For those of you not African-American with a girl’s name, Kelly Brook is an English model that appears in the tabs an awful lot for no other reason that she appears in the tabs an awful lot.
Category: Blogging
We At MfBJN Would Never Stoop So Low
Seen on Facebook:
Rest assured, gentle reader, we will not resort to blogging with intelligence, artificial or otherwise, at Musings from Brian J. Noggle.
Thank you, that is all.
Again, Brian Knows Wilder’s Source Material
Wilder begins a cheery post entitled The Coming American Dictatorship, Part I with a quote from Star Trek:
“Well, Captain, the Klingons called you a tin-plated overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood.” – Star Trek
Oooh, oooh, Mr. Kahtter. I know which episode that comes from. Not only did I read the short story version of “The Trouble with Tribbles” in Star Trek 3, I actually caught the episode on a DVD I bought a couple weeks ago.
But that’s a story for another post.
Weird, How I Know The Source
So yesterday, I found myself watching Steven Wright’s first appearance on The Tonight Show:
I don’t even know how I got to that. Did I go to YouTube for something else and see that on the front page? Did a blog post it? I couldn’t tell you.
What I can tell you is that Wilder borrowed a joke from that routine yesterday:
The world is a really big place. Oh, sure, sometimes people say (when they run into a coincidence) that it’s a small world, but my standard response to that is, “let’s see you paint it.”
That alignment is interesting.
Does Google know I read Wilder every day, so it presented me with the source of the joke? Does Wilder read the same blogs I do and see the same post with the embedded video? Did everyone on YouTube get Steven Wright presented yesterday? Or is it just a little mind trying to detect patterns in mere coincidence?
When conspiracy theories become fact, print the conspiracy theories!
I Know How They Feel
Sarah Hoyt sez
However, around the edges, I actually found out what makes people bond with you personally. I found it out both by reading a lot of blogs and running one: People want to know you. As a person. They want to know the funny little things in your life. They want to feel you’re one of their friends, and they could drop by the kitchen for a cup of coffee. (To be fair, my fans who know where I live are welcome to.)
So I’ll riff off of a couple of other posts I came across today with a personal flair. Continue reading “I Know How They Feel”
We’re Getting To An Age
OregonMuse, the poster of the hoity-toity Ace of Spades HQ book thread on Sunday mornings, has passed away.
You know, we longtime bloggers are getting to that age, are we not?
I am going to miss his book threads and his morning rants.
Ace of Spades HQ Finds The Real Killer
Hidden in plain sight at Ace of Spades HQ, in the sidebar, the identity of Betty White’s real killer:
And he would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those meddling morons!
On Kim du Toit’s Christmas List
IT’S NO YOLK Model Kelly Brook serves up cheeky poses to launch cookery calendar with SlimFast
I would say, “Mine, too,” but my mother-in-law gives each of us a calendar every year for Christmas, and I have run out of wall space in my office to hang one, so I am topped up on calendars annually.
Need Help? Just Ask!
If you happen to find yourself looking for pictures of Kathy Ireland, our professional service team is ready to help!
She appears in the posts We’re Not Far From A Forbes Swimsuit Edition and Film Watching: National Lampoon’s Loaded Weapon I (1993).
If you need anything else, do not be afraid to ask!
On My Watch List, I Guess
I guess the world wants me to look for Pete Metheny records at book sales.
- A couple weeks ago (I thought, but actually a month and a half ago), Jack Baruth posted about his relationship with the artist:
My relationship with Pat Metheny is about as complicated as an entirely one-way thing can be; obviously Pat has no idea of who I am or what I might be thinking about him at any given time. I bought Letter From Home in 1989 and was a compulsive customer of his from then till 2019 or thereabouts. I have pretty much everything he has ever recorded, in multiple formats. Bought all the sheet music. The practice-exercise book. T-shirts, guitar picks. Hell, I bought Zero Tolerance For Silence, a repulsive cacophony of noise that was meant to be a final middle finger towards David Geffen. Have seen him in concert more than a dozen times, including three separate episodes when I caught the same gig twice in a week, at different places. You get the idea.
- One of the marching bands I’ve seen in competition recently based part of their program on some piece or another from the artist; he was mentioned by name in the introduction. It’s not like I could tell Metheny’s music from any other bit of marching band music.
- Today, Lileks mentioned him:
If you call the number, you are warned that we are experiencing high call volume, and have not adjusted staffing levels at all; why would we? At least that’s what they should say. I was on hold longer than the actual length of the flight I was calling to change, it seemed. At least the hold music was unobtrusive. Meandering jazz. It made me wonder how much demand there is these days for smooth jazz – you know, the stuff secretaries put on the stereo in 1983 when someone was coming over for dinner for the third date. I was listening to some Pat Metheny the other day, and wondered: is this stuff just over?
I mean, it seems to be over for Pat Metheny, inasmuch as I don’t hear him doing this type of music any more, so perhaps that’s a clue.
So I’ll watch for some of the early work of the artist on records when I hit the book sales and whatnot.
Of course, the mentions of the artist accumulating in my subconscious would have made me pick up something even if I didn’t say on my blog like a blood vow to the unheeding Internet that I would be looking for the artist in the future.
I’m not convinced to pay full freight for it, though, unlike that hard rock album Lileks told me to get.
The Ace of Spades HQ Sidebar Agrees With MfBJN
Today’s sidebar at Ace of Spades HQ:
C’mon, man, I don’t even have to click to know what you’re talking about.
I did, though, and discovered the sidebar’s ranking matches what I said in 2019.
Old; Also, Busted
And recognize that this might well be the very last time, at least according to the chronology of the writing, where you read Old and busted/new hotness.
Ed Driscoll, 8:14 PM (Eastern) today:
OLD AND BUSTED: ‘Only hot people get the Pfizer’ Vaccine rivalries descend on TikTok.
–NBC News, April 8th.
The New Hotness? Wait. So now Moderna is twice as good as Pfizer?
–Jazz Shaw, Hot Air, today.
Curse you, Ed Driscoll! But be advised that I have probably been wearing a fedora longer than you have. AND I LOOK BETTER IN IT.
From the Imagination of Brian J., I Hope
I cannot help notice that all of a sudden, a lot of people are reading this eleven year old book report on It Happened In Lemay, a comb-bound self-published collection of historical anecdotes and stories about south St. Louis County published by the editor of a tiny little paper in the area.
In my imagination, several people have learned that the book contains clues to a secret of some sort, perhaps a treasure, and they’re desperately trying to find a copy (the copy?) that will lead them to wealth or something. And they will stop at nothing to get it.
Personally, I hope it’s the location of the Yocum Silver Mine so I don’t have to travel too far to find it if I work out the mystery or get caught up in the search.
Of course, the biggest puzzle might turn out to be Where is it on Brian J.’s read shelves? I mean, I read it right after we moved to Nogglestead. Back then, the read shelves were organized, but a lot of time and a thousand books have been added since that sepia-toned time.
Sparkly Vampire Fan Fiction Apparently Allowed
In 2004, I mentioned that Bravenet singled out the works of John Norman in its terms of service:
Funny, Frank Herbert, J.R.R. Tolkien, and R.A. Salvatore don’t suffer from the literary persecution John Norman does. Here’s section 8d of BraveNet’s terms of service:
(d) Associate Bravenet and any Products and Services with any adult material of any sort. This includes, but is not limited to, such things as nudity, any site, page, image or service requiring any adult verification service, anything that users to be 18 or older to view or join or access, and any text, image or likeness suggesting sexual and/or inappropriate and/or illegal acts of any sort. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use the Products and Services to store, use, contain or display pornography, adult novelties, adult toys, XXX material, escort services, Gorean, bondage, BDSM, bigotry, racism, hatred, profanity, or any material which may be insulting to another person(s) or entity;
No Counter-Earth fan pages for you, children.
Well, I see today that Lileks added Bravenet forums to The Bleat, so I went a-looking to see if Gor is still prohibited.
Yes.
Although it’s now in section 9, so someone has updated the terms in the last seventeen years, although nobody removed the Gorean prohibition. Probably they didn’t know what Gorean meant. Which, to be honest, is probably why few people post Gorean content using Bravenet widgets or services. Not because anyone but me reads these terms and conditions closely.
You can probably find all kinds of Fifty Shades of Grey knock-offs across sites using Bravenet components, though. Because that’s modern stuff and not really dirty like your grandpa might have liked.
A Special Thank You To A Singapore Reader
Or bot as the case may be for answering a question I had in my report on watching Alien.
I noted that I had the first, third, and fourth movies in the series, but not the second, and I mused it was probably not at the place where I bought the films.
Well, a reader or some scrapping algorithm in Singapore led me to the answer.
I bought the movies at the Hope Church Relay for Life Garage Sale in 2013.
The three Alien movies I have yet to see. The Hope Lutheran Church sale did not have Aliens.
I have started haunting antique and thrift stores for films and have yet to see Aliens.
Brian J.’s Recycler Tour
I can’t believe I wasted some of my best lines on Twitter and Facebook, making money for the Boy rather than as an attraction for you, gentle reader, to come here for the wit and make me money by clicking one of the (blocked) ads or the Amazon links, even though I was booted from the affiliate program when Amazon had tantrum about people making money in states that threatened to collect Internet sales taxes before they had a footprint in that state. Now, of course, Internet sales taxes are a fait accompli and Amazon has big footprints in the state, but when I applied for reinstatement, not enough people ordered through my affiliate link, so I got discharged a second time. Maybe I’ll try again when I get up to fifty readers a day consistently–they’re mostly search hits for old book reports anyway, the kind of place where an affiliate book link might make sense.
But I digress.
Apparently, I posted this gem on Facebook ten years ago:
Momma always said life is like a box of Kafka’s.
Now more than ever, ainna?
Seventeen, Nan. Seventeen.
In case you missed it, today is Musings from Brian J. Noggle’s seventeenth birthday.
I should have dropped this into conversation sometime last week so you’d have known to get me something or send a card, but I wanted to see who was a MfBJN superfan, and actually, the only answer is Me Five Years from now.
But thanks to those of you who are mere readers and commenters.
Meanwhile, In The Powerline Week In Pictures, We Get My Area
This weeks Week in Pictures at Powerline features a meme from my area:
If I am not mistaken, that is Kearney facing east. North of Kearney, there’s only Interstate 44 and then non-overpass intersections north.
Of course, I hardly ever see the intersection going that way–when I’m going to ABC Books, I take US 65 north to Kearney and then turn west on Kearney to get to Glenstone and my favorite bookstore.
I have seen the sign on rare occasions when I have wanted to catch the highway from Kearney or when I have gone east on Kearney to a sports facility formerly known as The Courts, where my boys had a basketball camp and my youngest briefly played in a basketball league.
Not as weird as seeing a known intersection in a CAPTCHA.
Great Minds Move In Tandem
Of course, in this example, the great minds would be me and the Amazon AI thing, but on the very day I post a bad lip reading GIF from Rambo: First Blood Part II, Amazon recommends to Neo that she watch the latest Rambo movie.
Perhaps all of us right-wing whackadoodle bloggers look alike to Amazon’s AI.
We must use this to our advantage.
Another Produce Clerk Heard From
Economist and long-time blogger Tyler Cowen was a produce clerk, and shares his lessons from the experience.
You might remember, gentle reader, I shared my essay Lessons from a Grocery Store on this here blog (well, on its Blogspot incarnation originally) almost seventeen years ago.
(Link via Instapundit.)