The tackiest gift of the week (photographed at the Great Mall in Olathe)

Wrong drugs? (somewhere in Olathe)

Unique or Eunuch ?

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After seeing a historic courthouse in Pittsfield,IL I searched the Life Magazine Archives for the photos of old courthouses in Kansas in Missouri. There were just a few.

Pettis Co. Courthouse in Sedalia, MO.

Cars crowding the parking lot in front of the courthouse in Independence, MO.

Pike County Courthouse in Bowling Green, MO.

I usually limit my old photo posts to KS and MO, but here is a link to other courthouse photos around the country.

Thanks to JJS in KCK for the idea.

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The singer “was a virtual skeleton – barely eating and with only pills in his stomach at the time he died”, the paper said.

Imagine you are a coroner, crappy profession that it already is, your days are filled with horrible, bloody, disgustingly smelling, disfigured things that no one in the right state of mind would even want to be in the same building with, and instead of enjoying a nice sunny LA day you have to dissect a skeleton-looking, hairless, needle-ridden body of a weird celebrity. Not only do you have to chisel off the layers of plaster and artificial prosthetic parts, you for some ungodly reason have to cut his stomach open to see what he was eating before he croaked. It’s in the times like this that you must feel that you should’ve picked another specialty like a podiatrist or a proctologist, albeit their worldview is somewhat constricted.

That’s why I think every person should carry a card at all times with the contents of their stomach for the past 48 hours as a way to make the job of forensic pathologists just a little bit easier.

Let’s see, today my stomach contains:

• a cup of coffee
• cheese and turkey sandwich
• a orange/apricot jelly (from Bermuda) and toast
• cherries
• persimmon
• apple
• some frozen yogurt from Yummo (mix of 3 flavors) because they don’t sell Korean tacos on Monday
• chicken patty
• a piece of dried banana
• salad (Caesar dressing)
• cheese quesadilla
• corn
• some lemonade
• a piece of Tippins coconut-creme pie

I think that’s it. There maybe some leftovers of this cinnamon roll from Barb’s Kolache Bakery in Shawnee from a couple of days ago
and just a little bit of the cherry kolache ( I gave the other ones away)

but that’s just being too thorough.

See this is not so hard.
Maybe your coroner will be grateful for not having to dig through your rotting guts and will not “leak” embarrassing details of your autopsy to the media. In my book, that’s just paying it forward.

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When I was growing up©, I used to calculate how old I will be in the year 2000. This was my Mayan Calendar of sorts – the year 2000 was so far away and the double-digit age of 31 seemed so unbelievably huge that I didn’t bother to look beyond the year with too many zeroes. Now, ten years on the other side of that imaginary horizon I still can’t believe I made it so far without any outstanding achievements. No lives saved, no cure for cancer discovered, no small town square named after me, no major scientific problems solved, no bestselling books written and no spread in the Blind Playgirl Magazine. The only thing I can show for the previous 40 years of my life is a steady weight gain and a child who is extracting the most aggravating noises out of the Nintendo WII as I type this.
This year started with me trying to decide if that’s what an alcohol poisoning feels like and will end at the same place in another attempt to achieve it. As always I hurt some people, made some people laugh, got fatter but not any wiser. In other words, a pretty average year, just another one in now a long line separating me from that naive age when I couldn’t imagine the life past 31.

I would like to thank many readers of this blog, people who thought enough of my writing to stop by and leave a comment, and many others who know me on Twitter, Facebook and in real life (there are about 4 or 5 of the lucky ones). I hope you all have a great year, stay healthy, employed and sexually active happy.

This is an old (1956) Soviet song – “5 minutes til the New Year”:

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Berl Berry automobile dealership organization, founded by Berl Berry in 1940 with Ford and Lincoln-Mercury automobiles, moved to two locations in 1950 at 19th and McGee Streets and 1818 Independence Boulevard.
Leaving for work:

At work:

Midday break:

Checking out his ranch:

Relaxing at home after the long day on a giant bed:

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