Author: Brian J. Noggle

Book Report: Chosen Prey by John Sandford (2001)

Brian J. Noggle

This bookis the second of the three that I have inherited from my aunt and all three are well along in the series. I’m glad I read the preceding book, Easy Prey, since that book begins with some characterization of the main character and his relationship with his team.

Chosen Prey jumps right into the chaotic world of Lucas Davenport and his special Minneapolis police team. Well, no, it starts with a quick insight into the mind of the named criminal, a sex fiend academic (do I repeat myself?) named James Qatar who likes to do kinky things to artsy blondes and then kill them. We know this in the first chapter, because the semi-omniscient narrator follows Qatar to a tryst.

So the book is a race between Qatar and the police, who must track him down before he kills again. Or at least must stop him before he depopulates Minnesota and western Wisconsin.

The book’s pace captures the nature of the frantic team investigation captained by Davenport. His personal life interrupts, as his True Love and recently (Easy Prey) returned Weather wants to have a child and marry Lucas. The sub plotline would detract had I not read the preceding book and known who she was and why this was different or difficult for Davenport.

It’s an okay turn for a series book, but I’d hardly recommend it as the first in the series, as the author expects the reader to be familiar with the characters. Heck, I probably missed most of the inside humor. On his worst day, McBain does a better police procedural and characterizes the familiar so even the uninitiated can pick up on them. Sandford doesn’t, and he doesn’t seem to try. Of course, this isn’t much of a police procedural, either, since the main character is at a high level and although he does do some interrogation himself, he’s also a millionaire zipping around in a Porsche (when the weather’s good) and a deputy chief with all the resources of the police department at his disposal. So it’s not so much a police procedural as as a simple suspense page turner.

So Sandford’s no Ed McBain, but no one really can hold a candle to that. He’s no Randisi either, and he actually suffers from that particular comparison. Unless he really is Randisi in a different pseudonym.

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Blogger Problem

Brian J. Noggle

Wow, it looks as though each post I put up yesterday overwrote the preceding entry, so instead of 3 posts, you only get the last one, and that’s not without some work since Blogger wants to overwrite it with this post.

Allow me to assure you that you are definitely missing out on a lot of my eloquence, but rest assured that the only post that displays for yesterday is in fact probably the best.

I guess I shall have to return to the habit of saving all of my posts outside of Blogger. Again.

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Hearsay

Brian J. Noggle

Here’s what some are saying and how that’s headline material for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

  • Both sides fear “stealth” nominee, observers say

    One wonders what observers these are. International appointment observers? Professional observers? I know it doesn’t include me, because the Post-Dispatch never asked. But then, citizens are not engaged observers and independent thinkers. They’re children to whom the press must explain things like they really are, not how they are portrayed on Fox News.

  • Ranchers don’t always report cattle diseases, some say

    Some ranchers? Some cattle diseases? No, wait, the “some” does refer to ranchers. Some ranchers say the other ranchers do illegal things. Why would businessmen say ill things about their competitors? Who cares, it’s news!

  • Man kills himself after standoff, police say

    Of course, the Post-Dispatch wants you to know that what follows is only the police story; actually, it’s entirely possible that the police shot him dead with his own gun or that a Republican strangled the man and staged the whole crime to cover it up and used illegal capitalist profit to buy off the police. So of course the police would say it was attempted murder-successful suicide.

  • Iran’s president-elect wasn’t hostage taker, ex-secret agent says

    Of course, that’s Saeed Hajjarian, a top adviser to outgoing President Mohammad Khatami, so we have an Iranian ex-secret agent defending the newly-minted (and not elected) Iranian president. But the Post-Dispatch has conveyed as much gravitas as it can on the report by noting that
    it’s a secret agent and someone who would know. Theirs, ours, it’s all the same to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

  • Vote fraud verdict won’t change results of Nov. 2 election, officials say

    Of course not, as a Democrat was elected. However, the story only seems to quote one official, and he says “I think it would be really difficult for a losing candidate to get a judge to overrule the election code,” which is a far sight from won’t. Perhaps the other officials said won’t. Perhaps it was just the headline writer.

So does the St. Louis Post-Dispatch include or alter the “x says” portion of its headlines to flavor the following story? Eh, who knows. All I know is that they waste an awful lot of words on he-said, she-said, they-said.

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Book Report: The Long Valley by John Steinbeck (1938)

Brian J. Noggle

This book collects a number of John Steinbeck short stories. They’re centered around the Salinas Valley in California, and I feel a little more connection with them and the topography that Steinbeck describes since we visited northern California this year. Suddenly, I understand mountains at the edge of the ocean.

Steinbeck’s writing is accessible enough for modern readers steeped in commercial fiction (like me) to grasp. James Joyce, Benjy Campson, and all the tangled verbiage artists have done more to drive readers away from any literary fiction than Steinbeck or Hemingway could hope to save.

I find Steinbeck’s style a little disengaging, although easy to read, and it can take me a while to get into a rhythm where I appreciate the characters and want to find out what happens next. In Steinbeck’s novels, this doesn’t pose difficulty other than the initial start-up costs of turning the first few dozen pages by discipline. However, with short stories, you have to start over with a new character or set of characters. So a number of stories just don’t work.

However, the last set of stories features the same set of characters, so I was able to plunge, enjoyably, through the last quarter of the book.

So I enjoyed the book, but not unabashedly. But this completes my hardback study of Steinbeck spurred by the purchase of a set of these hardback editions at an estate sale two years ago. Although I still have East of Eden in paperback, I don’t know how quickly I will get to it.

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Balance

Brian J. Noggle

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch demonstrates balance in this article: Reverse mortgages can be a godsend or a curse to the elderly. Unfortunately, the balance is only in the ill-written headline.

It sits atop an otherwise evenhanded explanation of the reverse mortgage, including a number of anecdotes of people whom the instrument has helped, coupled with a financial advisor who explains some of the risks involved.

Where’s the curse besides the headline?

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Kelover

Brian J. Noggle

City forces out 2 downtown businesses: Action follows high court ruling on eminent domain:

Last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling approving a Connecticut city’s plan to take private land by eminent domain may seem far away.

But to John Revelli, whose family has operated a tire shop near downtown Oakland for decades, the implications hit home on Friday.

A team of contractors hired by the city of Oakland packed the contents of his small auto shop in a moving van and evicted Revelli from the property his family has owned since 1949.

“I have the perfect location; my customers who work downtown can drop off their cars and walk back here,” said Revelli, 65, pointing at the nearby high- rises. “The city is taking it all away from me to give someone else. It’s not fair.”

The city of Oakland, using eminent domain, seized Revelli Tire and the adjacent property, owner-operated Autohouse, on 20th Street between Telegraph and San Pablo avenues on Friday and evicted the longtime property owners, who have refused to sell to clear the way for a large housing development.

It’s not fair, but late trends in our governance indicate that it’s more fair for some than others.

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The St. Lawrence Seaway Is Ours!

Brian J. Noggle

The Canadians can no longer adequately defend it:

The navy is back down to one working submarine.

Of the four used subs Canada acquired from Britain for $891 million, Halifax’s HMCS Windsor is the only one that can go to sea. HMCS Victoria has stopped sailing from its British Columbia base and will go into an extended docking work period next month that will last almost two years.

“We have no choice,” said Lieut. Diane Grover of navy public affairs.

We had better strike now. The Canadians will enter the 20th century in a matter of months. Well, 30 or 40:

The navy expects to see its first sub fully operational and able to fire torpedoes by 2009.

BTW, Happy Canada Day to all of my Canadian readers. Enjoy your first of July celebration while you can, before we subjugate you and force you to celebrate the fourth of July with us.

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Think Of It As Air Space Eminent Domain

Brian J. Noggle

Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times, supports government reduction of property rights:

I’m generally a personal liberty, Milton Friedman, let-’em-buy-heroin-if-it-makes-’em-happy kind of guy. Yet I’m also always glad to see cigarette smoking restricted, basically, because it kills some people and annoys the rest (so would legal heroin, but heck, why be consistent? It’s summertime).

We seem to be doing it the right way, too, slowly whittling away the social space allowed to smokers. Smoking has gone from being cool to being an embarrassing personal lapse, somewhere between picking your nose and bedwetting. Soon the guy standing on the corner smoking a cigarette will carry the same cachet as someone standing on the corner sucking wine out of a bottle in a bag.

I’m not gloating. I’m sad for cigarettes — a lovely habit, a nice vice. Except for the kill-you part. But it’s in society’s interest to shuck them as soon as possible. Women used to paint their faces with white lead, but it had bad side effects, like death, so they got out of the practice. Habits change, if we’re lucky.

Sorry to join the cacaphony of people who only comment when they disagree with you, Mr. Steinberg, but the slow whittling is not of smokers’ rights, but property owners’ rights in many cases. Would you applaud it were the governments to start banning pasta in restaurants because of the obesity academic?

They wouldn’t do that? Why not? It’s a public health issue, and property rights mean nothing any more.

Perhaps we could just think of it as though the local governments were condemning the airspace within private property and offered just compensation in the form of their continued indulgence in the “owner’s” “right” to own/operate the property/business.

Update: Apparently, this set off William Squire: Neil Steinberg is a Bigot.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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Milwaukee Humor

Brian J. Noggle

You know you’re from Milwaukee when….

However, note:

  • It’s not just a Packers flag. You can stand in most rooms in about 80% of the residences in southeastern Wisconsin and have a Packers logo visible somewhere. The waste basket, a photo/wallhanging, an article of clothing, the fine china….
  • What, no mention of the Witch’s House?
  • The Safe House IS better than Disney Land. Don’t forget to order a Hail to the Chief for your friends.
  • Please note that spending all day bashing the Cubs is not strictly a Milwaukee, nor a Wisconsin thing, nor are bashing those people from Illinois. Remember, Illinois borders five states.
  • Isn’t Brother Ron off the scene? I haven’t seen him anywhere on my last few visits (“The Jesus Car” as this unknowledgeable blogthing person calls him).

Just offering you a bit of insight into your noble host, gentle reader.

(Link seen on Triticale.)

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Keeping Out the Undesireables — The Students

Brian J. Noggle

The mayor of Waukesha, Wisconsin, is against an expansion of the local University of Wisconsin (Mayor backs UW-Waukesha: Lombardi wants Doyle to veto UWM merger proposal):

Mayor Carol Lombardi has urged Gov. Jim Doyle to veto a plan for merging two college campuses in the Milwaukee area, saying that the move toward consolidation stems from “more politics than practical study.”

Lombardi also said that making the University of Wisconsin-Waukesha part of UW-Milwaukee would strain her city’s police force and other resources if the suburban campus must be expanded.

Gentle reader, what motivation for this position would be the least odious?

  • She doesn’t want the urban people who go to UWM to infect Waukesha. Since she brings up the cost of police protection, I think this is probably her motive.
  • She’s holding the state up for more money, grants, and so on for her fiefdom to spend.
  • She doesn’t think government consolidation and efficiency are worthwhile goals if they cut into her pork.
  • She fears the loss of prestige for Waukesha if there’s not a University of Wisconsin-Waukesha. Come to think of it, that’s all the prestige Waukesha might have. In the right light.

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Des Moines Columnist Thinks Media Does Not Focus On Important Things, Like How Bush Sucks

Brian J. Noggle

It’s the only thing I can get from this piece entitled "Little room for real news" by Rob Borsellino of the Des Moines Register. He intersperses the trivia covered by new media with things the media doesn’t cover, like the badness of the current administration:

I knew the exact time Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, and I could tell you that the runaway bride got a half-million-dollar advance to tell her story.

But I had lost track of how many U.S. soldiers have been killed in Iraq.

And:

I listen to the president making a speech about how much better the world is without Saddam Hussein in power and how much progress we’re making in Iraq. That’s followed by news stories about a car bomb killing dozens in Baghdad, U.S. recruitment going into the tank, Iran and North Korea getting nuke savvy.

So I’ve got to wonder if the commander in chief is dealing with reality.

I listen to the vice president calling Guantanamo Bay critics a bunch of anti-American crybabies with nothing better to do with their time, and then I hear those left-wing radicals from the Red Cross talking how the U.S. is using tactics “tantamount to torture.”

So how much attention should I pay when the V.P. speaks?

Finally:

The Bolton nomination and "the deadlock that has centered on Democratic demands to see draft testimony that Bolton's office prepared on Syria for a House committee hearing two years ago and insistence on seeing 36 names Bolton requested and was allowed to see from blacked-out National Security Agency reports." Or news that “Jennifer Wilbanks, the runaway bride, was found to have prior records for shoplifting in two separate cases.”

Given the choice between innocuous fluff and the common funeral drumbeating of “serious” journalists, I choose….

Not to watch the news or read the newspaper. Duh.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

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