A night on the town

One of my favorite memories is cooking dinner on Saturday evenings. In my fantasy, I'm fixing Italian sausage and pasta. The steam from the boiling water is fogging my glasses and downstairs I hear the WHIRRRRR of my ex racing away on the stationary bicycle. What's on the radio? Why its A Night on the Town.

George Harter's A Night on the Town is one of my favorite local radio programs of all time. He plays two hours of Broadway Show tunes and one hour of film scores.

When KXTR folded its classical music tent, the classical music went to AM. I quit listening. However, I have recently discovered KANU and to my wonder, A Night on the Town is on for the full three hours in FM Stereo. Check it out.

Highly recommended as well is the Retro Cocktail Hour. The website decribes retro as Space Age Pop; Bachelor Pad Music; Exotica; Lounge Music; and Cocktail Jazz. Take a two hour warm up for George Harter. Make it an evening.

When you hear that the Democrats want the UN to guarantee free elections.....

... think of their history in Kansas City.

• Thugs roamed the streets near polling places in the March 27, 1934, election for mayor and council, in which reformers were pushing hard to beat machine candidates. At one precinct, 1901 E. 24th Street, thugs barged in and killed a poll worker. Later, a sheriff's deputy, a hardware store owner and a machine enforcer were shot to death outside a polling place at 5824 Ward Parkway. Over the years, blame has been ascribed to one or another Democratic faction or to gangsters. In the end, most machine candidates won handily.

Stunning Nelly Don 1950s Dress/Bolero Jacket (Aa. 1930s - 1950s) at A Midnight Sparkle Vintage Clothing

My next door neighbor where I grew up in Independence worked for Nelly Don. She always brought me home these neat cones to play with. I later found out that they were used as bobbins for thread. Here is a dress that she might have worked on.
Stunning Nelly Don 1950s Dress/Bolero Jacket (Aa. 1930s - 1950s) at A Midnight Sparkle Vintage Clothing

Butt Ugly

Kansas City, the town where I lived for 26 years, has always resented being called a cowtown.  So why is it that at I-435 and Bannister Road (95th Street), the Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) has erected some of the ugliest western themed "art" that I have ever seen.  

The "art" consists of rusty silhouettes of bison, cowboys, Indians, you get the picture.  Now I know that the place where the "art" was erected is in the general location where the Santa Fe Trail crossed I-435.  

I am not a philistine.  I like the shuttlecocks.  I liked it when Christo wrapped the sidewalks of Loose Park,  my favorite place to lay on a blanket with excellent company during college, with golden cloth.  I really like the Sky Stations on top of Bartle Hall.  What I don't like is poorly executed crap.  This is even much worse than the rusty steel cattle bull wall" " that is in front of the American Royal.

Folks, it doesn't have to be ugly to be art.

Joe Pyne

Before anyone, there was Joe Pyne. As a little boy in Independence, MO, I loved this show. Follow the link and read about Joe.

Funny thing is, when I saw the show, I thought he was ancient. Now I see he died at age 44. That's two years younger than I am, which makes me....ancient plus two.

I gazed into the abyss and the abyss gazed back....

...neither one of us were very impressed.---Brother Theodore.

Nietzsche - Abyss

Nietzsche says....

...Oh blow it out your ass Howard. --Mel Brooks

Some Favorite Aphorisms from Nietzsche

Performance Sport Trailers

I'm leaving for Colorado on the R1100RT tomorrow and this guy went out of his way to show me how to care for a trailer that I didn't even buy from him. He also runs an auto service shop. If you are in Olathe and can shoot him some business he comes highly recommended. He is fixing up his trailer to take Bushtec to Cassoday the first Sunday of every month. Performance Sport Trailers

Maybe ya' wanna steer clear of the gyros.

Mirror.co.uk - GREEKS 'TO GAS 15,000 DOGS BEFORE OLYMPICS'

Now this guy really was a guru.

I found this website when I was researching the history of UMKC for the Engineer's Week Scavenger Hunt.

Paramahansa Yogananda in Kansas City, January, 1932!

I just love the use of "ompage." Wish I had registered it first.

It says that Jimmy Lynn "meditated six hours with [Paramahansa Yogananda] the first day." Such was his receptivity, that in that first meeting, the Guru was able to transmit to him the experience of samadhi.

A really good article on Jimmy Lynn is here. Article on Jimmy Lynn

Now, do you think it was because Lynn was such a hot-shot meditator or was it because he was loaded? Lynn founded the Universal Underwriters corporation and donated Epperson House, and buckets full of money, to the University of Kansas City, predecessor to UMKC.

The master speaks

Reading WFB expanded my vocabulary and helped me to drive my liberal high school teachers nuts.

"James, I think that the more educated one becomes, the more liberal they become," Mrs. Freeman, 1972.

The New York Times > Magazine > Questions for William F. Buckley: Conservatively Speaking

This guy is a guru?

One of the most obnoxious people I ever sat in class with demonstrated the truth of Franklin's dictum, "Considering that in conversation knowledge was obtained rather by the use of the ears than of the tongue, I gave Silence second place among the virtues I determined to cultivate."

The class was advanced financial institutions and the professor had been teaching and more importantly advancing his knowledge of the subject for decades. And this guy just would not shut up. Most of this is in retrospect, however. At the time, I was a much different person.


Vince Milum

Fun with progressive bifocals

My Mom passed away yesterday. Right afterwards, I was standing over her and crying. When I opened my eyes, while I was shaking my head, it looked like she was moving. It was my bifocals. I stood there for what seemed like a minute and I could shake my head and make it look as if she were still breathing.

Frickin' Clinton Toilets

If you want to know why I'm a Republican, here's why.

I just bought a new house. It's filled with these frickin' Bill Clinton, 1.6 gallon per flush toilets.

Because of my Mom and all, I haven't been eating regularly and that means that something else hasn't been regular either. If you catch my drift and all. Yesterday, after a particularly cathartic episode in the bathroom, it took three flushes to eliminate evidence of my elimination. My old house, a seventy plus year old product of the depression, would never have let me down like this.

So what's my point? My point is this. You can be a gay and want to marry your goat and the Supremes will step in and keep the John Ashcrofts of the world from keeping you from true love. But, whenever the Democrats get in, they start in with this shit, literally, of telling you how many gallons you can have whenever you flush your toilet. And NOBODY, not the supremes, not congress is going to step in and flush the crappy toilet regulations.

Death Rattle

I spent the better part of my weekend at the nursing home with my Mom. Her kidneys have shut down and her heart is not keeping her lungs clear. I intervened and had them take the IV out on Saturday night. This morning, Tuesday, they wanted to run some bloodwork on her. I said, No, I've been hearing for three days that the nurses didn't think she would last through their shift. So they have orders not to stick her with anymore needles.

When the lungs fill up it makes a sound commonly referred to as "death rattle." When I heard it in Mom it sounded more like one of these:fountain. But I guess they couldn't call it Death Fountain Paint Pots.