To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
The top 100 pop culture dogs.
Kavik’s attorneys are descending upon retroCRUSH headquarters to demand recounts until he is on the list. Buck’s legal team, including several specialists from London, are watching Kavik’s story to see if it has a case as well.
(Link seen on Althouse.)
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The first Web Flash cartoon I’ve watched in a non-professional capacity. Because I know Will.
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Plan to silence noisy car stereos is pulled:
The city’s get-tough plan to silence booming car stereos was pulled Friday after the mayor and comptroller turned up the political pressure.
Alderman Craig Schmid’s proposal to allow police to impound cars with enhanced stereo equipment was criticized as overly broad and intrusive. The bill would have allowed the city to fine motorists with some sound systems straight from the factory, technically enabling police to take their cars regardless of whether music was pumping or not.
Headlines that focus on the minor bad thing that this legislation would address–annoying loud car sound systems–overlooks the far greater evil in its punishment–government seizure of private property for a small infraction.
Because I’m not so far from my youth to have forgotten how I would occasionally turn up my radio to probably inappropriate levels when a good song came on the radio. A ticket, I could have handled. Taking my car would have driven me to unemployment, as most of the places I lived in my twenties didn’t offer quick or convenient mass transit that could convey me twenty miles to my various places of underpaid employment.
Legislating to eliminate pet peeves by putting down their owners should never pass nor be considered seriously, but with 200 years of legislation and a thousand years of English common law behind them, our legislators have to make busy to citizens’ detriment.
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Time to stop coddling the damn world if this is all the love we get in return:
Iran is the country most widely viewed as having a negative influence in the world, with the US in second place, a new poll for the BBC suggests.
The survey for the BBC World Service asked how 39,435 people in 33 nations across the globe saw various countries.
Freedom: The rest of the world views it negatively, who are we to think otherwise??
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I got this book as a Christmas gift, and as I was looking for a quick read in my recent spate of nonfiction, so I picked it out of my hundreds of volumes that I have yet to read. It was a quick read.
I won’t go into too much depth with the book, as it doesn’t go much into depth itself. Of course, it’s preaching to the seminary here with its indictment of entire classifications of people whose individual goals counter the cohesion of our country for no real purpose except to aggrandize the individuals. It’s not a creative indemnification of the collective, but rather the buzzards shrieking that distracts a weakened nation.
Although he became a conservative pin-up author for Bias and Arrogance, Goldberg doesn’t just identify liberals, nor does he fall into pinning the tail on liberals because they’re liberals. He identifies destructive ideas and people who champion them, and I agreed with many of his selections.
So it’s a good book for a couple bucks, and it’s a great book for nothing. Just keep in mind you’re getting a list book and not a deep analysis of ideas, politics, or society.
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Skier Accused Of Punching Teen Snowboarder:
A man is charged with assault after he allegedly beat a female teenage snowboarder who crashed into his daughter at Steamboat Ski Area over the weekend.
The collision knocked both girls to the ground but neither were seriously injured.
Randell Berg, of Littleton [Colorado], saw the crash and yelled profanities at the teen as he allegedly punched her in the head and neck, Steamboat police said.
Or maybe it’s because of Bush or something. Please, Michael Moore, help me understand how this can take place in Colorado, that microcosm for America.
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Rev. Jesse Jackson plans Katrina protest march in New Orleans.
Good luck on that whole boycotting the weather thing.
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Kevin McGehee, of Yippie Ki Yay, is stuck in the past. Case in point, this category: Truckin’. The last time I saw the word trucking without the g was probably sometime 1981 on a hand-me-down t-shirt with an iron-on decal with a hitchhiker’s thumb in the air. Which leads me to wonder…is Kevin McGehee stuck on the Seventies? Let’s look at the evidence:
Granted, these are only a few signs, but I think they warrant an intervention by the blogosphere, or at least the two bloggers who like him.
Yes, it’s true I’ve got some truck with McGehee, but I only wish him the best, and hope that he comes to be stuck in the 1990s like so many of us.
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Fear of Girls. Yeah, geek, they’re talking about you.
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The Sentinel: Okay, Kiefer Sutherland as a shouting government agent, we can accept, but President Sledge Hammer!? Not so much.
The split second shot (no pun intended) of David Rasche along with the words “the President” were enough to pitch my wife and I into gales of laughter during the preview.
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On my second attempt, I made it through this book by blogger Roger L. Simon. Of course, the book was written in 1979, before blogs. As some of you long-time readers know, I bought a number of the Moses Wine iBooks reissues in November 2004 and I read the two books (The Big Fix and The Lost Coast) in the first week I owned them. Then I tried Peking Duck. And it took me over a year to try it again.
The book centers on a trip Moses Wine takes to China. A liberal by philosophy, Wine has some sympathy and reverence for the Chinese Communists and their noble ideals. As he’s belonged to a Chinese friendship society to please his aunt, he’s invited on her tour of China. While in China, a crime occurs, and he’s the one who has to solve the mystery and set the things aright, to make the world safe for Chinese communism.
One of my complaints with this book is the same as with The Big Fix: We get a complete enumeration of names and professions for the people on the trip with Moses Wine, but for the most part, they remain names and professions, and I couldn’t keep many of them straight. Which wasn’t too important, as they’re just scenery. The book goes at length to describe the trip to China, the Chinese cities, and the Chinese line on communism in the late 1970s. As a matter of fact, it reads more like a fictional, sympathetically political travelogue. On page 120 or so, the crime finally occurs, and I knew who did it immediately.
So the book didn’t really hold me in any suspense, nor did I really enjoy it all that much. However, I did make it through it this time. Roger L. Simon was nominated for an Academy Award for a screen play, and I think his strength must lie in that medium.
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James Frey, author of the fictional A Million Little Pieces, says:
“I think writing a book about this experience would be trying to capitalize on it in some way and that’s not something I want to do at all.”
This does not, however, rule out a movie a la Shattered Glass.
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Back in the old days, the Milwaukee Journal ran a cartoon in its Green Sheet called “There Ought to Be a Law”, whose rejoinder/punchline “TOBAL.” followed annoying day to day situations. One would suspect that many the current generation of revered legislators steeped themselves in this comic strip instead of the Constitution, the Federalist papers, or even the watered-down civics books that public schools offer. For behold, the stupidest St. Louis aldermanic idea since peeing in a trash can: Big stereo could cost you your car
City police would be able to seize cars blasting loud music under an ordinance passed Friday by the Board of Aldermen.
The ordinance, which would take effect once signed by Mayor Francis Slay, prohibits the use and even installation of some enhanced speakers.
Hell, you only own your home at the leisure of the leisurely ruling class. Why not your cars, too? Instead of ticketing you, they’ll take your car. And what will they do with that seized car? Sell it at auction, no doubt.
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Like the Lupica book, I bought this book at Barnes and Noble (Ladue) off of its clearance table for $1.00. I mean, if I don’t burn those points off of the card, the card management company will gladly do so for a certain number of cents every ten days until such time as they have to garnish my wages for the overage. So it’s desperation, coupled with the twin desires of acquiring trivia knowledge and preparing for a historical perspective when the Torino Olympics start, I dove into the book.
It’s a series of top ten lists which include different athletes and incidents within the past Olympics, sliced and diced by topic. Unfortunately, that’s led to some repetition in the records. Also. as I read, I found that the trivia infusion only re-inforced the information I’d experienced. That Zola Budd was responsible for Decker’s loss in some track event in 1984….Man, the number of times I retyped the decade digit indicates how powerful that bit of trivia is, so I better not indicate that I know how South African Zola Budd got to compete anyway, or else I’ll be in jeopardy the next time the North Side Mind Flayers step into a St. Louis Trivia night.
The book’s major flaw is that it repeats anecdotes in different sections as the author tried to leverage limited material into more pages. For example, we read about the Nancy Kerrigan/Tonya Harding incident in two chapters. One anecdote focuses on Kerrigan and one on Harding. This retreading of material gives one the idea that the author was indeed stretching to make his limited sources pay off. Hey, as a writer, I can’t knock it, but as a reader, I can sure mock it.
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16 Blocks: Because The Gauntlet would have been much better without Sondra Locke.
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As some of you know, I have a disagreement with McGehee of Yuppie-Ki-Yay, a blog written from an aesthete cokehead’s midtown Manhattan apartment. Just so you know, I am punishing him by giving him the silent treatment, which is apparently effective.
Mostly because tonight’s photo manipulation historical research hasn’t proven effective.
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Facts about Jack Bauer, from television’s 24.
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Some of you readers might know that I have this thing about Kevin McGehee of Yippee-Ki-Yay!.
"Why?" Some of you ask. "After all, McGehee is cool; he’s got a Web log."
That’s not enough.
Signs include:
Friends, I have met geeks in my life, and Kevin McGehee is nothing but a potential Commie cyborg from the past pretending to be a geek to win your confidence.
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Some people were just born to work in fast food:
Then everyone’s attention turned to a woman in line – the one with a shredded sequined purse on the tile floor near her feet.
“She picked up her purse like it was some kind of disease,” explained Shelley White, the store manager on duty.
“I ain’t got no gun,” was the only thing the stranger told the crowd in the restaurant before gathering her purse and teenage daughter from a nearby booth and running out of the place about 1 p.m. Friday.
But she did have a gun, investigators said, apparently a low-quality one that discharged by accident when she dropped her purse.
She had a secret too, one that she might have kept had White not rushed to the window and called out the license number for a customer to jot down. The fleeing woman was an off-duty St. Louis police officer.
After the woman inadvertantly discharged a firearm, fled the scene, and threw the firearm out of her window on the interstate before she was caught, she resigned when the internal affairs department of her police department opened an investigation.
As someone who travels into the city almost daily, I would hope the city of St. Louis would weed these people out before they’re actually, you know, cops.
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Waukesha County gives cash for trash: Selected homeowners given $100 for recycling:
Diane Penosky was tinkering in her garage when she heard someone – or something – picking through the family’s recycling bin outside.
Bruce and Diane Penosky of Summit carry cardboard and plastic bags to their vehicle to take to the recycling center. The couple were chosen as winners of a $100 cash reward as part of Waukesha County’s recycling program.
It turned out the intruder was neither a thief nor a critter, but a Waukesha County employee who was sizing up Penosky for a reward for being a good recycler: $100.
Waukesha County is believed to be the first government agency in southeastern Wisconsin to distribute a friendly bribe as a way of encouraging homeowners to recycle.
The government of Waukesha County has employees whose job entails rifling through your recycling to make sure you’re doing it properly:
Who gets Waukesha County’s cash rewards is a matter of luck.
Moving from community to community, county officials pick a street by throwing a dart at a map. Then they head to that street on curbside recycling day and make a winner of the first homeowner whose bin is found filled correctly.
It’s good that Waukesha County officials and employees have handled all of the city’s other business, eliminated crime, and has reduced taxes as much as possible to cover all the minimums. It’s just unfortunate that it spends all of its remaining effort and energy not on private enterprises of the individuals in the government, but on freaking going through citizens’ recycling by hand.
Because that would never be abused once citizens become accustomed to it.
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