’t do it.”

There are no fines if someone is observed jumping off a cliff, but Johannsen said several people a year are injured doing risky cliff jumps.

It shouldn’t be illegal, of course, but people need to be careful.

Strangely enough, the incident reminded me of a book: The Dive from Clausen’s Pier. Between the book, though, and cliff-jumping into an unknown stretch of river, I’d be torn.

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Book Report: The Long Good Boy by Carol Lea Benjamin (2001)

June 2, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover After reading a book about magickal cats who solve crimes, it only seemed fitting to turn to this book, which I just bought in March, which features a private investigator (Rachel Alexander) and her pit bull (Dash) who solve crimes. Dash, it should be noted, does not talk. Also, note I read an omnibus edition of a couple earlier books in this series in 2009.

At any rate. In this book, Rachel is hired by a trio of transvestite hookers to investigate the murder of one of their colleagues in the meat-packing district of New York City. She finds that a manager of a local meat plant was murdered around the same time, so she wants a look into the files of the plant. She spends many pages teaching a dachshund belonging to one of the prostitutes to unlock a bathroom window so she can break in and fax files to her home line. The meat plant might be tied up in mob activity. The plant’s assistant manager, who was passed over for the job when the murdered manager was hired, is a frequent client of the prostitutes, including the one who was murdered.

Much of the book is spent in chasing down or set pieces that don’t really amount to much. The whole plant break in thing takes a long time, and then Rachel is outfitted as a hooker and spends a couple nights on the streets for no real reason other than to explore the experience, and then in the last third of the book, she finds out not so much that family secrets are involved and a couple of failed police stings, and then the book wraps up in a rather abbreviated and confusing climax.

Still, it was an enjoyable read. The pacing was good, even when it was going nowhere. I liked it enough to maybe pick up another the next time I find it for a buck.

Robert B. Parker created the Sunny Randall series to be adapted by Hollywood for Helen Hunt, or so I heard. I wonder why this series hasn’t been optioned?

Also, as a side note, the topic matter and discussion of transvestite and pre-operative transgenders: Although this book is sensitive for 2001, how insensitive is it in 2018? If the chronically offended read old books, perhaps we would know. And the answer, likely: INTOLERABLY!

(Also, if you’re interested, here’s my book report on the book whose title is the source of this book’s title: The Long Goodbye.)

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Book Report: I Hate Ann Coulter by “Unanimous” (2006)

June 1, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover What a mean-spirited, insipid little book this is.

Of course, with a title like I Hate Ann Coulter!, what would I expect? Probably something akin to Rush Limbaugh Is A Big, Fat Idiot by Al Franken, which is also floating around on the shelves somewhere here.

I’ve not been a fan of Coulter. The only book of hers I’ve reviewed here was Godless, although I might have read one of her earlier books before this blog–although it’s hard to imagine any life before this blog. I know she was kind of popular with the early blogosphere, but I don’t think I’ve seen anything linking to her in quite some time. Her books are quite incendiary, with a bunch of name calling and near-nastiness that’s supposed to be humorous as she makes her points.

But that differs from this book, where nastiness is the point, and the author or authors do nothing but lay into Coulter’s looks and whatnot. They insinuate she’s a man. You know, the kind of thing that in the year 2018 would be doubleplus ungoodthink, but only if not targeted to Ann Coulter, apparently.

The times when they bother to attack her credibility as a commentator, they mock Coulter’s points that time has borne out. Such as:

Ann makes the wonderfully deranged contention in Godless that a liberal, when questioned, “might turn violent–much like the practicioners of Islam, the Religion of Peace, who ransacked Danish embassies worldwide because a Danish newspaper published cartoons of Mohammed.”

Well, we’ve seen an uptick in political violence from the left in the intervening years, ainna?

Or the stunning ignorance on offhanded display, such as an assertion in a quiz to see if you’re like Ann:

6. Does it bother you as a Christian that Jesus never kicked anyone’s ass?

Seriously, kids? Have you never heard this story?

The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!”

You’re refuting Coulter’s point about liberals being, well, Godless by demonstrating a relatively common story from the Bible.

My goodness, I cannot believe I read this. Well, no, I can. I read anything, and this little stroll through the gutter did not take me very long, fortunately, and my book count this year needs some padding.

I would recommend you not bother. Go visit Twitter if this is your thing. No doubt the author(s) of this book have a sweet feed somewhere over there where they DESTROY and OWN conservative commentators all day long.

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