To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
See, I post about my messy desktop, and I set to work cleaning it. You’re an inspiration to me, gentle reader.
The Blip, mounted:
The Blip and the Parker Brothers Merlin join the previous wallhangings. All, of course, are mounted on Velcro so I can pull them down and play a quick game any time I want to, natch.
The cat thing, though, that’s still on my desk until I figure out what to do with it.
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Last spring, I lost a part from my rototiller, so I went down to the sporting goods store and bought a metal detector to find it. And since I live on the edge of the Old Wire Road / Trail of Tears, I thought I might become a relic hunter–that’s what the people who use metal detectors call themselves. Or treasure hunters if they look for pure metal. So I ordered this book to get an idea of how to use my metal detector.
The book was written by Charles Garrett, President of the Garrett Metal Detectors company, so the book gives a lot of attention to the innovations in the latest Garrett detectors. It provides a broad overview, from looking for coins on the beach to using metal detectors to prospect for gold in the American West. It has a chapter on how good the hobby is for seniors and children. Ergo, it’s a little broader than I would have hoped.
I guess to get the knowledge I hope for, I’ll have to spend a little more time using the device rather than reading about it. Ain’t that the way?
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Perry once invested in firm that profited from porn.
W00t! An early investor in Vivid Entertainment? Not so much:
A 16-year-old investment by Texas Gov. Rick Perry in a firm that rented pornographic movies is drawing new scrutiny in light of his just-launched presidential campaign.
Liberal bloggers and a handful of news sites have been taking the Republican candidate to task for his 1995 investment in the now-defunct Movie Gallery, which at the time was an Alabama-based video store chain that attributed some of its profits from renting pornographic films.
What? He just invested in a movie rental chain? That’s a firm that profited from porn? Hang on, let me pause here to laugh outrageously again.
You’ve got a Republican Christian running for president, so all of a sudden, it’s a bunch of gotcha journalism, wheels within wheels of HYPOCRISY! Journalists who kind of nod at national Democratic leaders’ churchgoing (it’s the pageant) and who ignore moral defects suddenly start thumping the bible like a drum to send a message to the savage natives that THIS MAN IS NOT A CHRISTIAN! (like you, rube.)
Let those amongst you who have not invested in Blockbuster or Johnson and Johnson (who profits from products that promote premarital and homosexual sex!!!! amongst other things) cast the first stone.
(Joke, and I hope this is really just a joke, seen via Hot Air’s headlines.)
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An unsorted list that describes, really, why I need to clean off my desk:
These things were deposited by me onto this desk months ago because I need to take a couple minutes to clean them or whatnot. Instead of doing that, I’ve posted on my blog, and soon enough a blizzard of paper to file and act upon will cover them again until the springtime.
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Courtesy of Instapundit, we have this story:
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) announced Thursday that Virginia has finished its fiscal year with a surplus of $544.8 million through higher-than-expected tax revenue and savings.
And suddenly, the idea comes to me: The Federal Government should tax the rich states!
I mean, why should the fiscally prudent legislators and governor in Virginia get to keep that surplus? I believe when you spread the wealth around states, it’s good for everyone, especially California, New York, Illinois, and other blue state fiscal disaster areas.
Plus, it punishes the mostly red states and encourages them to spill every drop of taxpayer sweat they can.
Damn, it’s a good thing I’m not a Democratic strategist. I’m awful devious.
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The town in which I lived prior to my moving to Southwest Missouri has been recognized in Money as one of the best 100 places to live in the US:
Nestled among tall oak trees planted 200 years ago, the neighborhoods in Webster Groves–named for 19th century statesman Daniel Webster–offer considerable economic diversity. Just two miles outside St. Louis city limits, the town has affordable housing that draws young families, plus much more expensive homes.
Funny, that. Actually, the story of the naming is a little more complicated. In the 19th century, there was a school named for Daniel Webster that got a train stop. The school closed, but the train stop remained, so when the townspeople wanted to incorporate to keep the demon liquor out, they applied for the name “Webster.” However, since there was already a Webster, Missouri, they had to append “Groves” on it to get the official town name. True story. You just read it on the Internet.
Was that college Webster University? No, of course not: Webster University 1) isn’t closed and 2) was named for Noah Webster, who donated land to the Sisters of Loretto who ran the then-named Loretto College but who needed a new name since there was already a, you guessed it, Loretto College. True story. You just read it on the Internet.
Hey, wait a minute: Why is Old Trees suddenly on this list after I moved away?
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Courtesy of Woody, we have the top 100 NPR Science Fiction and Fantasy Books and Series. What? A list of books! Of course we have to measure ourselves against it.
Gentle readers, remember this means I read the book, this means I own the book and haven’t read it yet, and this means I’ve read part of the series. Also, I’ve included a link to those books whose book reports I’ve published on MfBJN.
It looks like 28 complete novels/series and 3 partials. On the other hand, I have read other books in series whose first book is mentioned (the Rama series, the Ringworld series, 3 of the 4 books in the Elijah Bailey series by Asimov, maybe an extra Foundation book or two beyond the Foundation trilogy, and so on.
Frankly, I’d rather the compiler of these lists include books in series as individual books if they’re going to include them at all, just for consistency sake.
Also, note that to catch up with Woody (who has read 44 of the list, somehow), I should to focus on individual novels on it instead of series, since reading the Lord of the Rings and Dune took me most of the summer, but only counts as one item on this list. Or I could read what I want and just let the list items embolden where they may.
I like the last. Also, when the world comes out with the best 100 best Gold Eagle Books, I’ll…. Well, considering that Gold Eagle has been publishing a large number of books for 30 years, I’d still have a hard time with meeting those list items unless the early Executioner series was overrepresented. Which it very well might be.
Also, I’d like to lament that only one of the authors on this list has said anything nice about my writing. It was Marion Zimmer Bradley after a submission to her eponymous magazine in the 1990s. At least I think it was complimentary: “Much like 200 others, but better written.” Hey, in those days as these, I’ll take what I can get.
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This book is a short collection of tales from Ozarks lore, broken into categories such as “Tales of the Supernatural”, “Indian Tales”, “Treasure Tales”, “Outlaw Stories”, and so on. None of them are well-researched or well-documented, but they do give one interesting stories to tell the children and ideas for little essays and historical bits if one wants to put in the time to conduct real research.
The best bit about this book, though, is this written on the title page:
As some of you assuredly know, the William Quantrill led a pro-Confederate band of guerrillas in the Civil War. The William Quantrill does not appear in this book, so it’s not a notation of a previous owner. I assume it was the name of the previous owner, perhaps a distant relation of The William Quantrill. So I can boast I own a book once owned by William Quantrill, but given that this is the 1998 reprinting of a book that first appeared in 1983, it’s not The William Quantrill. But those to whom I boast need not know.
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Pet monkeys, or maybe just pet monkeys on leashes, are illegal in Springfield.
Well, then, I’ll take my pet monkey to Republic or Clever instead.
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Dustbury and Jennifer muse on the Gun question that appears on pediatrician forms. You know the one: Are there guns in the home?
Remember, if you refuse to answer that, you actually answer “Yes, and furthermore, I’m a politically sensitive gun owner, which means TERRORIST!”
However, there are some better answers:
See, in all of those scenarios, Junior is safer.
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Obama fences, parries at start of Midwestern tour
Parrying is an integral part of the sport of fencing; saying the President fences, parries is like saying the President fishes, casts his line.
The only way that headline is not redundant is if the President is selling stolen goods. Or maybe putting up some chain link. I’ll let you guess which metaphor serves him least.
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Ever since he watched Star Wars, the child is full of questions about it, mostly along the lines of “Are stormtroopers bad guys?”, “Is Anakin a good guy,” and “Why was there a monster in that place where they went [the garbage compactor]?”
It was bad enough when George Lucas bollixed it all up with the prequels or even with the originals when reflected upon as an adult (So they’re standing knee deep in waste water on a space station?).
However, the boy also asks questions along the lines of:
The first four planets orbiting the star 55 Cns were discovered in the late1990’s – early 2000’s. However, they were hot gas giants. After the discovery in 2002 of the planets 55 Cnc C and 55 Cnc D it turned out that there was a wide “gap” between them. However, the results of modular simulation showed that this space can be occupied by stable planetary orbits. Only in 2007 one of the study participants, Professor Geoffrey Marcy, “stumbled” upon the fifth planet – 55 Cnc F, whose mass is equal to 0.155 of the mass of Jupiter (approximately 46 Earth masses) and is removed from its parent star by approximately the same distance as Earth from the Sun.
The new planet was “unofficially” name Tatooine – the name of the homeland of “Star Wars” characters Anakin (the future Darth Vader) and Luke Skywalker, a planet with two suns.
Great. So now I have to admit that some things from Star Wars are real, kind of, and confuse him with why, kind of like how I confuse him by telling him the Star Wars stories are real qua stories, but that the events depicted within them did not happen.
At least it will keep me from trying to explain how Anakin Skywalker will bring balance to the force by killing all the Jedi but two (one of whom dies of old age) and then killing the Sith Master and dying as the Sith Apprentice. Which is a pretty grim bit of balance bringing, that.
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Yesterday, instead of doing something productive, I gathered up the family and headed to two garage sales. When we’d gone to Asbury United Methodist Church last year, they had a whole room of books. This year, there was only a table, but it was heavy on the science fiction as you will see below. Additionally, we managed to reach the SLS 8th Grade Trip Sale about 10 minutes before it was going to close at 11, and, hey, they had books, too.
Here’s what I got:
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This is the next book after Firestorm U.S.A., but it’s far different from the earlier book. We get a lot of allusion to some things in Barrabas’s past, but the book starts him out in Egypt without much to give this reader any bearing on why he’s there and what he’s doing. After a very slow and disengaging first chapter, one discovers that Barrabas has a recurring villain, a former CIA agent who bedevils Barrabas repeatedly. So this book ties into that storyline with which I was familiar.
At any rate, Barrabas goes hunting for this guy; coincidentally, two members of his team are spending some of their “off” time in Africa helping the medically needy there, and they find the super-villain in an abandoned copper mine, weaponizing this new deadly disease AIDS using African natives as incubators. The super-villain frames Barrabas for the attempt on the life of Barrabas’s ex-lover, who then comes to Africa to avenge her brother by killing Barrabas. And other member of Barrabas’s team come looking for him as Barrabas survives a plane crash in the desert.
It comes together at the villain’s lair, of course, and Barrabas’s team wins, of course. Unfortunately, the pacing of the book is kinda slow, and even the jump cuts don’t build suspense because it reminds you how obvious the required coincidence is. So it’s my least favorite in the series, but it does not kill the series for me.
Now, if I could only read something weighty to impress my smart friends.
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Police say naked gunman flees from Illinois into Missouri
Dude, welcome to the Show-Me State. Now, don’t show us so much.
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I watched the first half of the Republican debate in Iowa last night, and I’m pleased to announce that I won.
I won because I saw the candidates with the potential to win the presidential nomination (Romney, Bachmann, Pawlenty, and maybe Cain), and I did not react to any of them with an Ew, not him.
Unlike in 2008, where a McCain caller early in the process got very snitty with me because I didn’t think McCain would be much of an improvement over Hillary Clinton. McCain was a candidate I would support only with my reluctant vote (although his vice-presidential choice got me to an event or two with some grubzits).
But those people on stage, yeah, I can send them money (and have, in one case) and maybe spend a little time at the local HQ volunteering. And that gives me hope and a little sense of some semblance of a role to play in shaping the future of the country. Instead of just reluctantly voting for whomever the party has put out there because he’s slightly better than Hillary or the Sena (only a half term, so he only gets half the title) from Illinois.
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A friend on Facebook posted a retro comment about wanting to go shopping so her mom could buy her a Trapper Keeper for school, and after I was all about reminding everyone that I was a child of the housing projects who got his first Trapper Keeper secondhand, if you call “from the common metal garbage cans in the alley” secondhand (all right, they weren’t exactly common, as each apartment got two trash cans with the apartment address painted on them–you got me, I’m making this all up!). I never did take that Trapper Keeper to school, as it had last year’s (1981’s) scrawlings from someone else in it.
But I did get a second one in 1985, which I still have. Of course.
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This is not the first Foxworthy book I’ve read; I read You Might Be A Redneck If… in 2006 and How to Really Stink at Work: A Guide to Making Yourself Fire-Proof While Having the Most Fun Possible last year. This book proved its worth in merely providing me with the fodder for a blog post ("Wherein My Life Intersects, Again, With The Humor Of Jeff Foxworthy And Larry The Cable Guy") and a tweet/status. Strangely enough, this is my gold standard for books by comedians these days. Also, books by Roman emperors.
This book is better than How To Really Stink At Work anyway. The humor and musings are more aligned with Foxworthy’s humor. Unfortunately, the book does stray into his personal life a bit too much for my taste. I dunno, he talks about his courtship of his wife and whatnot, and I guess I like my humor a little more abstract. When he’s talking about wives and women, I cringe a little to tie this to a specific person. Maybe that’s just me or my taste towards the middle of 2011.
So it’s an amusing enough book, but not pure enough comedy for me.
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You know, reading this has changed my life. The first thing I’m going to tell myself when I get up in the morning is Today, we will first secure the goat. Me, I will use that royal ‘we’ inside my own head because goat-securing sounds like a two-person job, even metaphorically.
When someone lets me down, I will express my disappointment by telling that person that he did not secure the goat.
And I will ask myself as I lie in bed, going to sleep (or staring at the ceiling, depending upon what I think the answer will be): Did I secure the goat today?
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I’ve been kicking around the idea of starting a blog dedicated to the objects I find in books as bookmarks used by the previous owners, where I can muse on what the objects might mean. Some of them will be very curious, as they’ve laid dormant in books for decades.
I’ve started it, sort of. The first post is Kansas City Royals Ticket Stub. It is not as quaint as some of the other things I’ve found, but it’s a start.
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