Musings from Brian J. Noggle – Page 400 – To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."

Marketer-to-English Translation

September 20, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Hasbro is using brand name products for token in its new Monopoly Here and Now game:

Five of the eight tokens in the new Monopoly Here and Now edition will be branded, offering players the chance to be represented by miniature versions of a Toyota Prius hybrid car, an order of McDonald’s french fries, a New Balance running shoe, a cup of Starbucks coffee or a Motorola Razr cell phone.

Hasbro Games senior vice president for marketing Mark Blecher assures us:

Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens, Blecher said, to minimize concerns that the new edition would be too commercialized.

Apparently, in Blecher’s world, 62.5% commercialized is acceptable, whereas 62.6% is not. However, as I am in marketing myself (obliquely), allow me to translate what Blecher really means:

Hasbro chose not to brand all the new tokens because it couldn’t find cross-promotional deals with an airline, a dog breeder, and a computer maker.

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Some Unfunded Government Mandates Are More Equal Than Others

September 19, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Mandating $15 ID to vote, restoring some measure of faith and legitimacy to elections by making it harder to vote fraudlently? Bad.

Ordering citizens who would procreate (nowadays, that’s Republicans and the poor) to add a $49.99 (minimum) booster seat after the mandated $99.99 (minimum) infant car seat and the mandated $99.99 (minimum) toddler car seat on the off chance that the child will be in an automobile crash? Good.

Someone call me and ask me if I have faith in my government so I can add a couple hundredths of a percentage point to an inconvenient poll that our venal government betters will ignore.

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Probably Nothing To See, But

September 19, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

D.C. man charged with stealing desktop with info on thousands:

Authorities have charged a 21-year-old Unisys Corp. subcontractor with stealing a desktop computer with billing information on as many as 38,000 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs medical patients.

Khalil Abdulla-Raheem of Washington was charged Wednesday with theft of government property. He is the employee of an unnamed company that “provides temporary labor to Unisys,” according to a statement released by the VA’s Office of Inspector General.

The computer was stolen in late July from Unisys’ Reston, Va., offices. It contained records on about 16,000 living patients who had received treatment at VA medical centers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, as well has information on another 2,000 who are deceased. Data on an additional 20,000 patients may have been stored on the computer, according to the VA.

The VA said these records may have contained Social Security numbers, addresses and insurance information. The FBI is analyzing the computer to determine whether the information was compromised, but investigators do not believe that Abdulla-Raheem was after the VA data.

Still, forgive us our sensitivity to fellows with Arabic names. No, probably, we won’t be forgiven; instead, we’ll be told to pay no attention to criminals of a certain faith.

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What, It’s Not Identity Genocide?

September 19, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

In the San Francisco Chronicle, a quote by a feminist equates theft of consumer data in a video game to, what else, rape:

“It’s identity rape,” said Lisa Stone, co-founder of Palo Alto’s BlogHer, an organization for female bloggers, and a sporadic resident of Second Life. “If this happened, it would be a personal violation. It’s completely unacceptable.”

She said she’s typically much more uninhibited in the virtual world of Second Life than she is in the real world. This is largely a factor of using a pseudonym when interacting with other Second Life members and having an invented digital image — an avatar — to hide behind.

“It’s fantastically freeing,” Stone said. “When I’m online, I can be anyone I want.”

So knowing your secret identity is exactly, or at least metaphorically, equivalent to forcible sexual penetration with actual violence or the threat of violence? I doubt it, seriously, and I haven’t even had to be raped to know the difference. Perhaps that makes me a chickenvictim or something.

You know, modern rhetoric and discourse has a distinct lack of imagination for metaphor. It’s either rape or Hitler to someone, somewhere, who lacks inventiveness to create his or her own turn of phrase. Yet these people get rewarded by a chorus of “Hell, yeah!”

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The St. Louis Cardinals Bring St. Louisians Together

September 19, 2006May 4, 2013 Brian J. Noggle

Who would have thought it? Bill McClellan of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and I agree on something: the owners of the St. Louis Cardinals played the civic “leaders” like ballpark organs:

Not so with a ballpark. If developers thought a Ballpark Village were a great idea, they would have built a village around the old ballpark. They didn’t. So when the Cardinal owners wanted some financial help for their new stadium, they promised – and put that promise in writing – that they’d also build a Ballpark Village. This would be a big plus for the revitalization of downtown.

Now comes the word that yes, the Cardinal owners could live up to that promise, but the Village would be a lowercase sort of place: ballpark village. Doomed to failure. Who wants to live in ballpark village? On the other hand, the city could have something spectacular – three times the size of the original plan – but the taxpayers are going to have to help out again. Maybe $100 million or so worth of help.

Perhaps these crony capitalists are serving a function for the greater good.

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St. Louis Cardinals Pop Some More Seed Corn

September 18, 2006May 4, 2013 Brian J. Noggle

Media Views: A cut in free-TV games seems to be in the Cards:

As the baseball season winds down, the clock also could be ticking on KPLR’s run of televising Cardinals games. It remains to be seen where the over-the-air games in the Cards’ local television package end up next season — or even if there will be a free-TV portion to the deal. The current agreement places 41 games on Channel 11.

FSN Midwest, the cable-satellite TV outlet that carries the bulk of the team’s local television package (110 games this season), has been negotiating with the club for months to increase its number of games as part of a new deal that would begin next year. (The club’s arrangement with KPLR allows for either side to opt out of after this season.)

This is a high stakes game not only for the team and TV outlets, but for a significant number of fans. Only about 80 percent of homes in the market subscribe to services that carry FSN Midwest, which is one of the lowest percentages of cable-satellite TV penetration in the country. That means that one in five homes in the area — about 244,000 total – could face a significant reduction in the number of telecasts available over free TV, as the club would be taking money over those fans’ interests and the fact more people watch on KPLR than FSN. That would parallel the team’s switch of flagship radio stations, from KMOX (1120 AM) to KTRS (550 AM).

Let’s not forget the Cardinals made the public build them a stadium with fewer seats in it, so they’ve got to dissuade the casual fans somehow. By making the games unavailable for free on television or the radio, they’re on their way.

You know, current sports owners remind me more and more of quick-turn real estate rehabbers. They buy a team, slap some wallpaper agreements raising revenue in the short term, and sell it for exorbitant profit after only a short time. The next investor group picks it up, does the same, and hopes to make their short term profits before the infrastructure–in this case, the fan base–crumbles entirely.

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Book Report: TV Now: Stars and Shows by Dorothy Scheuer (1984)

September 18, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

I picked this book up at a book fair for a quarter because it’s like TV Superstars ’83, and I already shot my credibility as a serious thinker by admitting a weird attraction to the Scholastic books covering television from the era in which these things mattered to me. Man, I remember the little one page tissue-paperesque book order forms from Scholastic, Tab, Arrow, and so on, and how one could buy real books for a buck or two for a paperback. Of course, we didn’t have a buck or two, so I just got to look at the catalogs and imagine (for the most part). And now, some twenty years later, I’m amassing a library which includes the occasional book I was denied in elementary school.

This book, like the other, deals with television shows in the 1983-1984 time frame, so there’s quite a bit of overlap–Mr. T., Tootie Fields, Gary Coleman, and so on. But where TV Superstars ’83 filled out its pages with stars who’ve faded from even my memory, this book delves into the television industry, including chapters on the portrayal of technology on television, cable television, a bit about ratings, adulation for commercials, and musings about the future of interactive television. So this work might be the slightly more serious of the two.

Like you’re going to run out and get it or click the link below to order it from Amazon. Still, I read it because it was a cheap and quick way to get another item on my annual list of what I’ve read and a last ditch Sunday night blog entry. But I read it, and here’s my post on it.

Books mentioned in this review:

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That’s One Inept Conspiracy

September 17, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Bush administration distances itself from ailing U.S. automakers:

Please call back after the election.

That’s the message from President George W. Bush’s business-friendly administration to executives of the ailing U.S. auto industry.

Twice this spring, Bush postponed a summit with the chief executives of Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG’s Chrysler unit and General Motors Corp., citing scheduling problems.

In a Sept. 8 phone call to Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr., Bush said he wanted to wait until after the Nov. 7 midterm elections to keep partisan politics from intruding on the event.

I mean, if the Bush administration is wholly owned by Big Oil, what the hell is it doing by not pandering to Big Auto, one of the best mechanisms through which citizens consume Big Oil’s products? I guess the two choices are:

The Bush administration isn’t wholly owned by Big Oil.
The Bush administration is incompetent in the service of its master, Big Oil.

Many people in the blogosphere will just expect it’s option 2.

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St. Louis Post-Dispatch Headline Writer Again Focuses Wrongly

September 16, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Here’s the headline: Teen student shot by officer is charged with two felonies.

Note how the teen student’s major role in this headline is to be shot by the officer, and then passive-voicedly charged with two felonies. What, pray tell could those felonies be? Illegal Larceny of Government Rounds By Secreting Them Upon One’s Person Or In One’s Body? Failure to Be Dead From Government Shooting? Here’s the handy lead to shed some light on it:

A Westminster Christian Academy student who was shot in the leg by police during a confrontation at his school Wednesday has been charged with two felonies.

Well, a confrontation. Perhaps the young man exchanged words with the policeman. Perhaps he tried to speak truth to power or to enlighten the policeman to the policeman’s oppressive role in the existing order.

I guess the Post-Dispatch does get to the point eventually:

The officer fired at Vincent – first grazing his leg and then striking it – as the student sat on a curb on the campus with a .410-gauge shotgun, according to Creve Coeur police Capt. Bob Kayser.

Witnesses said Vincent, who had not been in school that day, was pointing the shotgun toward his head and that he had earlier sent a text message to another student, saying he was planning to kill himself.

After police arrived, they began talking to the teen, who threatened to kill himself, Kayser said. At one point, Vincent lowered the shotgun and pointed it at the officers, who told him to drop it, Kayser said. An officer shot him when he did not.

So, this isn’t just the teen student shot by police; this is the teen student who brought a gun to school to commit violence upon himself or others.

(More fun with the Post-Dispatch and its love of passive voice here, here, here, and here. More coming to a newstand near you tomorrow.)

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Stop, Spot! The Alligator Is Not Your Friend!

September 15, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

What kind of messages are our children’s books sending with pages like these?

I mean, come on, green or not, the alligator is not the puppy’s friend. The alligator is a carnivore known to come out of Floridian canals to take puppies for a little death roll and snack. They do not sit on the sides of the canals and make garlands like a shepherd and his love.

So you’ll pardon me if I censor my offspring’s literature to provide common sense adages like The grass is green. Oh, crap, it’s an alligator. I knew we shouldn’t have come to Florida for vacation. Cover your ears, Spot, Daddy has to shoot the primordial enemy of man.

Call me insensitive and, yea, prejudiced for not liking things of other colors which would eat me if given the opportunity.

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Book Report: Small Felonies by Bill Pronzini (1988)

September 15, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

As you might remember, gentle reader, I read Bill Pronzini’s Blowback in May. I thought well enough of it that when I found this particular book at the Carondolet YMCA book fair this month, I picked it up for a dollar. I’d already broken through the buy/not buy barrier and the bottom of a stroller makes it easy to forget how much you’ve already selected. Not that there was a baby in the stroller, mind you; babies take up room better left to books.

This book collects fifty short short stories in the mystery genre. These stories run under 2000 words for the most part–three or four book pages. They don’t offer a great deal of character development, layered nuance, or other such hallmarks of immortal literary fiction that won’t survive the decade. They do, however, have plots, crimes, and sometimes a twist of an ending. Sure, they’re obvious sometimes and are fairly simple in structure, but they’re all good short shorts.

And they’re easy and not very intimidating to start reading because they’re so short, but it’s hard to stop because the next one won’t take long, either.

I enjoyed the book, and I’ll have to start watching out for short short collections. Also, this book doesn’t diminish my view of Pronzini; I think I’ll move him a little higher in my unofficial pantheon and start looking for more of his works. For when I start buying books again, which hopefully will be sometime after I’ve run through my backlog of thousands.

Books mentioned in this review:

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At Least Some Good Came Of It

September 13, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Bears’ Shutout Means Free Furniture:

Kendall County furniture store owner and “huge Bears fan” Randy Gonigam got tired of players bragging about their defense, so he decided to put his money where their mouths are. Over Labor Day weekend, Gonigam’s World Furniture Mall in Plano offered customers free furniture – up to $10,000 – if the Bears shut out the Green Bay Packers in their season opener. Four quarters, 206 customers and about $300,000 later, Gonigam is still a little shell-shocked.

Let the conspiracy rumors begin: Mike McCarthy threw the game for a nice bedroom set.

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After the Civic Failed

September 13, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Accord averts teachers’ strike in Alton schools

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Saddam Hussein Becomes Farce, Moreso, Again

September 13, 2006September 8, 2018 Brian J. Noggle

Now he’s apparently channelling the Kids in the Hall:

Hussein later lashed out at “agents of Iran and Zionism” in the courtroom and vowed to “crush your heads.”

For intelligence into how this is possible, I refer you to the following documents:

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Kevin’s Notes

September 11, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Kevin Horrigan, former sports columnist and now Editorial Page staff reporting to former television columnist and now Editorial Page Editor Eric Mink, proves that not only can you get promoted if you try hard enough and if ownership roils enough on your paper that you’re the only guy left, but also writes an attempted satirical column depicting a Bush book report on Camus’ The Stranger:

Some lessons in this book: One, if this is a French masterpiece, then I don’t want to hear the French whine about anything any more. Two, don’t go sleeping around. Three, what’d I tell you about the Arabs? Four, capital punishment is a good thing, because it not only put this guy, Meursault, out of his misery but it put the rest of us out of our misery, too.

Now, that’s hardly satire; as a matter of fact, that and the preceding paragraphs pretty accurately sum up the book. But Horrigan loves his own wit, and has to turn an enlightening summation of the book into an imagined indictment of Bush:

Five, the war in Iraq made us all safer. Six, keep your expectations low. And finally, anyone who believes I actually read this book probably still believes Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.

Well, now. Honestly, I think Bush probably read the book–it’s skinny enough and it’s not Entangled Existentialism like Being and Nothingness. Also, I think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and may or may not still have undiscovered caches thereof, but I wouldn’t expect the newly reconstituted Iraq defense forces to have a WMD program already.

Secondly, I was going to apologize for my ad homenim funning above about Kevin Horrigan’s pedigree. But, on the other hand, that sort of rhetorical goofballery is the kind of thing that can get you on the editorial page of the Post-Dispatch, and I just want them to know I am available, and fond of my own biting wit.

(In a bit of Brian lore, when I checked The Stranger out from the Marquette University library, I also checked out another slender volume called The Outsider by Camus. As soon as I polished off the 120 pages of The Stranger, I opened The Outsider and found it to be a strangely familiar, yet laden with Existential meaning, experience. As you probably know, well-educated reader, The Outsider is the British translation of L’Etranger. Imagine my chagrin.)

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Good News for Packer Fans

September 11, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

The Green Bay Packers aren’t peaking too early.

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Wealthy Owners, Profitable Ball Club Cannot Fulfill Promises Made to Get Public Money Without More Public Money

September 10, 2006May 4, 2013 Brian J. Noggle

The St. Louis Cardinals want the taxpayers to throw more good money after bad–for the Cardinals owners to catch, of course:

As the new Busch Stadium continues to attract sellout crowds, the crater next door that was once the old stadium continues to do what it has done since the season’s first pitch: gather dust.

Team officials have promised that the site one day will be Ballpark Village, a bustling collection of shops, restaurants and condominiums that will transform downtown St. Louis. To get a tax break from the city, Cardinals executives three years ago committed to spending at least $60 million to develop two of Ballpark Village’s planned six blocks.

Now they are back, pushing for a $650 million project on all six blocks. But with that renewed ambition, comes an outstretched hand – more public financing. A look at similar projects shows that the taxpayers’ burden could well exceed $100 million.

I would be almost be happy if this proved to be an expensive lesson to governments who would spend their constituents’ money to pamper sports teams. However, like all other boondoggles before it, I expect this will ultimately only prove to be expensive.

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The Only Possible Rejoinder

September 9, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Iraqi PM set to visit Iran:

Iraq’s prime minister announced plans to visit Iran on Monday, just days after his deputy returned from the country, accompanied by several top officials.

Whereas some people will no doubt say, “We toppled Saddam Hussein to make a little Iran?”, I can only rebut, “Well, it’s a free country.”

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Which We Is That?

September 9, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy today attended an immigration rally, which means an amnesty for illegal immigrants rally in Washington to show his support for the cause. However, his speech proffers a possibly ill-interpreted turn of phrase:

And if we can’t get this Congress to pass fair immigration reform now, we’ll elect a new Congress in November that will pass it.

No doubt the we means the naturalized citizens and I, but given that he’s speaking before a crowd that could, quite possibly contain some non-naturalized gente, doesn’t it sound almost as though Edward Kennedy is exhorting illegal aliens to vote Democratic in November?

One could easily make that mistake, couldn’t one?

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Metaphor Failure! Metaphor Failure!

September 9, 2006December 14, 2017 Brian J. Noggle

In a story about how Macy’s will revitalize downtown when its preceding Famous-Barr gave up and lie curled in a fetal position at the corner of 6th and Olive, we have a gusher:

“This is exactly the punch in the arm downtown needed,” she said. “I think this is just the beginning. Famous-Barr had been here for years. Then Macy’s took it over and, boom, they brought it back.”

There you have it. Macy’s is giving downtown a punch in the arm. Sorta like the bigger kids in gym class. No word on when Macy’s will demand the lunch money of downtown, but all corporations do, sooner or later.

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