To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Spotted on my to-read shelves:
I don’t remember purchasing My Book of Leaves.
Do you think my son put that book on my bookshelves because he desperately wants me to notice his work and/or to read to him, or was it just something he could do since Daddy had a little stepping stool in the office?
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At the end of the aforementioned Scooby Doo, Cartoon Network’s The Hub plays an anti-bullying PSA (embedding disabled by request, because if there’s one thing you want to upload onto the torrents, it’s an anti-bullying PSA) with Tom and Jerry shorts:
I gotta ask you, which message do you think resonates with young viewers?
Frankly, I think the PSA is like one of the adult gags in the cartoons that the kids don’t get yet. It does, however, sound the proper notes to today’s concerned parents.
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In the other room, my children are watching an episode of The New Scooby Doo Movies with Davy Jones in it.
The program originally aired on December 2, 1972, so I probably didn’t see it when it ran first. A couple years later, I watched it with my mother and brother, and I remember distinctly the joke that Davy Jones makes “I’ve never sung for frogs before, just monkeys.” She explained that he used to belong to a band called the Monkees.
Of course, the Monkees were most active between 1966 and 1968, when the television show appeared, but a decade later when I watched the cartoon, Davy Jones was a has-been, if a little boy thought of such things. Regardless, he was off my cultural radar, if I had such a thing at about 10.
Of course, a couple years after that, in 1985, MTV started airing the television program and brought about a brief Monkees revival. The shows played on MTV and Nickolodeon, the band toured, and I even ended up with a greatest hits album.
When the children heard that Scooby Doo was meeting Davy Jones, their only knowledge was of the guy with the locker. Although this reference precedes any of the pop-culture musings above since it’s a nautical term for the undersea place where drowned sailors go, the boys only know of it from what they’ve heard about the Pirates of the Caribbean movie series.
That’s a lot of generational history wrapped into a single episode of a forty-year-old cartoon.
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I’ve been a curmudgeon since elementary school, but I cannot feel like an old curmudgeon these days when confronted by stories written, obviously, by a 20-something who thinks history began sometime in Bill Clinton’s reign.
First, this piece in Vanity Fair talking about the sameness of culture since that era:
The past is a foreign country. Only 20 years ago the World Wide Web was an obscure academic thingamajig. All personal computers were fancy stand-alone typewriters and calculators that showed only text (but no newspapers or magazines), played no video or music, offered no products to buy.
This is a surprise to anyone on Compuserve, Quantum Link, and BBSes running on CG-Net or WWIV-Net or people who used Commodore 64s or Amigas that could plays music and show short snippets of video.
Then there’s this: Five Video Games You Loved as a Kid But Will Hate If You’re Dumb Enough to Play As an Adult:
Perusing through my massive back catalog of games from my childhood has led me to one conclusion: Games of the past have more capacity to challenge the imagination than those on today’s consoles.
Pocky and Rocky for the Super Nintendo! Can any childhood be complete without it? Come on, surely I’m not the only one who has played this? No?
In essence, the 2-D warmth of games we played as children symbolize a spoiled innocence that has been long lost, which has since been replaced by so-called “Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games” (MMORPGs) and first-person shooters. Games can still be addictive, but the enhanced technological capabilities of today often provide a shortcut. Technological innovation replaced game play innovation. Today game story lines are often bogged down with tedious cut scenes which just take away from the game play more than anything else. The titles on older systems of the ‘80s, ‘90s, and first half of the ‘00s weren’t just reduced to the number of polygons or shades of green. They relied on fun game play and clever artwork to keep their patrons entertained – instead of hooking hopeless addicts with make believe social lives which require a monthly subscription fee and the final ounces of one’s self-respect.
Perhaps though, I should be more balanced about the Video Game’s Golden Days. In some ways, it was actually the Dark Ages.
This is what Pokemon Stadium looked like when it first came out in 2000. It may have been state of the art at the time, but play it now and you’d better have some killer weed.
It would be misleading to say that all of the games from the past deserve recognition. Video games are just like all media: the majority of titles were overhyped, derivative, and poorly designed. This list covers some of the worst offenders from my own vast collection. After weeks of gaming I’ve narrowed down my list to five guilty titles that were considered classics at the time of their release but now do little more than piss you off. Play at your own risk.
He was a child when the SuperNintendo was out. ‘Nuff said.
Jeez, I realize that there are gonna be kids writing because kids are cheap. I’m even almost made piece that I’ll even have doctors who are younger than I am with names like Kailee and Ayden and Tyler. All right.
But I hope they’re old enough to know things went on before they were born.
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A reversible Navy jacket:
Unfortunately, it’s not very effective for deserters, since when you turn it inside out, the Navy logo appears on the other side, too.
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From The 27 Rules of Conquering the Gym:
No one in the history of gyms has ever lost a pound while reading “The New Yorker” and slowly pedaling a recumbent bicycle. No one.
Which is why I read Forbes, The National Review, St. Louis Magazine, and 417 when slowly pedaling a recumbent bike. They’re more intense.
This, on the other hand, sounds a lot like my workout:
There’s also the Strange Guy Who is Always at the Gym. Just when you think he isn’t here today…there he is, lurking by the barbells.
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Something I’ve never noticed before: Expiration dates on distilled water.
I guess I’ll have to pour it out on December 1, 2012.
If the EPA allows one to pour out expired distilled water without taking it through some expensive, certified reclamation process.
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In the holiday spirit of Electric Venom, I must offer a gloss on a “Christmas” carol.
I hate this song. If I hear this song on the radio, I turn it at once, and sometimes I even turn the radio off for a half hour to punish the radio station that played it.
I mean, not only is it a bunch of wealthy secularists trying to shame the less fortunate into pouring money into the coffers of large organizations with large overhead to send pink jeeps and swag with cool logos to Africa, but it has fundamental flaws.
It’s Christmas time, there’s no need to be afraid
At christmas time, we let in light and we banish shade
Christmas comes on one of the shortest days of the year in the northern hemisphere, you pinheads.
it’s hard, but when you’re having fun
There’s a world outside your window
And it’s a world of dreaded fear
Where the only water flowing is a bitter sting of tears
This just in: It can’t be the only water, since if you’re dehydrated, your tears don’t flow.
And the christmas bells that ring there are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it’s them instead of you
Oh, really, now. Who expresses this sentiment at Christmas time except for Bono?
And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time
Any fool knows that Africa is all jungle or desert, and this particular fool songwriter fails to account for the fact that Africa is a big continent with varied topography and, yes, snow.
But most of the continent lies in the southern hemisphere, where Christmas falls in the summertime. So the lack of snow is not because of the lack of giving by first world peoples.
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
That’s a pretty hasty generalization of Africa. They probably only mean the hungry parts of Africa, where nothing ever grows and it lacks water. You know what you should send peoples who live in those regions? Not food, U-Haul trucks.
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?
Given the fact that 40% of Africans are Christian, I would expect they do. Come on, remember this guy?
That’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu. You know?
Here’s to you
Raise your glass for everyone
Here’s to them
Underneath that burning sun
Let’s raise a toast to the starving? Really? We salute you!
Then they go into that idiotic Feed the world chant.
Now, I’m a giving guy, maybe even a little more giving around Christmas. But I’m not into feeding the world; I am not like the gods nor am I full of hubris. I contribute food to the local food bank, support the church, drop a couple bucks into the red kettles, and participate in various YMCA fundraisers and charitable programs. I don’t remember if I’ve done my charitable giving manifesto or not, but I can tell you right now that doing what Bono tells me or having my consciousness briefly raised for a sawbuck’s worth of Western guilt-assauging when stimulated by a celebrity stunt ain’t one of them. I’m not trying to feed the world. I’m trying to make life a little better for my neighbors.
I can’t stand this hectoring song that somehow warrants heavy radio rotation amid the secular winter holiday classics that play when they go to all “Christmas” music. I mean, seriously, the radio stations go to Wilson Phillips singing “Hey, Santa”, Eartha Kitt mewling about being Santa’s kept woman, Band Aid hectoring, hippopotamus-wishing, and plying-reluctant-women-with-liquor-while-it’s-cold-outside. What’s the matter with a little Bing Crosby?
Is it any wonder I go to the record player and the vinyl still bearing my mother’s MCAS El Toro address label in December?
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Murphy’s Oil is composed of 98% Naturally Derived Ingredients:
If you’re going through the trouble of extracting the “blood” from the fungi of Yuggoth made from a form of matter that does not naturally occur on Earth and infuse it into a solution that imparts a distinct shine on wood, wouldn’t you play that element up in your packaging?
Probably not, if the shine only lasts until the thinly-spread fungi coalesces into a convoluted ellipsoid creature that will put your brain in a bucket and take it to the stars. I mean, you can’t even admit to that possibility without the FDA coming down on you.
Plus, there are a lot of darkly complected cultists out there who would come to your plants to free the Mi-go amid constant sanity check rolls.
So I guess, ultimately, it is best to leave the consumer wondering what eldritch, fetid matter makes up that 2%.
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I’ve been receiving letters like this from my insurance carrier this autumn:
In effect, Anthem’s vendor Express Scripts is playing contractual hardball with Walgreens over some fiscal aspects of their relationship.
Because Walgreens won’t meet my insurance carrier vendor’s demands, my insurance carrier is coming to me. Ostensibly so I can make other plans, but also so I can complain to Walgreens if I want.
It’s not as blatant as that. Maybe they are trying to keep me informed. But we’re awash in pleas from companies these days to advocate on their behalf when they’re in contract negotiations with another corporation. The classic example is when it comes time for a media company to negotiate with a content delivery company. This fall, Fox Sports channels ran endless commercials about how DirecTV was going to drop the Fox Channels, and maybe Fox Sports channel followers should drop that provider right now and sign up with a DirecTCompetitor.
You know what? To the devil with all of you. I’m your customer, you provide a service to me, I don’t provide one to you. Anthem, you pressure St. Louis-based-and-employer-of-some-my-readers Express Scripts and make them re-sign with Walgreens.
And as for the Fox Sports situation, I knew enough to ignore that because at the last minute they generally sign an agreement (or a day or so after the last minute).
Seriously, I am a consumer. You meet my needs, not the other way around.
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On January 1, 2012, I will receive my first spam email about purchasing imported Canadian 100-watt incandescent light bulbs.
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But as J. Christian Adams points out, the U2 album Achtung Baby is 20 years old this month. Which would make The Joshua Tree, what, 25? You remember the olden days, when bands had comeback albums after their initial success, and that time period was like five years? And it seemed like a long time?
Here’s my favorite U2 song, “One”, which is from the album:
Like all good U2 songs, and by which I mean “both,” (“I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” being the other), the song starts out highly personal, where the listener can relate in a very raw fashion, and then all of a sudden we take an Automan-like left turn and Bono is singing about Universal Harmony and Feeding Africa (but not manufacturing there). Strangely, I spent most of my youth thinking the song was about a man and a woman rehashing, again, their broken relationship, but apparently I was enjoying a meaning at odds with the song’s real meaning. So it’s my failure as a listener that makes this song my favorite from U2.
So I posted on Facebook about the age of Achtung Baby, and a contemporaneous friend said, “And the album hasn’t aged one bit, I still listen to it all the time.”
To which I replied, “You tell yourself that. To an eighteen-year-old today, you might as well be listening to Pat Boone.”
And not the metal Pat Boone:
What? No More Mr. Nice Guy is fifteen years old?
But he was just on Letterman the other day promoting the album.
Now I’ve made myself feel old, old man.
UPDATE: Welcome, VftP readers. Hey, if you’ve got a buck, I’ve got a comedy to sell you. The Courtship of Barbara Holt is now available for the Kindle. It, like Achtung Baby is about 20 years old, but I’ve stripped most of the dated pop culture references from it except a reference to the Spin Doctors.
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another year on the right side of the dirt. Everything else is gravy.
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“visible from space,” as in Giant Mound Of Tires In South Carolina Visible From Space. Especially when your photo credit is
Satellite image of collection of tires in Calhoun County, S.C. (credit: maps.google.com)
This just in: Sometime in the last decade, Google has made everything VISIBLE FROM SPACE! Easy enough for a local CBS affiliate to find on the Internet.
Frankly, I’ve had my pickup truck for 10 years now, and it’s so awesome I’ve seen it from space in three different zip codes. The latest:
And so on.
Seriously, by the time I click Publish, the new NSA satellites will have infraredded and ultravioleted through the walls enough to see how messy my desk remains after all my attempts to clean it, and the Department of Agriculture will have analyzed, based on that satellite data, how much what I should add to my corn bed to actually get corn from the soil this year. Newspapers who try to make you think something is more something because you can see it from space need to come into the twenty-first century with the rest of us.
UPDATE: Thanks for another link, Ms. K. Visitors, please check out my novel John Donnelly’s Gold, which Roberta X. called a satisfying story.
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The pitch for the “One Gift” program kinda sounds like “Nice mailbox you got there. Be a shame if we were to continue sending pitches to it with pictures of children with cleft palates.”
I think the schtick is that if you send them a one-time “gift,” they’ll stop sending you the envelopes full of deformed children.
That doesn’t stop those same disturbing photos from appearing in the back of every national magazine (at whose cost?). Also, according to this American Institute of Philanthropy report, the donation doesn’t stop the solicitations.
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Without a Packers game on today, my son was a bit unclear about for whom he should cheer in sporting events on television. Daddy tried to explain, as best he could, the rooting rules within the household and why they are rational and just.
Frankly, Daddy is from Milwaukee, which some infiltrators (i.e., residents Daddy does not respect) call Milwaukee “Chicago North.” You know what? Milwaukee kicked Chicago’s back bottom in the olden times, until those lazy cheapskate railroad tycoons didn’t want to drag tracks an extra ninety miles north and settled on “Milwaukee South” as their railroad hub for iron ore and timber. Generations later, Daddy retains the outrage. You can root for Real Madrid or even Manchester United, child, but in any contest where Chicago plays, you root against Chicago.
Those are the basic rules. When one starts in on the personalities (Go Broncos, the former Packers we want to see do well (Go Titans!), and the other subtle, arbitrary distinctions, it’s no wonder the child is confused except for the ABC (Anybody But Chicago) rule. But that is the most important rule.
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When I cook something on the grill and enter the house smelling of smoke and charred meat, my wife sometimes says with the undertone of a growl, “You smell good.”
When I emerge from poorly ventilated bathrooms and smell of chemical solvents, my wife says nothing.
Bear that in mind the next time a women’s magazine poll, designed to be shown to men by their mates, proves that women who read women’s magazines and show their poll results to their mates find housecleaning sexy.
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If there’s anyone left memeing on blogs, or at least memeing on blogs that read MfBJN, I demand, er, ask you to consider what you’ve been looking at on Wikipedia.
Consider this A PERSONAL REQUEST FROM BRIAN J. NOGGLE.
Go to your browser’s address bar and start typing en.wikipedia and report the five top results.
If you care, mine are:
I’d count that as being a Renaissance man. Especially since I’m counting from my Tower machine. Were I recounting from my laptop, no doubt Sinistar would reign supreme.
So what have you been looking at on Wikipedia?
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We went to the gym this morning, my laddie and I, and the man at the front desk offered the child a hand stamp. He accepted, chose a haunted house motif, and bore the green-inked imprint proudly.
At the child care desk, he couldn’t wait to tell the attendant about it. “I have a haunted house,” he said.
“You have a house?” the attendant replied.
“It’s green,” I set up.
“It’s green,” the child said.
“LEED-certified,” I said.
Nobody laughed. But children make excellent straight men.
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In addition to all the various fauna that comes around Nogglestead, including but not limited to armadillos, skunks, raccoons, opossums, and whatnot, we have some reptilian friends about, too, mostly skinks and snakes, who sometimes find their way through holes in the foundation to roam our family room. Briefly. Until our elderly cat gets them.
Well, he doesn’t always get them. One night recently, I was watching a Steven Seagal movie when I heard some hissing from behind me. My two cats were facing off on a very agitated snake on my family room floor. You know, the one we routinely cross barefooted. I called my wife, not so much to handle the snake but to keep the cats back while I…. what? Lopped its head off on the carpeting? That’s SOP, but it would have involved a lot of mess, so I sought an alternative form of treatment, and my poor wife couldn’t see the spectacle, since she was on the phone working at 8pm on a Friday night (!).
So I grabbed an empty clear bin and its lid and managed to snatch the agitated snake half in the bin. This did not calm the snake, but I did get a chance to look closely for fangs. Nothing. So we got that going for us. I opened the back door and threw the snake into the night.
Yeah, I know, I could have been more manly by grabbing the snake by its tail all Steve Irwin-like or even by watching a more appropriate Escape from New York when the incident occurred. However.
At any rate, the other day, my beautiful wife spotted the fellow or its ilk on the deck in the sun:
So it gave me a chance to try to identify the snake. It looks to be a hatchling black rat snake, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation Web site:
Well, all right, this guy goes on the list with all the garter snakes and striped snakes I’ve seen around here. But copperheads are native to the region, too:
The Missouri DoC even offers a pamphlet entitled Missouri Copperheads: They’re Your Friend. They Love You. Please, Put Down The Hoe (PDF). All right, I might have funnin’ed on that subtitle, but not by much. The real subtitle is “They Are Vital To The Natural Scene. They Rarely Bite. They Never Kill”.
It has a nice section about living with the little pit viper, like it’s an episode of Friends and you and this poisonous creature are going to share repartee about personal relationships in the coffee shop. Well, no, it’s tips about leaving them alone.
You know what the Nogglestead policy on deadly creatures is? Hoe, hut! I’ve got children wandering around here, and I can’t chance letting that little rascal slither out of my sight to pop up later with its feline-shaped pupils staring at one of them. Particularly if it’s near the house.
Does that make me a bad, bad man? Copperheads have a lot of acreage out there to roam about happily having a collective negative impact on wildlife in many areas, killing ground-nesting birds, fledgling songbirds and small mammals. I don’t want them on mine.
The MO DoC explains that they rarely bite. Be that as it may, I know someone who has been bitten by a copperhead in the last year (while camping). Just for fun, find out how much antivenom costs and whether your insurance company fully covers it. I’d recommend you do it just for fun and not based on need, or you might walk into an antivenom shortage.
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