Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 364 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Some Animals More Equal Than Others, Poor Things

October 14, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Stunning finding reported in Reader’s Digest:

A February report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that taking antioxidant vitamins actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

. . . .

But in 47 randomized trials involving almost 181,000 adults, researchers found that taking vitamins A, beta carotene and E, alone or in combination, actually increased a person’s risk of dying by up to 16 percent.

Personally, I find my odds daunting, but at least they’re not 116% chance of dying.

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Good Book Hunting: October 13, 2007

October 14, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

This week, we stopped at only 3 sales because we had prior commitments. However, I found something.

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Firefly; it cost $10, which is more than I would normally spend on media at a garage sale, but all the cool kids like it.
The first season of Star Trek: The Next Generation; some Christmases ago, Heather bought me the second season for Christmas and we watched it together. Now we can continue that tradition, probably sometime after our next generation is done.
Metropolis on videocassette; I’ve never seen it and it’s supposed to be something. I want especially to see if Fritz Lang anticipated a lot of unemployed computer contractors and a declining economy after the non-event of a computer bug.
Guerilla PR Wired; anyone who can combine wires, Kalashnikovs, and marketing must have something interesting to say.
Six Sigma; I can read this and review it on my other blog. Maybe you’ve heard of it, QAHatesYou.com?
A pair of history books from the 1930s, Origins of the American Revolution and The Growth of the American Republic; it was odd to see these amongst bins of cartoon, animation, and film books, but the seller said they’d been his father’s.
The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethus; If I’m going to use and abuse books, I should get some consolation, should I not?
English Literature to 11660, a textbook; bought from some former teacher/professor who was unloading a pile of text books and original materials. If they had been hardbacks, particularly the original texts, I would have bought far more.
Gangbusters by Michael Stone; a true story about a NYPD Homicide Unit took down a gang.
Quick Lit: Plots, Themes, Characters, and Sample Essays for the Most Assigned Books in English and Literature Classes–Written by Students for Students; of the 35, I’ve read 27. And, truth be told, I don’t have trouble telling apart the Great Literature I’ve read; instead, I could use a resource that helps me keep track of the various and sundry genre fiction I read. Oh, right, that’s this blog for the last couple of years.

You’ll notice the single John D. Fitzgerald book to the right for the boy. Just like his daddy, he acquired without really knowing what’s on his shelves, and Me and My Little Brain is the only one of the Great Brain series he owns. Now, temporarily, he owns two.

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Good Book Hunting: October 6, 2008

October 13, 2007October 6, 2014 Brian J. Noggle

Last Saturday, I did not go book hunting per se; I went to my mother’s yard sale and spent all day down there, talking to the little old ladies (and my mother) and whatnot.

However, I did get a handful of material that I bought from others, received as gifts, or reclaimed instead of donating:

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The stack to the left represents some children’s books for the boy; the center stack, which I will not enumerate here, includes the aforementioned magazines, craft books, and home improvement materials I’ve reclaimed. Since they’ve been mine since the early part of the century when I was an eBay seller, I’m not trying to convince you they’re new. They haven’t been in the household for a couple of years, though.

New material includes:

Orvieto, a book about the city of Orvieto. Because I hadn’t had one before, you know.
From Gold to Grey by Mary D. Brine, an 1886 collection of poetry given to me by one of the women at the garage sale because she knew I collected old books.
The Path of Vision by Bessie Mona Lasky, a collection of musings and paintings given to me by the same woman.
Richtofen: The True History of the Red Baron, mostly because I had been thinking of the song “Snoopy and the Red Baron” and its sequel “Snoopy’s Christmas” by The Royal Guardsmen, and I need something to give me the real story.
A pair of Nat King Cole audiocassettes.
A pair of noir films, The Big Combo and Raw Deal (not the Schwarzeneggar film).
A Cary Grant three pack on VHS, including His Girl Friday, Charade, and Penny Serenade.

So the weekend wasn’t a total loss as far as acquisitions are concerned.

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Another Day, More World Points

October 12, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Today’s mail contained 2 Bank of America World Points credit card offers with the same nonprofit group branding:

The only difference is the free gift offered.

The next step, of course, is five credit card offers in a day with no difference whatsoever! Since I’m not interested, perhaps someone who’d steal my identity by stealing my mail or taking advantage of a misdelivery will!

This even beats my last batch of credit card offers.

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Metaphish

October 12, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

A phish disguising itself as a warning about phishing scams. Brilliant!

Although this phising scam warns the recipients that Citizens Bank Money Manager GPS users have been the target of phishing scams containing misspelled words, it obviously does not note that phishing e-mails often contain weird capitalization or lack punctuation, but then again, valid e-mails often contain these problems.

To be really helpful, it would include a tip about checking your status bar (that bottom line of text in some e-mail clients) or the mouseover text (in some e-mail clients) to make sure that the target of the link is the same as the link text, or it would explain that subdomains with legitimate-looking text are irrelevant if the actual domain, that is, the last thing before the .com, is not what it’s supposed to be (such as vbv75.com).

But that would sort of spoil the phishing exercise, wouldn’t it?

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When Rec Room Furnishings Go Bad

October 12, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Spanish Lake bar sold cocaine, police say

I understand the jukebox was running numbers, too.

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Book Report: The Case of the Fiery Fingers by Erle Stanley Gardner (1951, ?)

October 11, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

This is the second Perry Mason book I’ve re-read this year; the first was The Case of the Cautious Coquette in April. This volume is published by Walter J. Black, the same fellow that does the Classics Club and Dickens editions I’ve been collecting; now that I look at it, they use the same binding. No doubt these were inexpensive books sold as part of a Perry Mason book club, and the fact that I see so many of these titles in the wild indicates they were probably early volumes in the series.

In this book, celebrating its 56th anniversary this year, Mason consults with a nurse who wants to prevent the murder of her charge by a husband after her (the charge’s) property. Mason can’t do much for her, but gets roped into defending the nurse when she’s accused of theft. Then the charge actually dies, and Mason must defend the accused–the dead woman’s sister who also consulted with Mason with an incomplete hand-written will.

A quick read and a good mystery. There’s a reason Mason was popular in fiction and on television for fifty years.

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That’s How The Army Meets Its Recruiting Goals These Days

October 11, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Corvette goes airborne, lands on a mobile home in Swansea.

Chevys in the 82nd. What will they think of next?

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Obvious Solution Eludes Government Officials, Sycophants

October 10, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Late tax payments rise again in county:

Milwaukee County, including some of its most affluent suburbs, had a double-digit increase in the percentage of property owners unable to pay their tax bills in 2007, a trend that began last year with a 26% surge in the value of tax delinquencies in the county’s suburbs alone.

In all, 17,960 Milwaukee County properties were delinquent as of September on taxes levied for the current year, up 14% from 15,754 as of September 2006. The City of Milwaukee and 14 of its 18 suburbs posted double-digit percentage increases in delinquencies, representing almost $37 million in unpaid taxes this year.

Much of the blame has been levied on the mortgage crisis, in which a proliferation of nontraditional mortgages and predatory lending practices over the last two years have put many buyers – even those in higher income brackets – in over their heads.

But economists and credit counselors point to numerous pressures in a weak economy where minimal wage gains are being eaten away by the rising cost of everything from food and utilities to mortgages and taxes. Since late summer 2006, ground beef prices have risen by 6.7%, chicken breasts by 6.9% and whole milk by 26%, and the federal Energy Information Administration on Tuesday predicted an 11% increase in Midwest winter heating bills.

What else has gone up?

A few dismissed the notion that rising tax bills played a role, though Milwaukee County taxpayers owed at least $35 million more in taxes this year than last, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.

“The tax bill doesn’t go up enough to cause that problem,” said Chris Swartz, village manager in Shorewood, where delinquent property owners owed an average of $6,600 a parcel, second only to River Hills.

Of course not. Given the choice between heat, food, fuel, and property tax bills, where do you think people’s priorities lie?

No doubt the municipal officials are ready to pillory private industry for forcing people to choose to spend their money on non-essentials.

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In Lieu of Payment, She’ll Take Children’s Kittens

October 10, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Cop who fell on the job sues family of baby who almost drowned:

In January, 1-year-old Joey Cosmillo wandered into the backyard and fell into the family pool. When his mother hauled him out, he wasn’t breathing. Rescuers were able to bring him back to life, but he suffered severe brain damage and cannot walk, talk or even swallow.

Now, his family faces another burden: One of the rescuers, Casselberry police Sgt. Andrea Eichhorn, is suing, alleging the family left a puddle of water on the floor that afternoon, causing her to slip and fall.

Twit.

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Taste the Condescension!

October 10, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Man, I love the anthropological-style essays about hipsters who move to suburbia and report their shocking findings!

The second morning after I moved into my first officially “owned” home, I woke up to find my somewhat decrepit mailbox bashed in by vandals.

I was rattled. As an Asian, I thought perhaps the bashing was meant as a kind of message to me: You are not wanted here – or something to that effect.

Home ownership was, to me, a strange thing. You’d think it would give you a sense of belonging, of security. But for me it was a foray into territory that as a woman, and half Chinese, seemed off-limits, even though I was born here.

It didn’t help that my new next-door neighbor flew the flag in his front yard well past the Fourth of July and, I would discover, straight into winter.

I live in Santa Cruz, so my initial reading on the mailbox bashing seemed improbable. Still, I was shaken. The neighborhood was suburban style, and filled with a lot of folks of retirement age who had lived in the city since before it had become “progressive” – since before anyone had heard of the word at all.

Later on that day, as I was strolling along my block, I noticed that almost every one of my neighbors also had their mailboxes bashed in – except for those who had taken time to hand paint their mailboxes with flowers or hummingbirds, or who had added accessories to make their mailboxes into caricatures of cats or frogs or sharks or what have you. I mused that at least it was nice of the (I supposed) teenagers with the baseball bat to grant some forbearance for attempts at mailbox aesthetics.

She’s lucky she moved to suburbia in California, because let me tell you, if that half-Chinese woman had moved onto my block, I would probably have not even noticed. Dramatically!

And she could have reported how the people in this tribe walk their children, fly flags with strange foreign emblems (giant green and gold Gs), and refuse to mow their lawns religiously.

Somewhere, somehow, hipsters are all caught by surprise by the revelation that people who live in homes instead of condos, lofts, or urban apartments are people, too!

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Book Report: North Webster: A Photograpic History of a Black Community by Ann Morris and Henrietta Ambrose (1993)

October 9, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Like the preceding books Webster Park: 1892-1992 and How To Research the History of Your Webster Groves Home, I borrowed this book from the library; unlike those, however, it is still publicly available for purchase at Amazon.com, so I might get a copy.

This book tells the story of North Webster, a small community in the northwestern part of Webster Groves that is mostly black in racial makeup. The book traces its origins as a couple of freedmen’s houses in the middle of the 1800s to its annexation by Webster Groves in the middle 1900s and its integration into the community.

Of course, the best part about this book is the moments and tidbits it provides: Douglass High School became the first black high school in the county, and Carl Sandburg spoke there. The book tells about the young men from the town that joined the 92nd in World War I and their participation in the dedication of the World War I memorial on Big Bend and Lockwood–a war memorial that has since been moved so that the contemporary right-minded folk don’t have to think about the sacrifices and participation in war, but can soothe themselves with a giant sculpture designed to rust.

The book is about 50 pages of text with a large number of names of residents throughout the years (I suspect that much of the narrative comes from family remembrances) combined with eighty pages of photographs from the local residents.

An interesting piece; I’ve added it to my Amazon Wish List, not that you gentle readers are obligated to show me the love you have of this backwater blog with gratuitous gifts.

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Book Report: State’s Evidence by Stephen Greenleaf (1982)

October 8, 2007July 18, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

I picked up this book because I liked its cover and its book jacket flap blurbs. Of course, now that I look more closely, the cover is kinda weird:

I mean, there’s a tire with a shiny hubcap on the pavement, and there’s the hot chick (ca 1982) witness to a hit and run reflected in it. However, if the perspective of the reflection is to be believed, she’s either a legless panhandler on a little cart or coming out of a manhole in the street. Or the car and the obligatory hard-boiled hat are somehow on a platform three to four feet above the pavement level where the woman is standing.

Okay, so the hard-boiled detective, series character Tanner in this case, is supposed to find a model who witnessed a hit-and-run where the hitter was a local crime boss and the hitee was really a hit. That’s what the flap says. Inside, the Tanner character and his Greenleaf author try to throwback to Chandler and Macdonald (Ross)–the detective even mentions reading those authors at one point. The language is seriously over-the-top riven with metaphors, sometimes two to a sentence or five in a paragraph. It made for some slower reading.

Then, after a bit, the language didn’t jar me, so I thought perhaps this Tanner fellow was hard in the line of the greats. The book, set in El Gordo, California (literally, The Fat Man) uses the California landscape prevalent in the classics, and the book plays in the elements of the idle rich, gangsters, and mixed-up youth.

However, ultimately, it’s not up to the level of the names it tries to invoke. The plot gets just one not too twisted and the resolution is a little too tidy.

I won’t dodge others in this series, but I’m not ordering them all right now. It’s below Robert Crais and Robert B. Parker but not completely unworthwhile.

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Neighboorhood Activists Agitate For Blackouts

October 8, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Given how easily the power has gone out over the last year or so, you would think that residents would agitate for the local power company to do something. Actually, you’re right. A series of “show trials” where the power company officials had to do some ‘splainin before the elected officials and their hangers-on, the press.

And when the company, AmerenUE wants to do something, what does it get? You bet! Residents agitating that AmerenUE is doing something:

Pam Schnebelen realizes that AmerenUE officials are going to have a tough time deciding on a route to build miles of transmission lines through Jefferson County.

But, they better not come through the LaBarque Creek watershed area in northwestern Jefferson County, she said.

“They are not going to build in this watershed,” Schnebelen said. “They’ll have to take any landowner to court to get an easement, because they can’t compensate in dollars for the environmental impact involved.”

Schnebelen, 57, Judy Browne-D’Amico and Bob Coffing, 68, all members of the LaBarque Creek Watershed Landowners Committee, recently invited the Journal to see the LaBarque Creek watershed area. The area includes private property as well as public lands and is located off Route FF near the St. Louis County line. It covers about 13 square miles.

Why can’t private industry use the same magic that the government uses to be all things to all voters?

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Mail Call

October 5, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

In yesterday’s mail:

Marquette University branded credit card

Missouri State University branded credit card

Northern Michigan University branded credit card

The thing is, I have actually only attended one of these schools. Of the others, my wife has contributed money to one and we established a scholarship at the other.

Special thanks to the development departments at the last two for selling my name in vain and to Bank of America for its unsolicited and unwarranted come-ons.

In the mail for BOA the day after tomorrow: three post-paid envelopes containing nothing but the cardmember agreement.

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Almost Like A Geek, But Pays Less

October 4, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

NerdTests.com says I'm a Mega-Dorky Nerd God. What are you? Click here!

(Link seen on The Anchoress.)

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Book Report: Eight Black Horses by Ed McBain (1985)

October 4, 2007April 20, 2010 Brian J. Noggle

I’ve read this book before, so I knew how it was going to end. I read it again anyway. That’s what I like about McBain. That I like McBain. Or something.

This book is one of the Deaf Man books, which you know what that means if you know McBain. The 87th Precinct series are pretty straight ahead police procedurals, but a number of the books center on the heist designs of the arch criminal of the series, The Deaf Man. These books deal less with the investigation of a realistic crime than the heistalistic stylings and clues and eventual accidental collapse of the schemes. In this book, he begins sending clues to the 87th Precinct that usually indicates the heist he’s going to pull. If he’s playing fair. Oh, yeah, there’s a dead body found in Grover Park, too.

The Deaf Man subseries aren’t the best introduction to the series if you haven’t read them before, but if you’re familiar with the series, they’re a understandable diversion. McBain must have had fun with them.

So I’ve read it more than once, and I’ll probably read it again someday. The next time I find another copy on my to-read shelves. Which could be as early as December.

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Book Report: Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (1861, ?)

October 3, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

I got this book in the Reader’s Digest purty edition instead of the Walter J. Black Classics Club/Classic Editions (as is Oliver Twist and some of the other Dickens I have). Hence, instead of $1 or $4.95 I would have paid for it, I paid $30 or so (plus shipping and handling). There was a phase I was going through when I thought it would be neat to have matching editions of books in my collection, before I came to my senses and started amassing matching editions that only cost $1.00.

At first, I thought I would like this book much better than Oliver Twist for two reasons: first, the book uses a double-effect first person narrator. Now, to those of you not up on those terms, it means that the voice telling the story is an I (I did, I said). The double-effect means that the voice is telling a story from the past, so the events of the past convey not only what happened and what the narrator thought of them as they happened, but the greater wisdom of interpretation from a later time. This allows some offhand foreshadowing as well as a certain wryness.

Secondly, with a first person narrator, I figured that flaw I found in Oliver Twist, that things happened to Oliver, a passive participant in his own story, wouldn’t happen. Well, therein I was incorrect. For although things happened to Oliver, in Great Expectations, Pip spends a lot of time doing nothing.

For a quick synopsis: A young orphan, raised by his sister and her blacksmith husband, finds an escaped convict in the graveyard where his parents are buried (the child’s, not the convict’s). Forced to help the convict, the orphan brings him a file and some victuals. The convict is captured the next day, but the child never lets on he helped the convict. After time passes, the child (Pip) grows a bit and is selected to visit a reclusive wealthy woman who has stopped her clocks at the time she was jilted by a con man some years ago. Pip meets her ward as well, a young woman who is attractive but cold. Apparently, the woman is raising the child to be a man-eater to exact revenge on the gender. Suddenly, the woman’s attorney–and a criminal defender of some reknown–comes forward to tell Pip he has “great expectations”–that is, someone has given him an allowance for education and he might come into some property when he turns 21. Pip turns from an earnest, lower class fellow into a shiftless upper class snob, continues to pursue the beautiful but cold Estella, and waits to learn the name and nature of his benefactor.

So, ultimately, while Oliver Twist had a lot of things just happen to Oliver, Great Expectations has a first person narrator who does little but kill time. Overall, the book was too long building with a lot of paragraphs spent on the things Pip did while passing the time, but the nut of the story could have been told in 200 pages. This is the nature of Victorian literature, I guess, filled with passages and “comic” moments that really aren’t that funny to a modern audience.

Worth your time if you’re into literature, but there are better things to read.

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Good Book Hunting: September 29, 2007

October 1, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Another week, another set of yard sales. At the first one we visited, I carried the boy instead of putting him in the stroller, so I didn’t browse too closely the inexpensive books or videocassettes. At the second one, we deployed the stroller, but I was being very selective–as in not looking too closely at all–until I saw the price: 50 cents for hardbacks, 25 cents for paperbacks. Then I went bonkers, because who knows when I might need several books covering Triumph automobiles?

Here’s what we got:

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The Confessions of St. Augustine, because, um, it’s learned to have it.
A Set of Six by Joseph Conrad, some novels and novellas that do not include Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer.
Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen because I wasn’t sure if I owned it or not.
Castles and Keeps of Scotland, a Barnes and Noble edition so the book must be pretty famous and out of copyright protection.
Missouri Trivia. It’s questions and answers, but I’ll learn something to astonish my friends and family.
The Global War on Guns, written by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. Has anyone told him how French his name sounds? Seriously, Wayne is probably his Americanized way of spelling Jacques. The book probably condenses the last year’s worth of America’s First Freedom, but it was only fifty cents.
It’s Pat: My Life Exposed. A book based on an unfunny Saturday Night Live series of skits. At least I haven’t seen the movie. That is to my credit, I believe. This was a quarter, though, with no additional royalties encouraging the participants.
The Illustrated Triumph Buyer’s Guide. I told you so.
TR for Triumph. I meant more than one.
Sunset Best Home Plans. Back when I was eBaying, I found home plan books went surprising well. Now that I am not eBaying, I like to look at them and kind of dream. Plus, I think I will accidentally find myself collecting old Sunset books one of these days.
Disco Dancing. A book showing you how to disco. I shall use it to train my son.
Disco. I think this is some sort of coffee table book. I picked it up because I’d already picked up the disco book above, and when you get the chance to get more than one book on a topic in a week, you take it. See also “Triumph” in this blog entry.
New York at Night, a collection of photographs. Probably better than Detroit, but probably there isn’t much that is not.
Ulysses by James Joyce. If there’s ever a reason I want to punish myself, this is the method I will choose.
Momisms, a little greeting card sort of book. It was cheap, and I was in a frenzy; don’t you know what that means yet?
Panati’s Parade of Frauds, Follies, and Manias [sic]. As you should know by now, gentle reader, I like to grab these compendia to get ideas for essays. Sometimes, it pays off (watch this space!).
The Triumph TRs. I meant I got a bunch of books on Triumph cars. Just in case. I better start collecting them to make this book purchase meaningful.
Opening Nights by Janet Burroway. Some 15 years ago, my college fiction workshop used a textbook written by this author. This is the first I’ve seen one of her books in the wild. Let’s see if she knows what she’s talking about. Of course, in the 15 years since I took that class, I’ve forgotten anything I might have learned.
A Celebration of Poets. Another collection of poetry to read aloud, although I’ve sort of fallen out of the habit of doing that to with the boy.
Training African Grey Parrots. Once upon a time, I was going to get one. Well, I thought about it. Now I have a book that will teach me how to train one.
The Dead Zone by Stephen King. This will replace a book club edition already on my to-read shelf. And by “will replace,” I mean will sit on my to-read shelf until I inadvertently read both of them.
Dogbert’s Top Secret Management Handbook by Scott Adams. Now that I am not actively managing any more, this book won’t do me as much good as it would have, but it will prove amusing nevertheless.
Skeleton Crew by Stephen King. Also a replacement. Also subject to doubling.

Additionally I picked up a VHS copy of Computer Warriors, a Mattel “cartoon” circa 1990 that was supposed to support a line of toys. Remember them? Me, either. Which is why this video will prove an even greater curiosity.

Heather bought her regular collection of books, cassettes, and records pictured, as usual, to the right.

So I bought 23 books when I started out uninterested in buying any. The worst part is that, although I bought 3 books about Triumph automobiles, I passed up 2 books on historic Mobile, Alabama. Given my recent drive to read this sort of historical material in my own neighborhood, I do regret, lightly, passing over them.

All told, the feast you see before you cost less than $40. I gloat a bit, but I also mourn that this much knowledge is worth so little in the contemporary marketplace.

UPDATE: Frequent commenter gimlet suggests I start my new collection with this.

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Book Report: How To Research the History of Your Webster Groves Home by Ann Morris (1980)

October 1, 2007November 24, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

This old book is more akin to a pamphlet as it weighs in at 20 typed-and-photocopied pages, but since the library counted it as a book, I will, too. Like Webster Park: 1892-1992, it provides insight into the history of the region in which I live, but it’s not much. The book provides a little text describing how to look for information about your home from the city of St. Louis (if your home was built before the city threw out the county lo, those many years ago) or St. Louis County. Additionally, it provides a couple of maps showing some of the early subdivisions of the land, so I now know who owned the land my house was on from the time the Spanish crown deeded it to a fellow named Sarpy to the time it was parcelled into 40 acre lots. It’s not far, really, for me to draw up a line of owners all the way to me if I were so inclined. Perhaps someday I might.

The book precedes the Internet, though, in that it includes a couple of forms that you can photocopy and fill out to take with you to the government. Of course, from what I know of the government, it still precedes the Internet, so perhaps those will come in handy.

Worth the hour I spent browsing it just for the maps.

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