Me and Clay Chastain

Dear God save us, he may be coming back.

“I’m heading back to Kansas City to try to change the direction of the city,” Chastain says. “I want to help create the greatest light rail system in the country in Kansas City next March. I’ll be back in a few weeks.”

Will it never end?!? Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!! Haven't we been through enough with this guy?

"Chastain will be petitioning (trolling for babes) to get an initiative before voters (in his Quixotic hopes of someday being Mayor) in March for a rail system that would run from Swope Park and the zoo (drive-by central) to the Nelson (hoity-toity art geeks from JoCo don't ride trains), UMKC (students and academics seem to prefer transportation via bicycles, spandex and unnecessarily streamlined helmets), Plaza (yeah...park the air-conditioned Beamer with the JoCo tags, mingle with the un-washed masses and take a train. That will happen), Westport (drunks hoping to avoid a DUI), Union Station (no one goes there), the new Performing Arts Center (see Nelson above), Sprint Center (Big Empty Glass Wok with a third rate, yet-to-be-named sports team of some sort), City Market (young, gay urban-dwellers who can walk to work and don't need a train) and over the river and through the Northland with stops that would include Zona Rosa (all of the people who shop at Zona Rosa live near Zona Rosa) and on to the airport (people leaving KC in a huge hurry)."

Chastain: “And I have an honest passion to help my country, the people of Kansas City and the planet.”

Oh puhLEEZE! Let me tell you a little story.

It's the early '80s. I'm single, never been married. I'm living in a sweet little studio apartment in Westport just off of 39th and Clark. It's a former single-family dwelling that has been converted into 3 modest apartments. I have the whole ground floor. Nice picture window. Little kitchen. It's fully furnished (I have a fold-out couch for a bed), all utilities paid, rent is $175.00 a month.

The guy who owned Kelly's in Westport lived right across the street. I'd sit on the front porch, sipping an ice cold Killian's Red and chuckle as he mowed his lawn in the 110 degree heat and 80% humidity (my landlord came by and mowed my grass once a week).

Live music was a block and a half away at Parody Hall. We're talking The Morells, The Blasters, local bands like Steve, Dave and Bill or whatever the fuck the Rainmakers used to be called, national acts like Gatemouth Brown and Leon Russell.

Life was simple. Life was good. The place was small enough that I could survey my entire "estate", inventory everything I owned by simply turning my head from left to right. It was all there, within eyesight from my crappy recliner parked in front of my 13" TV. I lived there for 4 years. My longest sustained residency at that time.

Enter Clay Chastain and some business partner whose name escapes me. Suffice it to say Clay was the "idea guy", the other numb-nuts was the "money guy".

I see them one day, outside the house, taking pictures. Clay is doing all of the talking and making lots of hand gestures, like he's trying to convey a concept.

I used to be a friendly, open guy. So I go out and ask what's up.

Clay explains (in so many words) that they have bought the place, they're evicting everyone (including the semi-hot slut on the third floor that I was hoping to nail...we have 30 days), so that he and his partner can "renovate" the place, restore it to a single-family dwelling, paint it in bright Victorian colors and charge some stupid yuppie hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy it so that he and his partner both walk away rich while the lives of the current tenants are left in shambles.

Is this a great country, or what? God Bless America.

Thus ended the Golden Age of Xavier Onassis.

Clay Chastain can kiss my big, white, flabby, suburban ass.

Clay Chastain doesn't care about anybody but Clay Chastain.

"Greed...is good."

Smartest (and horniest) man in the world says we may be fucked

Environmentally speaking.

You can't see it in this picture, but a bumper sticker on the back of his wheel chair says:

"Eat your vegatables"

Even geniuses need a little "action" now and then.

"Heat Bursts?"?

OK, I'm not a baptized Global Warmer.

The Earth is 4 Billion years old. We've only been studying the weather scientifically (without invoking Gods) for a couple of hundred years.

The Antarctic used to be tropical. The Gobi desert used to be lush. North America was a frozen tundra buried under glaciers. Shit happens.

Even if the Earth IS warming, I'm not convinced that we are to blame. It could be cyclical. It could be the Sun's fault. We don't know.

But "heat bursts"? That's some freaky shit.

I'm 50 years old. Never heard of heat bursts.

My Dad

I've always associated my dad with airplanes.

My earliest memories are living right across the highway from the airport in Coffeyville, Ks. That's where the Continental Can Company, where my dad worked, was located. He was a sheet metal worker and he made parts for airplanes.

When I was seven years old, we moved from Coffeyville to Mulvane, KS. Right out side Wichita. He got a job at the Boeing Overhaul base working on sheet metal parts for B-52s. We were only there for about a year, and during that year he got laid-off from Boeing and went to work for Beechcraft doing the same sort of sheet metal work.

That year cemented my love of airplanes. Wichita was the home of Boeing, Beechcraft and Cessna. It had McConnel AFB which was the home of the 388th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying F-105s, mainly to protect the horseshoe shaped ring of Titan II Missle silos around Wichita.

Every day in Mulvane was like being at an airshow. The sky was filled with low flying B-52 Strato-Fortresses and F-105 Thunderchiefs, on maneuvers. Sonic booms were commonplace. The ground shook and your bones rattled every day. The B-52s flew so low and were so loud, that you couldn't hear a person shouting at you from 2 feet away. If you stood out in your yard and waved at the airplanes, they would "tip their wings" to say "Hi" back to you. When we drove by the Boeing plant in Wichita, the first thing you saw were the 3-story high tails of the B-52s towering above the hangers. The only thing taller was the red and white checkered water tower.

I knew that My Dad was a part of that. Pretty heady stuff for a seven year old.

After dad got laid-off from Beechcraft, him and a buddy got jobs at the TWA Overhaul Base in Kansas City. The two of them temporarily left their families and moved into an apartment above a liquor store in Weston, MO. They found houses for their families in Excelsior Springs and then moved us all up.

I remember him studying to get his Airframe and Powerplant certification so he could get out of the sheet metal work and get a better job. I remember him not being around as much because he worked the Twilight Shift (3pm - Midnight) because it paid more. Even after his seniority qualified him for a "better" shift. With a wife and 4 kids to support, he needed the money.

Dad worked for TWA for the rest of his life. I remember when TWA moved to an "all jet fleet", phasing out the last of the "Connies". I remember touring the plant and seeing their very first 747.

So I've always closely associated my dad with my love of all things air and space. My love of airplanes led to my fascination with the space program. I closely followed the X-15 flights, the Mercury and Gemini programs, and of course, Apollo. I can recite from memory every flight, every crew member and their major accomplishments. To this day, my daughter believes that I know everything there is to know about "space".

My "high-tech fetish" led to a career with computers. For the past 20 years or so, I've made my living as a Systems Analyst. I owe this to the legacy that my father gave me.

So it really surprised me several years ago when my dad confessed that he really hated all of those jobs. He never had a job he really liked. Every job he had was a means to meet an end...to provide for his family. Know what he really wanted to be? A Forrest Ranger.

So this is a hats off to all of those hard-working fathers everywhere who toil and struggle through a lifetime of jobs they hate because they love their families and want to give them something that they themselves never had.

I love you dad. Happy Father's Day.

Coffee Cuts Cirrhosis Risk

GOD this is good news!!

Studies have already shown that consumption of alcohol can reduce the risk of heart disease.

Now they've found that drinking coffee can reduce the risk of cirrhosis by up to 80%!!

All I need now are two more studies!

hypothesis 1: Long periods of inactivity and lethargy give the body the strength, rest and time it needs to heal itself from the effects of smoking.

hypothesis 2: Spanking the monkey while looking at porn on the internet is actually an "aerobic" activity that can raise your metabolism and heart rate, causing you to lose weight. The more, the better.

Prove those two theories for me and I can live to be 180!!!

GO SCIENCE! GO SCIENCE! GO SCIENCE!

The Amazing Cruithne

OK, this is not my typical sort of post and it probably won't be of much interest to my regular readers (either one of them). It's not political, it's not funny and it's not some shit-stirring rant designed to rack up the hits and the comments.

This is just me being taken totally by surprise and left kinda in awe at how strange the universe is.

I know a lot about space. Enough to put me in the borderline nerd/geek category. The only thing that saves me from crossing over into pocket protector land is my lack of math skills. That allows me to keep my "layman" status.

But in all my years of absorbing astronomical and aeronautical data like a sponge, I had never heard a word about this.

A three mile wide asteroid named Cruithne, that shares Earth's orbit and has this absolutely incredible horseshoe shaped orbit. Not around Earth, but around three of Earth's Lagrange Points.



I had no idea this thing existed! My twelve year old daughter, little Galdriel Tanqueray Onassis is convinced that I know everything there is to know about space.

Thank God she doesn't read my blog! For this, and other reasons.

George W. Bush and The Big Lie

"His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it."

The above quote might be from a page out of the Bush administrations play book on how to handle public policy discussions. Especially the so-called "War On Terror".

But it's not.

It's from an OSS (Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the CIA) report created during WWII describing Adolph Hitler's psychological profile.

Hitler himself outlined this strategy in Mein Kampf:

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes. ..."

Those die-hard Republican Neo-Cons who continue to support their president just prove that Hitler, and George W. Bush, were correct.

Why Women Are Insane

I took my daughter, young Galadriel Tanqueray Onassis, shopping for clothes yesterday. She's twelve years old and will be going to Australia for three weeks this summer as a Student Ambassador with People to People, Int. So she needed some stylin' threads.

She's at that age where she no longer shops in the Girls section...she is now in Juniors. But get this...apparently she's a Size 0.

That's right. SIZE ZERO.

What the fuck? Let me repeat that. WHAT THE FUCK??

Men's clothing sizes actually MEAN SOMETHING. They are real measurements of real things. Men can shop for a shirt with a 16" neck and 36" sleeves. Pants with a 34" waist and a 36" inseam. Jackets with a 46" chest. This allows men to pretty much walk in, find their measurements, grab an armful of clothes without even trying them on and get the hell out. Shopping trip for an entire new wardrobe? Twenty minutes, tops.

Women's sizes mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. How can someone be a Size 0?? Wouldn't that mean that you don't actually exist??

No wonder women are nuts.

This shouldn't surprise anyone...

We've always know Batman and Robin were as gay as the day is long.

Now Batwoman comes out of the closet.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Alien life on Earth?

Mysterious, thick-walled red cells which contain no DNA yet still manage to reproduce, even in extreme environments?

If this is true, it's one of the freakiest discoveries I've ever heard about.

Check it out here.

"Where Are They Now?"

Click here for the story of the sad end to the tragic life of one of America's most beloved illegal immigrants.

A grateful nation mourns his passing.

R.I.P.

God fires "warning shot" across bow of S.S. Pat Robertson

Looks like God is gunnin' for the Rev. Pat Robertson.

It's about fucking time.

Every word that comes out of this idiots mouth just adds to the steaming pile of crap that is his legacy.

Can't believe anybody still sends money to this con artist.

Anybody foolish enough to donate money to the 700 Club should consider sending their money to me at the 695 Club. Cause, ya know, it's a bargain. And the end result will be exactly the same. You'll be poorer and God won't want you in Heaven because he doesn't want to spend eternity surrounded by idiots.

Pat Robertson is to Christianity what Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to Islam.

How can people be so fucking stupid?

Isn't there some way we can keep them from voting?

http://www.cbn.com/communitypublic/shake.aspx

http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=141967

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Pat_Robertson#Robertson_proposes_Chavez_be_assassinated