Chinese Convict Imports Undercut Prices
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You’d Think, With Their Guns And All, They Could Do It On Their Own
St. Louis police ask for help in gas station robbery
And they probably will get away with it.
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Where the 21st Century Does Not Meet 1980s Science Fiction
The 21st century sure has diverged from the future offered up by RoboCop. Not in the technologies nor law enforcement attitudes.
Detroit doesn’t have that many people in it, and Old Detroit is getting bulldozed for farmland.
Crikey, in the future, I’m going to have to explain to my children what Detroit was in every Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker film.
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It’s Not A Book List
TJIC linked to a Web site that would identify the New York Times Best Sellers on the day you were born.
Of course, it’s not just a book list; it’s a book challenge. How many of the books that were best sellers when you were born have you read?
The list from my birth date (books I’ve read in italics):
Fiction
- THE WINDS OF WAR Herman Wouk
- WHEELS Alex Hailey
- THE DAY OF THE JACKAL Frederick Forsyth
- THE EXORCIST William Peter Blatty
- RABBIT REDUX John Updike
- THE BETSY Harold Robbins
- MESSAGE FROM MALAGA Helen MacInnes
- OUR GANG Philip Roth
- NEMESIS Agatha Christie
- THE NAIVE AND SENTIMENTAL LOVER John Le Carré
Non-Fiction
- ELEANOR AND FRANKLIN Joseph P. Lash
- TRACY AND HEPBURN Garson Kanin
- BURY MY HEART AT WOUNDED KNEE Dee Brown
- THE DEFENSE NEVER RESTS F. Lee Bailey
- THE GAME OF THE FOXES Ladislas Farago
- JENNIE VOLUME TWO, Ralph G. Martin
- HONOR THY FATHER Gay Talese
- THE LAST WHOLE EARTH CATALOG Portola Institute
- BRIAN PICCOLO: A SHORT SEASON Jeannie Morris
- BEYOND FREEDOM AND DIGNITY B. F. Skinner
Strangely enough, I read the same percentage (10%) of TJIC’s list, and they’re different books. Also, I have not identified the books I already own but have not yet read because, frankly, there are so many that I can never be sure.
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An Idea I Was Saving For The Palin Administration, But….
You know, people would probably would not mind it so much if TSA luggage scanners and wands killed bedbugs.
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Book Report: A Political Bestiary by Eugene J. McCarthy and James J. Kilpatrick (1978)
This book was written in 1978, back when one could try to write a general political humor book without vitriol toward either side. So it’s amusing in spots, imagining Washington buzzwords as actual animals illustrated by Jeff McNelly of “Shoe” fame.
More than its actual humor content, though, the book provides a sort of insight as a time capsule into 1970s political thought. At the base, not much has changed except that perhaps the underlying tenets of liberal thought have been seriously challenged, leading to the aforementioned vitriol.
The more the differences change, though, the more they remain the same.
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Book Report: Missouri Bandits, Bushwhackers, Outlaws, Crooks, Devils, Ghosts, & Desperadoes by Carole Marsh (1990)
With a title like this, I’d hoped for a collection of thought-provoking and perhaps article-launching anecdotes. Instead, I got a young adult book self-published in a very rudimentary style circa 1990. How rudimentary? The pages are only printed on one side, the dust jacket is a stock dust jacket with the title pasted on, possibly from work-at-home-in-your-spare-time people, and the pages were designed with DOS-based, if that, desktop publishing not far above the old Print Shop software. And the author liked to make things fun by putting wingdings in words. I kid you not.
Revel in that glory.
And for all that, the pieces in the book aren’t that specific to Missouri. There are some things about Ma Barker and whatnot, but then they get into President Lincoln’s ghost in the White House, word finds with synonyms for Thief, jokes, and urban legends set elsewhere in the Midwest. All the better for the recycling of the material.
Hey, apparently Carole Marsh made a go of this judging by the sheer number of titles associate with her. Good for her. However, I cannot recommend anything from this book.
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Stay-At-Home Father Chronicles
How does a mostly stay-at-home father spend his days with two preschool children?
Building battle mechs for livestock.
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What Are They Going To Do When It’s Upside-Down?
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That’s My House
Back when I lived in the projects, the other children and I would often declare That’s my (blank) whenever we saw something really nice. By stating that, we were declaring how awesome something was. And probably how unlike it was to anything we really have.
So in that vein (or vain, as the case may be), I’d like to declare about the 2010 417 Homes Homes of the Year winner in the $1,000,000 Plus category: That’s my house:
Some of the home’s unique features include a 60-foot corkscrew water slide that leads into a heated indoor pool. There is a diving rock above the pool, and a hot tub is located nearby. These luxurious features extend far beyond the pool room into the basement with a bistro area, a wine cellar and a walk-in cooler. The finished basement also features a bar made of an antique reclaimed wood beam with a three-tap bar system. And the fun doesn’t stop there, either. There is also an underground shooting range, where the homeowners can polish their pistol and archery skills.
The person for whom the house was built said:
The homeowners stressed to the builder, Doug Pitts of Doug Pitts Construction, that they wanted this home to have a lot of space for their three children to run around in.
Sounds like Daddy took care of Daddy, too. Since <LeonidasVoice>This…. Is… Springfield!</LeonidasVoice>, perhaps the underground shooting gallery was Mommy’s idea. You never can tell down here.
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Quotation from Popular Literature ca. 1904
Owen Wister, The Virginian:
There can be no doubt of this: All America is divided into two classes,–the quality and the equality.
The latter will always recognize the former when mistaken for it. Both will be with us until our women bear nothing but hangs.
It was through the Declaration of Independence that we Americans acknowledged the ETERNAL INEQUALITY of man. For by it we abolished a cut-and-dried aristocracy. We had seen little mere artificially held up in high places, and great men artificially held down in low places, and our own justice-loving hearts abhorred this violence to human nature. Therefore, we decreed that every man should thenceforth have equal liberty to find his own level. By this very decree we aknowledged and gave freedom to true aristocracy, saying, “Let the best man win, whoever he is.” Let the best man win! That is America’s word. That is true democracy. And true democracy and true aristocracy are one and the same thing. If anybody cannot see this, so much the worse for his eyesight.
Of course, that was popular literature when America was on the ascent.
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Largess My Ingress
The other day, I bad a couple minutes to spare, so I thought I’d do so as a proper Lileksian: I decided I’d try out the new Relics Antique Mall on Battlefield Road here in Springfield. I had about 30 minutes, and I knew I would not have time to go through the whole thing, but I’d have the chance to review the self-proclaimed Largest Antique Mall in Missouri (larger than all the other largest antique malls in Missouri, and I think they all claim it). So I turn into the driveway by the huge sign and pull into the parking lot of a large warehouse-or-manufacturing-plant-looking building stuffed between a couple of warehouse and manufacturing style facilities.
The building has two narrow glass doors on either side with no other windows on the building. As I start looking for a parking spot, I see a small 9.5″ by 11″ sign on the first door I pass: Not an Entrance. No identifiers on it. The second door has a similar sign on it, but I didn’t see it clearly. Only that neither of the doors clearly said “Entrance” or “Relics” or offered business hours. They looked like the entrances to, well, an office building or a plant of some sort. Suddenly and sullenly, I was no longer in the mood for an antiquing expedition. And I left.
Because I didn’t know where the damn entrance was.
One thing that trips my Grrr wire (and, apparently, ranting fingers) is a commercial enterprise that won’t tell me where to go for commerce. Whether its nondescript buildings holding an office I need to visit or a yard sale that has ads in the papers and signs on the corners but nothing in the grass by the house to tell me that, yes, there are things for sale way up the driveway, I just say, well, since I have children in the car with me a lot of times, these days I just say, “Never mind.”
Spend a little money for clear lettering and signage where I’m supposed to come in, or I won’t. Spread a little light pollution, for Pete’s sake. Because I’m not going into undermarked doors like this one and chancing that the Millworkers Union might impress me as an apprentice.
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You Know What You Want, But Planners Know What You Need
So you think you want a home with room for children and hobbies surrounded by a little bit of grass and maybe privacy fence where you can put something more than a toy barbecue designed for apartment balconies? St. Louis County Planners know better:
St. Louis County planners want to change the county’s zoning codes to encourage people to live closer together to save energy and the environment.
The current codes reflect society’s reliance on the automobile and people’s preference for stand-alone houses, one to a lot.
That’s not the future of housing, experts say.
The last line quoted should be That’s not the future of housing if experts have their say.
Because, face it, they’ve spent years and thousands of dollars getting Master of Urban Planning degrees and have studied theories about what people should want instead of what they want–and do–when allowed freedom.
Message: The environment is more important than you are, subject.
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Thought To Begin Your Day
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars. Wondering what Snooki is going to do next.”
–Oscar Wilde and Brian J. Noggle
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Economists Are So Cute
Economist ‘encouraged’ despite jump in area jobless rate:
Kansas City-based BLS economist Linda Nickisch said there was an upside despite the 9.3 to 9.5 percent increase in local unemployment from October to November.
“It’s encouraging because it could mean that more people are out there looking for jobs,” Nickisch said.
It could also mean that in that time period, unemployed people thought that their unemployment benefits were going to end in December and were taking action to get a job, but now that they’ve got another year or so to lollygag about, they’ll get back on the sofa and bring that unemployment number back down.
Economics is the PhD equivalent of going to WheresGeorge.com and using its sample to not only tell where all the dollar bills in the country are right now, but also where they will be in 2 years and 8 days.
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Key to Pronunciation
I swear, if you affect an an in front of a word that starts with h where the h is aspirated, like an historic event, you damn well better use it the same way in your confession when you admitting to killing an hobo.
Thank you, that is all.
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Modern Mythology
I’m not gonna get all down on Big Pharmaceuticals here, but don’t the names these days sound a little more mythic than they need to?
Because when I hear about Uloric, immediately I think of a giant blond man with a horned helmet, bearing the mighty four-bladed Xanax in his quest to defeat the unhuman Prinvil and their allies the demonic Zestril and to defend the mighty artifact the Zocor from the predations of the Norvasc and their tyrannical warlord Zithromax.
I think we could build a whole mythology here, or at least keep a comic book running for 40 years, not counting the time spent on alt-history and alt-present stories.
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This Will Help Me With My New Year’s Resolutions
Resolution: To learn how to dance better.
Solution: Not sneaking into the Fred Astaire Dance Studio no matter how many times I hear its advertisements on WISN (listening to Milwaukee radio stations when you live in Missouri leads to lots of good hometown services you can’t get in Springfield). No, the solution is to study this guy:
That kid has got moves.
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2010: The Year In Reading
Well, I made it to 100 books this year, helped immensely by a collection of art books and craft books.
Here’s the list:
| A Beader’s Reference | Jane Davis |
| Hunting Down Amanda | Andrew Klavan |
| A Heinlein Trio | Robert Heinlein |
| Designing Jewelry with Glass Beads | Stephanie Sersich |
| Adam-12: The Runaway | Chris Stratton |
| Adam-12: Dead on Arrival | Chris Stratton |
| Blood for a Dirty Dollar | Joe Millard |
| Wilson’s Creek | William Garrett Piston & Richard W. Hatcher III |
| Make Necklaces | Jo Moody |
| Jumpers | Tom Stoppard |
| The Frankenstein Factory | Edward D. Hoch |
| Assignment Golden Girl | Edward S. Aarons |
| Street Fighter | Todd Strasser |
| The Crime Encyclopedia | Marie J. MacNee |
| Kipling: A Selection of His Stories and Poems Volume 1 | edited by John Beecroft |
| Skin Tight | Carl Hiaasen |
| Captains Courageous | Rudyard Kipling |
| Play It Again Sam | Stephen Humphrey Bogart |
| The Magic of Scrub Holler | Lanny Gibson |
| 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America | Bernard Goldberg |
| Arizona Ambush | Don Pendleton |
| The Joy of Junk | Cheryl Fall |
| Winnowing Out Our Souls | Jane Hoogestraat |
| The Illustrated Man | Ray Bradbury |
| Tennessee Smash | Don Pendleton |
| Trash to Treasure 8 | Leisure Arts, Inc. |
| The Art of Woodburning | Betty Auth |
| Clemmie | John D. MacDonald |
| Two Hour Crafts | Landauer Books |
| Viets Guide to Sex,Travel, & Anything Else That Will Sell This Book | Elaine Viets |
| Brother Odd | Dean Koontz |
| Craftivity | edited by Tsia Carson |
| Trash to Treasure 2 | Leisure Arts, Inc. |
| Another Antigone | A.R. Gurney, Jr. |
| Tabletop Fountains | Dawn Cusick |
| Historic Midwest Houses | John Drury |
| Up For Grabs/Top of the Heap | Erle Stanley Gardner |
| Step-by-Step Pyrography | Bob Neill |
| Creative Tabletop Fountains | Marthe Le Van |
| Junk Beautiful Outdoor Edition | Sue Whitney with Kimberly Melamed |
| Murder, She Wrote: Dying to Retire | Jessica Fletcher with Donald Bain |
| 100 Crafts Under $10 | Better Homes and Gardens |
| Wicked Prey | John Sandford |
| The Salvage Sisters’ Guide to Finding Style in the Street and Inspiration in the Attic | Kathleen Hackett and Mary Ann Young |
| Great Presidential Wit | Bob Dole |
| City | Clifford B. Simak |
| Rules of Prey | John Sandford |
| Cosbyology | Bill Cosby |
| Getting Even with the Answering Machine | John Carfi and Cliff Carle |
| Currier and Ives’ America | edited by Colin Simkin |
| Detroit | Perrin Souvenir Company |
| Alberto Vargas: Works from the Max Vargas Collection | Reid Stewart Austin |
| Dick Tracy: The Secret Files | Edited by Max Allan Collins and Martin H. Greenberg |
| Kilobyte Couture | Brittany Forks |
| Creative Juice | Cathie Filian and Steve Piacenza |
| It Happened In Lemay | William F. Alden |
| The Bug | Ellen Ullman |
| Frederic Remington | Peter Hassrick |
| Odd Hours | Dean Koontz |
| Degas | Phoebe Pool |
| The Impressionists | Denis Thomas |
| Rough Country | John Sandford |
| Napkin Decoupage | Deborah Morbin and Tracy Boomer |
| The New Roadside America | Mike Wilkins, Ken Smith, and Doug Kirby |
| Star Trek: The Eugenics Wars Volume I | Greg Cox |
| Everything Crafts Easy Projects | edited by Courtney Nolan |
| Three-dimensional Decoupage | Hilda Stokes |
| Friday’s Feast | Don Pendleton |
| Fatherhood | Bill Cosby |
| You Look Nice Today | Stanley Bing |
| Trash to Treasure 6 | Leisure Arts |
| Borrowed Ideas and Famous Firsts: St. Louis Architecture | Marilynne Bradley and Ahme Quist |
| Hand Shadows To Be Thrown On The Wall | Henry Bursill |
| Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World | Jack Weatherford |
| Satan’s Sabbath | Don Pendleton |
| Rustic Reminders of the Past | Leo Hamblet |
| Motherhood, the Second Oldest Profession | Erma Bombeck |
| Double Crossfire | Don Pendleton |
| A History of the Rural Schools of Greene County, MO | David L. Burton |
| The Libyan Contract | Don Smith |
| Second Opinions of Hippocrates’ Oaf | James T. Brown, MD |
| Copp for Hire | Don Pendleton |
| Paul Harvey’s For What It’s Worth | edited by Paul Harvey, Jr. |
| Copp on Fire | Don Pendleton |
| Missouri Trivia | Ernie Couch |
| Fantastic Four The Universal Guide | |
| Color Treasury of Firearms | Crescent Books |
| Growing Up in the Ozarks | John E. Hult |
| The Past Through Tomorrow | Robert Heinlein |
| Mary Ellen’s Best of Helpful Hints | Mary Ellen |
| Cambodia Clash | Mack Bolan |
I didn’t read too much of real consequence this year; just a couple of Rudyard Kipling books. Also, in my defense in the run up to 100, one of the Kipling books was a collection with multiple books in it, and one of the Heinlein books I read this year was a collection of three shorter novels. Still, I count the number of books read.
I also didn’t add in my own novel, which I’ve read once through in manuscript form and a half way in bound galley form. Watch for that next year, werd.
If you’re interested in learning what I thought about each book on the list, check out the Book Reports category and keep scrolling.
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Make That Man An Honorary Milwaukeean
Finally, a man has combined bowling with pool:
At nearly 30 feet long and 15 feet wide, the table and the hybrid game played on its surface — a combination of billiards and bowling that Steve calls “Knokkers” — are a culmination of an idea 25 years in the making.
They need to put a statue of this visionary in downtown Milwaukee right next to the statue of Fonzie.
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