Friday, December 30, 2011

XO Covers the Occupy KC "Parade"

Occupy KC marchers take message to downtown sidewalks

By TONY RIZZO
The Kansas City Star

"Members of the Occupy KC movement made a loud, spirited and peaceful march through downtown Kansas City Friday.To the accompaniment of drums and other musical instruments, between 150 and 200 people took part in a New Orleans style jazz funeral march signifying the death of the social safety net.Denied a permit to walk in the streets because they could not afford to pay for the police protection required by the city, the marchers kept to the sidewalks — for the most part — during the 90-minute event."
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/12/30/3345234/occupy-kc-marchers-take-message.html#storylink=cpy





























Monday, December 26, 2011

Fucked Up Foodies


The Internet is deluged with blogs, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and all manner digital personas presenting themselves as supreme arbiters of what you should and should not eat or drink.

They vehemently eschew anything you've ever actually tried and liked. The only worthy food and drink, according to these pretentious, pompous asshats, are obscure, never heard of, impossible to find, ethnically dubious, nutritionally marginal, stupidly expensive, small plate artistic creations that wouldn't satisfy the hunger of anyone but a coke-headed hipster.

The very fact that most people like something makes it common, cheap and to be avoided at all costs. Only the rare, bizarre and mostly unknown should be sought out and savored.

Strouds, a local Kansas City family-style dining tradition that has been around for generations is regularly looked down upon because everyone likes it and it is good, plain, down home cooking. Pan fried chicken, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, green beans and dinner rolls as big as your head. All served family style just like at Grandma's.

Instead, the local Foodies would have you seek out some Ethiopian store-front "restaurant" with bars on the window in a high crime area that serves traditional Ethiopian fare. Like "drought starved grubs lightly dusted with dry sand, garnished with a fine, brown dust served with a side of sun parched mud".

Or some Egyptian place that serves pickled monkey brains on a bed of papyrus sprinkled with finely ground dung beetles lightly drizzled with the distilled essence of mummified goat testicles.

These Foodies won't eat where you eat.

They will only eat from dubious food trucks or "pop up" restaurants.

If Foodie "logic" were extended to the rest of society, only the Presidential candidate with the least number of votes would be elected to office. A candidate who didn't bother to run and got no votes at all would be ideal.

Only television shows that no one ever watched would be aired.

Only movies that never sold a single ticket or were never viewed by anyone other than movie critics would be eligible for any awards.

Only books that never got checked out or read would be stocked in libraries.

Streets with the least amount of traffic would get the most attention and maintenance. Major thoroughfares and highways would be left to crumble.

The diseases that afflicted the greatest number of people would receive the least amount of funding. Only obscure afflictions like "sunflower pollen intolerance among Siberian albino hermaphrodites" would be considered worthy of research dollars.

Ignore these pretentious foodie motherfuckers and don't let them make you feel inferior about what you like.

Eat what you want. Eat what you like. Enjoy.

If these skinny-jeans wearing hipsters want to ride their bicycles to the latest pop up restaurant serving free-range Libyan locusts humanely drowned in the finest Moroccan honey served on a plate of 100 year old Turkish hummus cooked over a genuine camel dung stove smothered in scarab wings, more power to them.

I'll gladly settle for a ham and beef half and half sammich from Bryant's with a full plate of greasy skin-on fries, lots of that thin, vinegary delicious sauce and a frosty mug of generic beer.

Bone a Petite.

Sunday, December 25, 2011

Christmas Day, 2011


Christmas is the only day in America that you can see sites like this.



Hell, even in the event of a Zombie Apocolypse the Mall would still be littered with corpse-filled vehicles.



This kind of empty only comes once a year.










Of course, one advantage of clearing out the Gentiles is, it makes it really easy to find the Jews.


Saturday, December 24, 2011

Vote For Your Favorite Photo of 2011

I waded through my photos from 2011 and picked my favorite 12.

I hesitate to call them my "best" because I don't know that any of my photos are "good" in any real professional sense.

I'm not a photographer. A real photographer controls the camera, the lighting and the environment to get consistent results every time.

I don't know how to do that shit. I just try to put myself in the right place at the right time, take a lot of pictures, and hope I get lucky enough to get a shot that works.

So, they are numbered 1-12. Leave your vote in the Comment Section. If you want to vote for more than one, that's cool. Just order your votes as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc.

If there are photos you like that aren't on the list, you can cast a "write in" ballot by posting a link to the photo and vote on that.

Voting will continue through midnight, December 31st, 2011. The winning photo will find its way into a large format print, a quality matte and frame and a place of honor in my home. The voters who voted for the winning print will all be invited to a Super Deluxe Brunch at my home after the print is ensconced.

So here are the contestants...

1. Ameristar Sunset



2. Bennet's Garage



3. Kaw Point Cargo



4. Arcade Christmas



5. Church Steeple



6. Cosby Hotel



7. Dragonfly



8. Fae of the Wildwood



9. King Kong Eats a Farm



10. Missouri River Trees



11. Missouri River Sunset



12. Under the Bridge



As in Chicago politics, vote early, vote often. GO!