Author: Brian J. Noggle

Book Report: Assignment Golden Girl by Edward S. Aarons (1971)

Brian J. Noggle

I bought this book because it’s a Fawcett Gold Medal paperback. It looks like a John D. MacDonald book from the era, and it’s part of a series featuring derring-do much like the other little pulps I like to read. However.

This book’s pace is too slow, really, for pulp goodness. It features a Cajun American agent named Durell who goes to a fictitious African nation to spirit out its prince after a neighboring nation, spurred on by the ChiComs’ need for a railroad right-of-way, overruns the small nation. Durell has one chance to get the prince, a former student radical during his studies at Yale, out: an old woodburning steam locomotive and a single track. Durell is distracted and aided by a beautiful woman–the golden girl of the title–who turns out to be the prince’s younger sister, whom the prince wants dead to cement his claim to the throne.

The book’s scenes are pretty stock bits of action spaced well among long descriptions of the terrain that only pad the book out. The final climactic battle isn’t really that climactic, and as I mentioned, the pacing of the book is pretty poor.

But it’s the thirty-somethingth in the series, so someone in publishing must have supported it. Maybe the first books in the series were good enough to build a following and the author coasted from there.

I wouldn’t recommend it unless you’re an absolute glutton like me.

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A Noggleism

Brian J. Noggle

My humor is often obscure enough that only one person in the room gets the joke, but that person thinks it’s uproariously funny.

Here, try this one out and see if you’re that person:

I went into MacDonald’s and ordered a MacGuffin. They gave me a box with a gilded rhinoceros horn that an unscrupulous arms dealer wanted very badly.

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Book Report: Street Fighter by Todd Strasser (1994)

Brian J. Noggle

You know, I wouldn’t read a comic book and put it on the list here, but somehow I can read a YA adaptation of a film based on a video game (which is not a first: see here where I’ve read the novelization of a sequel of a movie based on a video game).

That said, come on, it’s a book about a military operation that incorporates the characters from the side-by-side fighter game and somehow gets Jean-Claude Van Damme in front of them. The plot is about a mad warlord in a backwater country in Southeast Asia who is using science to tip the balance in his favor on his plan to rule the world. The good guys, the AN (Allied Nations, a proxy for the UN), need to infiltrate the hidden base to free some hostages, and several non-military players get into the base to seek vengeance on the warlord.

Meanwhile, in a stunning turn of events (and the fact this is not the film version of Heavy Barrel), everyone drops their weapons and starts fighting with martial arts. Someone fires a bazooka stolen from the military, presumably a military museum. The bad guy gets his comeuppance. The book ends.

It’s a straight forward story with some back story fleshed out to the depth you’d expect. Maybe the backstories scrolled on the video game itself. But this book, like other YA adventures including those of Heinlein, really could serve as a gateway to more in depth reading. But in 1994, it probably just was a gateway to Street Fighter II.

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How Many Hands Does This Guy Have?

Brian J. Noggle

Yesterday, I mentioned how President Obama took away more than he gave while chanting, “Drill, baby, drill.”

And he keeps on taking:

The Environmental Protection Agency tightened water-quality standards that could severely limit future surface coal-mining operations throughout Appalachia, while mining-industry officials said the change was unfair and endangers jobs in the region.

The action is a significant step in the EPA’s push under the Obama administration to limit the practice of mountaintop coal mining and its environmental effects. For the first time, the agency is setting limits on the electrical conductivity, or salinity, of streams, which can be impacted by such mining.

Even without passing cap-and-trade, your Hope and Change Federal government is working hard to raise energy prices for you.

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Watch My Right Hand, The Amazing Obama Says, Not My Left Hand

Brian J. Noggle

Obama opens door to offshore drilling in Virginia, rejects plans for new Alaska sites:

In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling off Virginia’s shorelines and considering it for a large chunk of the Atlantic seaboard. At the same time, he’s rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Unfortunately, even the AP here is noting in the opening paragraph that President Obama is taking something away while giving something of lesser value.

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The Bright Side of Salary Decline

Brian J. Noggle

In 2005, this would have been bad news: Talented employees now affordable:

Don Carroll, a former financial analyst with a master’s degree in business administration from a top university, was clearly overqualified for the job running the claims department for Cartwright International, a small, family-owned moving company south of Kansas City, Mo.

But he had been out of work for six months, and the department badly needed modernization after several decades of benign neglect. It turned out to be a perfect match.

In the year 2OE, however, this is good news.

If G.J. Meyer was reduced to being a Wal-Mart greeter, this would now be a great networking opportunity

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He Also Didn’t Mention The Spanish Inquisition

Brian J. Noggle

Pope doesn’t mention sex scandal in Palm Sunday homily:

Pope Benedict XVI opened Holy Week on Sunday amid one of the most serious crises facing the church in decades, with protesters in London demanding he resign and calls in Switzerland for a central registry for pedophile priests.

Benedict made no direct mention of the scandal in his Palm Sunday homily. But one of the prayers, recited in Portuguese during Mass, was “for the young and for those charged with educating them and protecting them.”

I think it stuns journalists that religious leaders behave differently than the celebrities that journalists have trained to react to negative publicity with groveling, insincere half apologies, and elaborate shows of unfelt penance.

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Book Report: The Frankenstein Factory by Edward D. Hoch (1975)

Brian J. Noggle

This book proves that there are some things that should be left untried, some experiments should remain conceived in the mind of the inventor and not carried out to their horrible, unholy result. Edward Hoch should never have tried the novel form.

I love Edward Hoch’s Nick Velvet short stories. Short and snappy. This book is not.

It takes place in the near future of 1974. A team of surgeons on an island off of Baja California seek to reanimate a man from cyrogenic sleep using parts from other cyrogenic sleepers whose maintenance payments have lapsed, including the brain of a murderer. When the operation finishes, people start dying. Is it the reanimated sleeper? Or one of them?

The book pays homage to Ten Little Indians and names the earlier work. However, this book is a bit of a chore to read since the characters are cyphers who are really just names and specialties except for the woman, who is sex on a stick, and the investigator who was supposed to look in on the scientific institute’s finances (his tech investigation bureau, HQs atop the World Trade Center, natch). Finally, the numbers dwindle and the authorities arrive just in time for the real murderer to be unmasked.

The author builds tension with customary devices such as splitting up and weapons remembered halfway through the book as well as actions and behaviors on the part of the characters that I could not adequately suspend disbelief to enjoy the book.

On the other hand, the book describes a board game called Laser that hasn’t been invented yet, but it sounds interesting. I might have to work on it.

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Book Report: Jumpers by Tom Stoppard (1972, 1981)

Brian J. Noggle

I thought I’d read a quick bit of drama to break up a larger multi-book volume that I’m also working on currently. A full evening play. You know, something you could read in a night. Ha. This one took me three nights.

It’s not a straightforward play, unlike the stuff I’ve read by Neil Simon recently or even this author’s own Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. It’s a bit, erm, stylized, which requires a lot more attention reading and relies on some conceits and whatnot that you have to keep in mind to follow along.

For example, this book takes place in a future England from 1972, where England has landed on the moon, but tragedy struck there as the lander was damaged and the two landing astronauts fought each other to see who would survive, and the television audience back home saw the fight live. Fancy that: in 1972, they thought everyone would go to the moon.

Also, the government has been taken over by a totalitarian left (but I repeat myself) party that has rounded up the usual suspects and has replaced the Archbishop of Canterbury with some other government minister. The main characters are a philosopher who holds a chair at a university where the ultimate leader has a band of professors/acrobats (the titular jumpers) and his wife, a former musical actress who lost it singing a moon song after the above mentioned astronaut incident.

During a party, when the professor is working, the wife shoots one of the jumpers.

She deals with covering it up with the help of her “therapist” who does some strange things with her and might be schlepping her.

The professor works on a major presentation and tries to reconcile with the wife. Then an inspector, a fan of the wife, shows up. He might know something about the dead jumper, but he squelches the investigation for a chair at the university (open as said jumper is dead), maybe some autographs, and maybe some schlepping.

I think I’ve given you the nutshell of this piece. I don’t even remember how it ends. I certainly didn’t get the point.

On the whole, I think the nicest thing I can say for it is at least it’s not French drama.

Books mentioned in this review:

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Thanks, Wall Street Journal Magazine, For That Uncomfortable Conversation With My Preschooler

Brian J. Noggle

I was eating breakfast with a magazine spread before me. This time, it was the new slick that the Wall Street Journal bundles with its paper. I’m looking at this story, somehow involving a woman and an exercise bike. I forget anything beyond that.

Woman on bike

“What is she doing?” my three-year-old asks.

“She’s riding an exercise bike,” I reply.

“I think she’s in bed,” he says.

“Uh huh,” I respond in that recognition that he’s being imaginative and contrarian as three-year-olds are when they’re not sleeping and sometimes when they’re eating.

Then I glanced at the left hand page.

(UPDATE: John wants a NSFW label on this post. I initially didn’t put one on it because it was SFWSJ. However, in hope of getting more traffic, here it is: Potentially NSFW. That made you click the Read More link even faster, didn’t it?)

Continue reading “Thanks, Wall Street Journal Magazine, For That Uncomfortable Conversation With My Preschooler” →

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Headline Triggers A Memory

Brian J. Noggle

Here’s a headline in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel: Incorporation of Okauchee Lake area under study.

Which reminds me, I might be the only man in history to have used Okauchee Lake in a sonnet:

Okauchee Light

Across the dark Okauchee lake, a light,
the marker for the end of someone’s dock,
is strangely lit at nearly twelve o’clock
and breaks the solid black that is the night.
From here, across the chilling April lake,
through busy bar room glass I see that glow,
but life or rooms beyond I’ll never know.
One light does not a utopia make.
Quite like your smile, that single man-made star:
Up there, on stage, you flash a smile at me,
and crinkle eyes to give the gesture weight,
but like the dock-end light, you are too far;
your glow is there for someone else to see,
and now, for me at least, it is too late.

Back in the early 1990s, in my sonneting days, my friends and I followed a band called the Surf Boys from festival to festival in Milwaukee. The band was Nick, the lead singer, a guitarist named Dave, a keyboardist named Debbie, and a drummer. However, these backup players were not the original Surf Boys, and when they wanted to reunite, they cast off the other players. One night, we drove out to a bar on Okauchee Lake to see the Dave, Debbie, et al, in their non-Surf Boys incarnation. I ended up writing a sonnet about it. Not that I was that interested in Debbie, per se; she was cute, but I think I had a sum of one conversation with her throughout. But I thought the sonnet has a cool Great Gatsby vibe, and a musician on stage does offer a good unattainable woman conceit.

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I Guess The Recession Isn’t That Bad Yet

Brian J. Noggle

Pet hunger spurs idea for national food bank network:

The Mayor’s Alliance is working with the Petco Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the pet store chain, to build a national network of pet food banks supplied in part out of donation bins that Petco is putting in its stores.

Of course, there are those who lament starving people in the United States and then devote their energies to pampering animals. Because a generic person on the street has less worth than the generic dog.

I was going to say “objective” worth, but that’s not the case, is it?

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Even The Name Sounds Roman

Brian J. Noggle

Citizens have little faith in the elected government and more confidence in their military, and here’s a general considering a presidential run:

U.S. Gen. David Petraeus is being strongly suggested as the Republican presidential candidate to stand against Barack Obama in 2012.

Speculation is growing that the shrewd and articulate commander credited with turning around the Iraq war is contemplating a run for the White House.

Haven’t I heard a variation of this story before?

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An Unfortunate Turn To Boilerplate Health Care Sob Story

Brian J. Noggle

Another entry in a thought-provoking series designed to provoke support for government health care:

For nearly a decade, Paula O—-‘s brain tumor was kept at bay by a drug that was not approved to treat her condition.

Then Oertel did something she never imagined would jeopardize her good health. She moved. Less than 30 miles – from one county in Wisconsin to another.

The move triggered a review of her health insurance from Medicare, which eventually led to a loss of coverage, including the drug. And the tumor returned within four months.

A tragic story, but, um, that’s already government health care denying the coverage. Is this story supposed to be promoting health control reform or arguing against it?

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Charity Founded By Former Elected Officials Blows Entire Budget On Overhead, Parties

Brian J. Noggle

What a surprise.

After seven years of raising money, the Animal House Fund didn’t reach its goal of building a new city pound.

But organizers did know how to throw a party.

Young supporters donned their Hellenic best for a toga fundraiser in Soulard, while comedian Elayne Boosler emceed a gala at City Hall. Andy Warhol paintings —his dog portraits — provided the backdrop for another benefit at an area art gallery.

The photo opportunities were plenty. The direct benefit to the dogs and cats in the city’s dilapidated shelter, though, remains questionable.

The founder was the former head of the St. Louis city board of aldermen.

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