Kansas City Restore Sanity Reportage

NOTICE: I used the word "reportage" in the title because I'm an Intellectual Elitist who has no patience with "common, everyday Americans" who can't be bothered to expand their limited fucking vocabularies by going to the trouble of Googling new words.

So I had to leave the house today anyway to go into work to finish up some system testing.

As long as I was wearing grown up clothes and out amongst humanity, I figured I may as well go to the Kansas City Satellite Rally To Restore Sanity on The Plaza.

The second thing I noticed when I got there (after the anticipated low turn out...it was more of a nanosatellite rally) was the Po Po!


Apparently, before I arrived there had been a bit of a dust-up, if not an actual kerfuffle teetering dangerously close to an all out brouhaha!

It seems that while the Restore Sanity folks had gone through all of the proper Kansas City Parks and Recreation channels to get the required permit for their event (where they were told they COULD NOT use loudspeakers or any other voice amplification devices...a requirement they complied with), some rogue Tea Baggers showed up WITHOUT a permit and WITH a sound system to mount a counter-rally!





That woman creeped me out a bit. Looked like a Mormon sister-wife.

The Tea Bagger turn out was WAY smaller then the Sane people. It looked like the Tea Bagger speakers and their audience all rode together in the same van.

So I kind of eavesdropped on a conversation between the Po Po and some of the folks from both sides. The police were saying something about no actual law being broken while the Tea Bagging lady was saying

"But we DO have a permit! From God! It's called the Constitution!"

which she then brandished a copy of to the cop who seemed unimpressed.



Later, the police got bored and managed to find the only African-American on The Plaza to interrogate, much to their obvious delight.



The only News Crew on sight was from KSHB. I'll leave it up to you to figure out how I noticed their presence.




Yeah, I'd tap that.

I was only there for a few minutes when I saw my good friend and fellow blogger Average Jane who was giving out Free Hugs!



This was her sign...



That was typical of most of the signs I saw. Level headed, intelligent, rational, non-confrontational and inclusive.















Some of the signs were a bit more confrontational, but barely...









That last one may seem to be the most aggressive, but he's a gutless moderate next to my "Eat The Rich" campaign.



There were some Stephen Colbert supporters who infiltrated the rally in an attempt to Keep Fear Alive...









But these were my favorites...













After the rally I had a nice lunch with Average Jane and her friend Lisa at The Cheesecake Factory.

Nice day!

No Paternity Testing Needed

So my 16 y.o. daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis, was invited to join her boyfriend Jimmy's family on their vacation.

They're flying out to Vegas tonight for the weekend. Then they are renting a car and driving to L.A. for the rest of the week. Where, among other things, they are going to Disneyland!

[When she was 5, I tried to convince her that the Midland Carnival that came to the Richmond Mushroom Festival was "Disneyland". Told her that was "Mickey" we saw scurrying under the Cotton Candy cart. She didn't fucking believe me. Me! Her own father! So young to be so cynical. Sad.]

Jimmy's family is paying for the trip, but her mother and I loaded her up with several hundred dollars of spending money so she wouldn't be a complete mooch.

GTO just texted me, and I quote:

"So, I was just thinking, I'm pretty sure I'm gonna spend all my money on cocaine and prostitutes. Sound okay with you?"

My reply:

"Only one of those things is legal in Vegas. Be safe! Use protection!"

They grow up so fast! I'm all verklempt here!

Sometimes, I Bore Myself

It started with a comment thread over at my friend Christian's Facebook page.

It inspired me to spend several hours last night crafting a post for this blog on the hypocritical shenanigans in this election cycle.

But after finishing the post, I decided not to publish right away. I wanted to sleep on it, let it stew in it's own juices, see how it looked in the morning.

GOOD FUCKING CALL!

The gist of the post was, all of these Tea Bagging/Birther/Tenther/fucktards who scream about wanting smaller government only want small government when it comes to "MY MONEY!" They don't want this "Socialist/Obama/Pelosi/Job Killing/Blahblahblah" Big Gummint using "MY MONEY!" to help their fellow Americans. Fuck 'em!

But they are ALL ABOUT Big Gummint when it comes to sending our military off to kill people and break things; keeping Mexicans out of the country; preventing women from controlling their own bodies and reproduction; controlling who can fall in love and get married; criminalizing what consenting adults can do in the privacy of their own bedrooms; arresting, prosecuting, convicting and jailing weed monkey stoners; taking away your anonymity and privacy by allowing Big Gummint to spy on you without a warrant in case you just might be a terrorist.

So that's it. Two paragraphs sums it all up and, quite frankly, it's all shit I've said before. But for some reason, I felt compelled to ramble on and on and on about it. I read it this morning and I found it boring, not that funny, pretty pedantic, so I chose not to post it.

I know you're all disappointed. Let me make it up to you.

Instead of a (intended) biting, witty, insightful, educating, satirical and enlightening essay on the hypocrisy of the current election cycle, I give you a YouTube video of a turtle fucking a shoe. Which, surprisingly, I found by going to YouTube and doing a search for "turtle fucking a shoe".



You're welcome.

Carl Sagan's Final Legacy, 1996

This man perfectly embodied and represented my view of reality. This is the legacy I hope to pass on to my daughter.

IT'S A MIRACLE!!!

No.

It's not.

It's science and technology, even some Rocket Science, and some brass-balled, Harry Stamper, Armegeddon, drilling motherfuckers that saved those 33 miners.

Don't get me wrong.

I have no doubt whatsoever that the religous faith of the miners and their families sustained them, gave them comfort and helped them survive this ordeal.

But all of the prayers in the world didn't penetrate a single centimeter of rock. It didn't supply them with air to breath. It didn't feed them. It didn't give them water. It didn't allow them to communicate with the outside world.

It was good, old fashioned, American high-tech drilling teams that got those miners out of that death trap.

There was nothing supernatural or miraculous about this.

It was GPS, drilling, air, water, food, cameras, psychology, technology and sheer human will power and determination that snatched 33 men from a cavity more than 2 Empire State Buildings deep in some of the hardest rock in the world after being trapped for over 2 months.


Humans, science and technology saved those men.

Their faith may have comforted and sustained them, but it was actual science and technology that saved their lives.

Left to the "The Will Of God", they would all have been dead a long time ago.

This Is Why Republicans Won't Take Control In November

In a nutshell, it's because they are running batshit crazy candidates that no swing voter is going to cast a ballot for.

Christine O'Donnel, Republican, Delaware: The Lying, Anti-Masturbation, Anti-Evolution, Palin-Endorsed Witch



Sharron Angle, Republican, Nevada: The Neo-Prohibitionist, Anti-U.N, Anti-Social Security, Anti-Education, Tea Party Republican who won the Primary against the Chicken Barterer



Carl Paladino, Republican, New York: The Sexist Fag Hater!



And last but not least...

Rich Iott, Republican, Illinois: The Nazi SS Jew Killing Renactor


"Republican congressional candidate Rich Iott, under fire for dressing as a Nazi in World War II reenactments, attacked House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) on Monday for repudiating his participation “before he had all the facts.”

In an interview on CNN, Iott defended his role in the reenactments and offered harsh criticism of Cantor, one of the highest profile Jewish lawmakers in Washington.

“Rep. Cantor did what so many career politicians do…he reacted before he had all the facts,” Iott said. “He didn't know the whole story. He didn't understand what historical reenacting is all about, or the education side of it. And he just made a decision without all the facts.”



Jesus Fucking Christ in a chicken basket!

These are the best candidates that the Republicans can field? Because every other Republican candidate was too moderate?

I'm betting on the American people to vote for the SANE candidates.

The Cosby Hotel - b. 1881 - d. ????

[click on any of the pics to embiggen and explore the luscious detail]

The 139 year old Cosby Hotel at 9th and Baltimore is one of the oldest buildings in Kansas City and deserves to be preserved.

But it seems that the current owner may be more interested in selling a vacant lot at a prime downtown location than preserving history.


Apparently the only options are finding a buyer or putting it under the wrecking ball.


This is so puzzling because the property isn't in the middle of a blighted neighborhood where all of the other buildings are falling apart.


Far from it. The 9th St. corridor west of Main is thriving. The historic facade could be preserved and incorporated into a new building.




The owner of The Cosby recently had all of the windows removed from the building. Whether that was to remove a potential flying glass hazard during demolition or merely to hasten the natural deterioration of the building is unknown.


But it did offer an unprecedented and never to be repeated ghostly view into 139 years of Kansas City history.










The other day I made swing by The Cosby and found that all of the windows were now boarded up.


Does this mean that possible preservation has trumped greed and neglect?

Let's hope so.

ACKNOWLEGMENTS: David Remley at Hyperblogal challenged me to conduct this photo essay and his encouragement and advice have been invaluable. To the extent that this essay doesn't suck, thank you Dave! To the extent that it does suck, that's all on me.