Kansas City News Blog

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Sure, National America Appreciation Day and its associated three-day weekend are over now, but before we move on to National Stomach Cancer Awareness Month, let's pause to reflect on all the awesome shit we blew up on the Fourth of July and, while we're at it, all the awesome shit America has blown up over the years. During the Iraq war — the first, more successful one, not the disappointing newer one — I remember Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf giving a great audiovisual press briefing that featured a lot of precision explosions of bridges and stuff. Honestly, how am I supposed to get pumped about dropping bombs on wedding parties and neonatal ICUs?

I consider myself a patriot. Before starting work each morning, I say the Pledge of Allegiance at my desk — I mean, shit, we make children do it, and they don't even know what "indivisible" means. I refuse to believe any loyalty oath taken by people whose little fontanels haven't knitted together over the exposed brains they were born with. When I say the Pledge, it's with the full knowledge of the entire history and conservative Christian underpinnings of the United States of America. However, I'm a writer and I'm always revising, so my version of the Pledge of Allegiance has a reworked Digital Underground ending sending out "peace and humptiness forever" to "all the ladies out there." After the jump, all the news I could cram between ironic air quotes and post later than normal. Click here, or on President Humpty Hump to continue:

Fake Flame of Freedom: I kind of dig Yael T. Abouhalkah's distaste for the expense of Liberty Memorial's commemorative simulated eternal flame, and also how he encloses the word "eternal" in bitterly ironic quotes, the way angry Iraq war opponents might talk about Army "intelligence." Now that members of the private sector, such as chefs and businessmen, have stepped forward with their little red-white-and-blue purses open to cover the $45,000 annual cost of keeping the steam and lights plugged in, taxpayers can go back to funding abortions for gay, flag-burning Mexican immigrants. At least, I think I heard that's what taxes were for. I'll defer to dictionary-consulting economist Ross Balano at the Kansas City Star's Midwest Voices blog w/r/t government expenditures.

The best part is that by posting any kind of criticism related to Liberty Memorial on the third of July, Yael bravely opens himself up for an inevitable fusilade of simulated patriotic outrage generated with steam and colored lights by commenters pretending to believe that he is criticizing America's entire involvement in World War I rather than a public finance issue. I was going to blockquote a few of the better examples, but then I got distracted by my reflection in the mirror and spent a half-hour oiling myself up and flexing my quads and abdominals, then eating a breakfast of raw eggs, and before I knew it, the whole morning had got away from me.

Barack Obamas from the sky: IT'S RAINING BARACK OBAMAS! Obama's charter plane made an unscheduled landing in St. Louis today to correct some kind of mechanical error that couldn't be fixed in the sky, the way they would have done it on Disney's TaleSpin series, a cartoon for "slow" children about a group of anthropomorphic bears who have wild adventures in their airplanes, landing only to eat backpackers, hibernate and — possibly — shit in the woods. No word from the Democratic presidential nominee about the wild adventures he has flying around the country spreading the good word about Allah and the Koran while dodging air pirates, but he did confirm to reporters that his campaign charter hadn't ever made an unscheduled landing before. But I will always remember this as the day when it occurred to me that I should really stick it to the most innocuous, boring cartoon imaginable.