December 20th 2008
Burger King has launched a men’s body spray called “Flame.” It’s billed as “The scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat.” $3.99 online.
Let us not forget that this is the home of The Whopper.
December 18th 2008
This is an edited version of the column I wrote for the November-December 2008 issue of TK Magazine. It’s a true story. It’s too wonderful to be fiction. Alyse has given permission for me to use her and her mother’s names.
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For several years I was a member of Sweet Adelines, and even sang in a quartet. We were never very good, but we had a lot of fun, and have remained good friends ever since.
Alyse Stewart sang tenor in our little foursome, and her Mother, Helen, was our biggest fan. Helen loved and supported us, even when we were dreadful.
Alyse is the fourth-generation owner of Stewart Hardware in Valley Falls. Alyse’s great-grandfather opened the store in 1890, and it still operates in the same delightfully crowded building with a wall full of drawers containing every nail, nut, bolt, or screw you could want. Helen worked there 5 days a week until a few months before her death at age 89. If anyone could embody the concept “pillar of the community,” it was Helen Stewart.
Valley Falls (population 1260 or so) is one of those wonderful small towns where everybody knows everybody. When I go there to visit Alyse, people turn and look as I drive past, because they don’t recognize my car. There are two police officers and one stoplight. Alyse assures me the good folks of Valley Falls are more cautious now, but when this story happened most of them routinely left their keys in their cars.
Helen Stewart loved to fish, and Stewart Hardware carries some fishing gear. One day a young customer came in the store to buy an ocean rod, which was not something Stewart Hardware stocked. But Helen knew of a wholesaler in town who would have it; and, since Helen had help in the store that day, she offered to go with her customer to the wholesaler.
As they walked out the door, Young Customer said, “Would you like me to drive?”
“Well, yes, thank you,” said Helen.
Now, Young Customer thought he was offering to drive Helen’s vehicle for her, and Helen thought Young Customer was offering to drive her in his vehicle. So they sort of moseyed over to the curb, got in a truck that didn’t belong to either one of them, and drove away.
A few minutes later, the rightful owner of the truck came out of an adjacent business, and found his truck had been stolen. The police were called, and a description of the vehicle was taken. Policeman One set out to find the perpetrator.
By that time Helen and Young Customer were on their way back. As Policeman One was sitting at the stop light, the stolen truck pulled up going the opposite direction. Helen Stewart was driving. She smiled and waved at the officer.
Not wanting to go down in the Valley Falls annals as the person who arrested Helen Stewart, Policeman One made a surreptitious u-turn and quietly followed her back to her store.
As they pulled up and got out of the truck, Rightful Owner was hollering and gesturing; and Helen and Young Customer, in a move worthy of Abbott and Costello, turned to each other and said in unison, “You mean it’s not yours?”
Three minutes later, Helen, Young Customer, Rightful Owner, and Policeman One were all laughing over what had to be one of the best stories any of them would ever tell. Rightful Owner got in his truck and drove off.
Two blocks away he was stopped by Policeman Two because he was driving a stolen vehicle.
(You can see a picture of Helen behind the counter of Stewart Hardware.)
October 22nd 2008
For those who don’t recognize him, the central figure here is Topeka’s pride and joy, Fred Phelps.
October 22nd 2008
I am proud to tell you that the author of this piece is my son.
September 29th 2008
Two great bumper stickers from lpstuff.com:
“Vote Libertarian. It Only Feels Kinky the First Time.”
“Vote Libertarian — The Fast-Acting Cure for Electile Disfunction.”
September 25th 2008
I am proud to present this as the creation of one of our local Libertarians.
September 22nd 2008
This is a slightly edited version of an article I wrote for the September-October issue of TK Magazine.
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Since this issue of TK Magazine is focused on politics, I am going to take the opportunity to provide some information about the Libertarian Party, of which I am an enthusiastic member.
The Libertarian Party is the third-largest and fastest-growing political party in the nation. We believe in personal freedom and individual responsibility. We are sometimes categorized as economically conservative and socially liberal.
For many years, American politics has been seen, overly simplistically, as a straight line, with the liberal folks on the left and the conservative folks on the right. The left wants personal freedoms and governmental control of the economy; the right wants economic freedom and governmental control of personal behavior.
It’s far more complex than that, of course. There are a few people who want the government to control almost everything, and a large group who want the government to control almost nothing. In 1971, David Nolan, one of the founders of the Libertarian Party, published the diamond-shaped chart that still bears his name. To see the chart, and to take a short quiz that will tell you where you fit on the chart, visit www.theadvocates.org/quiz.
I am not a spokesperson for the Libertarian Party, nor do I intend to paraphrase the party’s platform here. I was at the 2008 convention for much of the platform debate, and that was enough of that, thank you very much. That information, and much more, is available at www.lp.org for those who are interested.
Rather, I would like to present some of the ideas about libertarianism that I, personally, find compelling. They are in no particular order.
The function of government is to protect your life, your liberty, and your property. It is not the function of government to provide for you.
You should be able to live your life as you see fit until you start taking that right away from someone else.
Voluntary charity works better that any government agency. Contrast the FEMA mess with the voluntary outpouring of help from all over the nation sent to the Hurricane Katrina victims.
When you control your own charitable giving, you have the right to demand an accounting of how your dollars are spent. As things are now, you are required to contribute under threat of incarceration, and yet have no right to demand accountability.
Lower taxes encourage and attract businesses, which in turn create jobs and lower the need for government programs. If taxes are low, there is no need to force citizens to ante up to entice new businesses to your town.
The majority does NOT rule, for which we should be grateful. If it did, the majority could dictate to you where to live, what job you could have, even the name of your next child. It’s called Tyranny of the Majority, and has been explored by other writers. No, you should be in charge of every aspect of your own life, even if you are a minority of one, except in those few cases where the Constitution specifies that the majority, via the government, may compel certain behaviors of you.
The federal government MUST be required to confine its activities to those allowed it by the Constitution. These are functions, such as national defense, which the states and the citizens cannot reasonably be expected to perform for themselves. All other functions are explicitly forbidden to the federal government by the Tenth Amendment. Education, for example, is forbidden as a function of the federal government, but required by the Kansas Constitution as a function of the state. Kansas, and Kansas alone, should be responsible for public education in our state.
The government should be afraid of the citizens, not the other way around. The IRS is one of the most oppressive and frightening institutions around, and should be abolished, along with the Income Tax. If government were confined to its Constitutional limits, the Income Tax would not be necessary.
We must end corporate welfare.
Not everything that’s a good idea should be compelled by law.
Not everything that’s a bad idea should be prohibited by law.
September 22nd 2008
The equinox is not a day. It’s an exact moment when the center of the sun is directly above the earth’s equator. That happened this morning at 11-something o’clock, Topeka time. On the day that happens, the sun rises directly east and sets directly west.
In Topeka, numbered streets — at least the ones south of 12th Street – run due east and west. And so it was that, at 7:10 this evening, I was standing in the middle of 23rd Street making darn sure the sun was doing what it’s supposed to do on this day, which is to set smack dab over the middle of the west end of my street. *
Sure enough.
I find something magical about the absolute predictability of our little solar system. People who know about that stuff can predict eclipses centuries in advance, for cryin’ out loud. I have no idea how that’s done, but I am doing my small part by checking up on the sun every March and every September.
And if I ever go out there and the cosmos isn’t doing what I expected, I plan to write my Congressperson and see if they can’t make a law to fix that.
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* Lest any of you are concerned, 23rd Street is residential, with little traffic at that time of day. And I gave up a long, long time ago being concerned about what people think of me.
September 22nd 2008
Having been out of town for a while, and then having had trouble getting caught up after being out of town for a while, and then having gotten out of the habit of writing anything after trying to get caught up after being out of town for a while, I can say with some confidence that I am back. Sort of.
August 6th 2008
I’ve had this on file for a while, and cannot remember where it came from.