Month: April 2026

Setting the Stage for Another Sequel

Brian J. Noggle

Voters reject proposed tourism tax to fund downtown Springfield Expo and Convention Center:

“We respect the decision of our voters and appreciate the time they took to learn about the proposal and make their voices heard. Our next steps will be to take what we have heard and really focus on the priorities of the City Council as reflected by our residents,” said Springfield Mayor Jeff Schrag.

Hopefully more than the last time, one election ago.

I put the over/under on this reappearing on the ballot at 11 months.

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Book Report: 40 Days of Courage (2026)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis is the third year running in which I have read the church’s Lenten devotional–in 2024 it was 40 Days of Wisdom, in 2025 it was 40 Days of Discovery. This time, it was 40 Days of Courage.

I mean, it ties in with the sermon series we’ve had this season, but the variety is a little underwhelming. Whereas in years past, we’ve had a lot of contributions from different congregation members, this year the devotional features a higher percentage of pastors, including one who is retired but still preaches in our church on occasion (and whose wife is from Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, and who laughs like my aunt up in Hubertus, so if I spend any time around her, I run the risk of backsliding or propersliding into a Wisconsin accent). We also have a contribution from the pastor’s daughter and one from a high school member of the youth group, and a couple from members of the board, etc., but definitely a smaller sampling of voices than my previous experience. Which, I guess, means that I am sorry that my beautiful wife did not contribute three devotions this year.

I mean, otherwise, I don’t have much to say about it. I’ve mentioned that I’m not the target audience for devotionals.

Unlike some comic books, though, I did count this in the annual reading total. These are my arbitrary rules. If you don’t like them, I have others.

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We See What You Did There

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverSo, gentle reader, I am the sort of person who puts dryer sheets in with his laundry, especially during the winter months. And I have vacillated between the warehouse club’s house brand and Bounce name-brand dryer sheets for years. Depending upon how miserly I was feeling, mostly. But the last time I was in the market, I decided to go with Bounce because even though we run the laundry all day here, by the time we got to the bottom of a box of sheets, particularly the two-pack bundles we got, the sheets had lost most of their scent. So I went with the Bounce, and….

Wait a minute.

Instead of a two-pack of sheets, I got a single box here instead of two, and you’ve cut the size of the sheet about 20% but have put two of them together, perforated, so I have to tear them apart myself. And for the same low price?

Well, I guess if you’re going to do shrinkflation, it pays to add as many variables to the calculation as possible to try to obscure it as best you can.

Best of all, you’re doing this for my convenience.

Jeez, guys, am I getting more curmudgeonly, or merely posting the same amount of curmudgeonishness and cynicism more often? More value for you! If you value that sort of thing, I guess.

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And We Pass Those Costs On To You, Under the Power of the Law

Brian J. Noggle

Another day, another push to mandate insurance coverage for obscure treatments.

Ah, gentle reader, I feel for the people who need this, for the family whose child’s name is on the law, and for all the sob stories the media, activists, and politicians will dredge up to appeal to our emotions so that we won’t realize that this, and the drive to ever-more mandate ever-more outflows from the insurance companies will create ever-more increases in premiums to pay for the treatments that most people will not and, indeed, cannot use.

Oh, Brian J., you monster! What would you propose? Well, non-profits can gather funds for “increasing awareness” and “engaging with legislators.” Perhaps some of them could help with the treatment payments instead of employing people with humanities degrees, good hearts, and a taste for the finer things in life.

Ultimately, though, health care costs have spiraled for decades because the government has made it happen through legislation and enforcement and businesses have learned how to make the requirements more profitable for themselves.

Here I am, paying $2800 on health insurance (down, actually, since I was dropped from COBRA due to a software bug and went to an unsubsidized marketplace provider). Which is up $24,000 a year from when I paid my whole health insurance bill as a self-employed computer consultant. So, yeah, I am sensitive to the forces which continue to drive this increase year-over-year. Both government mandates and the big insurance company drives for ever-increasing profits and stock price heights.

In Brian J.’s pseudo-libertarian perfect world, health care costs would go down over time with increasing efficiencies and competition in the marketplace. Like you see for unsubsidized procedures like cosmetic surgery and, in the old days, LASIK surgery (they still do it, I guess, but they certainly don’t advertise for it like they used to). More freestanding health care clinics would spring up along with the diagnostic storefronts you can find if you look for them. And maybe I could go to my barber to set a broken limb or get a tooth extracted. I’m only kinda funnin’ here.

But stories like this, and the legislation they trigger, never talk about the tradeoffs. They only talk about the balm for people who are suffering difficulty or suffer a loss.

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So What To Do With These, Then?

Brian J. Noggle

As I mentioned, in January, I reclaimed some comic books from my youngest’s bedroom as we culled the children’s books from his shelves (and moved the bookshelves downstairs as depicted in the The Noggle Library, 2026 Edition).

I stacked up the salvageable ones, which includes not only some heavily worn comics from my youth but also things that the boys got at The Comic Cave back in the day or things they bought at ABC Books, whether with gift cards they received or as a bribe for coming with me to the book shop (not that they had much choice ten and twelve years ago).

And…. some of these Bongo Simpsons Comics Explosion books. They’re flat-spined collections of comic strips(?).

I have a bit of a conundrum: Do I count them as books or comic books?

As you know, gentle reader, I have in the past counted collections of cartoons as books in my annual tally and generally subject you to my twee musings on what I’ve read. Not so with comic books. But, as I mentioned, these have flat spines. Like graphic novels. Which I have counted in the past.

So, if I count them as books, I can use them for blog fodder. And I can just put them on my bookshelves. If I count them as comics, I have to acquire some magazine-sized poly bags and figure out where to put them–my short boxes are comic sized. Maybe I need to get a magazine-sized box as well.

Oh, the dilemma!

Probably, though, I will bag them and store them with the comics. Not that it will make much different at estate sale time, but it will leave the room on the bookshelves for actual, you know, books.

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Well, Ackshually….

Brian J. Noggle

Ms. K. yesterday:

This was the second time I drove myself there. The first time I did was back in 2022 when I took the Zed Drei, and on that occasion I stopped in Springfield, Missouri on the way home and fell in love with the twee little Holiday Inn right off I-44. It’s like a 5/8ths scale big city hotel, with an atrium and birdcage elevators and the works and if Springfield has an annual sci-fi con then this is where it happens and I’ll bet it’s adorable.

Missouri Comic Con is coming up in a week, and check out the guests. Randy Quaid, Anthony Michael Hall, Jewel Staite, Alan Tudyk, Jonathan Frakes, Brent Spiner, Vicki Lawrence (?)….

It’s at the fairgrounds, not the Holiday Inn.

Am I going? Nah.

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On Great Authors of the Western Literary Tradition Part IV with Professor Ronald G. Herzman (2004)

Brian J. Noggle

Book coverThis particular set, six discs in a single binder and with a single professor, from the much larger series that I bought in 2024. I am writing the reports on this particular course as I go because the whole series is 7 binders, 42 CDs, and 84 lectures in total–it might take me eight months or more to get through them.

This set is taught by Professor Ronald Herzman and is subtitled “Literature of the Renaissance”. Of course, those of us in the know will tell you that the dates of “the Renaissance” differ based on geography; the Italian Renaissance, for example, was far earlier than the English Renaissance. So this set of lectures would cover a broad swath indeed

Individual lectures include:

  1. Christine de Pizan
  2. Erasmus
  3. Thomas More
  4. Michel de Montaigne
  5. François Rabelais
  6. Christopher Marlowe
  7. William Shakespeare — The Merchant of Venice
  8. William Shakespeare — Hamlet
  9. Lope de Vega
  10. Miguel de Cervantes
  11. John Milton
  12. Blaise Pascal

It started out with a lecture on an obscure author, a woman who wrote a book about women who is unknown today unless you’re in the academy–and by “today,” I guess I mean the end of the 20th century. Hell’s bells, but the youth of today might not know any of them except maybe Shakespeare. And maybe I was a little deeper into books than most, even amongst my cohorts at the university.

At any rate, I’ve got many of these authors in Classics Club editions, including the Montaigne I started reading in 2017 (and have since re-shelved). As you might know, gentle reader, I am working through the complete works of Shakespeare in a multi-decade (probably) project (most recently A Midsummer Night’s Dream).

So: It made me want to delve into the works I’m not currently reading, so it’s got that going for it. Unfortunately, they will wash over me during the remaining lectures so that the feeling will pass. Hopefully, I won’t rush out to buy anything which will hold down my chair side table for years (I bought Pamela after hearing The English Novel in 2020, and I probably started it not long after–which makes me glad I did not run out and buy Tom Jones, too).

So I am on the downhill slide on these lectures; only three more binders, 36 lectures to go. And, looking ahead (or at least to the next set, “Neoclassic Literature of the 17th Century”), I have to think that the further into the more recent past we go, the less I’ll be inspired to read the authors. If the book makes it into the 20th century, that’s likely true. But I will still get something out of it, even if I don’t remember it.

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