Merry Christmas, everybody.
Weird that you never hear that one on Christmas radio stations given that it has gone platinum and re-enters the charts every year (and has its own Wikipedia page.)
Christmas Greeting
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Author: Brian J. Noggle
Talking Back To Memes, Again
I saw this on Facebook a couple times yesterday:
However, I used to know a girl named Eve when we were both wanna be poets in the St. Louis coffeehouse circuit. If I were still talking to her, I could say today, “Happy Christmas Eve, Eve” which DESTROYS this meme.
I think she went on to become a real poet, unlike me. Although I guess I did sell a poem for money once.
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A Quiz I Passed, If You Ask Me
In Memoriam: Technology That Died in 2019.
I won’t reproduce the entire list of, what, 67 “technologies” that appear in the listicle. I will, however, point out that I have only used three of them (Adobe Shockwave, Google+, and iTunes on the Macintosh). I have heard of a couple more of them, but most of the others are companies or offerings I’ve never even heard of.
Which I count as a win, as it might mean that I focus on the important things in life, which are in meatspace, or that I am not a young Internet content creator who feels the need to come up with an extensive list of obscure things for $25.
Instead, I’m an old Internet content creator who feels the need to comment on such listicles for free.
(Link via Instapundit.)
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A Bit of a Scratched Christmas Season
Gentle reader, here at Nogglestead, it has not really felt much like the Christmas season at all this year. What follows is a bit of a personal cri-di-coeur, so I’ll tuck it below the fold.
Thanksgiving came late, as you know, and my mother-in-law was ill and could not attend the holidays, which highlighted how few we probably have left with her.
After Thanksgiving dinner which was attended only by my immediate family and a single friend, I learned that my aunt in St. Charles had passed away that morning.
I had planned a little weekend getaway with my beautiful wife for that weekend, a polite fiction that would have allowed us to visit my aunt while having a date night with my wife. However, it turned into an extended stay ending in a memorial service.
Over the extended weekend, my remaining aunt, the caretaker of my recently passed aunt, walked with me through the house so I could earmark anything of hers I wanted. My aunt had decorated her house in fine wood furniture and antiques, many of which had been in the family for generations. But I have a complicated relationship with the possessions of dead family members. My father had once said about my sainted mother that she was sniffing around for money or would be when someone died. I don’t know what prompted him to say that, but it gave me a lasting fear that people would think that I was interested in benefiting from the deaths of my family. So I have always minimized what I accept after the death of a family member. Which sometimes leads to internal conflict when I think I could really use that, but it’s a practical need and not something to remind me of my aunt.
So I ended up with a collection of books, a nice console stereo, an entertainment center, a pair of cat sculptures, and some wall decorations. Which presented a logistical challenge for getting them from St. Charles to Springfield and have enough adult bodies to carry said furniture. I planned to to drive to Poplar Bluff with my youngest son, pick up my brother and nephew, and go to St. Charles, where we would rent a truck and drive the truck from St. Charles to Springfield, unload my things, and my brother and nephew would continue to Poplar Bluff to unload their things and drop off the truck. We could not do it the first weekend of the month, as I had other plans.
The other plans, unfortunately, were not fun. My wife and boys were going to Camdenton for the First Lego League state competition. Last year, we turned it into a weekend in Osage Beach just down the road from Camdenton, and while the boys were competing, my wife and I could do some Christmas shopping and having a date day somewhere else. Unfortunately, this weekend was the first weekend I had to work on a Saturday, so I had to work instead.
While in Camdenton, my wife aggravated a slight sports injury into a major case of sciatica which, after she drove home on Sunday, left her barely able to move or walk on her own, so she needed pretty attentive care, and her debilitated state left us unable to attend any of the school or church Christmas programs–including a concert she was supposed to sing in as part of the church choir. She’s moving better now and is almost back to normal, but it did wipe out the Christmas program season.
She convalesced in our parlor, where our existing record player is, which limited access to the annual rotation of the Christmas records. And, of course, I could not leave her for my circuit of Poplar Bluff-St. Charles-Springfield, so I had to rely upon my beatified brother and nephew to bring my aunt’s furniture to me. Which he did.
The weather hasn’t helped. I’m from up north, so I expect winter to be, well, snowy. Even though my boys have had three snow days already this year, we have yet to see measurable snowfall. Kansas City and even the St. Louis area have had proper snowfalls, but nothing here. As a matter of fact, it’s spring-like, with temperatures predicted in the 60s through the week.
And, to be honest, I’m a little disappointed with the gifts I’m giving this year. I usually like to have something that I think will wow the family, but this year, the gifts are pretty rote and predictable. I also like to have something for the family from Santa, something a little out of left field for the whole lot of us, but this year, I haven’t thought of anything. Which is just as well. As I look back over the years, a lot of times those gifts have gone unused ultimately. So maybe this safe Christmas of giving will be better than previous years.
If it happens. The oldest boy has been under the weather a bit, so an abundance of caution might prevent my mother-in-law from attending Christmas dinner and gift exchange.
I am glad that I kind of follow the church calendar and mark Christmas as the beginning of the new year, as I am about ready for a new beginning. I’m off work for the next week and a half and hope I won’t blow the time sitting at the computer doing nothing. Except, perhaps, tapping out something on a mostly unread blog.
Meh, it’s a mindset that makes a feedback loop, where negative things leads me to see the negative things. I need to shake it, and I’ve generally found that when I’m finally able to talk about it probably means I’m on the upswing already.
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Book Report: The Homecoming by Harold Pinter (1966, ?)
I got this book last week when I went to ABC Books for the Christmas gift cards. I did not do a full Good Book Hunting post on it because, gentle reader, I’m not sure if you even read them (or the blog book reports for that matter). But, if you’re interested, I got Little Town on the Prairie, Those Happy Golden Years, and The First Four Years in the Little House series, this book, and a book on whips and whipmaking that I bought for a gag gift for my brother but that I ultimately kept because, hey, I might want to make a whip some day.
At any rate, this is a mid-(twentieth)-century British two act play by Harold Pinter, who apparently won a Nobel Prize for Literature. Given the topic matter, I can see why.
The plot revolves around a house containing Max, the patriarch not respected by anyone and given to long stories extolling himself; his brother Sam, a chaffeur; his son Lenny, a pimp; and his other son Daryl Joey, a young man who wants to be a prize fighter. So they’re lower class grifters, basically. The oldest son, Teddy, a Doctor of Philosophy teaching in America, returns home as a surprise and brings his wife Ruth home.
So everyone propositions Ruth (as the back panel tells us), and the story alludes to the dead mother’s infidelity (as well as the male characters promiscuity and attempted promiscuity), and at the end, though frustrated with Ruth’s fidelity (or at least denying everyone in the household), they make plans to turn her into a prostitute and proposition her with the possibility, and she apparently agrees–leaving her husband to leave the house and return to America without her. At the end, she is the center of the household and the men revolve around her.
So I guess that’s the message: It’s unclear whether she will actually become a prostitute or just get all the sex she wants, but she will rule this household. At least, I think that’s what the message is. I suppose I could re-read it and highlight the bits that support my theory and turn it into a proper undergrad paper, but I’ve graduated, and I am reading for pleasure. So, nah.
The play did remind me of a play that I saw after college at St. Louis Community College-Meramac with a similar theme. I’ll have to go through my momentoes to see if I still have the program. It might even have been this play, but I am not sure. Funny, I haven’t thought of the play ever, and I remember most of the productions I’ve been to. Now I’ll have to dig those boxes out and see what it was.
But I’m not going to put Harold Pinter on my list of playwrights whose works I want to pick up. Unless they’re a buck at a book sale, perhaps.
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Book Report: Direct Hit The Executioner #141 (1990)
Welp, this is not one of the better entries in the series. The series by this point was progressing to more elaborate plots, and sometimes the authors handled them better (see White Line War and Devil Force).
This book, however, has the trappings of elaboration, such as continent-spanning set pieces and a bunch of interlocking conspiracies with different bad guys/terrorist organizations with their own competing and sometimes clashing agenda, but this author handles them a little clumsy compared to others. We don’t get much beyond the plotting part, with characters remaining thin and some of the plot movement is a little more than intertitle cards. So perhaps it reads a little like a silent movie version of an Executioner novel.
Still, I will continue with the series because some are better than others. Also, I stil have 24 of the numbered entries in the series and numerous spin-off titles, and they aren’t going to read themselves. Unlike the Little House books, though, I shall not finish them in 2020. But since the numbered series total is down to 24, I can almost see the end.
Oh, and one thing I flagged in this book is a little bit of big city rural miscalculation (such as was also seen in Death of a Hired Man).
She pointed the way, and he drove the battered pickup through Parkersburg, an unimpressive town of about forty thousand.
You know, forty thousand sounds small if you live in a major metropolitan area, but out here in the country, that’s pretty big. Springfield is bigger, of course, but Parkersburg is bigger than Nixa, Republic, Marshfield, and Monett. It’s almost as big as Joplin, and we kind of think of Joplin as a small city. After all, the Census Bureau says anything over 10,000 is an urban enclave.
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Book Report: Christmas Lights by Christine Pisera Naman (2007)
This is my annual Christmas novel for the year, although it’s really more of a short story cycle a la Winesburg, Ohio than a novel-novel.
It contains a number of short stories focusing on women at various stages of their lives and having different difficulties around the holidays. One is a busy doctor with no time for personal relationships until a gust of wind scatters the nativity set from her apartment balcony, leading various neighbors to each bring back a piece and introduce themselves–including a potential love interest! Another woman is having difficulty in her marriage and walks out, only to find herself in church praying and eventually reconciling with her husband. One woman meets someone at the airport–a baby she’s adopting from overseas. And so on.
At the end, we discover that they’re all sisters as they gather in their mother’s home on Christmas Eve and recount their stories.
The stories are short and women-centric, but I guess the target audience for these sorts of books is not the same as the Executioner novels. The back flap says the author writes for the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, and, to be honest, these do kind of seem like Chicken Soup short stories, with a bit of setup and then a positive, uplifting outcome.
I didn’t like it as much as some of the other Christmas novels I’ve read, but it’s a pleasant and quick read.
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Their Inherited Carpentry Skill
As you might know, gentle reader, I come from a line of carpenters. My great-grandfather and my grandfather and then my grandfather and father were two sets of Noggle and Son remodeling. My father knew how to do everything and often did. My mother was unafraid to tackle large remodeling projects. My brother, too, is like a Borg infesting a house and improving it. And, as you know, I have done a bit of (rudimentary) furniture making.
I am pleased to say that carpentry skill is indeed transmitted genetically, as my boys (mostly the younger) has taught himself how to use tools (auto-didactic because working on anything his father does is like, you know, work). So they have set themselves to building a birdopolis outside their bedroom windows:
He used pine boards not cut but broken during martial arts testing and a couple nails, and not much more.
Apparently, the birds have seen these fine domiciles and have determined that the rent is surely higher than they can afford, as none have yet moved in.
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Book Report: The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder (1940, ?)
It’s been since July that I read By the Shores of Silver Lake, and I picked a good time (December) to read this book. It deals with, well, a long winter that the Ingalls family endures in North Dakota with blizzards every couple of days.
The Ingalls family has become more urban, as they move from their claim shanty to the building in town that they built and leased at the end of By the Shores of Silver Lake. They depend upon regular deliveries by train of coal and food, and the trains run intermittently and then stop until the spring which pushes the town to the brink. They have to eat some of the Wilder boy’s seed wheat. They have to twist and burn hay when the coal runs out, an effort that requires almost around-the-clock effort. And Almanzo Wilder and another young man make a desperate bid to find a farmer some miles from town that, rumor has it, laid up a lot of wheat that he might sell.
The book reminds us acutely–again–how throughout much of history, just living was a struggle. A perspective lost if our schools replace historical books with theme-of-the-day morality plays that emphasize made-up drama for Man versus Nature storylines.
At any rate, I’m not saying the book influenced me, but I built a wood fire one night while reading it (because wood burns hotter than Duraflame logs). And the day’s high was something like sixty degrees, so I’m not actually really cold. But reading about how they broke the ice on their indoor water pail in the mornings makes me shiver when I’m out of bed before 4am when the forced air heating kicks into day time temperatures.
I guess I’m running out of these books. I bought the rest at ABC Books recently and likely will finish them next year. At which point, I guess I’ll have to find some adult books to read or something.
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Another Musical Confusion
Another confession: When I was really young, I confused Old King Cole with Nat King Cole.
It’s amazing that I knew when I was young who Nat King Cole was given that he died before I was born.
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My Confusion, Circa 1988
When I was younger, I sometimes confused Patty Smyth:
With Patti Smith:
It could happen to anyone, right?
Although sometime in 1993 or 1994, I had written a novel that featured a dark haired and dark eyed young woman as a love interest, and when I saw a ten-year-old Patty Smyth music video, I thought, that’s her. Maybe I based Kym Russano on Patty Smyth, as I’m sure I had seen “The Warrior” (as I referred to it in a collegiate commentary).
All I know is that I have to keep typing their names so that perhaps when I can tell them apart I can spell their names correctly (unlike in 1992).
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Now Serving
As part of his annual Christmas party, my oldest son has to bring something that tastes strange to school, so he wanted to stop at the Asian grocery store.
I’ve done this from time to time, generally when my beautiful wife is hunting something exotic for a recipe, and I have taken to picking up some odd canned fruits to serve with dinner. In the past, I’ve gone as far as canned quail eggs, although I’m pretty sure that I didn’t even try those.
So whilst my son got his crazy soft drinks and candy, I picked out a selection.
We have:
- Mango Slices in Syrup
- Bitter Melon in Brine
- Toddy Palm’s Seed Whole in Syrup
- Jackfruit in Syrup
- Longan in Syrup
- Banana Blossoms in Brine
Each night, I alternate between my boys and ask them to pick and apportion the fruit into three bowls (as my wife does not care to participate in this ritual). So we tend to go from the more known to the more frightening-sounding as we go.
True to form, the youngest first picked the mango slices.
Then, last night, my oldest chose the banana blossoms which I thought would be the last selection. After putting them into the bowls, he drank from the can, thinking it contained syrup instead of brine. He pulled a face and spit it out and learned that not all fruit are stored in sweet syrup. Banana blossoms in brine, by the way, taste like bland artichoke hearts.
So now I’m betting the toddy palm seed will be the last. I think the youngest will take the longan tonight, and the jackfruit is a relatively known quality as we’ve had it before.
Lately, the local supermarket has offered fresh jackfruit, but I’m not sure why. I know when I was a produce clerk, something exotic appearing on our racks meant that the warehouse had mispicked the item, sending us sugar canes instead of limes, and they told us not to bother sending it back. So we would put it out since it didn’t cost us anything (we got credit on our invoice for the case of limes that didn’t show up), so any novelty sales to people like what I have become would be pure profit.
But I have not bought a fresh jackfruit yet.
Perhaps soon.
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Angel in the Centerfold
Man, the centerfold in this week’s Springfield Business Journal is HAWT!
When I posted this on Facebook, my beautiful wife pointed out that the story on her company is not in the centerfold, but on page five. The math proves she is better than a Page 3 girl.
I was just talking to my grandmother this week, and she remarked on a twenty-year-old picture my wife and I that I sent her (my grandmother) in October. She said that she had forgotten how pretty my wife is. I have not, of course, although I do have some difficulty in convincing my wife how pretty she is.
I guess I have already mentioned that she’s all that from 1998 and more. This post was just an excuse again to show how I married up.
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Also, We Must Raze Aurora
A Missouri lawmaker is setting himself up to be the next exemplar of religious fanatics in the Republican party: State representative says there shouldn’t be a “false god” on the capitol building:
A local lawmaker is asking state officials to prevent putting up a statue of a [R]oman goddess back on the [C]apitol building.
State Representative Mike Moon, from Ash Grove, wrote to Governor Mike Parson claiming the statue of Ceres Is a “false god” and should not be displayed on the capitol dome. [capitalization corrected]
What does he think of having a town not far from his named after a Roman goddess?
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I Haven’t Mentioned Her Name In Almost 24 Hours
Marie Fredriksson, Roxette singer, dead of cancer at 61:
Roxette singer Marie Fredriksson, the Swedish star who achieved worldwide fame with such hits as “Joyride” and “It Must Have Been Love,” has died at age 61 after a 17-year battle with cancer.
“The Look” came on the radio when I took my boys to school yesterday, and I recounted the ‘fact’ that she could not speak English when this song was released.
I must have heard that on the radio at the time. I have no idea if it was ever true.
Fun fact: My friend Dave (of the Iron Maiden poster fame) and I argued against my brother about the staying power of Milli Vanilli (David and I posited) versus Roxette (my brother countered). In retrospect, it pretty much a wash in American music and its charts, and Roxette has only appeared on this blog as a punchline (Scientists Prove Rest of World Is Parallel Universe to United States in 2007, Free Trivia Answer in 2005).
Still, I am saddened to learn of her passing.
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The Legendary M&M Gift Tags of Nogglestead
Not quite as legendary as the wallpaper gift wrap of Nogglestead, the M&M labels I’ve used for a couple of years certainly are noteworthy.
Because I buy Christmas gifts all year long, I need gift tags all year long. Which means I often run out of gift tags in February, and the Christmas wrapping material is no longer in stores. I looked for gift tags in the local Walmarts, and I didn’t tend to find them. So I went to Amazon and searched for adhesive gift tags, and I bought the least expensive ones I could find.
The title pretty clearly said M&M, and I am sure if I magnified the image I would have seen that they did, in fact, depict M&Ms in various party ways.
Did I send them back?
Of course not.
I have been using them for years.
I am about to finally run out of them along with that fabled wallpaper, so I am going to have to buy some Christmas ones while they’re available and somehow come up with gift tags for birthdays and whatnot.
However, if I order from the Internet again, I will look more closely.
The funny thing is, though, I am not sure anyone has noticed this family ‘tradition.’
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Losing the Mannheiming of Christmas
One of the radio presets in our vehicles switches to Christmas music in mid-November, so we get our share of Christmas music that does not come from our growing collection of LPs.
And you know what I haven’t heard on this station in the last couple of years or, to my recollection, on KEZK in St. Louis when I lived there and on recent trips back?
Mannheim Steamroller.
This band really broke through after a number of albums with its 1984 Christmas album. I remember seeing this video on MTV with my brother; we were lying on my grandmother’s floor, and when it finished, we both said, Whoa.
But you don’t hear it in the mix much these days. Of course, the radio Christmas playlists have suddenly (maybe not suddenly?) tilted to modern artists doing secular winter songs, so you get a lot of Taylor Swift and Michael Buble, but not a lot of Steve and Eydie and whatnot.
So I guess that’s where Mannheim Steamroller went. Into the past.
I have this album, Mannheim Steamroller Christmas, and a later Christmas album, Christmas in the Aire on audio cassette. I should see about getting them on CD. Mannheim Steamroller Christmas was the first Christmas album I bought, werd.
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Book Report: The Savage Tales of Solomon Kane by Robert E. Howard (2004)
I read Robert E. Howard’s Conan novels in 2014 and bought this book in January. Since these are all proceeds from Christmas gift cards at Barnes and Noble, I had to clear the deck for this year’s expected gift card. I can only hope that Barnes and Noble has another Robert E. Howard collection to pick up.
This book collects stories, poems, and fragments of incomplete stories featuring a swashbuckling Puritan having adventures. The character differs from Conan, but the plots and the way they play out really do not. Kane goes to different exotic places, particularly Africa, and encounters fallen and decadent civilizations and has to fight his way out. One of the stories featured a device similar to one in a Conan story–a hidden priest speaking through an idol–but it plays out differently than the Conan story.
The style is rich pulp–the plots are two-fisted, but the prose has some heft. More than an Executioner novel, anyway. I enjoyed reading the fragments even though they would not resolve because the plot and the setup were good on their own.
The Robert E. Howard library series contains a number of other volumes, and I can only hope they’re available at Barnes and Noble after the holiday. Or I’ll have to–gasp!–order them from Barnes and Noble’s Web site.
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I Blame The Dharma Initiative
Polar bear spray-painted with ‘T-34’ baffles Russia wildlife experts:
Footage shared on social media in Russia of a polar bear with “T-34” spray-painted in black on its side has alarmed experts.
Experts warned the stunt could affect the animal’s ability to blend in with its surroundings and hunt for food.
An investigation is under way to determine exactly where in Arctic Russia the video was filmed.
I’ve seen this before.
Fifteen years later, I’m probably the only one still alluding to Lost.
UPDATE: It looks as though Ms. K. has also commented on the story.
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The Poignancy Of Growing Children and the Dangers of Poignant Photos
So my boys’ school has a program that pairs kids from higher grades with kids from lower grades for a bit of story time and crafts. The program is called Big Friend/Little Friend.
So one of the the Christmas projects is a candle holder wherein the urchins paste some tissue paper squares on glass.
In his 2nd grade year, he made a little one when he was a little friend. We put it on the little mirror shelf that is the only real repository for knick-knacks and figurines at Nogglestead. It’s been up there ever since with a collection of little candles we’ve acquired in various places.
Now, in his 6th grade year, he’s on the Big Friend side of the equation, and he made another with his Little Friend. However, as he was older, he grabbed a Mason jar instead of a little votive.
I thought it would make a poignant photo of how the boys are growing.
I was going to end with a quip about how I hope the youngest does not expect the Mason jar to go on display as well, but in picking up the small votive, it broke. I have picked it up to dust it once or twice in the last four years (maybe three times), but when I grasped it by the lip of the votive, the glass broke and was only held together by the tissue paper. So even the small votive won’t be on display.
So, suddenly, we’ve gotten a different life lesson from this act of photography. I’m not sure what it is. Tempus Fugit, and whatever the Latin is for “sometimes in setting up the artifice of a photo to illustrate life lessons on my little-read blog creates its own bad lessons.”
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