Author: Brian J. Noggle

Rain Without Rainmakers

Brian J. Noggle

Instapundit links to a story about falling oil prices:

Oil prices plunged to a three-month low Monday, briefly tumbling below $120 a barrel in another huge sell-off after Tropical Storm Edouard seemed less likely to disrupt oil and natural gas output in the Gulf of Mexico.

Brothers and sisters, this is why Congress must act now! It’s not important what action they take, whether it’s foolish rule against oil speculators or more sensible plans to allow off-shore drilling or oil exploration on public lands.

What is important is that our ruling political class realize that unless it acts, citizens might get the impression that market forces alone can cause declining gas prices, and that sometimes the rain falls without the dances of the rainmakers on the floors of the House and Senate.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Good Book Hunting: Return to the Book of the Month Club

Brian J. Noggle

I’ve been so down about not finding much at garage sales lately that I fell prey to the Six for the Price Of One Book of the Month Club offer. I got these:



Book of the Month Club selections
Click for full size

They include:

  • The fourth Dean Koontz Odd Thomas book, Odd Hours. I haven’t read Brother Odd yet, but I’ll find that at a book fair soon. The new copy was only twenty cents plus $4.00 shipping and handling. Note that it’s in shrink wrap with a note. The note says, “We’re sorry, there’s a typo on the last page. It should say, ‘Stormy was there to greet me. “Don’t feel bad, Oddie,” she said, “You did the best you could and that’s all anyone could ask.”‘ We hope this doesn’t impede your enjoyment of the book. As if revealing the ending on the front cover would do such a thing.
  • Bonk, a book about sex.
  • Phantom Prey, a new Lucas Davenport novel by John Sandford and something I’ll read right away to wash out the taste of No Witnesses.
  • Resolution, Robert B. Parker’s sequel to Appaloosa. Notice I’m not buying Robert B. Parker novels at full price the minute they come out these days?
  • A Carl Hiaasen nonfiction book about golf.
  • Duma Key, a new Stephen King novel.

Wait, you only count five instead of six? Well, I don’t remember what I ordered as the sixth book, but it certainly wasn’t the nutritional science outrage book they shipped. Fortunately, though, one of Heather’s reading interests is that sort of thing, so she wanted it. Keeps me from having to throw a pissy fit over getting shipped a random overstock book.

But, geez, the printing quality on these books has really diminished over the years. The paper is almost newsprint, word. I’m glad I didn’t get any chick lit because my tears would make the ink run. It’s hard to see me sticking with the club after my obligated One At Full Price escape clause.

Still, they’re relatively recent novels, a year before I could get them on the book fair tables for a buck. To make it worthwhile, I have to read them all within the next year I guess.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Book Report: No Witnesses by Ridley Pearson (1994)

Brian J. Noggle

Ugh. Ultimately, I sort of dreaded reading a Pearson book because he lives part time in the next suburb over, so he’s the author I’m most likely to run into at the local coffeeshop or used bookstore and the one who could most easily show up on my front doorstep to taunt me that he’s a published and successful author and my blog isn’t even as well read as his book reviews.

Because, brother, this book sucked.

It sort of serves me right, I suppose, that I swore off classics because they take so long and then I start a 470 page mass market paperback that I have to endure over the course of two weeks or so. You know what? Maybe I’ll go back to the classics. Sometimes, they’re good enough that I enjoy them even if they’re slow reading.

This piece is the third, I guess, in a police detective series featuring a detective and a police psychologist. Perhaps its presence in the series explains a bit how the characters are sort of thin–I suppose they get that way in even the middle of McBain’s books or John Sandford’s books. But the descriptions are paragraph-long (or more) adjective dumps, and we get bunches of them even for minor characters. Then, they’re moved through a series of convoluted, contrived, and melodramatic chapter scenes where individual characters, mostly the female police detective, face artificial peril. Then we get to a semi-climax whose very setup relies on poor police procedure that imperils innocent children based on a prosecutor’s (wait, second prosecutor: first was eliminated in a contrived subplot) desire for better charges.

It was so bad that the night before I finished, I went into my wife’s office after reading it and banged my head into her wall just so I could sum up why I stuck with the book: the punchline “Because it feels so good when I stop.”

Maybe this is an outlier on the bottom end of Pearson’s books. I think I’ve got at least one more in English here somewhere to read (in addition to the one I have in a Scandinavian language that I cannot read), so perhaps eventually I’ll give him another shot. I won’t buy any more, though. I have enough else to read.

Special memo to Mr. Pearson when he Googles himself: Hey, no offense, and congratulations on making a living doing what I’d rather. I cannot even get agents to review the complete manuscript of my last novel.

Books mentioned in this review:


Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

It Would Shock You If You Didn’t Expect It

Brian J. Noggle

Terry Teachout on Raymond Chandler’s speaking voice:

Only one recording of Raymond Chandler’s speaking voice survives, a BBC interview conducted with Chandler in 1958 by none other than Ian Fleming. You can listen to it by going here. If you do so, you’ll be staggered to learn that the creator of Philip Marlowe sounds…well, wimpy.

Not if you’ve read any of his letters or his biography. Fellow was a total anglophile prone to wearing gloves and not shaking hands because he thought it was barbaric. That he sounds more Capote than Hemingway is not surprising at all.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

She’s Tired Of It Now

Brian J. Noggle

My wife is tired of my all-purpose punchline/rejoinder If President Obama lets us..

If she’s tired of it now, just think how she will feel once it’s our (and everyone else’s) lifestyle.

Meanwhile, I guess I’ll have to switch to If it makes Reid money in an obscure land deal or If its good for the Pelosi canneries.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Great Moments in Police Professionalism

Brian J. Noggle

Wellston police scuffle; guns drawn:

A brawl between the newly chosen city police chief and his ousted predecessor resulted in guns being drawn on Friday and the mayor requiring medical attention for trying to intercede, police said.

The new police chief was named about four days ago, said Pine Lawn Police Chief Rickey Collins, whose department is investigating at the request of the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney’s office.

The two men began pushing and shoving each other about 3 p.m in a meeting room inside Wellston’s City Hall. Collins said he did not know what they argued about, though he said the former police chief recently had been demoted to assistant chief.

Guns were pulled during the scuffle, but no shots were fired, Collins said.

Respect for law and order takes another hit.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Good Book Hunting: July 30, 2008

Brian J. Noggle

Yesterday (yes, Wednesday), my beautiful wife and I sneaked off to a church rummage sale alone together, so we had some prime browse time and a chance to pick up some books. Here they are:



Pile of books from a church rummage sale

Click for full size


Among my purchases, you’ll find:

  • The Battle of Midway Island, a paperback history of the World War II battle.
  • Nine To Five, the paperbackization of the movie. I saw that movie within the last two years, I think. Maybe three.
  • A Russian/English/English/Russian dictionary. True story, in the middle 1980s, while in middle school, I tinkered with teaching myself Russian. Just in case they invaded, I wanted to have wisecracks they’d understand as I partook in the street to street fighting in my trailer park. This was before my physics class that would teach me that street to street fighting in a trailer park would not leave much time for the scrappy Wolverinesish middle schoolers to make cracks. Still, I got one now because I didn’t yet have one.
  • Wisconsin: Off the Beaten Path just so I can see where I’ve been and where I should go.
  • Cotswold Mistress a novel about something. It was a fifty cents, that’s my excuse. Also, I’ve been jonesing for some acquisitions, I guess.
  • See, I Told You So, another copy of Rush Limbaugh’s second book, ca. the middle nineties. Funny that he hasn’t written more, but I guess book royalties might not be a good return on his investment vis-a-vis other things he can do.
  • Buckley: The Right Word, a vocabulary builder, I think, based on the work of William F. Buckley, Jr.
  • Complete Works by William Shakespeare in the Walter J. Black Classics Club edition. Note that I paid fifty cents for it. You Google searchers who inherited a pile from your predecessors and want me to tell you they’re worth a lot of money, take note that you can get them for fifty cents each or a dollar each at garage sales and book fairs and about five bucks at used book stores that bother to stock them. They’re not old, they’re not rare. Get a job.
  • Excessive Joy Injures the Heart. I think it’s one of those chick novels. It had a cool title and it was a ha’buck.
  • Bruges and Its Beauties, a guidebook to some city somewhere. I’d better set a bit from a suspense novel I write in it sometime, or I will have wasted this quarter.
  • Several Sunset paperbacks about fixing up your home. I got something about decks, something about wiring, and something about painting and wallpapering.
  • The Great Lakes and Florida, two photographic journey coffeetable books because I’ve been to both places and because I can probably browse them during baseball games.
  • Five CDs of artwork, including 2 Renaissance collections, 1 Impressionism collection, and the Vatican’s collection. I think they might be art history things. They were like a buck each, so probably worth it.

So there I have them. A bunch more books to read when I’m done with 600 page academic history library books.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Crossing Over, With Brian J.

Brian J. Noggle

As some of you might be surprised to learn, I have crossed over from time to time when it comes to voting, particularly for state races. Actually, “crossing over” is a bit of a misnomer; I tend to vote for Democrats, Libertarians, and Republicans based on a strange algorithm that only I understand.

This year, I cannot cross over to vote for Al Liese (Dem.) for state representative just so I can see which member of the family runs next time when Liese, who replaced his son using very similar signage for his run, gets term limited out. I thought it was a neat trick, but I was a neophyte in that scam even though I saw The Distinguished Gentleman. Now, though, I realize that Missouri politics is a full employment program for the Carnahan family as well as the other microdynasties-they-hope in the Blunt, Loudon, McNary, et al families.

Still, if Katherine Bruckner (her “blog”) somehow gets nominated for state rep, I’d vote for her in a heartbeat. I mean, she’s a Democrat proud she’s got her concealed carry license? That’s tougher than the Republicans vying for the spot on the ballot, word.

Additionally, I’m kicking around voting for Jay Nixon for governor if Kenny Hulshof is elected. I have a new motto: I trust a Missouri Democrat more than a Washington Republican. The difference, of course, lies in that anyone elected to or running for a national office is now a national servant, not the servant of the Missouri people. The money for the race comes from the outlying states, and suddenly the candidate espouses the national party’s opinions. It’s why I could have tolerated a Governor McCaskill but am not too pleased with Senator McCaskill.

Of course, once I start seeing the Jay Nixon ads and he starts making me sick of him, I might end up going Hulshof after all. Reluctantly.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Leftist Thugs On Wheels

Brian J. Noggle

Another month, another Critical Mass event includes beating a four wheeler, this time in Seattle:

According to Jamieson, as the Critical Mass group moved down the street, blocking traffic, some riders got in the way of the Subaru and prevented it from leaving. Some bikers sat on the car and were banging on it, he said.

“The driver was pretty fearful that he was about to be assaulted by the bicyclists,” Jamieson said.

The man tried to back up, but bumped into a biker. “This enraged the group,” Jamieson said.

Several of the bikers bashed up the Subaru, shattering the windshield and rear window, Jamieson said.

The driver tried to drive away, but hit another bicyclist, Jamieson said. Still, he drove about a block, to the corner of Aloha and 15th Avenue East, before the Critical Mass riders cornered the car again and started spitting on it and banging against it.

One bicyclist punched the driver through his open window, and another used a knife to slash the Subaru’s tires, Jamieson said.

The driver got out of his car, and was hit in the back of the head, opening a large gash.

Wow, just like San Fransisco.

You know, if they keep at it and this spreads, eventually cities will ban these events. More oppression for the poor, poor bike lovers everywhere, especially the leftist thugs who like any excuse to damage the straights with “cause.”

(Link seen on Ace of Spades HQ.)

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Conscious Colors for Interpretive Metrics

Brian J. Noggle

In case you didn’t know it, Missouri is almost on par with the third world, or so this dynamic and purposefully frighteningly colored map would have you think.


food insecurity--the new made up scourge

What is food insecurity? Probably something less than distended bellies and dead children in the streets. But it’s a interpretive metric, so those who want more government money in programs designed to combat bad feelings will always have just cause to spend more money. Except, sometimes, I suspect that it’s just ’cause that they have.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

One Cup Of Earl Grey, Hot, Away From Jean-Luc Picard

Brian J. Noggle

Godwin’s law states that As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.. A lesser known corollary, or maybe something I just made up, states that most disputes can be clarified by using a Picard versus Kirk clarifying analogy.

Therefore, I would posit for your reflection, that Obama is Picard and McCain is Kirk.

Obama lives in a moneyless world where the Federation rules all aspects of its citizens lives, and the military vessel he runs would only use its weapons to make pretty lights as it ferried ambassadors and vaccines all over the galaxy.

McCain, on the other hand, lives in a world where the Federation is an outpost of decency barely clinging on in a galaxy where others would conquer it and it wants to have adventures, dammit. McCain also sings “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” and he might be bluffing….but maybe not. You can see Kirk doing that, but not Picard. That’s my point.

So, friends and three of my four regular readers (excepting my sainted mother, who isn’t geek enough for this post), please, let me know in the comments whether the analogy holds up.

Also, please no obvious Obama is Sisko bits. One, I don’t know if I’ve ever watched a complete episode of Deep Space Nine in my life, and two, any Star Trek series with a number in its acronym is a sissy series (and I include ST:V in this assessment even though V is only a Roman number–however, Obama is Janeway comments might be acceptable.)

Get your geek on!

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

That’s Just Sad

Brian J. Noggle

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch uses the AB-InBev merger as a springboard to launch a series of “damaging” fatuous questions at John McCain, whose wife owns an AB distributorship.

The head of the Washington Bureau “asks”:

John McCain’s Straight Talk Express is far less talkative when it comes to beer.

McCain’s campaign is unwilling to directly address questions flowing from InBev’s purchase of Anheuser-Busch Cos. in light of his wife, Cindy’s, ownership of a large Anheuser-Busch distributorship in Arizona, Hensley and Co.

— For more than 20 years as a legislator, McCain has abstained from taking positions or voting on measures related to alcohol. As president, would he act on beer-related legislation — or continue to abstain, in effect casting a veto?

— InBev does business in Cuba, designated by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. As a candidate, McCain has been tough on the Cuban government. Will his wife now sell the products of a company that does business in Cuba — or even expand her business to include InBev’s other products?

McCain’s campaign is unusually tight-lipped on those questions, and wouldn’t say whether the candidate’s wife plans to separate herself from Hensley.

The paper’s really making an effort here to springboard from a rather touchstone local issue into casting aspersions onto McCain’s ethics. Particularly creative is trying to cast his recusing himself from voting on things that would benefit him through his wife’s company and complaining about how a parent company would do business in Cuba. We’re really stretching here.

I mean, for crying out loud, Barack Obama drives a Chrysler 300, and DaimlerChrysler does business in Cuba. Shouldn’t Barack have rented a Ford? And what about his publisher’s parent company, guilty of using Nazi slave labor at one point? Will Barack abstain from signing legislation in favor of slavery or Nazis?

I mean, I’m just a crackpot backwater blog making sarcastic remarks about Obama here, but the story and the leading questions in the paper is from a “credible” periodical with a (declining) metropolitan audience.

Forget this story, Post-Dispatch. If you need to try to gig McCain based on a narrative of local concern, investigate why he’s tight-lipped about trading for a good middle reliever for the Cardinals. Sure, it’s not his job, but you can still blame him for with a couple of bullet points.

(Full disclosure: I am actually a citizen columnist for a sort of sister publication of the Post-Dispatch.)

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

When Is A Lobbyist Not A Lobbyist?

Brian J. Noggle

When he agrees with the journalist’s point of view:

A rising number of uninsured patients are going without necessary care and are raising medical costs for those who have insurance coverage, according to a report released Tuesday by the Missouri Foundation for Health.

The report, “The Significance of Missouri’s Uninsured,” took several recent studies from health care think tanks and federal agencies, located data relevant to Missouri and added analysis. The report was prepared by the foundation’s Cover Missouri project, which began earlier this year.

“I think there is an increasing understanding among Missourians that we’re reaching crisis,” said Ryan Barker, a health policy analyst for the nonprofit foundation, which conducts health research and advocacy. “This is a problem not just of a few people but of almost 800,000 Missourians.

Spending money on health care for the poor? Not when there’s a study to conduct to bolster allocating tax money to a cause!

When it’s a special interest group that the paper likes, it’s not lobbying, it’s advocating, and the special interest group-funded study isn’t suspect, it’s news.

I know, it goes without saying. But I’ll say it anyway because it’s as important to make a mystical chant out of the truth as it is the less-than-true that you want to stick in people’s heads.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Williams Goes For Steelman

Brian J. Noggle

Michael Williams endorses Steelman.

No doubt he’s getting a flurry of hits from the House of Representatives since he quotes the magic Google term “Kenny Hulshof” in his post. I hope you fellows there in Kenny’s office are doing official government work on those computers and not campaign work because I’m under the impression that’s naughty.

But Washington naughty doesn’t count, right?

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Words That Do Not Belong In Country Songs Twofer

Brian J. Noggle

Badonkadonk, Donkey Kong, as in Trace Adkins "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk":

    That honkey tonk badonkadonk
    Keepin’ perfect rhythm
    Make ya wanna swing along
    Got it goin’ on
    Like Donkey Kong

Word to the wise: do not refer to an attractive woman as a large gorilla who kidnaps girls and throws barrels, or any other video game character for that matter. Let’s just say that calling a certain beautiful wife “Lara” sort of spoiled the moment, okay?

You can see the video for the Trace Adkins song, along with attendant badonkadonk, here.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories

Good Book Hunting: July 19, 2008

Brian J. Noggle

Well, the one church that ran its classified ad last week actually had its rummage sale (not the northern terminology) this week, and that was the centerpiece of our trip this week. This will probably be our last weekend excursion, friends, as the pickings are so slim and the stage management so onerous as to render the weekly scheduled trips less than pleasant. Worry not, though; from time to time, I’ll sneak into an estate sale and come up with some books, so I won’t starve. Also, my to-read shelves are several thousand volumes, and there’s always the library for historical nonfiction.

Regardless, here’s what we got:



More books
Click for full size

I got:

  • The Middle Ages Volume III, a Books, Inc., publication about the Middle Ages, which in a couple thousand years will no longer be the middle. Hopefully.
  • The Renaissance Volume IV, a Books, Inc., publication about the Renaissance. In Art, maybe. Perhaps I bought two parts of a series here. I don’t know.
  • Aristotle’s Selections, a Books, Inc., publication. Selections of Aristotle, or a volume entitled Selections by Aristotle? Hey, they were a quarter each and matched, so I bought them without knowing.
  • The Travels of Marco Polo, a Books, Inc., publication about the Marco Polo, I hope.
  • Pure Drivel by Steve Martin. Comedy or a novella? I don’t yet have it, so I bought it.
  • The Practical Handbook of Electrical Repairs and The Practical Handbook of Plumbing and Heating. A series of books detailing easy repairs from the 1960s. I haven’t actually finished the one about television repair in a time where you could replace the tubes yourself and run down to the drug store to test them if you didn’t know. So I won’t jump right into reading them probably.
  • How Things Work In Your Home (and what to do when they don’t). I have the How Electronic Things Work book, which looks like a distant relation. I think I’ll run through this book for some basics so I can continue to impress my wife with my mad repair skillz. Actually, impress isn’t the word; she just assumes that I know or can do it. That assumption is more gratifying than her being impressed every time. Also, it’s more pressure. But I have these books!

Also, I got some cassettes of some easy listening stuff and a couple of, get this, design your garden computer program CDs. BECAUSE THEY WERE CHEAP! But you know what would be the killer app? Combining these design your level programs with a first person shooter where you can go in and execute, with a variety of weapons, those damn squirrels who have completely picked your tomato plants clean. Like a 21st century Centipede. I’d pay more than a quarter for that.

Oh, yeah, the wife got some books and cassettes and the Js got some books, but this is my blog, so no loving detail for those acquisitions.

Buy My Books!
Buy John Donnelly's Gold Buy The Courtship of Barbara Holt Buy Coffee House Memories