Category: Life

Heather has a birthday coming up this summer. Want to know what not to get her?

Approximately 730 bales of styrofoam.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you if she unwraps that gift with your name on it.

Here’s a piece of on-product advertising from Frito-Lay:

The text:

America prefers the taste of Lay’s Stax® Original Potato Crisps Over Pringles® Original Potato Crisps**

Taste for Yourself!

** Among those with a preference

Among those with a preference? You mean amongst the thirty people outside of Lay’s who have heard of the canned Lay’s? Wow, that’s some bandwagon there.

In a related note, America prefers Musings from Brian J. Noggle to Pop-Up Mocker**

** Among those with a preference and who know what a “blog” is and who have heard of either of the aforementioned bottom-feeding blogs.

Hoover, the talking seal.

Well, it’s Saturday, so I’ve got nothing better to do than to expose you to a representative of my well-used bookmark collection. It’s really only a collection because the bookmarks are accumulating in the nightstand drawer, not because I’m actively seeking new and exotic bookmarks. If I were, I’d undoubtedly have better items than the collection of Amazon, used book store, and “here’s a gift, send us money” unsolicited fundraiser bookmarks I’ve got. Still, some of the bookmarks merit comment, including this one:

This bookmark comes to us from 1985, and it’s geared to students. Check out the fellow depicted upon the front of the bookmark. He’s got a flattop haircut undoubtedly helped out with a liberal dose of gel. By 1985, we were moving out of the heavily-teased hair styles for the most part and into more natural looks. At least we were in the middle of America; perhaps the Flock of Seagulls thing persisted in pockets on the coasts (although the mullet has yet to go out of style in Jefferson County, Missouri). This kid’s wearing a t-shirt with his own picture on it, the very latest thing available from the malls, and a pair of the oversized shorts they called jams. Me, I never had a pair of jams, although I liked to call the patterned oversized swimming trunks I acquired via hand-me-down-from-outside-the-family or parental garage sale purchase “jams” simply because they had a design upon them. This kid’s also wearing a pair of untied Converse or some other non-Nike brand of high-tops, all the rage amongst the rural toughies in the area in which I went to high school. Toughies whom the urban toughs that I spent my early years would have eaten alive (and probably have in prison by now, or so I hope in the remainder of my adolescent revenge fantasies). The text of this bookmark reads, “It’s cool to be you!” The irony, of course, lies in that this self-esteem-boosting message lies on a bookmark. Cool kids, or at least those of the soc or jock or hooter/stoner mentality would not be privy to this particular boost. The very fact that this message appears on a bookmark implies that the adults-that-be, or at least the adults-that-were expected that young people with books needed self-esteem boosts to make up for the slights and the lacks of dates and for all the other various and sundry humiliations levied against those who preferred books to television and the assorted social and physical vandalism that represents the high school experience…. well, a simple I’m OK, You’re OK from a bookmark wouldn’t do a thing for a teenager, who would see through its facetiousness and condescensious consolation. I wouldn’t have taken it seriously as encouragement had I owned this bookmark in 1985; since I got it sometime as part of a yard sale book purchase, where it was wedged between the incompletely-read pages of some adult book, it helped me even less than a “It’s cool to be a middle-aged suburban subdivision dweller” bookmark more geared to my demographic. Crikey, I hope no teenager has thrown a belt over a rafter as a result of the loss of this security blanket.

The back of this particular bookmark indicates that I’m not lying when I say it’s circa 1985; as a matter of fact, the text indicates it’s copyright, which I am no doubt violating terribly since you gentle readers could blow up the pictures, print them on the new-fangled photo-quality color ink jets whose abilities we could only see in movies in 1985 while we listened to our dot-matrix printers chattering away or the daisy wheels pounding on paper. Please, do not send me a nickel when you do so, for you’d just be an obvious plant from the copyright holder’s lawyers. The brand name, Tab-Marks, would indicate that this bookmark was the product of one of the big three book clubs of the era. Come on, Generation X, you know what I am talking about. The single sheet of full-color (not the Weekly Reader, you pre-addled baby boomleters) front and back distributed in class that allowed those of us who needed ego-booster bookmarks to choose from a menu of paperback books for a buck or two each. Arrow, Tab, and Scholastic fliers made the rounds at my elementary and junior high (although in Missouri, they call them middle school) classes. Kinda like Columbia House for kids, with nothing required to buy in the future. It was always a big deal, as our family was rather, um, undercapitalized, to get to order books from these services. I did, on occasion; after a couple of weeks, I got some books that were mine and not the library’s. Wholesome youth entertainment like Judy Blume and Beverly Cleary (I consider it a testament to the power of these book clubs, and the library, that I still score 8 of 10 on the Harry Huggins trivia quiz). Do kids still get these circulars? We don’t have children yet, so I don’t know whether schools fit them in yet amongst the year-round fundraisers to which those pimping schools subject their students. Perhaps children of the twenty-first century don’t need pencils to make checkmarks and ticks on full-color order forms when they can use their cellular phones to order the books directly from Amazon.com. I hope one or the other is the case; I’d hate to think that no children spend rainy afternoons in overstuffed recliners with simple paperbacks extolling the adventures of anyone not named Potter. Mainly because my dream is to open a used book store, and to be honest, the Greatest Generation, who stocked their post WWII homes with New American Library editions of the classics, the few Baby Boomers not into free love and protests, and the few straggling, under-self-esteemed (apparently) Generation Xers are dying off faster than I can accummulate the wealth and stock to start the money-losing dream-come-true.

Remarkable, ainna, that bookmarks can jog as many memories and reflections, sometimes, as the books into which we stick them? So many people just jam notes, slips of paper, and bank privacy notices (hem, well, perhaps only for technical, business-related books, you see) into books because reading doesn’t require the pomp and circumstance of true bookmarks.

Although, oddly, perhaps that would merit a better sign of books’ ubiquitousness….

Australian columnist Phillip Adams calls the Oscars a symbol of American hegemony. To alter the quote of a more famous Australian, that’s not a symbol of American hegemony, this is a symbol of American hegemony:

(Link seen on Tim Blair.)

May 7: Free Comic Book Day

You know, I don’t normally play chess because most knowledgeable opponents recognize the Noggle Blitz for what it really is–a shortsighted attempt to take as many of the opponent’s pieces as fast as possible while sowing confusion with those inexplicable queen-for-knight swaps.

Of course, I don’t normally drink hard liquor either. But this Shot Glass Chess Set might make me take up both. Take a piece, do a shot!

I wonder what the blogosphere’s resident chessophile would think?

UPDATE: Pejman says what he thinks.

Imagine my horror this morning when I discovered that I opened my new toothbrush from the wrong end:

Jeez, I should have read all instructions carefully. By removing the toothbrush from the box handle first, I’ve not only violated the warranty, which means that if this toothbrush fails to clean my teeth effectively, I cannot return it to the manufacturer for repair, but also that I have actually diminished the effectiveness of the toothbrush whose toothcleaning power was actually activated by the upward motion of the toothbrush head through the OPEN THIS END side.

Not to mention this very blog entry will be used as evidence against me at the next hearing, making it harder for me to acquire and receive a license for toothbrushes in the future.

What a sucky way to start my day.

Save Toby.

Toby is the cutest little bunny on the planet. Unfortunately, he will DIE on June 30th, 2005 if you don’t help. I rescued him several months ago. I found him under my porch, soaking wet, injured from what appeared to be an attack from an alley cat. I took him in, thinking he had no chance to live from his injuries, but miraculously, he recovered. I have since spent several months nursing him to health. Toby is a fighter, that’s for sure.

Unfortunately, on June 30th, 2005, Toby will die. I am going to eat him. I am going to take Toby to a butcher to have him slaughter this cute bunny. I will then prepare Toby for a midsummer feast. I have several recipes under consideration, which can be seen, with some pretty graphic images, under the recipe section.

As a poor young man in Milwaukee in the middle 1970s, I ate a lot of rabbit. My father had a string of traps in the city parks and sometimes shot rabbits right out of his car. We ate so much rabbit my father called it “Fuzzy Chicken.” Say what you will, but we never went too hungry when my father was between jobs.

Does using the word bollix in an office e-mail create a hostile work environment, or is it merely tacky?

Because I can handle tacky.

Sure, Cagey throws me a bone and reminds me that the Atari 2600 was only # 9 in MobilePC’s The Top 100 Gadgets of All Time, but come on, it’s a magazine entitled Mobile PC–who could have foreseen that laptops and PDAs would weigh heavily?

As a retaliatory strike, I say to him: How many of these classic games do you recognize by their screenshots? It should be easy, old timer, since you’ve probably played at least one of them at an Atari Party sometime and you’ve played the close sibling of another.

(Link seen on A Small Victory.)

JC T-Shirts: They could be hot sellers in Nigeria!

That’s what I assume from this e-mail I received:

Hello,
We want to order some product from your store to our store in lagos,Nigeria.First of all,we will like to know maybe you shipp via (USPS GLOBAL EXPRESS 4-5 DAYS DELIVERY SERVICE).And the method of payment will be made by major credit card. Kindly respond to this enquiry as soon as possible.Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Best regards.

Accept a credit card payment and drop ship to Nigeria? What could possibly go wrong?

But you, gentle reader, can still order any of these snazzy designs through Cafe Press:

Visualize World Hegemony

Cog in the Machine

Tao Sharks

Here’s your future trivia question answer for the week. Remember it and you’ll be the hero of your trivia night in five years:

Flash mob

I first saw this new form of apostrophe abuse on a late night car dealer’s ad (Yes, George Weber, you’re the offender). However, I see that even CNN is doing it now:

The new abuse: putting 05′ to indicate 2005. You schnucking cretins, don’t you understand the apostrophe represents what was removed? It ought to be ’05, to signify that you, like John Donne and William Shakespeare, have removed something where the apostrophe is.

Oh, but no. Now, in addition to being the tick mark to indicate feet instead of inches, according to the new rules, you can sprinkle an apostrophe any where you want to indicate something in the expression has been truncated. Because readers love puzzles, and maybe they’ll click the link or go to the automobile showroom to find out just what the illiterate meant.

We here in the Noggle Household recycle a lot. But instead of paying several dollars a month to have the locally-contracted waste removal company take a select number of items, categorized just so and following these said rules so that the uncaring garbagemen can dump the recycleables into a single truck and drive it to the dump, we separate a our goods and sneak them to another municipality’s recycling center. We can recycle a greater number of items this way, for the same cost in gas, and we’re further abstracted from the corner-cutting that will bury our recycleables in a landfill.

But Ann Althouse speaks the real reason we don’t put our recycling at the curb:

Good thing we drank a lot of milk this week so there are plenty of bulky milk containers to cover up all the wine and beer bottles that conveniently sink to the bottom — otherwise the locals might think ill of us — but then they’d probably think ill of us if we had a lot of diet soda cans — or even soda cans, period.

I had to buy a pickup truck to ferry my empties to the recycling facility. Even so, I don’t expect that the neighbors think the clinking in the opaque black bags is milk bottles.

Attention other husbands out there: Les Miserables is not an up-and-coming blues band. Your wife is tricking you to see a singing play. Don’t fall for it, or you, too, might find yourself having nightmares about living in a world where everyone communicates by singing, and you only understand one word in four.

Or so I heard.

UPDATE: Another band geek weighs in.