No, this is all about the Wilsons.
Wilsons, of course, refers to the $100,000 bill, which briefly depicted Woodrow Wilson.
Phrase of the Day
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Author: Brian J. Noggle
A Phrase I Might Have Coined, But I’m Too Afraid To Google To Find Out Otherwise
“Vonnegut-sniffing dogs.” Read about it at 24th State.
I thought I’d coined a phrase yesterday, “the fêted swamp of Washington, D.C.“, but it turns out I found (via Google) that others before me had turned that particular intersection-of-Lovecraft-and-French phrase before.
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What’s In Your Storeroom?
Harvey has an outdated technology check. Which of the following do you own?
As I have just cleaned out my storeroom, I know pretty well. Here’s his list, with the things I own emboldened:
- phonograph turntable
- phonograph turntable capable of playing 78s (Right here on the desk with my laptop)
- 8 track player
- cassette player
- 5 1/4 floppy drive (Most are Commodore 1541s; I think I recycled my last PC 5.25″ as mentioned in my previous post)
- 3 1/2 floppy drive
- a car with a carburetor
- a non-cable-ready TV (I am pretty sure I donated all the old Atari Party televisions before we moved to Springfield.)
- a dial phone
- a corded phone
- a winding wristwatch (Although I do own a winding pocket watch and, like Harvey, a grandfather clock that requires winding.)
- a manual typewriter (Although I do own two vintage electric typewriters, but no manual typewriters.)
Harvey asks for suggestions; of course I’d add some of the following which I own:
- VCR (I own 5)
- Betamax
- Laserdisc (Added so Charles could check another list item.)
- Atari 2600
- Nintendo NES
- SuperNintendo
- Maybe just “pre-1995 computer or gaming system”
Play along.
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Employee of the Month Nominees
I hereby nominate the following employees for employee of the month for July:
- The automotive service center counter man who dealt with the woman who’d brought her car in for some no cost warranty work and spent much of her time in the waiting room talking about how she has no money for a month and a half for groceries or car repairs and how she’s thinking about selling plasma or going to the local medical research firm to have herself injected with drugs for money so the local medical research firm can see how they break down in the bloodstream. Yes, when confronted with these lamentations, the salesman did not back off on his point-of-sale badgering until she agreed to put the $10 bottle of fuel system cleaner onto her store credit card.
- The local computer service employee, who told me as I dropped off old printers and desktops for ‘recycling’ after confirming via email with someone at the company that there was no charge for recycling printers that there was, in fact, a $5 charge for laser printers because they have toner cartridges in them. You know, the toner cartridges you can take to Staples and get a discount on your next purchase for recycling them there so Staples can refill them or the toner cartridges sometimes collected by schools as a fundraiser because they can recoup money selling them to ink refillers. You know, the only part in the printer guaranteed to make the recycler money–that I need to pay them to take.
Kudos to those guys for going the extra mile in a down economy for trying to squeeze blood from a rutabaga.
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Google Maps Include Ghost Town
I don’t know why Google Maps continue to include Times Beach, Missouri:
There it is, in the lower left corner, just north of Eureka on Interstate 44.
Times Beach, notoriously sprayed with dioxin, was disbanded and all of its citizens relocated in 1983.
But there it is, still on Google’s maps.
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Shades of Greedo Shot First
Bumblebee is a Volkswagen Beetle, dammit!
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My Walmart Makes It Big
Over at Legal Insurrection, Prof. Jacobson posts a bumper sticker spotted at my local Walmart.
It’s strange to find I’m not the only one in Greene County who reads his blog.
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In Which Noggle Is Disturbed By An Ad In An NRA Magazine
In the cheap ads in the back of the NRA’s America’s 1st Freedom magazine, we find this ad that juxtaposes a woman with a gun with, well, you see:
Because, gentle reader, when a relaxing moment turns into the right moment, is the object of your affection holding a firearm? If so, you’re doing something wrong.
I mean, seriously, who sees this and does not immediately think of a particular quote from the film Dirty Harry?
(Another gun-show-magazine ad with a scantily clad woman for no reason here.)
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Book Report: The Seinfeld Universe by Greg Gattuso (1998)
I don’t mean to make you feel old, but Seinfeld has been off the air for 13 years now. I didn’t watch a lot of television in the 1990s, so I missed a lot of the viewing events of my generation, such as E.R. and Seinfeld. Given that it was a thirty minute sitcom, I must have seen a full episode of it sometime, although I cannot remember when or what it would have been. I don’t think I saw a complete episode of E.R., either.
This book, written by a fan newsletter (back in the day when newsletters were mostly mailed) editor, discusses the development of the sitcom, the post Larry David years, the cast, the memorable locations, and so on. It heaps approval on the show, of course, and made me interested in maybe seeing some of the show.
The cast biographies talk about how the individuals playing the roles, scrappy good-hearted souls all of them, are dealing with their success and being on top of the world. Strangely, from here in the future, we can see that after the show ends, Jason Alexander voices a cartoon, Julie Louis-Dreyfus cannot carry a realtime sitcom, Michael Richards gets Corrected for a response to hecklers, and Jerry Seinfeld marries that little girl. The wheel of fortune, she turns in a decade and change.
If nothing else, the book would be an interesting time capsule into the 1990s, although the program did begin in 1989, so it ran contemporaneously with my youthful golden age between high school, college, and almost up to my engagement.
Ah, the 1990s. It seems like American history follows a certain cyclical pattern, doesn’t it? An epic struggle followed by a party. The 1920s followed the War to End All Wars, the 1950s and early 1960s followed the Depression and World War II, the 1990s followed the Cold War…. It’s a facile generalization, sure, but what do you expect in a derivative book report based on a television program about nothing? Regardless, I suppose I should be optimistic about the future after we get through the current troubles, but I know past performance is not indicative of future performance. Nothin’ but the David in me.
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Facebook as Official Communications Channel
Perhaps you’ve seen the video of the concealed carry motorist in Ohio who tried to inform the police officers that he was carrying a concealed weapon, only to be interrupted each time by the tough cop until such time when the weapon was discovered, whereupon the officer threatens him with bodily injury and death. I’ll tuck the video under the fold.
Courtesy of a Hot Air update, I see the police department has issued a statement on its Facebook page:
I want to assure our citizens that the behavior, as demonstrated in this video, is wholly unacceptable and in complete contradiction to the professional standards we demand of our officers. As such, appropriate steps were placed in motion as dictated by our standards, policies and contractual obligations….
I have to ask you, do you take postings on social network sites from official government entities as the truth? As an official in a government entity, do you think this really is the forum for official statements?
I dunno. Since it’s so easy to hack or spoof the social network sites, I don’t it’s a good idea. But I’m an old man. NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!
Continue reading “Facebook as Official Communications Channel”
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A Sacred Vow
I will not water the flowers with the pressure sprayer.
Continue reading “A Sacred Vow”
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The Other Must Be Excluded
We’ve all seen this video:
A lot of people are glomping on how unprepared the MSNBC hostess is to walk into that bit of a gaffe. Yeah, she’s unprepared and looks dumb.
However, more telling to her mindset is that she asks the question to dismiss the opinion of the member of Congress’s opinion; however, when the Congressman answers in such a fashion that his does have the credential to have a valid opinion, she dismisses that, too.
So asking for a credential is only important in so far that it can exclude others. If the other has the proper credential, that, too, is unimportant; the other must be excluded some other way.
(Video seen most recently on Boots and Sabers, but I think I saw it first on Ace of Spades HQ.)
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I’ll Believe It’s A Crisis When It’s Not Used As A Reason To Refinance Your Mortgage
I just heard a radio ad on the WISN Internet stream wherein Accunet home mortgage company that said it’s time to refinance your mortgage because of the debt limit crisis.
If the US defaults, mortgage rates are going to go up, the saying goes.
Way to keep your eyes on your ball, boys.
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Your Body Is Not My Kindle
I hope this tattoo fixation in our culture has just about run its course. It was bad enough when people put cutesy little pictures you could recognize, mostly, when they ordered them inked onto their bodies. A little butterfly on the shoulder, a little flower on the ankle, a little skull with a dagger through it on the forearm, I get it. I can catch it in a glance and get the drift of what your self-image is.
But now we’ve moved into text, heaven forfend. I feel self-conscious enough when my gaze lingers on a woman’s chest just so I can read her t-shirt, but now we’ve got people putting lines of text in fancy script on their bodies. Megan Fox, for example, has a couple samples of this upon her. Matt Holiday, the St. Louis Cardinal, has some line of text running up his left arm, aligned so it’s readable when he’s stretched his arm out horizontally, such as when he’s batting. I hope it’s a taunt to the opposing player, but word is it’s a bible verse, or so I read on the Internet. I cannot read it, since he’s always fidgeting or swinging the bat when it’s on camera.
Today, at the YMCA, some dude had finished his run outside and was cooling off at a bench as we came out. He had his shirt off, and on his right torso I swear to deity he had a freaking paragraph. Some five or six lines, probably, in an italicized or right-leaning font, justified no less to make a block of text that looked like it might wrap all the way around his side from his back to his front.
Are you kidding me? What is someone seeing that supposed to do? Stop to read it, maybe put on reading glasses to do so, perhaps ask him to turn a little as one follows the words? Come on. This is trying to make it look like you have a tattoo with a deeper meaning than a picture and less passé than an oriental character that probably means something other than you asked for anyway.
For Pete’s sake, if you find a saying you like that reflects your lifestyle and ambition, get a journal with a bound cover and a nice pen and keep it there, or if you’re feeling risqué (sorry, WordPress had a sale on the character é, and I bought a bunch), write it on a notecard and tape it onto a mirror. If you’re compelled to share it with everyone, put it on Facebook where we can read it without staring or feeling creepy. If you have trouble remembering things à la (buy two és, get an à free!) Momento, get a smartphone.
Because in 20 years, your skin is going to go to papyrus, and that tattoo’s going to look like a doctor’s handwriting.
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Steyn Award Winner, 2011
I hereby present the Steyn Award for Competitive Breeding as Means to Demographically Preserve Your Culture to this woman:
When Joanne Watson learned that her 15-year-old daughter was pregnant earlier this year, she confesses to feeling shock and disappointment — but not for the reasons you might expect.
Never mind the struggles that her daughter would face as a teenage single mum; Joanne was jealous that it was her daughter expecting a baby and not herself.
‘I’d just done a pregnancy test of my own and it was negative. I came downstairs and that’s when Mariah said she had something to tell me,’ Joanne says.
‘I somehow knew immediately that she was going to tell me she was expecting a baby, and it was the last thing I wanted to hear after doing my own test. I said: “I don’t want to know.” But there was no avoiding it. We went to the doctor’s and she was eight weeks gone.’
An astonishing response? Well, yes. But then Joanne, 40, is no ordinary mum. For including Mariah, she has 14 children, ranging in age from 22-year-old Natasha to two-year-old Indianna. Oh, and since her divorce three years ago, she’s a single mum, raising them all (you guessed it) on state benefits. Shocked? It gets worse. For Mariah is not the only one of the brood to have become a teenage mother. Her two elder sisters beat her to it.
Natasha got pregnant with her son Branford, now six, when she was 16, while Shanice, now 19, gave birth to a baby boy at 17 and recently had another son.
That’s really putting some effort into preserving modern British culture there. Sadly, the culture being preserved is modern British culture.
(Link seen on Hot Air.)
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Tips on Displaying, Caring For Books
I’m a couple months behind in my Wall Street Journal reading, so I just now got to this article: Books Start Conversation, Stay Dust-Free. New York bookseller Nancy Bass Wyden talks about how to care for books using her own personal collection and home display as a guide.
However, about that personal collection:
Any book lover knows that it can be easy to have your collection overwhelm your décor. Just ask Nancy Bass Wyden, co-owner of the Strand Bookstore in New York City, who has a personal collection that numbers more than 2,000.
More than 2,000? Come on.
Maybe that would be another good tip to keeping your books clean and tidy looking: try to keep the library at 2,000.
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Book Report: Dark Bahama by Peter Cheyney (1950)
I’m breaking with tradition here a little bit: although I read this book as part of a Detective Book Club volume, I’m breaking it out to review individually (but I don’t count it as a book I’ve read this year until I finish the volume, of course–my accounting rules are as esoteric as GAAP).
This book is part of a series, the “Johnny Vallon” series–although that’s rather strange, as “Johnny Vallon” only makes an appearance at the very beginning as he meets a couple of the characters that do most of the sleuthing and sets them into motion. Maybe he’s like Charlie in Charlie’s Angels throughout the series.
At any rate, the alternate title is I’ll Bring Her Back, and it centers on an old flame of Johnny Vallon who asks for help. She’s promised to retrieve from Dark Bahama the ne’er-do-well daughter of a widow. Vallon can’t go himself, so he sends a man named Isles, kind of a ne’er-do-well gumshoe sort. When Isles gets to the island, he finds a dead body and is suspected in the murder, and as he works to clear himself, he finds that the job entails more than he bargained for. Enter Guelvada, a Belgian/English espionage type who takes over the book and gets some papers from under the nose of the other side.
Well. I mean, it starts out a crime/hard-boiled detective thing and then it turns into an espionage thing, and the main character isn’t the main character halfway through the book. Instead, the guy we’d rooted for falls into a sort of gofer role to the hardened espionage agent. Well.
The style, strangely, is English pulp. I can see where it’s trying to have the paperback sensitivities of American fiction, but the style is very poor for it. I figured it out later: it’s the prepositional phrases that blunt the punch.
For example:
Once again, he had a vague sense of annoyance at the sight of the overturned chair.
and:
In twenty minutes he arrived at the apex of the two roads. Immediately in front of him was the broad State highway. Twenty yards to his right, parked in the middle of the side road, was a State Trooper’s car. By the light of the dashboard Guelvada could see two men seated in the car…nearest to him the driver and on the right in the passenger seat a State Trooper with a submachine-gun on his knees.
Zzzzzzz….. Huh? What? Wrap it up?
It is an interesting artifact if nothing else, but I don’t think I’ll hunt down the rest of the series or the related Quayle series.
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PSA for Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Owners
Because your car does not make as much noise as an internal combustion engine automobile, your car presents an especial danger to those with impaired sight or to those who are merely inattentive in parking lots.
To alleviate this danger, it is important that you play music very loud, preferably with the bass turned to the maximum, with your windows down to improve safety.
A pedestrian cursing your choice in heavy metal is a safe pedestrian indeed.
Thank you, that is all.
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Finally, A Toy That Will Not Proselytize
Product does not convert.
Why, you could even sell them in Dearborn, Michigan, without trouble!
What? You say this just mean that this Transformer toy does not actually transform into a truck?
What kind of Orwellian world do we live in?
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Book Report: The Treasury of Clean Jokes by Tal D. Bonham (1981)
I bought a copy of this book at one of the recent friends of some library book sales hoping to blot the karma stain I earned by reading The World’s Best Dirty Jokes way back in 2005.
This book comes from the same era–1981–and contains a number of gags that are dated and really not that funny. Some border on amusing. And, to be honest, I did refactor five of the jokes within into my own tweets and status updates, so the book was worth something. Also, consider that Tal D. Bonham has turned this into an entire series of Treasury of [topic] jokes and that the edition linked below is the second edition of the book published in 1997. Heck’s pecs, the guy has more titles in this series than I’ve sold of my first novel. Someone’s finding these books to be worthwhile.
But I get slightly more laughs from Reader’s Digest and The Saturday Evening Post, both of which are starting to recycle their own jokes. But sometimes I’m slightly humorless, and there are only a couple of talking animal jokes in this book (talking animal jokes very often get me).
I guess this explains why I read joke collections only once every six years or so.
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