Let’s sue Cracker Barrel for its racially insensitive name. There’s got to be some scratch in that, ainna?
Saturday Scheming
Buy My Books!
Author: Brian J. Noggle
Book Report: Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen (1995)
Written in 1995, this book takes a recent current event as a starting point and reimagines it humorously, much like Lucky You. In this case, it’s a devastating hurricane (unnamed) that ravages southern Florida and brings together a motley bunch of characters around a crime or two.
The subplots: A woman on her honeymoon begins to doubt the wisdom of her marriage when her husband decides to drive from Disney World to the Miami area so he can take video of the damage and heartbreak; a crazy ex-governor gone native kidnaps him; a pair of unlikely conspirators decide to pose as a homeowning couple to participate in an insurance scam; the son of a woman killed in the storm seeks revenge upon those who sold her a shoddy mobile home; and a crooked former home inspector makes sacrifices to a voodoo god and tries to get some of his grift on.
So there’s a crime involved, but it doesn’t really carry the story. Hiaasen jump cuts the subplots and the characters interact, but the inevitable climax on a key comes too early, the denouement runs a bit long, and the book lacks some of the rush that his others bring.
So it’s somewhere between Lucky You and Nature Girl (which I didn’t like so much). Still, it’s a readable and enjoyable book, just not one of Hiaasen’s best.
Buy My Books!
Book Report: Come to Me in Silence by Rod McKuen (1973)
With each one of these books, his About the Author section gets longer and more full of world-beating achievements. Too bad I’m the only one bothering to read him 35 years later.
But this book is better than Fields of Wonder, probably because it deals with burying people under those fields instead of burying bits of McKuen in women he’s known.
Would I recommend it? No.
Buy My Books!
The Lyric I Still Cannot Believe Johnny Cash Sang
- I fly a starship
Across the universe divide
Come on, you cannot believe it either, even when you hear it in his own voice.
Buy My Books!
Are You As Smart As A Journal-Sentinel Reporter?
From the quiz Smart, very smart: Test tells if you know what a fifth-grader knows:
13. “You are as strong as an ox.” Is this statement a simile or metaphor?
Oh, yeah.
Buy My Books!
Brian J.’s Ann Coulter Moments
Sometimes, when I try to reach the Web site of the San Francisco Chronicle (www.sfgate.com) into the address bar of my browser, I transpose the a and the g.
And I am ashamed! Briefly. Before I hit the backspace key and can hide my homophobia from the world.
Buy My Books!
Brian J. Starts It, Frank J. Ends It
Sure, some might think (if some were like me) that MfBJN started the Fred Thompson bandwagon with this essay from August 2006, but it’s doubtless that Frank J. has sealed it with his Frank Facts About Fred Thompson.
Buy My Books!
Congressional Leaders Thought Corporation Liked Tar, Feathers, and Free Travel by Rail
The exorcists in our government have caused the demon to flee, but now they’re complaining about the loss of ritual, offerings to the church that persecuted the demon:
“They get a lot of government contracts, is this going to affect the investigations that are going on? Because we have a lot of evidence of misuse of government contracts and how they have cheated the American soldier and cheated the American taxpayer,” Clinton, speaking in New York, said of Halliburton.
Buy My Books!
Book Report: Great True Stories of Crime, Mystery, & Detection by Reader’s Digest (1965)
I bought this book at St. Michael’s book fair earlier this year; between Great Tales of Mystery & Suspense, my reading pace for the year is shot.
This book runs 574 pages and comes from the pages of Reader’s Digest magazine from the first half of the last century. It collects murder mysteries, a couple of ghost stories, and a long piece on the Alger Hiss espionage (starring Congressman Richard Nixon as the hero, which explains why former Vice-President Nixon offered a blurb on the back).
Some of the stories overlap with The World’s Most Infamous Crimes and Criminals, but they’re told with a punchier (partially digested) style. Also, overall, this book was not as depressing as The World’s Most Infamous Crimes and Criminals as it didn’t have matter-of-fact accounts of genocide.
Worth the buck, except for the part where it made me spend a week or so reading it. Looks like I’ll be reporting on coloring books for the next couple of weeks so I can get my average up.
Buy My Books!
No Refuge
Woman killed in police station:
A 35-year-old woman was killed inside the Fox Lake Police Department on Sunday afternoon as she frantically tried to flee her husband, authorities said.
A pedestrian called 911 around 4:45 p.m. after seeing a man ram his car into the woman’s car in the parking lot of the Fox Lake municipal building, according to the Dodge County Sheriff’s Department.
The woman, whose name was not released by authorities Sunday night, ran from her car and fled into the building as her husband pursued her inside, the department reported.
By the time a Fox Lake police officer arrived, the 40-year-old husband was getting back into his car, authorities said. There was no sign of the woman.
Buy My Books!
Keynesian Flat Tire
David Nicklaus writes a column on the drastic electricity price increases in Illinois, and finds a common villian: The government.
The Legislature, after all, passed the deregulation law in 1997 that led to this year’s rate increases. Consumers benefited for a decade from a rate cut and then a rate freeze. But the utilities, which no longer own power plants directly, had to buy power on the open market beginning this year and pass the cost on to consumers.
Statinalizing the power companies won’t solve the problems that exist when physical suppy and demand collide. Government officials only trade in perceptions.
Buy My Books!
Indecision of the Elderly
As some of you know, I have recently passed out of the meaningful demographic. In addition to getting the cold shoulder of marketers and television programmers everywhere, I’ve recently discovered some of the horrible, terrifying conundrums of this horrible age between youth and agedness. Such as:
Buy My Books!
So Many People Have Come And Gone
Back in the day, I was a huge Boston fan after buying Don’t Look Back on the $2.99 cassette rack at Walgreens. I went on to get the others available when I was in college (Boston and Third Stage). I even got RTZ’s Return to Zero which Delp played in when Boston was on hiatus.
A voice of my youth, silenced.
Buy My Books!
The Hawaiian Insurgency
Buy My Books!
300 Movie Review, As Expected
Joe Williams of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch pans 300, but it would be a better panning if it wasn’t so steeped in ignorance and mandatory thoughtsophistication. Choice bits:
Frank Miller is the biggest name in American comic books — or graphic novels, as his fans call them.
Is he demeaning graphic novels, or does he truly not know the difference between comic books and graphic novels? When in doubt, suspect ignorance, I say.
Armed only with shields and hoary slogans about freedom, the Spartans repel wave after wave of Persians.
Hoary slogans about freedom. Williams is above falling for those.
Persia became modern-day Iran, and it is surely no accident that the “Asian hordes” are depicted as dark-skinned degenerates. Some of the Persian warriors resemble Japanese samurai, some seem to be wearing Afghan burqas and the ruthless King Xerxes is bejeweled and effeminate.
Student of history trying to obscure the truth, or ignorant? Ignorant, probably, of the extent of the Persian empire that would feature many of those myriad peoples. Further, Williams seems to want to obscure the fact that throughout recorded history does actually feature occasions where the dark-skinned Other did invade the lands of lighter skinned folk. Much like lighter skinned folk have done to the Other. It’s more a matter of human nature than racial or ethnic differences, although cultures have differed in their warmaking sentiments and strategy.
I’d like to see the movie, and Joe Williams has never really influenced me before. I think his columns are more about his delicate sensibilities than the actual movies, but sometimes, that’s all a critic has going for him.
UPDATE: More reviews and reviews of reviews:
- Ace takes issue with Slate’s review.
(Anonymous commenter pointed this out in comments before I could post the link, but you people who don’t bother to read the comments might like it, too.)
- CNN sees it through the prism of a Republican administration:
Nevertheless, it’s not so much the body count or even the blood lust that’s disturbing. It’s that the film, with its macho militarism, seems out of step in a war-weary time.
- Oddly enough, Duane Dudek of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel sees an underdog story:
Neither history nor cinema is especially well served by “300,” which is, nonetheless, a remarkable intersection of technology and imagination.
The battle at Thermopylae in 480 B.C., a suicidal last stand by an army of Spartans and Thespians estimated at about 5,000, against Persian invaders, estimated at from hundreds of thousands to millions, set the stage for a later Persian defeat and for its own transformation into a metaphor for the ages.
Of course, Dudek probably recognizes the national anthem is a song about perservernce and not bombing the hell out of innocent native peoples, too, so he’s hardly qualified to be writing for a newspaper.
Buy My Books!
Ville Nieminen, Philosopher Forward
A new Blues acquisition muses on his first NHL game:
You can’t really remember anything … that’s how big of a memory it is.
Where was he when Scooter Libby was rounding up his defense?
Buy My Books!
Scenes From the Front Line In Homeland Security
Espied as I waited for my driver’s license to print several weeks overdue because I’d sent off to the Great State of Wisconsin for a Certified Birth Certificate and paid $15 for the effort to comply with the Lesser State of Missouri’s new laws designed to thwart the malevolent forces in the world from obtaining driver’s licenses with fake credentials so they could wreak havoc upon this nation.
Woman: (Retrieving a photostat of a birth certificate that looked like it had been washed in the pocket of blue jeans with the stones to create that worn effect that is found by certain segments of young people to be so pleasing as to pay extra for) I’m sorry, I sent for a new one and haven’t gotten it.
22 year old license office employee with the ring in her nose: (Not glancing at but not unfolding the three pieces) Okay.
Woman: Can I change my address? I moved.
Employee: I need something with your new address on it. A utility bill, a check, or something.
Woman: (Rifling through purse) Oh, I don’t have anything. That’s okay, keep it the same.
Thank you, faceless license bureau employee with the ring in her nose. Your efforts have ensured that this potentially lethal agent of destruction could not change the address on her driver’s license inappropriately. Our nation is safer!
Buy My Books!
Alaskan Insurgents Strike
Alaska Moose Brings Down Helicopter
Retreat! Redeploy our rangers to Seattle where they’ll be safe!
Buy My Books!
The Men Who Would Be Demigods
Lileks today takes issue with urban designers:
What really caught my eye was an interview with a University of Minnesota professor named Thomas Fisher, the dean of the U’s new School of Design. It was a conversation about the new Design Economy, a term I hadn’t heard before. America will compete and thrive because we design good things, like the iPod. You might wonder how a nation of 300 million can be sustained by design, but rest assured the term has broader definitions. The interview, called “Intelligent Design,” focused on cities. As you might expect they are in dire need of Design, and I suspect this design will be administrated by experts. (As Dr. Johnson once said: A man who has tired of criticizing London is tired of tenure.) In order to compete, our cities need better design. No argument here – until we look at the specifics.
Wouldn’t it be neat if we could get all of these government planners together and buy them copies of SimCity and let them go at that for their tax-money squandering fun as they tried to one-up each other?
No, probably not, because design and aesthetics and micromanaging Cits is only one component of their self-aggodizement. The other is enriching themselves and their unelected Elect.
Buy My Books!
Why QA A Simple Mail Merge?
Mail merges have been automatic for 20 years, right?
Front
Back
Buy My Books!