To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
In my cabinet in the kitchen where we store our pharmaceuticals and supplements, I recently uncovered this curiosity when I tried to find a child’s liquid medicine syringe among the cat pill guns and out-of-date vitamins:
Continue reading “What Is in Brian’s Cabinets, Part 1 in a Continuing Series”
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My desk is relatively clean these days, as I’m trying to keep ahead of things, but I do still have some strange things on my desk lingering from aeons past. To whit:
By naming these things on the blog, I do tend to handle them in short order, which is why I’m bothering you with them.
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From the February 6, 2012, Ozarks Farm and Neighbor (registration and subscription required):
With the release of the fourth quarter fundraising report, the Your Vote Counts Committee disclosed that the vast majority of their funding comes from the extremist animal-rights groups and donors from outside Missouri. The report, found on the Missouri Ethics Commission’s website, shows that Your Vote Counts Committee received a total of $164,863.92 in monetary and in-kind contributions from out-of-state individuals and special interest groups. Animal-rights groups ASPCA and HSUS contributed $50,000 and $87,305.39 respectively. Only two donors accounting for $150 were from the state of Missouri. In total, 99.91 percent of the Your Vote Counts Committee’s funding came from outside of Missouri in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Here’s that report if you’re interested.
So many ballot initiatives are driven by organizations and committees that have some idea of controlling something that displeases the committeemembers’ sense of aesthetics, and those committees are either directed or helped greatly by out-of-jurisdiction, centralized organizations dedicated to promoting those very laws. The committee forms, gets a couple sawbucks from actual residents, and then the bulk of its money from national organizations.
Another example: The Citizens for Clean Air Springfield, who successfully initiated a local ballot measure and banned smoking in Springfield, Missouri, got the vast majority of its monies from the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society (PDF report). A couple dollars from Springfield residents, a couple dollars from other local residents who do not live in Springfield itself, and tens of thousands of dollars from national organizations.
Did you know if you’re giving money to the American Cancer Society or the American Heart Association, you’re giving money to drive local bars out of business? Of course not. You thought you were giving money to research treatments for these things, but it’s all a big slush fund with national charities.
(Related: Springfield smoking ban targeted by group hoping for repeal)
Does this mean the ballot initiative process is flawed? Well, sort of. It presupposes an informed populace who respects individual freedom and understands that most issues can’t be adequately explored in a bumper sticker or a calendar full of puppies.
Does this mean the organizations should not spend their moneys influencing politics? Well, no, those organizations have the same rights as individuals, corporations, and other organizations in political speech. However, donors and voters need to know where their donations are going and whether the fundraising and political speech on the radio or television actually represents the feelings of their fellow citizens or whether it’s the views of a couple of local citizens and a couple of wealthy citizens from somewhere else.
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Note the description of the man who robbed the bank:
Police say a man wearing a bandana and dirty white gloves robbed a bank in south St. Louis County this afternoon.
Why, oh why, in the 21st century are we remarking upon the gender of this alleged assailant? Just because males make up the vast majority of bank robbers in this country, why should gender be mentioned in the description other than to perpetuate the stereotype that only men rob banks?
(Satire aside, FBI statistics from 2010 show that blacks and whites commit very similar numbers of bank crimes. But what would a descriptor like race do in aiding the police in looking for a bank robber?).
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James Lileks on bootscrapes:
I’m tired of walking across the lot to beep my ID and walk in the building and see the sign that asks me to stomp my feet to remove the snow. It comes out every year, along with a brush for scraping your boots. It has the company logo. It’s got to be more than half a century old.
I AM TIRED OF THE SHOE THING
Well, maybe in the big city, they only bring the bootscrapes out in the winter, but one of the first things I noticed when I moved to the Springfield area is that you’ll find bootscrapes outside many local businesses and whatnot.
Like outside the Republic branch of the Springfield-Greene County Library:
You’ll have to squint to see it in that picture.
Note that that esoteric branch of the library opened in 2009.
We have bootscrapes out here because we have ranchers out here. Not city slickers with their exotic footcoverings for the snow.
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How long have I owned this book? Here’s a photoshopped cover of it I did in July 2005. Oftentimes, I’ve picked it up when looking for something quick to read between weightier things, but Robert Hegyes, who played Esposito in Welcome Back, Kotter died, and I heard “Welcome Back” by John Sebastian on the radio (in tribute to the aforementioned Hegyes). So now seemed the time.
You know what? This is a pretty good book for such as it is.
I’ve read books based on hourlong dramas before (Adam-12 here and here, Murder, She Wrote here), but this might be the first book I’ve read based on a half hour sitcom. And it was pretty witty and true to the characters. While I didn’t laugh out loud at any of it, I was amused enough to want to watch some of the old programs and maybe come up with other books in the series.
As with any 70s paperback, the order forms in the back are always a treat. The books available in paperback immediately preceding this book include several in the Get Smart book series and other pulp. I’ve never, to my recollection, seen a book where the order forms are clipped, indicating someone has actually used them to order books. I wonder if the sort of people who did that were the sort of people to throw books out when they were done, or whether there never really was that sort of people.
UPDATE: How soon they forget. While cataloging this book, I learned I’d already read something by this author. That would be a Happy Days book, Ready to Go Steady, which I read in 2009. This book is far better than that Happy Days book.
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A History Channel Club bookmark has an interesting bit of inconsistency. Can you spot it?
Continue reading “Eh, They’re Republicans, So They’re All The Same Anyway”
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board puts words into Ed Martin’s mouth:
“See brown people. Round up brown people. Ed Martin. Tough on crime.” That’s quite a slogan.
Next, of course, we’ll see those words scroll across the screen in one of Chris Koster’s ads or one of the other entities out there putting out anti-Martin ads in advance of the election.
Paper prints crap, advertisements use crap as evidence that a legitimate news source agrees with advertiser, and hopefully, viewers will ignore the context.
I miss the days when St. Louis had two dailies. The Globe-Democrat, the Sun, whatever.
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Headline: Keep supporting fight against child abuse in the Ozarks
Yeah! Let’s beat child abuse like a red-haired stepchild!
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This film is based on the book by Robert B. Parker which I read in 2005. Since I was to read the fourth book in the series, I ordered the DVD so I could watch it after I finished the last book.
And you know what? The film is better than the book.
The latter 2/3 of Parker’s books were heavily influenced by his years in Hollywood in the 1980s, so they translate very well to the screen. But Parker didn’t write the screenplay–Ed Harris, who plays Cole, did along with a co-writer. As such, he takes the ideal Parkerian hero, the fast draw dead shot who loves a fallen woman character and diminishes him compared to Hitch, the sidekick and narrator. Harris emphasizes that Cole is not book-learned like Hitch when he (Cole) struggles with words. The screenplay also contrasts Cole with Bragg, the bad guy, as being undereducated. He’s not so much an ideal man as a fast man who is simple.
Maybe that’s the way that Parker intended it. Maybe too much interior thinking on Hitch’s park shaped the narrative wrong for it to carry off. Maybe I too much read Parker’s biography into all of his books. But it’s a good enough Western film, and I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed the recent Hitch and Cole books.
DVDs mentioned in this review:
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I’ve started a new blog called Missouri Insight to cover Missouri people, places, books, politics, and government.
Go check it out if you’re so inclined.
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As some of you know, Ed Martin has left the 2nd District race. This leaves Ann Wagner and former Webster Groves city councilman Randy Jotte.
Just so you know there is an alternative to the high-ranking Republican Party animal.
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I was concerned when Bill Hennessy posted about Ed Martin changing races for the second time this election cycle. First, he was running for the Senate. Then, he was running for the 2nd District Congressional seat. Now, he’s running for Missouri State Attorney General.
I’ve supported Ed Martin in his race for the Missouri 3rd Congressional District race in 2010, and I’ve supported him in his quest for both legislative positions this year. I’ll probably pull the lever for him in November for the Attorney General. But the continuing changes give me pause. Continue reading “Ed Martin Changes Races, Again”
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Right after I got married, I decided I was going to take up the art of furniture refinishing since the house where my bride and I rented had a garage where I could do such things. So I acquired a couple pieces to work on, and I managed to refinish a desk that had been in the family for a while that my mother had painted a shade of housing-project-leftover-paint beige. Since that was my only accomplishment in the field, maybe I should say my hobby was acquiring wooden things to refinish.
After a little under a year in our rental, we moved to Casinoport, which had no garage. But that didn’t stop me from acquiring the occasional piece or holding onto the ones I already had. So I acquired this bookshelf Continue reading “DeRooneyfication (III)”
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This book is the fourth of the Cole and Hitch westerns, and they find the duo back in Appaloosa, site of the first film. They’re not the law now–there’s a marshal in town with designs on higher office–but they catch on with the local saloons as private security when the local shopkeepers grow tired of the real town marshal’s protection racket–the merchants pay up extra to make sure that the law arrives in a timely fashion.
While they’re defending a saloon, Cole kills the son of a local rancher (who has taken up residence in the homestead of the last Appaloosa bad guy Cole dispatched), who then hires a killer to dispatch Cole. When a raiding native threatens the town, Cole brings it to the attention of the marshal, who walks right into the native’s trap as Cole and Hitch join forces with the rancher and the killer to save the town from the natives.
It’s a quick read–quicker than The Virginian or Wild Horse Mesa— but it’s a modern book, and it probably sacrifices some depth for pageturning. Which is opposite of what I usually complain about, I know.
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Back in the very early 1990s–like 1990 to 1991, which is really the very late eighties and the first year of the nineties if we must be technical, but since this is a personal narrative essay we don’t, so it was the early 1990s, dammit–I was a student at the University, living in the far northwest corner of Milwaukee, and about two blocks from the Mainstream Records at Fond du Lac and Silver Spring roads. Which explains where much of my non-tuition grocery store paychecks went in those days.
One of the things they offered was cheap 10-packs of used 45 rpm singles. Continue reading “Brian J. Noggle and the Adventure of the Accidental Collectible”
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Neo-neocon spots a campaign sticker:
You know, I thought that was clever when I wore it on a button in 1992.
And look where my mirthful apathy got us then.
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A couple weeks ago, the NRA sent me a DVD for some sort of self-defense course, telling me that it was a free preview, and I could mail it back in the post paid envelope or I could pay them $30 in gold or silver dimes to keep it.
Well, friends, as you might know, if some manufacturer or vendor sends you something unsolicited, that is a free gift to you, and you’re under no obligation to return it or to pay for it.
As the NRA nag letter that looks a lot like an invoice but can’t be an invoice says:
Although I’m not sure how the required text telling me I’m not obligated to pay for your widely cast net amounts to a “Service Guarantee.”
Good on ya, NRA. You’re stooping to the tricks of the Time-Warner media empire and trying to trick me out of money you don’t think you can get from me honestly. Did I say “good”? I meant a good pox.
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Here at Missouri Insight, we come down very hard on the concepts of TIFs because they favor one business over another. In Illinois, the Collinsville Gateway Center takes it to the logical conclusion, asking not only for the government to collect taxes to build infrastructure for the independent business, but to help pay its bills:
Declining revenue has prompted the Gateway Center to ask the city of Collinsville to allow it to keep the city’s portions of tax increment financing funds to cover the center’s operating costs.
Under a 2006 agreement between Gateway and the city, the convention center is allowed to use TIF funds collected in the hospitality district to satisfy shortages on its bond debt. The remainder of the funds collected are to be distributed equally between the center and the city. Gateway keeps 50 percent to cover maintenance and improvement costs and the city keeps 50 percent for future development.
Earlier this month, during a City Council strategic planning meeting, Gateway Center Director Cindy Warke asked the council to allow Gateway to retain the entire amount, which averages to about $250,000 a year, according to the city’s Community Development Director Paul Mann.
To sum up: because the business cannot generate business enough to cover its bills, it’s asking the city to give it money collected as taxes.
Why is this business more special than the hotel across the highway? Because government officials have said so, and will again.
In other convention center news, Springfield, Missouri, has a convention center that it feels is underperforming:
Inadequate facilities and the lack of a connecting hotel have been cited as reasons Springfield’s Expo Center isn’t doing more business.
In a report distributed to City Council on Tuesday, city staff said John Q. Hammons Hotels’ management of the center has fallen short of expectations, as well.
“Staff does not believe the Exposition Center has been marketed or used to its maximum potential,” the report says, noting Hammons Hotels has failed to submit required reports on a regular basis.
The memo, drafted in response to questions posed by Councilman Tom Bieker, said the problems likely fall short of justifying termination of the Hammons’ management contract, which runs through at least 2028 and could be extended a decade past that.
As a result, it might seek to terminate its designated private half of the public/private partnership that is floundering and to find, undoubtedly, another private half to rain public funds on to chase the dwindling convention and conference market. And when the new management underperforms, what then? More of the same, one might expect.
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As I mentioned, I bought this book last Wednesday, and I knew it wouldn’t take me long to get to reading it and to read it once I started. Blockade Billy is a novella in a hardcover along with a short story called “Morality”.
The title novella covers the discovery of a star catcher for the Titans. Blockade Billy, as he comes to be known, is a simple-minded youngster brought up from a AA team when the Titans’ catcher is hurt. He comes to town, focuses on the game, but he has dark secrets in his past that will come to light and make him the only player ever erased from Major League Baseball history.
King’s at his best here, pulling along with just the right voice and foreshadowing. The frame story is that Mr. King is interviewing the third base coach from the Titans to discover the real story, so it’s told in a very conversational style that’s easy to read.
The short story, though, “Morality”, is hardly worth reading. It’s a dash of the film Indecent Proposal thrown in with a twisted preacher and how his indecent proposal causes a marriage to break up. There are no characters in it worth sympathizing with and it’s rather stock.
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