To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Boy saved from Eau Claire bowling alley ball-return machine
A toddler who wandered down a lane at a Wisconsin bowling alley and was pulled into a ball return machine is rescued by one of the alley’s employees.
There are so many quips one could make about this incident, but only because the lad is okay.
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After I finished The Coming of Conan the Cimmerian, it felt the right time to delve back into the Gor series. I was taken a bit aback how long it’s been since I read the previous book in the series–I read Raiders of Gor in October 2007.
This book, though, was a bad place to resume. It’s not a Tarl Cabot story. Instead, it’s one of the one-off stories featuring a woman on Gor. The first, actually. It deals with a spoiled high society girl from Manhattan who’s taken to Gor to be a slave. And so she does.
The basic story arc is that the ship in which she is a passenger is shot down; she’s found by a slaver, trained to be a slave, gets rescued by some Forest Girls who are like Amazons, except they’re really just ‘liberating her’ to sell her to someone; she’s delivered to that someone in a building in the woods, but she escapes from that to be recaptured by guards of her original slaver. She’s sold and sold again, finally becoming the property and lover of a leader of a town, but he sells her, and she goes from owner to owner until getting pressured into an attempt on a merchant’s life.
That’s the high view. The details and bulk of the book are in the politics of the slaves, how this character is a weak liar, thief, and betrayer of other slaves. She’s never really redeemed in any fashion except (perhaps according to the ideology of the book) that she becomes a perfect slave.
There are hints and foreshadowing that she’s been chosen to be part of something, so I’d hoped that would come out at some point, but ultimately, it gets related very hurriedly in the last chapter, where she’s part of an assassination plot. At that point, things foreshadowed and hinted at are dumped into a couple of paragraphs, and it resolves kinda poorly.
So I was disappointed with this book, and I’ve got at least three remaining on my shelves. I might pick up another one soon–before 2021, I would hope. You can see a little bit as the series progresses, or at least I can looking back to my reports of the books, as to how Tarl Cabot gets to do a lot of different things like Conan did. He’s a pirate, he’s a warrior, he’s a slave. Norman really owed those old pulp books a debt, and he repays them pretty well.
Just not in this book.
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Everyone has heard of the five second rule (Wikipedia link for those callously excluded and oppressed by my use of the word “everyone” to imply “everyone good, intelligent, and moral” when that does not include you, you oppressed victim of my facile, lazy turn of phrase).
However, not everyone knows the five second corollary:
When transferring laundry from the washer to the dryer, if you drop a clean but damp article of clothing to the floor, it will not pick up dirt from the floor if you pick it up within five seconds. If you do, you can just throw it in the dryer.
Science.
UPDATE: Thanks for the , Mr. Hill.
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This is a fascinating book, especially on the meta level.
It is the autobiography of Horace Conner, born in 1919. Here’s how he puts it in the first lines of the book:
I was born on May 15, 1912 in Cotton County, Oklahoma, the southern part of Oklahoma on the Little Red River. I was the second child. The year I was born my father’s house was blown away in a cyclone.
And we’re off.
The book chronicles, in some order, his youth in a large, blended family; his businesses throughout the Depression with his father, particularly working on farms and orchards; his drafting into World War II and his service in the Navy and in post-surrender Japan; then his return to the United States, his failed marriage, his carousing and carrying on with women; and then his jobs after the war, including time in a produce market and a distribution center for Marshall Fields in Kansas City.
It’s a life of some dude who didn’t do particularly heroic things or live a particularly memorable life. But the voice is complex and engaging, or maybe I’m reading too much into it.
He’s humble, saying he wasn’t very good at writing at school, but here he’s written the book. He does a lot of humble bragging, where he does something and throws in that someone who saw him do it thinks he’s the best they’ve ever seen at it; I’m not sure if he is actually humblebragging because he’s good at it and wants affirmation of it or if he’s throwing it in to say it’s because he’s showing us he is too good at something. Some of the things he’s done that are less than heroic are just dropped in, like selling stuff from the Navy on the black market. But he also throws in stuff that he does that’s all right, like feeding Japanese war orphans from the back of his ship. He admits that he’s a bit of a carouser and not good relationship material, but that’s matter-of-fact and he doesn’t regret it or think it’s immoral or counterproductive. He goes out of town on a pleasure trip and ends up missing a day of work, and the excuse he gives his boss is that he was in jail in Sedalia. That’s his best excuse. And the manager buys it and keeps him on. What does that say outside the text of the book?
Most tellingly, he mentions that he wanted to have children and that he enjoyed time with his stepson while he was married, but he leaves no admitted progeny. He talks about retiring and picking up his small entrepreneurial ways, delivering some produce and selling it from his trucks. But he doesn’t much mention church–although he claims to read the Bible, particularly Proverbs. And he talks a little about his methodology of research at the library to make sure he gets his dates right in the book.
But he never explains why he wrote the book.
It’s not for his kids. Perhaps his nieces and nephews? I don’t know. For someone who claimed to not be a good writer, he didn’t do badly. But why did he do it? The writing of this book does not necessarily jibe with the simple man described within it.
As I said, on the meta level, it’s fascinating. And it wasn’t a bad read (better than An Ozark Boy’s Story for example) but there’s no real climactic payoff. After all, this is the life of a man. Also, gentle reader, it’s apparently $125 on the Internet, so you’ll probably not pick it up.
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She blinded me with Scions.
You’ll have to make your own set-up for it, though, since I’m coming up with nothing.
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A subject line fail from Apple:
I mean, isn’t kinda the thinking around the holiday that you are the great match for your Valentine?
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Certainly not that of the Wall Street Journal columnists.
First, in Bret Stephens’ Dancing in the Nuclear Dark, a bit of alt-pop-culture:
Where do federal government reports go once they’ve been published and (lightly) chewed over by second-tier officials, congressional staffers and think-tank wonks? I picture them being packed into crates and stored in some vast warehouse, like the Ark of the Covenant in the last scene of “Indiana Jones.”
The film’s name was Raiders of the Lost Ark.
At the bottom of the page, Fay Vincent offers Ten Tips for New Executives which includes:
Be sure to manage down. Spend time with the lower-level employees in your company and try to be decent to all of them. A polite greeting to the elevator operator, a thanks to the mail delivery person and a kind word to the assistants will be appreciated.[Emphasis added]
The elevator operator? Might as well have guided people to be kind to the stenographers and the milkman.
The New York Observer sez:
IT’S WELL KNOWN AMONG THE SMALL WORLD of people who pay attention to such things that the liberal-leaning reporters at The Wall Street Journal resent the conservative-leaning editorial page of The Wall Street Journal.
Apparently, the fact checkers hate them, too.
(Link to the Observer piece courtesy of the Ace of Spades HQ sidebar.)
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Trog links to a piece on The Federalist entitled The Top Ten Books People Lie About Reading and enumerates those which he, Trog, has read between Danica Patrick fan fiction (between two and five, because Trog counts partial reads).
I’d seen the linked piece before and considered doing a list-post comparing what I’ve read to the actual list, but my laziness precluded me. But now that all the cool kids are doing it (“If Trog jumped onto a river, would you?” “Yeah!”)
A little note, though: the item at the Federalist says “ten” books, but one list entry is actually two books. The math, it is hard for English majors.
Ergo, here is the list, with the ones I have read rendered in bold:
I do own Les Miserables and Democracy in America with the intent to read them. I also own Ulysses, but I’m not sure I’ll ever reach a point where I pick that up before another book unless it’s a post-apocalyptic world where I’m burning books for warmth.
That’s six of eleven. And The Art of War and The Prince are a hundred pages each. They’re not books. They’re fat pamphlets.
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I can’t believe I have to replace this belt already! I just paid $10 for this belt at Walmart three years ago and wear it almost every day.
Jeez, I’ve definitely turned a corner in aging gracelessly, ainna?
And don’t get me started on these cheap black sweatpants that I bought because I could not afford a gi when taking bujitsu in 1997. Can you believe they’re wearing thin in spots already?
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Undoubtedly, Charles has already seen this, but you might not have: Bob Greene, formerly of the Chicago Tribune, has a bit about Petula Clark in the Wall Street Journal:
Last year she released an album called “Lost in You” with a song, “Cut Copy Me,” that Time magazine deemed one of the 10 best of 2013. As remarkable as her life has been—she was Fred Astaire’s last big-screen dance partner (“Finian’s Rainbow,” 1968), she co-starred opposite Peter O’Toole (“Goodbye, Mr. Chips, ” 1969)—the girl who sang in solitude in the Welsh mountains remains. “We all build up our facade,” she says. “But the 5-year-old, she’s still there.”
You might know, gentle reader, that I continue to be impressed with the number of the 1960s people who continue to put out quality music outside the mainstream awareness.
Full disclosure: I own two Petula Clark LPs.
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Spotted in a shop:
It’s a decorative throw pillow.
That says Man Cave.
I’m not sure how the manufacture of this eldritch artifact did not immediately consume the entirety of the universe in some sort of instantaneous energy inversion triggered by the paradox.
UPDATE: Thanks for the link, Ms. K. Hey, VftP readers, check out my IT-themed comic heist novel John Donnelly’s Gold and my (allegedly) humorous play The Courtship of Barbara Holt, both available on Kindle for .99 or in paperback.
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Main Street Books will survive: St. Charles store has buyer:
St. Charles-area book lovers can celebrate: Main Street Books, expected to close this month, has found new owners.
Current owners [Redacted] said today that Emily, [Redacted] will buy the store as of Feb. 14. [Redacted], 24, a graduate of Truman State University who majored in English, will oversee the day-to-day operations of Main Street Books. Her parents live in Weldon Spring and she lives in Bel-Nor.
I’m pleased to see the book store survive because I like independent book stores, and my beautiful wife and I visited this shop on our first date.
I’m a little reserved about it, though, given that it’s being bought to provide a job for a young English major. Hopefully, she’ll handle it.
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I’m working on a joke about fencing and a good meal where the punchline is “Parry/repast.”
Please plan to laugh politely when I come up with the appropriate setup.
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This book was a part of my beautiful wife’s collection until she decided to winnow her collection down. I culled the discards for books I wanted, and so I got this one. Which I might have gotten for her as a gift in the swirling clouds of the past.
This book is a collection of poems as written by famous poets’ cats. You’ve got “The Cat’s Tale” by Chaucer’s cat, “Vet, Be Not Proud” by John Donne’s cat, “Kubla Kat” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s cat, and so on.
They’re very clever, and I felt very clever and/or well-read for recognizing most of the source material. It only cost me $40,000 plus interest in an English degree for that.
But, as with my riff about the loss of allusion in heavy metal music, I have to wonder if there are many Generation X-level people who would enjoy this book or if there are any members of later generations that would get them at all. Some, I suppose, but not many. Ah, life. There is no before-me, there is no after-me, there is only during-me.
At any rate, as I said, I enjoyed the brief little book, and the book made me want to re-read the poems they were based on. Did you know I used to be able to recite “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” from memory? Indeed, I used to do it at poetry open-mic nights in St. Louis, and I impressed my beautiful wife (then my beautiful girlfriend)’s mother, an English teacher in high school, by reciting it to her the first time we met. But that’s been a long time. I should work on re-memorizing those things.
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This book was designed as a gift for graduating seniors. It’s got a little place for a to and from in the beginning and a message. Given that 1995 was about seventeen years from 1978 (and ninteen years from now, old man), I’m deducing here.
It’s a little book of tidbits, a couple lists about news stories and pop culture in the year 1978.
I was six in 1978, so I don’t remember any of the news from that time. I mean, I do know of the things now: the Camp David Accords, Jim Jones, Sid and Nancy, and so on, but I don’t remember knowing them at the time. The first news things I think I can recollect are gas lines, the Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.
The only pop-cultural things I knew then were the television programs: Laverne and Shirley number 1, Happy Days number 2. But I know of the music (“Night Fever” the number one record, higher than “Stayin’ Alive”. Really?) and the books (#1: If Life is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing In The Pits?) because the cultural impact is more resonant over the years than the news items themselves.
Still, it’s a good reprise to bring you back a bit and maybe freshen things up if the Jeopardy! people summon me for an audition this year.
And, strangely enough, it’s probably a quicker read than this blog post was.
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Ah, now this book is a little more manly that decoupagistry.
This book is the first of a three-volume set that includes all of the Conan stories in the original order, which is to say not chronological order according to Conan’s point of view. Howard wrote just a bunch of stories from Conan’s life with a handy history guide he created after a couple of the stories.
For those of you who don’t know, the Conan stories are set in a prehistoric age called the Hyborean Age wedged between the fall of Atlantis and the rise of our recorded civilizations. They’re centered around a land mass similar to Europe, but different enough. Conan is a king fighting assassins, a pirate, a mercenary, and a bunch of different things as he swashbuckles through a series of adventures that are fresh enough in the beginning, but at the end of the volume start to become just a touch formulaic. As they would, being the inspiration for many knock-offs we’ve all seen in film since then and have read other stories (Brak the Destroyer, I’m looking at you–John Jakes endorses the Conan stories with a quote on the cover, and he’s identified as the author of North and South, but I remember him most as a writer of a couple of collected volumes of stories similar to this).
It’s definitely sword and sorcery, as the gods, demons, and summoning make up many parts of plot points. Some of the descriptions are even Lovecraftian–and it comes as no surprise, as Howard and Lovecraft corresponded and worked for the same editors and magazines. Conan stories are a bit like Lovecraft stories where humanity gets to hit back.
In addition to the stories, there are a couple of introductory and academic essays explaining the Importance of Howard and a bit of his writing chronology. They’re okay if you don’t take them too seriously and don’t mind skipping past it. I don’t know why I want my actual histories to be written by homers who appreciate and somewhat applaud or respect their subject, but I get a little irritated when editors and literature majors do that with fiction.
The book also includes the aforementioned history of the Hyborean age that Howard wrote to keep his notes and stories straight, some maps in his hand, and some fragments and drafts. It also includes his first draft of his first Conan story. When you compare them directly, you get a pretty good sense of how editting can improve writing. I’m a poor editor, as readers of my books can attest, but this example offers a stark example of the benefits.
So I enjoyed the book, but given its length and the fact that it is short stories means it took me longer than I would have liked to have read it. So although I own the other volumes, I don’t expect to dive right into them immediately. But I look forward to them.
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So there’s some fad going around school. Who knows how second graders get these notions in their heads? But my son has been talking about Poconos cards. All his friends collect them and pass them around and trade them. So he said, “Daddy, can I get some Poconos cards?”
Well, my son, through the wonder of eBay, you can. To surprise him, I picked these beauties up:
He might just have the most enviable collection of Poconos cards in his class.
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As you might know, gentle reader, my beautiful wife and I are pretentious enough that our cats have literary or mythological names.
Retired names include Galt, Ajax, and Dominique. Our current group of prowlers include Tristan, Aurora, Roark, Athena, and Isis.
But I hereby announce my intent that we name our next cats in the following literary fashion: H.P. Lovecraft stories.
Come on, there’s scarcely a title here that’s not suitable for naming a cat. The best:
I’ll have to stop there, or I’ll republish the whole bibliography in a different order.
I’m so inspired that I want to go to the feline recycling center right now.
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According to this story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, more objects are becoming murderous: Police seek pickup after man, 80, is killed in hit-and-run near Hillsboro
An 80-year-old man was struck and killed this morning near Hillsboro and authorities are searching for the pickup believed to have struck him before driving away.
So guns aren’t the only self-activating agents of human destruction any more.
On the one hand, it’s not passive voice, which is poor writing. On the other hand, ascribing actions to objects is worse than obscuring agency through passive voice.
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This book is the first book I’ve read this year, and it’s the end of January. My weeks and nights have been fairly busy through this part of the year, friends, and I’m suddenly afraid that I will never again hit the hundred-books-a-year pace I sometimes feebly use to rationalize my hundred-books-a-weekend book buying sprees.
And I got this book from the library, no less, something to flip through during football games. I wasn’t even that good about flipping through books during games this year, and there are no more games, alas. Where was I? Oh, yes, Modge Podge Rocks.
It’s basically a book about decoupage, which is gluing and shellacking paper or similar material to other material. Modge Podge is a popular compound for doing this. You brush some on the surface to which you want to adhere the decorations, press on the decorations, and layer more Modge Podge over the top. There’s not a lot to it, and you can have some interesting effects on stuff.
This book started out as a blog where the author did some decoupage and posted it, and later other people submitted things. And the author got a book deal. Strangely, one of the guest designers is Cathie Fillian, whose television program Creative Juice served as the inspiration for my forays into crafting.
So I’ve done some decoupaging before based on the inspiration from Creative Juice, I’ve gotten away from it and the whole crafting thing because my ideas have outpaced my skill level with these things, which leads to reluctance to start something new.
But I’ll try it again. After all, I have most of a jar of Modge Podge left, and I’d hate for it to go to waste. And by “to waste,” I mean “for twenty five cents at my estate sale.”
So this book has reminded me about this particular crafting style and could serve as a good introduction to those who aren’t familiar with the craft.
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