In Milwaukee, a group of aldermen are deferring or turning down salary increases to maintain other public services.
Thank you, gentlemen. I used to use that library you’re saving.
To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
In Milwaukee, a group of aldermen are deferring or turning down salary increases to maintain other public services.
Thank you, gentlemen. I used to use that library you’re saving.
No telling how they would reduce the BAC of the donor blood.
(Link seen on Drudge.)
Jeff Gordon of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch writes in his Tipsheet column:
LIFT WEIGHTS, RUN FOR OFFICECalifornia Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger got a warm reception when he presented medals at the 39th annual Mr. Olympia contest. He’s huge with the flex-and-pose crowd.
“Finally, I feel at home again,” he told a crowd of 6,000 in Las Vegas. “This is a terrific sport, and if it wouldn’t have been for bodybuilding, I wouldn’t have any of this. It’s a great foundation.”
Added Mr. Olympia founder Joe Weider, “Finally it’s beginning to dawn on the world that bodybuilders are smart. They develop determination. They don’t give up. They don’t lose. If they ever apply that to any profession . . . they can be a great success.”
Meanwhile, back in California, the southern half of the state was ablaze with brush fires.
Gordo, Non Sequitur does not play third line center for the Montreal Canadiens. You cannot even blame Schwarzenegger, or say he hasn’t done enough to stop the fires because he’s not even office yet.
I understand you media types, even you sportswriters, want to blame current Republican officeholders for unrelated problems that preceded their terms of office, but come on. Maybe you should go back to your normal job, which is blaming the current state of the Blues on the Brendan Shanahan tampering charge from 1991. Damn that Larry Pleau! How could he?
His Glenness relates a story about his recent trip wherein he and his family were in a hotel when the fire alarm sounded. InstaFamily escaped quickly, and the hotel sprinklers quickly doused the fire.
At least it was a real fire.
Last time I was in Milwaukee, staying in the Hyatt Regency, the fire alarm went off twice. Once on Saturday afternoon, when I was taking my pre-drinking nap and once at 3 am Sunday morning during my post-drinking-pre-driving-home slumber, someone tripped the fire alarm. Your paranoia shidoshi leapt into his trousers, shirt, and shoes quickly and stumbled, quite groggily in the second case, made his way down the narrow concrete steps.
If all the hotel’s denizens had been trying to make their ways down the stairs at the time, we would have had trouble. The stairs were only two people wide, and I was on the ninth floor. That would have made for some trampling if shidoshi had to sacrifice their lives to preserve his….
Oh, but no. The staircase was empty. All other patrons in the hotel waited in their rooms for the announcement that it was a false alarm.
Interesting strategy, guaranteed to only fail once.
My students, when that fire alarm rings, buzzes, or beeps, you leave the building. Perhaps Ashton Kutcher, wearing a fireman’s helmet, will meet you at on the street to tell you you’ve been punked. But maybe he won’t..
Or, if you’d rather not give up cable until you have to, feel free to make Brian J. Noggle the beneficiary of your traveler’s insurance as you go (e-mail me for my SSN, which you’ll need for the forms).
And do not ask your shidoshi about the “coincidence” that he never accepts employment in an office above the fifth floor, nor look in his lower left drawer and seek explanation for the fifty feet of nylon clothesline you might find.
Thank you, that is all.
The Sophorist posts several maps that indicate which regions in Missouri consistently favor concealed carry and which do not.
Rule the cities, rule the country.
As a recovering amateur eBay seller, I can appreciate this seller’s forthright listing:
Final Notice and Disclaimer: I know nothing about these stuffed Beanie Babies. I offer no proof of anything. It is a stuffed animal, get over it! I don’t think my ex-wife was in the Black Market Beanie Trade..but then again, I didn’t know she was having an affair either! Thus no gauruntees! All have theior little Heart Shaped tags on their ears.
Ants – Armidillo
Almond – Bear
Knuckles – Pig
Humphrey – Camel
Tiptoe – Rat (I must have picked this one)
Pig – Zodiac Pic (huh?)
Chipper- Chipmunk or Squirrel (Not Sure)
Neon – Sea Horse or Sea Serpent
Goatee- Goat
Prickles – Hedge Hog
Steg – Dinosaur (Stegasaurus I guess)
Manny – Mannatee
Paul – Walrus (Hey I get that joke..koo-koo-ka-choo)
Rabbit- Rabbit (Zodiac Critter)
Sheets – Ghost
Rainbow – Lizard (cameleon?)
Batty- Bat
Peanut – Elephant (comes in a plastic see-thru box)
Britannia – Bear with British Flag
Germania – Bear with German Flag
Eucalyptus – Koala Bear
Web – Spider (I must have picked all the ugly ones!)
Beak – Kiwi Bird?
Scaly – Komodo Dragon or other lizard..not sure!
Mystic – Unicorn
Nuts – Squirrel
(Not Pictured) Mickey Mouse in Hockey Uniform
ALL OF THEM HAVE THEIR LITTLE HEARTS TAG ON THE EARS!
On Sep-19-03 at 12:47:48 PDT, seller added the following information:
The valuable beanies here are Steg (dinosaur), Humphrey(camel), web (spider) and peanut (elephant). They are worth considerably more if they have the red heart hang tags and if the tags are in good shape – no creases or tears. If you wouldn’t mind giving me more info on those. Also, if you added more info to the auction I’m sure you could get more $$ for your tools!
To answer her question: I looked and to the best of my looking at them all. None of the ones she mentioned have any torn tags or creased tags. In fact NONE of the little critters have messed up tags. People have been telling me these critters are worth alot of money. I know nothing about them, and told you everything you need to know up in the description. I make no claims on value, and to be honest. I am amazed anyine pays more then a dollar a piece for these things. What happened to collecting STAMPS? Pay what you want for them! IT ALL GOES TO HOMEDEPOT !!!!!! and BEER!
On Sep-21-03 at 12:21:32 PDT, seller added the following information:
To sell counterfeits of a trademarked item wold make you a common criminal. Are you being honest? If so, cancel the auction, relist the common beanies, and send the rest for authentication. It would be well worth it financially and would make you honest. Taisha
Winning bid was $860. Better than I ever did, even any single auction in the great Playboy Job of 2000.
(Link seen on Pejmanesque.)
Kelley, from Suburban Blight, has led me to the following realization:
Which Beer are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Was there any doubt?
My home state, Wisconsin, has passed concealed carry legislation. Boots and Sabers has the complete rundown.
Good luck, guys. I hope your state constitution says “Guns are good if the legislature says so.” Anything else, we’re learning in Missouri, means the State Supreme Court gets to make the law of the land.
Anger Management gives to you:
The Fusking.
The last line of this story, about a principal at a charter school who uses RFID in the student IDs to keep track of the children, really sums it up properly. To address the concerns of the critics who think this might be problematic and invade the privacy of the students, he says:
“It’s as private as anything else can be when your information is stored on a server,” he said.
Anyone here who would accept that as a valid answer, please send me an e-mail with the reasons why that’s okay. Be sure to add your social security number and mother’s maiden name for validation purposes. Thank you.
(Link seen on /..)
In an editorial in the Washington Post, Michael Kinsley’s latest piece bears the headline “One Reason Not to Like Bush” and he starts with a lead of:
Conservatives wonder why so many liberals don’t just disagree with President Bush’s policies, but seem to dislike him personally. The story of stem cell research may help to explain.
He offer some blah blah blah about Bush opposing fetus stem cell research and how Bush pretends to think it’s immoral, but:
None of this matters if you believe that a microscopic embryo is a human being with the same human rights as you and me. George W. Bush claims to believe that, and you have to believe something like that to justify your opposition to stem cell research. But Bush cannot possibly believe that embryos are full human beings, or he would surely oppose modern fertility procedures that create and destroy many embryos for each baby they bring into the world. Bush does not oppose modern fertility treatments. He even praised them in his anti-stem cell speech.
Got that? Kinsley starts putting beliefs into Bush’s head to make his point. Lookie der, lookie der, Bush cannot adhere to his principles because he has not specifically addressed this particular permutation! HYPOCRITE!
Finally, after some blah blah blah about Bush being a hypocrite and moral poser and not a very good one at that (undoubtedly, Kinsley would probably intimate, like you and me, wink-wink-nudge-nudge-say-no-more!), Kinsley finishes with:
This is not a policy disagreement. Or rather, it is not only a policy disagreement. If the president is not a complete moron — and he probably is not — he is a hardened cynic, staging moral anguish he does not feel, pandering to people he cannot possibly agree with and sacrificing the future of many American citizens for short-term political advantage.
Is that a good enough reason to dislike him personally?
Actually, if I were falling for the straw man Kinsley’s hung in effigy, I might still think it was a policy disagreement if I left out every impure motive he so applied so dilligently to the policy discussion.
As it stands, I can only summon forth a “Poor form, Peter” and continue to disregard Michael Kinsley as a serious thinker. Is it good enough reason to dislike him personally? But, Mr. Toohey, I don’t think of you.
Sorry, not much posting tonight.
I realized I am going nowhere fast, so I decided to slow down and enjoy the scenery on my trip.
Porphyrohenitus provides a litmus test you can use to determine if you’re liberal (acidic, I presume) or conservative (basic).
I am a Member of the Dreaded NeoCon Cabal. Do we have magic in a cabal, or is that a coven?
Darn. At the next cabal committee meeting, I am going to move we reorganize into a NeoConCov.
In John Buccigross’s column on hockey this week, Shjon Podein, the former Colorado Avalanche and St. Louis Blues winger, defines chutzpah as only a hockey player can:
“So, I’m in my rookie year in Edmonton and it’s my birthday. We had just come home from one of our infamous 15-20 day road trips and my family is there to celebrate. So, the family and I go out to have some dinner and drinks. We’re just relaxing when one of my brothers gives me a four-foot high, inflatable tyrannosaurus rex for a birthday present. My other brother gives me a sombrero.
We get back to the hotel and get mom back in her room. As we’re leaving mom’s room, my brothers jump me and rip my suit off in the hotel hallway, leaving me with just my boxers, a sombrero and my 4 foot high inflatable tyrannosaurus rex.
So I’m wandering the hallways of the hotel trying to find where my room is. We’d been on the road for 15-20 days, it’s late, and I can’t remember my room number. I stick my room key in a number of doors, hoping to find the right one. All of a sudden, I look up and there is one of Canada’s finest security guards.
I go, “Hey, what’s going on!”
The security guard says, ‘We’ve had a complaint that some guy is walking down the hall in his boxers, wearing a sombrero, with a bottle of Bud in one hand and an inflatable dinosaur in the other, making too much noise.’
I looked at him and said, “You’ve got the WRONG GUY, brotha.”
The TSA strikes again, as in “swing and a miss!”
You think they’ll go after the harmless woman who brought a knife onto the plane to cut her apple snack? Perhaps it’s also against the law to eat an apple that’s not provided by flight staff on a plane, too. If not, maybe it should be.
(Link seen via Drudge.)
In his column today for the Chicago Sun-Times, Richard Roeper discusses the marketing creation “metrosexual.” He’s spot on when he says nobody but people who are selling something to men who want to be “metrosexuals” every really uses the term “metrosexual.”
However, he goes over the line with his clincher paragraph:
Uh, I don’t think so. And after I finish my Guinness tonight, moisturize and then read a few pages of The Devil Wears Prada before I watch “SportsCenter,” I’ll sleep well, knowing this whole metrosexual thing is just media-fueled nonsense. Hell, I don’t think I even know any metrosexuals.
Dammit, were I in Chicago, I might feel the need to defend my manliness by having a slap fight with him or downing a Budweiser just to prove I could. As it were, I shall finish my Guinness, read a chapter of The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, and ….
Uh oh.
Looks like there might be some awkward conversations at Thanksgiving when I come out of the walk-in closet.
Oh, wait, my beautiful wife dresses me, so I guess I am not a metrosexual after all.
I cannot praise 88.7 WSIE enough. It is the perfect radio station.
I mean, it only interrupts the jazz music to play St. Louis Blues hockey games.
One less reason for me to leave Musings Central here.
With all the handwringing about Nathaniel Heatwole and his “hide the box cutter” stunt which has left him facing ten years in Federal prison for pointing out the folly that is the TSA and its passenger searches, I think it’s time to inject a little perspective into the anti-box cutter hysteria. I understand they were used in the hijackings on September 11, 2001, but it was a different world then. People expected that hijackers wanted to fly to Cuba, or wanted some political hostages released, or some ransom money. People did not know then that doing what a hijacker wanted was certain death, too.
Otherwise, no one would be hijacked by someone wielding one of these:
Not exactly a machete, now, is it? This is your garden variety box cutter favored by retail stockers and warehousemen everywhere. Note the less-than-shiny razor blade with almost a whole half inch of cutting surface exposed. This is not a piercing or stabbing weapon, folks. This is a little slasher, and it’s got far less than an inch of penetration power. No bad man is going to stick you in the heart or lungs with it, and it’s probably not enough to cut through your stomach wall if you’ve done any extra situps recently or have been eating a lot of fast food. Keep it away from your neck and you should be okay if someone pulls one in a fight. Granted, I’d rather be the guy with a case cutter if one of the two of us in the fight has one, but it’s not instant death, and it’s not even that intimidating.
Even if the bad guy pulls the razor out, he’s only exposing 1.5 inches of slashing blade, and it’s a hell of a lot harder to hold:
Of course, maybe when the press describes box cutter it means a utility knife. Utility knives come in all shapes and sizes, but they’re all designed to have a small, sharp cutting surface but also to be safe for people to handle. As a result, they don’t make that effective of a weapon, especially if you’re a terrorist with a plane full of resisting people.
So we, the people, know that the measures that strip grandmothers of their pinking shears and businessmen of their nail clippers are mostly cosmetic. That the TSA is making a show of security all the while telling us to please be quiet so that the TSA can fool the bad men into thinking the planes are secure. By taking away some of the most effective makeshift weapons available. This effort inconveniences air travellers and probably doesn’t even phase the bad men. It also could lead to prosecution of innocent people who make a small mistake.
When I was working in retail, the box cutter just became a part of the gear I carry in my jeans pockets. After each work day, I dumped it onto the dresser with my wallet, keys, and change. Every morning, including some upon which I did not work, I picked the gear up and put it into my pockets. If I were to do that today, on a day whereupon I was to catch a plane, don’t doubt the TSA would make an example of me.
So let this be a series of lessons to you. Our TSA is creating, for its own benefit, an illusion of security by isolating innocuous items and hoping against all hope that the terrorists continue to use things TSA screeners are looking for and that the terrorists are foolish enough to get caught with them. The TSA will ruin countless innocent American (not that Heatwole’s innocent, mind you) lives to make its point, which is not worth much.
Apparently, going over Niagara Falls without a barrel is illegal, according to this story:
It was a stunt — not a suicide attempt — that sent a Michigan man over the brink of Niagara Falls yesterday. That’s according to Canadian police, who say they will charge 40-year-old Kirk Jones of Canton, Michigan with illegally performing a stunt.
I’m not sure which stunts are legal in Canada, but just in case, it’s probably a good idea to not leap through any flaming hoops when visiting our nothern neighbor.
No word from our legal counsel yet whether wearing clown shoes violates Ontario ordinance.