To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
It’s the Macy’s Father’s Day Sale. Who are the fathers who will receive gifts from Macy’s?
These guys:
That’s 3 of 6 of the images that have a father and a small child in them. Note that roughly half of these fathers of small children in the Macy’s world have greying or white hair.
(Yes, I know that the second and third pix are of the same model.)
I’m making no value judgments here, just noting.
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The New York Times uncorked this fact, which I’ve seen repeated elsewhere:
No American president since Franklin Delano Roosevelt has won a second term in office when the unemployment rate on Election Day topped 7.2 percent.
Well, okay. But how many presidents have we since?
13. One of whom has yet to run for re-election.
So the 12 who have include:
Of those, one died in office, so he could not run for re-election (John F. Kennedy for those of you who went to public school and are not a baby boomer).
Here are the election results and the unemployment rate in November of the re-election year:
| Year as Incumbent | Unemployment | ||
| Harry Truman | 1948 | 3.8 | |
| Dwight Eisenhower | 1956 | 4.3 | |
| Lyndon Johnson | 1964 | 4.8 | |
| 1968 | 3.4 | Withdrew | |
| Richard M. Nixon | 1972 | 5.3 | |
| Gerald Ford | 1976 | 7.8 | |
| Jimmy Carter | 1980 | 7.5 | |
| Ronald Reagan | 1984 | 7.2 | |
| George H.W. Bush | 1992 | 7.4 | |
| Bill Clinton | 1996 | 5.4 | |
| George W. Bush | 2004 | 5.4 |
I’ve added LBJ in 1968 since he was sort of eligible to run again but he withdrew before the primaries, so maybe he would count as not winning a second full term in office (although he did win a second term, his first full term, in 1964).
So, who did not win reelection? Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H.W. Bush. That’s three, and it is assured that the unemployment was over 7.2% on election day for those fellows, although in Bush’s case it was coming down. Of course, this statistic does not account for the 1992 candidacy of Ross Perot, who ran on a ticket of more fiscal conservatism than “Read My Lips” Bush.
Why the cutoff at “topped 7.2 percent”? Because in 1984, Ronald Reagan won reelection with that very figure.
By focusing strictly on the unemployment, the New York Times and its repeaters do disservice to other factors, including the mood in the country.
So this factoid is more of a “Huh.” kind of thing rather than something we should accept as a scientific truth.
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You know what I would pay to see twice? A film starring William Shatner and Shaquille O’Neal.
Shat and Shaq. What would beat that?
Since Hollywood is out of ideas and cannot probably think of something appropriately awesome, maybe a Lethal Weapon reboot with the colors reversed just so Shatner’s Murtaugh could say, “‘I’m getting too old for this s—,’ my dad says.”
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Judas Priest coming to Family Arena
Well, then, it’s at the Family Arena. Bring your kids.
Hell, old man, bring your grandchildren.
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The review copies of John Donnelly’s Gold have arrived:
To adjust the quote from Thoreau, I have now a library of nearly six thousand volumes, over seventy of which I wrote myself.
I’m sending these out in bunches to people who I think might be influencers and to book reviewers across the country, hoping to get some traction or notice.
Wish me luck.
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This is the first book of trivia-stuff or fact-review things I picked up for my upcoming June adventure, and I chose wisely. If I was looking for a quick read, this juvenile book is it. I should start checking publishers so I don’t get snookered by Scholastic.
It’s a quick bit of paragraphs with history vignettes / trivium in it, but it’s not without some trepidation. Any time you run into something in a book that you know is not true, particularly in a trivia book, you have to wonder if any of it is true. In this particular book, the author explains that the origin of the term “jeep” is that soldiers named it after the Popeye cartoon character. Well, that’s one theory of many.
Regardless, if anything in here stuck in my head, hopefully it’s the right questions.
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This is the 14th book in the series. Mack Bolan is summoned to San Diego by some former associates who worry about Bolan’s mentor from Vietnam, who seems to have become embroiled in some sort of mob scheme. Although Bolan does not consider San Diego a major target, he decides to investigate. When he tries to visit the general, Bolan finds the man dead of an apparent suicide and his papers in the fireplace. Bolan decides to investigate and clear his former boss’s name as much as possible. During the course of his investigations, he uncovers a ring involving stolen military-grade equipment.
It’s not one of the strongest in the series, and it contains a little more speechifying than the norm, but a quick and enjoyable read nevertheless.
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who looks at the Dole banana UPC sticker and sees a skull?
Or do I more obviously need therapy?
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This is the 13th book in the series, and it follows closely the events from Boston Blitz. Bolan goes to Washington D.C. to break the Mafia’s growing control over the levers of power. He meets a woman used to bait powerful men into compromising positions who might be an ally or who might be an enemy and discovers that the powerful man behind the Mafia’s efforts–the elusive Lupo–knows the woman better than she knows.
Also, explosions and guns. Bang! Bang!
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Here’s another bulleted list of trivia items, ungrouped. This one, though, is targeted for adults. And in case you’re wondering, this book’s known untruth is the assertion that the Great Wall of China might be the only man-made thing visible from space. As you and I know, 35 years after this book was published and some decade and a half after the rise of the Internet and Snopes.com, uh, no.
So I don’t know if any of this will help me at all, if I retained any of it, but I did find something of interest in this book. As it was written in 1975, it includes trivia about cigarettes, and they are not demonized. Additionally, there’s a lot of trivia about tea in this book, so the knowledge of the author speaks to the things the author likes, perhaps. I can almost picture what he looked like in 1975, swilling tea and smoking on a cigarette. Hippie.
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Good lord, this song annoyed me when WKTI played it over and over again when I was 19 years old. It’s “The One and Only” by some Brit named Chesney Hawkes:
20 years later, I get a touch of nostalgia hearing it. But it still annoys me. How is it possible to feel nostalgic for annoyance?
(Seen on Hot Air.)
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Marko Kloos has his first first fiction sale.
I remember that first check I received for a short story. It was 1995, and I got a $5 personal check from the editor of the Kinko’sed literary magazine Show and Tell. It’s easy to remember since it’s the only fiction I’ve sold.
I mean, aside from the stray copy of John Donnelly’s Gold here and there.
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After kicking in the door in the middle of the night and shooting a veteran 60 times, the police justify execution of a search warrant, the spokesman for the police explains the guy had a picture of a drug figure of some sort:
Mike Storie, a lawyer for the SWAT team, said at a press conference Thursday that weapons and body armor were found in the home as well as a photo of Jesus Malverde, who Storie called a “patron saint drug runner,” according to KGUN.
Lord, love a duck. I have a stack of Wall Street Journals two feet deep (I’m a little behind). I’ve got photos of drug runners, inside traders, international terrorists, and contemporary athletes. What kind of nefarious man am I?
It’s sad that a law enforcement official had to trot that out. Seriously, a “patron saint”? Are we supposed to imagine a shrine with an altar and some candles burning here?
Jeez.
(Link seen on Instapundit.)
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Hey, you. That dude in Texas who likes Mack Bolan books and has been crawling my book reports for a couple of days.
I don’t want to be a tease, but I’ve got a couple of Mack Bolan Book Reports forthcoming.
Also, don’t be afraid to send me a note or comment with some mention of what you think of the Executioner series.
UPDATE You know what sucks? Having blogged over eight years running and being able to reverse-stalk someone from my Sitemeter stats.
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As I said on Facebook the other night:
Brian J. Noggle snivels, slinkers, and mutters, “Our two dollarssess, we wantses it.”
You see, I thought I would be the only guy in the world who could successfully mash-up Johnny from Better Off Dead:
With Gollum from the Lord of the Rings trilogy:
Yeah, I thought I could possibly be the only one who could pull that off.
But, wait, there is another:
That’s Demian Slade, who actually played Johnny in Better Off Dead 26 years ago.
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You thought surreptitious Apple iPhone location tracking was bad?
Wait until you discover automated urinal flushers are doing.
Let’s just say that not everyone gets emails about improving their manhood, Chester.
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You see that new link in the sidebar?
Yeah, I finally got around to self-publishing my novel John Donnelly’s Gold.
Buy now, and it comes with a free survivalist fuel source (paperback only).
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I have taken the Jeopardy! online contestant tests for a number of years now, awaiting that one night a year where I get the chance to type one or two word answers into a Flash application as fast as I can, hoping to get enough right for the phone to ring or whatever. Every time, I walked away feeling kinda dumb and doubting my own trivia mastery. When I learned that they actually provided categories above the answers (you respond with a question on Jeopardy!, remember), I thought I did marginally better. This year, when I completed the test, I upgraded my self-assessment of my performance to ambivalent.
Then I got the email.
On June 14, I will venture to Kansas City for an actual audition for the program. If you’ve read up on it, you’ll know that this involves another test, a personality interview, and maybe a mock Jeopardy! game. If I pass muster, I get thrown into the smaller pool of people who might get the chance to play on the program.
So I have a little over a month to prepare. I did, briefly, think about “preparing,” as though some program of trivia immersion would somehow make me a better contestant or a more competitive player. However, there’s just as much chance, I think, that I’d stress myself and not enjoy the coming month, so I think I’ll take it in my normal stride: I’ll alter my reading program slightly to include brushing up on some subjects, but I’m not going to study much but maybe the presidents. And hope my native trivia intelligence is enough to carry me.
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The results of the Friends of the Springfield-Greene County Library book sale:
Friends volunteers sold $102,068.20 in used books, CDs, DVDs, audiobooks and more during the sale — the fifth consecutive Friends book sale that passed the $100,000 mark.
Given the damage I did to it (or it did to me), that means I represent .1% of the proceeds. If I had not gone on half price day, I might have been .2%.
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