Cracked rear view

You can learn a lot of good life lessons on a daily basis if, like me, you make a lot of stoopid mistakes.

Today is a great example.

Everything was going along well. Everyone got up, showered, dressed and fed in time for me to leave by 7:30 to get the kid to school and me to work.

So I hop in the car, buckle up, and put the care into reverse to pull out of the garage. So far, everything is going according to the usual daily routine.

Then, for a split second, I look down to adjust the air conditioner/defogger that I had turned on during yesterday's afternoon rush-hour downpour.

Bad idea.

As I turned the temperature dial from medium to cool, I heard the sickening crunch of plastic on metal. In my inattentive backing up, I had run my driver's side rearview mirror into the metal garage door track.

I wasn't moving very fast, and I hit the break immediately. But the damage had been done. The mirror is pulled away from the door about a quarter of an inch, and it cracked at the base where it connects to the car door.

My first auto accident of any kind since 1993. Son. Of. A. BITCH!

For the sake of the kid in the backseat, I managed to internalize a stream of obscenities. The rest of the morning drive went off as usual, and my temper was soothed a little by the conversation with the kid's teacher wherein I learned that she had a great day at school yesterday and yada, yada, yada.

During the short commute I tried to grasp for one of those aforementioned life lessons. Always stay focused on the task at hand? It's better to move forward to backward?

The best I could come up with is "Watch where you're fuckin' going!"

tagged: driving, accident, car, rear view, life, lesson

YouTube Tuesday: R.I.P. Greg

This week's YouTube Tuesday is dedicated to Greg Beck.

I won't be able to attend the funeral this morning (damn work), but if you have a chance (and a red dress), here's the info:

Funeral Services:
Tuesday, September 18th, 11:00am
Palestine Missionary Baptist Church of Jesus Christ
3619 E. 35th Street
Kansas City, Missouri 64127
816-921-6009
Please use the 35th Street entrance

And, just because it makes me feel a little bit better, here's a poem from one of my favorites, Billy Collins.


UPDATE: The Filegirl checks in with a nice update from the service. Thanks again, Filegirl, I hated to have missed it.

tagged: movie, YouTube, video, Greg Beck, Death's Door, The Dead, Billy Collins, funeral

Random photo V: The Lizard (smo)King

This excerpt from a mural in a popular Prairie Village tex-mex restaurant illustrates what everyone already knows: That smoking and drinking can make even cartoon iguanas look cool.

tagged: lizard, iguana, smoking, Prairie Village, Kansas, restaurant, dining

My Life's Soundtrack

I saw this on KCSponge's blog and it seemed like a good thing to do... at the time. Now, I'm not so sure. You be the judge.

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your music library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, whatev)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend your cool...!

I was a little taken aback by the appropriateness and/or irony of some of the random selections (and I promise, they were all as random as my iPod would allow). Of course, some of them make no sense whatsoever. But that's to be expected, right.

Anyway, on to the Soundtrack of My Life:

Opening credits:
Sentimental Mood - St. Germaine (seems pretty appropriate)

Waking up:
Santa Monica - Savage Garden (how the hell did that get on there)

First day of school:
Penny Lane - The Beatles (again, very apropos)

Falling in love:
One Step Closer - U2 (okay, this is getting eerie)

First Song:
Evidence - Thelonious Monk

Fight Song:
I Fought The Law - The Clash (how cool is that!)

Breaking Up:
Wheel In The Sky - Journey (Yeah, I like Journey. You got a problem with that?)

Prom:
Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen (OMG! This is just freaky! What are the odds that I would get the SAME THING as Sponge!)

Life:
Mending Fences - Restless Heart (from my Supermodel Wife's music collection, but still strangely appropriate)

Mental Breakdown:
Anthem - Rush

Driving:
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas - Diana Krall (Okay, that's pretty damn random)

Flashback:
Fins - Jimmy Buffett

Getting back together:
You Don't Know What Love Is - Fenton Robinson (oh, the irony)

Wedding:
If I Hadn't Been High - Detroit Junior (Now THAT is funny)

Birth of child:
Scuttle Buttin' - Stevie Ray Vaughan

Death Scene:
Right Here Right Now - Jesus Jones (Guilty pleasure? Maybe. Great song? Absolutely.)

Funeral Song:
Driftin' - Eric Clapton

End Credits:
Little Old Wine Drinker Me - Dean Martin (great closing credits song)

tagged: meme, music, soundtrack, Eric Clapton, Dean Martin, Jesus Jones, St. Germain, Diana Krall, Jimmy Buffett, blues, Rush

Friday Blogthing: Powerful stuff

I don't really need much power. Just enough to utterly crush my enemies and squeeze national governments into my iron control. That's all.

Oh, and have a grande latte delivered to my desk every morning.

Your Power Level is: 71%

You're a very powerful person, and you know that all of your power comes from within. Keep on doing what you're doing, and you'll reach your goals.

How Powerful Are You?

tagged: Friday, test, power, enemies, meme, blog

Sunday drive

We've started a kind of ad-hoc family tradition this summer.

After church on most Sundays, during the drive home, we'll stop off at the Prairie Elementary School at 80-something and Mission Road to check out the incredible outdoor classroom they have created.

The gardens boast dozens of different vegetable and flower varieties. Our daughter was impressed with the sunflower, and took a few of the ripe seeds as a souvenir last Sunday.

There's also this really cool iron sculpture.

But the favorite of our soon-to-be-five-year-old is the pond with giant lily pads.

tagged: Kansas, Johnson County, family, Prairie Village, garden, science, waterlily

Knockin' on heaven's door

By now you've all read that reports of Greg Beck's death are true.

Damn. Just... Damn.

I expect there will be a ton of tribute posts today, each one of them well deserved. That's just the effect Greg had on people. He was one of the good guys, you know?

It's one of those weird-but-cool phenomena of blogging, you get to know people so well even though you may have never met them in person.

Anyway, I think this is the only thing I'll post today. It's from one of the first posts by Greg that I read when I discovered his blog a few years ago and one of the reasons I, like many, became addicted to his daily take on life.

One day I came home from work late and hopped into bed. Later the Roommate came home from her gig and hopped into bed. The Stressed Out Italian Stripper came home and I heard her stop at the bedroom door. I could feel her staring at the scene before her. In my bed laid myself and tucked in on the other side of me was the Roommate. I heard a deep sigh and then the Stressed Out Italian Stripper crawled in on the other side of me. I just laid there takin it all in, wow, I’m in bed with two hot women. Then the four cats and the stupid dog hopped into bed and that kind’a ruined that Penthouse moment.

and the monkey flipped the switch


Here are some other blogger thoughts and remembrances:

• Irish KC on Greg Beck
• Xavier Onassis says it well
• Tony's Link
• A moment of silence from Heather
• Local blog community has lost a voice
• Nightmare remembers
• Greg flipped Spyder's switch
• SmedRock is right, he was an icon
• Just "damn" from JustCara
• Rusty remembers Greg as a second father
• Happy In Bag, a little less happy
• m_toast toasts her friend
• Chromed Curses feels the way we all do
  

tagged: Greg Beck, Death's Door, blogger, Kansas City

I hope this isn't true

Tony just linked to the report of the untimely death of Greg Beck, author of Death's Door, from a heart attack Sunday night.

Somebody please tell me that this is a horrible misunderstanding or a ghastly publicity prank.

This is a major loss to the local blogging scene if it's true.

tagged: Greg Beck, Death's Door, blogger, Kansas City

The Sebelius Administration and Chemical Weapons

The Sebelius Administration in Kansas just earned another black eye, proving yet again that it is no friend of the environment.

A report by the Wichita Eagle details how the Sebelius Administration approved a plan to go all Nazi on hundreds of cute, innocent prairie dogs in western Kansas.

Exterminators contracted by Logan County received approval from the Kansas Wildlife and Parks Department to use aluminum phosphide gas to execute the cuddly little creatures.

End environmentalists also fear the chemical weapons attack could have killed other cute meadow creatures such as burrowing owls, ornate box turtles, cottontail rabbits that tend to inhabit abandoned prairie dog holes.

The mass extermination was carried out with state support against the wishes of landowner Larry Haverfield.

"I hated to see them come on us and use that kind of poison," said Haverfield. "It kills everything in the holes. We would have liked to have someone come and seen us and talked about barriers and poison use."

The evil cabal of county commissioners and state undersecretaries took advantage of a 1904 state law that allows counties to poison prairie dogs and then bill the landowner for the atrocity.

With its support of this plan, the administration has revealed its deeply rooted anti-prairie dog sentiment. Oh, Sebelius' supporters will tell you that Priarie Dogs are vermin, that they carried plague and pestilence. Interesting how that is the same kind of rhetoric used by the Nazis in a little extermination scheme they had a few years ago.

Kansas shouldn't let this be swept under the rug. Today its prairie dogs in sparsely populated Logan County, tomorrow it could be the pet prairie dog in your back yard.

tagged: Kansas, Sebelius, chemical weapon, aluminum+phosphide, prairie+dog, wildlife, environmentalist

YouTube Tuesday: Are we not men?

So I've received a couple of emails and comments about my fascination with monkeys, and just what's the deal with that anyway.

Well, I didn't really know I had a fascination with monkeys. Sure, there's the Smoking Chimp that I use in my profile, and a handful of posts about monkeys. But I wouldn't really call that a fascination, would you.

But in way of explanation let me just say that monkeys are funny. In a metaphorical sense they are a good way to poke fun at ourselves and mock our baser instincts in an exaggerated way.

Kind of like what Ernest Cline does here...

tagged: movie, YouTube, video, science, humor, monkey, Ernest Cline, chimp