To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Dear Blogosphere, or just people who don’t like it when there’s too much purple on my beautiful wife’s occasional blog and not enough posting:
For Christmas, I gave her a Nintendo Game Cube with Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime II. I guess I have exacerbated the lack of posting for the next few months. Sorry.
Perhaps you could just read the posts here instead.
Sincerely,
Brian J. Noggle
Buy My Books!
Just to let all six of my readers know, I, too, will take a Christmas hiatus.
I probably won’t post between 10pm Christmas Eve and 6am on Christmas morning because I don’t want Santa to skip my house because I’m awake.
Posting will resume on its regular irregular schedule at 6:01 Christmas morning.
Thank you, that is all.
Buy My Books!
I bought a copy of this book at a yard sale a year or so back because I thought I didn’t read enough serious drama. Do you know how much serious drama is enough serious drama? Enough to remember that any serious drama is too much serious drama.
This play takes place in a brothel, where people dress as authority figures such as The Bishop, The Judge, and The General to get their rocks off on the trappings of power. When the revolution comes, the madame of the brothel must act as the Queen and these people must impersonate the actual offices they impersonate–and they like it. Those wacky post-WWII French.
Unfortunately, when drama’s built too heavily on Concept, with bunches of archetypes crowding a sparse stage and spitting out philosophy, I find myself lamenting the hard seat I’m in, and I’m in a recliner. That’s something my old drama professor taught me–that your play has to drag the audience along, and if the audience starts noticing the theatre and its accommodations, you’ve written a bad play. Unfortunately, most modernist and intellectual drama suffers from this when the playwright focuses too much on communicating his ideas and not enough on creating drama.
Give me an Ibsen, a Jonson, or a Shakespeare; a play where something happens to people, and later on, if you want to think about it, you can find some comment on the human condition. Reading this piece by Genet, on the other hand, is like reading an Existentialist op-ed on authority. Sure, I can see the message, but not the entertainment.
Buy My Books!
I feel so Pejmanic posting this love poem, but he started it with all the poems he’s posting these days. So here’s on with which I became reacquainted this weekend:
Cruise you are making me sing
Now you have taken me under your wing
Cruise, we both know you’re the best
How can they say you’re like all the rest
Cruise, we’re both travelling so far
Burning out fast like a shooting star
Cruise I feel sure that your song will be sung
And will ring in the ears of everyone
Saving our children, saving our land
Protecting us from things we can’t understand
Power and Glory, Justice and Right
I’m sure that you’ll help us to see the light
And the love that you radiate will keep us warm
And help us to weather the storm
Cruise, you have taken me in
And just when I’ve got you under my skin
You start ignoring the fears I have felt
‘Cause you know you can always make my poor heart melt
Please don’t take what I’m saying amiss
Or misunderstand at a time such as this
Because if such close friends should ever fall out
What would there be left worth fighting about
Power and glory, justice and right
I’m sure that you’ll help them to see the light
Will you save our children, will you save our land
And protect us from all the things we can’t understand?
Power and glory and justice for all
Who will we turn to when your hard rain falls
(Lyric source.) It’s from his album About Face, and somehow I think this 1984esque song probably meant it as satire.
I, on the other hand, remember the feelings I had when I sat in a stadium in southwest Missouri and an A10 flew over. An ugly machine crafted only to rain fire and death. Even though I knew this, I was happy that our technology is better than theirs. All of them others theirs.
Buy My Books!
Cori Dauber, the Ranting Professor, demonstrates apostasy:
Obviously, Dauber does not embrace La Vida Lileks as she should. Why, since I have become an acolyte, I have found more meaning in my life. I clean house amid my paying home-based job during the day. I pilgrimmate to my local Target for household wares. I make snarky and sometimes clever turns of phrase on my Web site (thanks for visiting!). I seek to emulate Lileks in all aspects of my life.
Lileks’ daily Bleats serve as a guide for my day-to-day existence.
To call it blather is to undermine my very being. How dare Dauber? How dare she, indeed!
Buy My Books!
Stephen Green, who rumor has it was banished from St. Louis for making a remark about the Chicago Cubs that could be construed as anything other than an insult, allows a guy to use his blog to utters promulgate more heresy:
No drinking-related discussion would be complete without a link to the pride of New Orleans, Chris Rose, who’s my personal favorite newspaper columnist. Check out his take on the Presidental debates, and marital relations (trust me, it works).
Green‘s "associate" has contradicted the blogma that James Lileks is the Most Holy Newspaper Columnist, both regular and extra syndi.
I’d say he should be stoned, but he’s already half way there in an airport in Florida even as we speak.
Friends, don’t let him plea for mercy with the admission
I once bought a broken Donkey Kong, Jr. arcade game for $35. It took another $12 and about an hour to fix it (it’s since been traded for the sweet Asteroids Deluxe that graces my den). Makes me just chuckle in an evil fashion at anybody who pays two grand for one of these.
Yea, verily, for I have looked in the Most Hallowed Tome of the Revered and have found his name lacking. Of course, mine was, too, but I had been removed during an audit after changing ISPs. What’s Green’s associate’s?
Except he’s a witch. Or a heretic. Scroll back up and see; I’ve been on Killer List of Video Games so long in my "research" that I have forgotten what I was accusing him of.
UPDATE: Someone using the name "Stephen Green" in an e-mail has taken umbrage at this post:
Will Collier wrote that piece, not me! And we’re up two games to nothin’.
-S.
Upon further review, I have determined that the post on VodkaPundit has been attributed to this "Will Collier" fellow, but as I replied to my e-mail correspondent, I have never seen Stephen Green and Will Collier in the same place. Of course, I have never seen Will Collier or Stephen Green in person, so perhaps I have seen them together and have not known it. But don’t confuse me.
Ergo, I have corrected this piece inline in red.
The rebuttal from the e-mailer claiming to be Stephen Green, and indeed the post itself raise two more scandals:
Buy My Books!
Courtesy of Spoons.
While the mice are away, the cats will play…with Spoons, who has nothing better to do.
Buy My Books!
Instapundit reports reports over 8,000,000 hits last month and predicts that he’ll see a traffic drop after the election.
Hey, this site had 3,000 hits last month, and I think it will drop after the election, too.
Actually, I think it will drop this month without an Instalanche to spur about a third of the total monthly traffic in a single day.
But I don’t write for the casual Internet readers. I toss off my insights for my own gratification and for you, the discriminating Internet reader.
Buy My Books!
Get old by Internet standards reflections here:
Buy My Books!
So when the pizza guy brought my pseudobachelor dinner this evening, he pointed to the Bush Cheney sign in the yard and was happy to see it (he explained in with a light Newyorican lilt in his voice). He said Bush was going to bury Kerry tonight. I’m disappointed he didn’t.
I think Bush and Kerry did about what we would have expected. Bush was on message, sometimes almost fumblingly so, Kerry was not intolerable. Kerry might have elevated his discourse from flip-flop to paradox, but he didn’t speak in French.
Kerry raised himself to nearly human, or perhaps lowered himself to nearly human, but you still get the sense that he’s not quite sincere, not quite earnest. Bush is. And I’ll still vote for Bush.
Unlike Instapundit, I don’t think Kim Jong Il will be nervous if Kerry’s elected. He’s about sanctions, resolutions, and Bush is about popping you one if you deserve it. Friends, that’s a capital fear for other nations to have, particularly those with opposing viewpoints.
This liveblogging experience brought to you without the aid of alcohol, because until I get a fridge in this office, it’s a long trip to the kitchen for a refill. This evening’s entertainment also brought to you without the skill of touch typing, which is why your content is thinner here than with the pros. But thanks for coming anyay. I should have listened to my beautiful wife and used that Mavis Beacon she bought me when I was but a young man of eight and twenty.
Buy My Books!
Bush’s statement:
This is more than the next four years; this is the next hundred years and civilization. No draft. No vetoes over foreign policy. I believe, I believe, and then we, we, mountain metaphor and valley.
Earnest, and he ends it very presidentially. His best performance of the debate, and he trumped Kerry’s response.
Buy My Books!
Kerry’s statement:
I served in Vietnam. I believe in strong aliances with weak countries. Also, I have many plans. And messages.
Buy My Books!
Didn’t Kerry say Saddam wasn’t a threat earlier in the debate? Now he says that Saddam was a threat, but that’s not the point.
He’s just paradoxed the whole debate. Wait, didn’t the debate start at 8 pm CDT? Why does my computer clock say 5:34? The space time continuum has ruptured!
Buy My Books!
On Putin, Kerry reminds us he served in Russia, mentions it’s important, and then goes back to North Korea.
Bilateral talks with China.
Buy My Books!
The Putin question:
Bush: Centralization in Russia in response to terror is bad, and I’ve said so publicly. Russia’s an ally, though, and Bush invokes Beslan. Calls Vladamir by his first names, and values his personal relationship. A good, even-tempered response. Will Kerry want preemptive invasion to save the Russians and secure the nuclear material?
Buy My Books!
In response to the nuclear proliferation thing, Kerry has plans and messages, but Bush has accomplishments.
And missile defense. Concrete things.
Kerry responds: I am a magician! I will wave my wand and North Korea and Iran will roll over.
Buy My Books!
Kerry’s not going to proliferate, and he’s going to cut ours.
He didn’t say it; just that he’s not going to build nuke buster bombs, but considering he’s been in favor of nuclear disarmament, he’s going to be all over it.
Because it sends a good message.
Of weakness.
Buy My Books!
Kerry never wavers, and he knows what to do. It’s a secret, though.
Buy My Books!
Kerry agrees with Bush’s kudos to him. And he likes Bush’s daughters.
Respects Laura Bush.
He also seems to think certainty is a bad thing.
And stem cells and global warming are bad. Thank you, and good night!
Buy My Books!
Bush: Kerry is a vet, and he’s a great dad.
Bush’s handling the character question well. He then brings up the changing positions, which adds a coda, but in not deploying another attack, he’s not being an attack dog.
Buy My Books!