July 2024 – Musings from Brian J. Noggle

ALERT: TOP STORY: Opportunity to Slap the Religious, Continue Fantasy Of Militant Religion on the March in United States

July 3, 2024July 3, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Stop the presses! The St. Louis Post-Dispatch brings us this breaking news!

Ascension parishioner thought Chesterfield ‘militia’ could bring young men to Catholic Church

The man who tried to start “The Legion of the Sancta Lana” at Ascension Catholic Church said he regrets describing the group as a militia.

* * * *

“Seeing the closure of Catholic churches and the dwindling congregations across St. Louis, it was my intention to create an organization for young men to push themselves mentally, physically, and spiritually through the practice of discipline, study, and fitness modeled after the military,” Ray said in a statement provided to the Post-Dispatch. “The use of the term ‘militia’ is regrettable and does not accurately represent the intention of the organization. However, the current state of the Church in The West is equally regrettable and I’m sure we can all agree that we are in desperate times.”

C’mon, man, this is top news? This is a notice in a church bulletin with keywords that cause right-thinking people to clutch their pearls and to help watercolor the picture that Christian Fundamentalists Are Arming Up To From Trump’s Irregular Army or something.

I would say “do better,” but the paper can probably not.

I haven’t seen the St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently, but I did have a dental appointment this week, so I got to glance over the Springfield News-Leader these days. And I kid you not, it was six or eight sheets of newsprint, so twelve or sixteen pages. That is, about the same size as the small town weeklies I take. Which means, what, twenty stories? Fewer? (Maybe I should actually count them the next time I’m at the dentist.) I won’t say the business model is completely failing, but journalist doesn’t seem like it’s a career path to the middle class.

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Movie Report: Epic Movie (2007)

July 3, 2024July 2, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Book cover I guess this is the third in this line ([Genre] Movie) that I’ve seen; I saw Date Movie last December and Not Another Teen Movie in the last couple of years (but before movie reports on the blog were a thing). I picked this DVD up this spring and clearly could not wait to get into it. Or, actually, wanted something very, very light to watch one evening.

So: Like the others of its ilk, it piles together elements from other films to parody them. In this film, four orphans (whether or not their parents are still alive) win golden tickets to go to a candy maker’s palace. The candy maker proves to be very creepy, so one of them (and then another, and then all of them eventually) try to hide in a wardrobe which leads them to the land of Gnarnia. The first, a girl, meets a satyr who takes him to his crib (cue the MTV or whatever style intro to where he lives), but he turns her out as the ruler of the land (the White Bitch, played by Jennifer Coolidge) knows that she will be deposed by four humans, so humans are to be turned over to her at once. The second, played by Kal Penn, is found by the White Bitch, whom he calls Stifler’s Mom (from the American Pie movies, get it?), and she offers him sexual favors or the promise therein to betray his friends. But they team up along with Captain Jack Swallow, the Brotherhood of Mutants (from the X-Men movies), and a bunch of other misfits to aid Aslo, a randy lion-man, to free Gnarnia.

So it throws a lot of things in there, mostly to say, did you see what we did here? and so you can feel a little smart when you recognize what they’ve jammed in there, but that’s about the depth of the humor. It’s not particularly raunchy, although there is a little sexual innuendo (the film is PG-13, not R).

Still, I don’t know. I mean, when I was writing parody in high school, I had this series of short stories where a character encountered all sorts of characters from other source material, and I thought it was a hoot. But my sense of humor has changed, I suppose, to something more sophisticated than see what I crammed in here?. Well, maybe it’s not necessarily more sophisticated, but different all the same.

Which is not to say that I won’t buy others in this line when I can get them for a buck or fifty cents. But I’m unlikely to watch them repeatedly like Airplane!, Hot Shots!, or National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I. Are those movies that substantially different, or is it that I watched them for the first time at different stages of my life? I dunno.

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New PPR (Personal Procrastination Record)

July 3, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

Ah, gentle reader. As you might know about me, I tend to put things off, especially home maintenance or repair projects. They will sit for ~~weeks~~ ~~months~~ years, and then I will do them in a short period of time. Instead of a sense of accomplishment, a look what I did triumph, I’ll then recriminate myself for not having done it sooner. And this very week, I have the topper of all stories in that ilk.

In late summer 2009, we had house-shopped in Springfield for a couple of months on intermittent weekends, and we settled on Nogglestead (like our home in Old Trees, we magickally found a house on the very last day we were house-shopping). I made the round trip after the paperwork was in motion for the home inspection and followed Dennis, the home inspector, around the house with my own tools to poke and prod what he was and what he was not (after all, home inspectors adhere to a checklist closely, and they’re paid by the home sellers, so they don’t go off book at risk of their continued employment).

One thing he pointed out was that the insulation around the copper line from the external air conditioner condenser unit to the house, the pipe that brings the cooled, erm, coolant back into the house was breaking down. It was an easy fix: just take it off and replace it with standard pipe insulation. It wasn’t on his checklist, and I didn’t make it part of the nickel-and-dime remediation conditions for purchase. But shortly after we bought Nogglestead, I went to the hardware store and bought two lengths of pipe insulation. And then I put them in the garage, a little out of the way, and….

Almost fifteen years pass.

Gentle reader, I have alluded to the fact that I am in a slow motion process of cleaning up my garage (which includes the slow grind of painting my fence so that I can get the three five gallon buckets of Mission Brown and three smaller buckets of Russet out of the garage). On Monday, I used a cardboard poster tube that originally contained a poster that we framed and gave to my mother-in-law for Christmas probably twenty years ago (when we lived in Casinoport, undoubtedly). It was on the top shelf of a, erm, shelving unit with round things: Rolled up replacement screen material, rolls of kraft paper for landscaping and/or painting, a couple of poster tubes in case I ever got back into the Ebay thing selling movie posters (which I have not for almost a quarter century), and the pipe insulation.

I noticed when running the line trimmer around the house that the line was almost bare copper these days, and it was sweating as much as I was. So it was time.

I got the insulation down, took a scissors and a roll of duct tape, and spent five minutes replacing the insulation. I peeled the remainder of the old insulation off, cut the new insulation down to size, wrapped it around, pulled the tape to the adhesive on the edges, pressed the edges together, and added a couple loops of duct tape, and….

It took almost as long to walk around the house and back as it did to fix the thing.

I probably put it off so long (as with other repairs like it) because I have little experience with HVAC and I was afraid I would somehow damage the unit. The next morning, the fear was almost realized, as the condenser had a weird rattle that it had not had before. However, I discovered that I left the duct tape on the condenser unit, and it was rattling. So, apparently, I have not damaged the unit.

I hate to think how much the delay cost me in energy costs.

But it’s done now, and I don’t think I can even top this procrastination record. And it’s a small step in cleaning my garage as well. So, ultimately, it is a funny (in a sad way) story and a small win anyway.

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Choose Your Own Grind Adventure

July 2, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

In video games, “grinding” is doing repetitive tasks over and over to increase your in-game scores or for some in-game benefit, such as mining a bunch to get the materials you need to craft a weapon or better tool.

Real life is like a grind. No, scratch that: Real life is a selection of different grinds from which you can choose. And, as a bonus, some grinds do not lead to better outcomes: some grinds are maintenance grinds which are repetitive tasks that you do just to keep even.

Continue reading “Choose Your Own Grind Adventure” →

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What’d I Say?

July 1, 2024July 1, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

The same thing as a commenter at Diplomad:

We need to dispel the idea that the problem is Biden (or whoever the Democrats choose to nominate). It does not matter whether the executive is Biden, Gavin, or Michelle; the outcome of their polices will be the same. The problem with the Democrats is their Leftist policies, and their willingness to do anything (including disregarding the Constitution) in order to remain in power.

By focusing on Trump vs. Biden, we offer them an easy solution of simply changing their figurehead. We need to disregard the ‘Cult of Personality’ battle, and focus on policy differences. Any debate about Biden’s abilities should begin with, “I know Biden is unfit, but that’s not the problem…”

We were talking about it last evening, and I explained to my beautiful wife how it could work. She didn’t believe it possible, but she is quite the optimist who believes that the elite follow the rules.

You know, I actually heard “What’d I Say?” on WSIE this morning. So thanks for the title, Mr. Charles.

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Good Book Hunting, Saturday, June 30, 2024: ABC Books

July 1, 2024June 30, 2024 Brian J. Noggle

After a martial arts class on Saturday morning, I decided I was going to do a throwback leisure activity and go to a book signing at ABC Books since I was going to the gun shop anyway, and it was on the way [Ed note: The gun shop is not, in fact, on the way; it is in the opposite direction, as a matter of fact, as this particular gun shop is in Ozark, which is south of Springfield, whereas ABC Books is so far north in Springfield that it is almost north of Springdfield.] Fine, fine. What really happened is that I planned to go to the book signing then the gun shop, but as it happened, the book signing was from 1-3 and not 11-2, so I flipped the order. I also dragged my youngest away from his Magical Fantasy Mirror for a couple of hours. He was more excited than dismissive when I mentioned going to the gun shop and lunch and a book signing–I will leave it to your imagination whether the gun shop or the lunch offered the enticement [Ed note: Probably the lunch].

At any rate, the side quests killed enough time that we arrived at ABC Books a little after 1 when the party was in full swing. I say “party,” because the young author brought some friends, and they were having a great time playing hide and seek or tag in the stacks. But I managed to dodge them as I hit the usual martial arts and poetry sections.

And only got a couple of things.

Including:

Teendyth: On Desecrated Faith and New-Found Religion by Steven-Mark Maine. He described it as a horror book about the son of a preacher who goes to the seminary and meets a different deity, presumably a dark one.
Finding Libre: My Life in the Martial Arts by Scott Babb.
Manual of Throws for Sport Judo and Self Defense by Fred Neff. Formerly property of Sigma 3 Survival School. Jeez, I hope it wasn’t stolen and some survivalists come to Nogglestead to try to take it back.
Houses of Worship, a hardback Ideals book with a lengthy inscription from a woman who “crashed” a party with her husband and had a great time and is giving this as a gift of thanks. I pointed it out to Ms. E., and we talked a little about Ideals magazine. She said that people came in the shop looking for them. I’d hunt them in thrift stores and whatnot to bring them in for profit, but, c’mon, man: Kittens and books: Two things that never leave Nogglestead.

I left two books on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu on the shelves as that is not my bag, baby (perhaps it will be someday). But, c’mon, man (he said, repeating himself like the populizer of the saying), if I bought two books on Tai Chi walking to clean the section out, the odds are very, very good that I will someday buy these books. But not today.

So now they will disappear into the Nogglestead stacks, likely for a number of years, although perhaps the Houses of Worship and Manual of Throws might emerge sooner rather than later. I’ll certainly think of them. The key is to find them.

And, yes, this now officially means I have bought more books this month than I’ve read all year. It happens less frequently these days, but still sometimes happens.

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