Blogs

By CHRIS PACKHAM

King Hillary of West Virginia: At his current pace of superdelegate endorsements, Barack Obama is on track to officially, numerically win the Democratic nomination by June 3. His team apparently mapped out the candidate's delegate strategy early in 2007, and I assume the plan extends all the way into the last year of his second term as president in 2015, including possible retorts to the accusations that he's become a "lame duck." For instance: "Am not."

Nonetheless, Fail Candidate Hillary Clinton is doggedly barreling ahead like the tough little fireplug she is. My feelings are best expressed in the lyrical idiom of Photoshop Elements 3.0:

By far, the most amount of time and work I've ever put into saying something mean. Daily Briefs: The only Web feature that cares about you.

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously:Yael Abouhalkah thinks you should WAKE UP, PEOPLE! And DESTROY YOUR TELEVISION! It's an ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT, and all it does is teach you to PASSIVELY CONSUME! Seriously, this reads like the unpracticed cynicism of an undergrad political science major. With a headful of Noam Chomsky. And a hackey-sack. I guess mass-media has let Yael down just one too many times.

Leviticus 21:19 is pretty funny, too. Back when I used to believe in God and baseball, I'd go to Royals games and hold up my JOSHUA 5:3 sign. It's the only Bible passage I ever cite: "So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the men at the Hill of the Foreskins..." These days, I'm into Scientology and women's figure skating, but it's still the only Bible passage I ever cite, because it's the all-purpose Leatherman multitool of Biblical references. The Hill of the Foreskins, people.

Wayne Godsey, president and general manager of KMBC, is so mad about Kansas City's crumbling, Civil War-era sewer system that he reaches the expressive limits of monosyllabic television news writing and becomes unexpectedly Bible-y: "Kansas City residents and businesses are about to pay for the sins of their fathers," he says. He's plainly blaming your dad — and calling him "sinful" — for not solving the problem so that he, Wayne Godsey, wouldn't have to. While we're all paying higher sewage fees so we can avoid the sales taxes Godsey opposes, I think we should remember our dads, and also the brave men who had to march up a certain hill back in Bible-Shakespeare-Renaissance Festival days. When John McCain was a lad, har har.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Making voting more like airport security: Like drunken sex and accidental conception, voter disenfranchisement begins in the parking lot outside Sidepockets, or, if you're on a budget, at home. Sedalia Republican Stanley Cox wants to have a constitutional amendment on the August ballot enabling election officials to demand elaborate proof of identification and citizenship in order to vote in the state of Missouri. This is ostensibly about Mexicans, and — I guess — the fear that Mexicans will attempt to overthrow the United States by voting it out of office. It could happen! Remember when people were afraid of killer bees advancing across the American Midwest? That totally happened, too. We have to protect the virginal sanctity of the ballot, obvs, and disenfranchising actual Americans is just a side effect, like flipper hands on thalidomide babies.

Did I mention that every Missouri resident could potentially have to go diving for new state-issued ID before November's presidential election? Remember back in the olden days when the Supreme Court was all "in love" with voter rights and probably, like, wanted to marry it? That is a thing of the past, along with midwifery and tipping your pilgrim hat to the scrivener. The current Supreme Court refused to overturn an Indiana voter ID law, and guess who was turned away at the polls during the Indiana primary? If you guessed "Illegal Mexican workers," you're close — just substitute the words "illegal," "Mexican" and "workers" with the word "nuns," and then refer back to the thalidomide flipper hands I cited in the previous graf.

Corncob-pipe-smoking Democrats speak: America's future boyfriend, Barack Obama, does not have time to conquer West Virginia because he is going to be in Missouri on Tuesday. Besides, the sheer concentration of backward racist hill-folk in the Appalachian states makes it hard for an obvious Muslim terrorist elitist America-hater to achieve electoral victory. Here are some actual quotes from some of Hillary Clinton's hardworking whites, along with some artist's conceptions of what they might look like.

"I've got 50-some guns, and I wasn't crazy about Obama's talk about small towns ... Besides, Obama just doesn't sound right for an American president."

"Obama takes the cake because of, you know, who he is. [He has a] Muslim name ... He's just a mistake any way you look at him."

"Is he Islamic or is he not? I know he's tried to talk about it but he hasn't looked anybody in Wayne in the eye and told them."

"I can't stand him. He's a Muslim. He's not even pro-American as far as I'm concerned."

"Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and ... whites in both states who had not completed college [are] supporting me."

"His father was a Black Muslim Kenyan. His mother is a white atheist from Kansas. Barack was schooled in a Jakarta Muslim school ... The Bible warns of the devil in sheep's clothing. If you want to put the fox in the hen house to guard the chickens, then go ahead and elect Barack Obama."

Your 28800-baud government at work: Broadband Internet access in the United States is a gigantic embarrassment, unless you take nationalistic pride in placing 15th worldwide. WHOOO! USA! Telecom deregulation has yielded a duopoly in America, while "socialist" countries — such as France — have a robust, competitive broadband marketplace. GO BACK TO FRANCE, FRANCE! Also, GO BACK TO FRANCE, CANADA, because even Canada treats broadband Internet access as a core infrastructure element, like highways and and aqueducts.

Hillary in the House: Do these people know they lost? I'm not a hateful man. Once, I gave some money to a hobo or a charity or something. But I sincerely hate each and every person in this video, particularly the shrill man-harpy at the beginning who's so enthusiastic about women "cleaning up the house." Imagine that you had to live with that guy, like, because of a court order, or something. And you had an ankle bracelet that electro-snitched when you strayed beyond a certain radius. And you had to hold hands with him. And he wouldn't stop singing this song:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Failure pile in a sadness bowl: Wednesday, Fail Candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton came right out and said that white people don't like Barack Obama.

"I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on," she said in an interview with USA TODAY. As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

"There's a pattern emerging here," she said.

She's citing this AP-Yahoo News Poll, which was taken back during the Dawn of Man, on May 3. Before Indiana and North Carolina. Hillary, you are literally the worst. And I work with people who will trample baby ducks in order to correct anyone using the word "literally" incorrectly, so I actually mean it. The list goes: Stickers on fruit, A Prairie Home Companion, accidentally sharting in public, Kevin Smith, Hillary Clinton. Gross, Clintons. Also, FAIL.

Your Pocketbook: As in, HAHA, you carry a pocketbook: Like a bunch of Tom Jodes, hard-hit American consumers are filling up their horse-drawn SUVs with salvage goods and generic macaroni from Aldi because of all the recession we aren't having. Story here. Don't worry: Stimulus checks are coming! My finances are none of your business, but I will say that a close personal domestic partner of mine is an accountant, and she says we're putting our free government money on our car loan rather than all the fun recommended by the Bush administration. Sorry for all the un-American debt reduction, Bush administration. You should have sent out nontransferable Playstation 3's or something.

Deadly PhD... in DEATH! This report says that besides curing heart cancer and transplanting wieners and stuff, doctors are also the best at committing suicide. An estimated 300 to 400 U.S. doctors commit suicide each year. Y'know, that's definitely the hardest part of being a doctor. What happens is, doctors go to medical schools that teach them about things like overdosing, so they know exactly how to do it. You guys, this is why knowledge should not be taught in schools. Way to go, medical school. We should all take a page out of the book that the state of Kansas won't let you read because it doesn't "teach the controversy," and stop dispensing knowledge to students without a prescription from a depressed doctor. Do you know the causes, signs and symptoms of suicide? One symptom is being dead, so look out for that.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

It's David Cook Day, Charlie Brown! Look, honest, I got no beef with David Cook Day in Kansas City. Because here's the thing: I've never even seen American Idol. Sorry — I'm just not a man of the people like Hillary Clinton. I think probably something else is on TV that night, but I'm not 100 percent sure what night it is. So it's entirely possible that I'm out drinking or attending to my many volunteer activities, such as buying cigars for children, which is a public service I provide at absolutely no cost. But seeing as it's David Cook Day Eve, why don't you all take a half-day off work, go home, and think about how commercial interests have sucked all the meaning out of David Cook Day.

The Brave Li'l Suburb: In the equivalent of a tax-break bat mitzvah, the City Council of Overland Park just approved the city's first TIF. Congratulations, Miss Overland Park. Now you can be called upon to read the Torah at a Shabbat, for today you have blossomed into a woman. Here, let me tuck this check into your coat pocket. Anyway. Developers will get $3.5 million in tax-increment financing to redevelop the Cherokee South Shopping Center at 95th Street and Antioch, if they meet certain requirements, which include delivering an anchor tenant. WEIRD! It's like this whole other country down there.

Volcanos: Nature's eruptions of ash, gas and magma: SURPRISE! The Chaitén Volcano in southern Chile erupted without warning last Friday for the first time in recorded history. These things happen. Five centimeters of ash have collected in Chaitén alone, and the plume is blowing across Argentina, choking vegetation and threatening all the cattle. BUT LOOK AT THIS AWESOME PICTURE!

It's a volcanic ash plume encountering a thunderstorm, and the image completely makes up for all the human and bovine suffering caused by unleashed tectonic forces. It's also helpful, for some reason, to remember that all of Yellowstone National Park is actually a supervolcano, which erupts periodically and sterilizes the entire surface of the Earth. So really, this isn't all that bad, as volcanic explosions go. Apocalyptic scenario sponsored by Nature, producer of soy isoflavones, MRSA, pooping, kittens, Larry Moore naked, and atoms.

Meet Vic: In case anyone wants to mess with me, I've hired a bodyguard. His name is Vic. He can't run far or fast without collapsing into a wheezing heap of gasping and heart attacks. And he's not smart. In fact, the only thing he can do is this:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton, Will You Please Go Now? So, last night, Barry Obama wiped out all of Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania popular vote gains. After weeks of nothing but Rev. Wright, bitter gun clinging, fake gasoline populism and then the well-timed return of crazy old Rev. Wright, Hillary Clinton actually managed to lose ground, while Obama made gains in every demographic constituency he'd supposedly alienated with all his elitism and secret Musliming. So, now can we see how the man campaigns without a 61-year-old, 185-pound lead slug tied around his ankles?

How about NO?

Also, how about NO?

The future of HVAC maintenance begins here: Hey, look! In two short years, the Kansas City, Missouri, School District gets a chance to regain full accreditation. State educators say Kansas City schools meet five of 14 standards for full accreditation — only nine to go! We totally need to start planning the big Accreditation Day party now, because these things sneak up on you the way the end of the semester sneaks up and you still haven't learned multiplication tables.

The New King of LiveJournal: It's really hard to make fun of E. Thomas McClanahan's Midwest Voices blog, because I think maybe he's kidding. Like, if you asked the writing staff of Hee-Haw to come up with an overly broad caricature of a conservative pundit, they'd produce something that looks like his blog's top page. Here's long, diving board-shaped screen grab:

"Steady improvement in Basra"? "Carving up al-Qaida"??? "Global Cooling"?????? It's completely relentless in its ironic barrage of conservative shibboleths — there's no way it's real! He's actually making fun of you for believing it. Not in an Andy Kaufman way, though. More like like Andy Milonakis. And you bought it! Sucker. It's a thing of beauty, but the infrequent updates are going to cost McClanahan a couple of points on the Bristol Stool Scale — final score: Type 6.

By CHRIS PACKHAM
FAIL: Ward Connerly came all the way from California to stop all the affirmative action in Missouri, and now he's going back home a spent, miserable failure of a man. HAHA! I'm now enjoying the satisfying sensation the Germans call zeitshadengeisteshichtefreudenwagen, which is roughly defined as "taking pleasure in the failure of Ward Connerly."

He had awfully big ambitions: Specifically, to get his ban on the November ballots in six states for what he called "Super Tuesday for Equal Rights." It would have been a giant holiday celebrating the ascendancy of white people, like St. Patrick's Day. Connerly's organization is vowing to return to Missouri in futuristic-sounding 2010, when, I predict, bad writers on the future internet will still bemoan their lack of jet-packs. Shut up, internet! LADIES, AM I RIGHT? Sorry to change the subject to Things That Annoy Chris, but while we're here, I'd like to send out a long-distance fuck you to stickers on fruit. I mean, Jesus!

Speaking of zeitshadengeisteshichtefreudenwagen: Bonn-based Deutsche Telekom AG is considering buying Overland Park-based Sprint Nextel Corp. Deutsche Telekom already owns T-Mobile. Seriously, do we really want to have just one big global telecommunications company? Fine, whatever you think -- "Go along to get along," is my new motto. Normally, I'd present an argument against allowing monolithic corporations to monopolize entire industries, and then I'd escalate that argument using a technique called "rhetoric" until it reached an unlikely apocalyptic conclusion, but the truth is that I didn't get a whole lot of sleep last night. So I guess you people will get exactly the monolithic Weyland-Yutani Corporations you deserve, with all the chest-bursting biomechanical xenomorphs that implies. Hey -- I totally did it! To celebrate, here is a cute video of kittens playing with a box:

Just a little walking-around pot: Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay has signed on as a co-sponsor to Massachusetts Rep. Barney Clark's bill decriminalizing small amounts of marijuana. As a conservative Republican investment banker, I am strongly against the passage of this bill, obvs., but it's not impossible. Just as there's a vanishingly tiny probability that the atoms that make up your body and the atoms that make up the floor of your office could align themselves in such a way that you fall straight through to Human Resources, it's not completely impossible that Tommy Chong could be elected President of the United States and sign the Clay-Clark pro-Marijuana legislation into law. And hey, a lady becoming president? Same thing.

Standard Deviants: The always-wrong Zogby poll says Sen. Barack Obama has pulled ahead in Indiana, and is expanding his lead in North Carolina. It's crazy that someone out there is still willing to pay Zogby for polling, but there you go. Based on past experience with Zogby polls, I'm guessing that one of those creepy military pack robots will win Indiana and that North Carolina will be an exact electoral tie between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Obama which will have to be settled via a traditional hand of Yu-Gi-Oh fantasy card game for nerds:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Hey hey, ho ho! These factory overstock 2007 Malibus have got to go: As of 9 a.m., the United Auto Workers union local are on strike at the General Motors Fairfax plant. American consumers have been on strike from buying General Motors cars for quite a few years, so SOLIDARITY, NORMA RAE! This is about local contract issues or something? All I know is, DOWN WITH MANAGEMENT!

Tornado season is the Shark Week of Tornado Alley: So, there's been some blatant meteorological revisionism with regard to that one storm last week that woke up everyone I know and destroyed an Arby's in Independence. Since Thursday, it's been upgraded from "straight-line winds" to "a tornado," to "Hurricane Condoleezza," and then downgraded right back to "regular-type tornado." To the Katie Horners and Brian Busbys of the world, I say: There's nothing wrong with your high-definition Doppler Radar. There's something wrong with your progressive-scan 1080p heart. Somewhere along the line, you lost the passion you had when you were young, brash meteorologists and now it's all about the Spendjamins, just admit it.

I think it's obvious what happens when we have too many Lord Xenu engrams in our bodies: Bad weather. Audit or die, preclears! Or, as John McCain-endorsing Rev. John Hagee would say, Jesus hates all the homosexual shift supervisors. Plus, the jamocha shake is totally an abomination according to Leviticus. If that doesn't put the fear of God in your heart, then look at this photoset with particular attention to the shot of the Arby's dining room exposed to the sky and tell me how much God loves the Big Roast Beef with extra horsey sauce.

Wishing in one hand and urban planning in the other: Political leaders in three counties have inserted their sausage-sized fingers up oversized novelty Mayor Mark Funkhouser's light-rail proposal, and the prognosis isn't good. The Mayor would, ideally, like to have his plan on the November ballot on account of all the young idealists who would show up to vote under one particular set of circumstances. By which I obviously mean as long as the Democratic nominee isn't a power-hungry, war-voting old former first lady. If Hillary Clinton is the nominee, it's time to get your geriatric reparations ballot initiative moving, because to quote 19th century UK Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson, her nondairy powdered creamer brings all the olds to the yard.

Light rail! Where was I? It would be nice to have regional light rail, because, as a nexus for pickpockets and ass-groping pervs who pretend they're just trying to pick your pocket, it would make Kansas City feel much more cosmopolitan — a town everyone could be happy to jump a turnstile in. Sentence-ending preposition sponsored with limited commercial interruption by the McDonald's Dollar Menu: the kind of food McDonald's can sell for a dollar and still make a profit. And then your body will attempt to use it to make heart valves. McDonald's! For a dollar! I'm lovin' it.

I am a ghastly troll-person: There's a new trailer for The Dark Knight that only serves to emphasize that Aaron Eckhart has raised the standard for male handsomeness to such an unattainably high level that I now have to measure my own attractiveness against things like industrial blight and unallayed human suffering. I'm much better looking than food shortages in Southeast Asia! Here's the trailer, ugly:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Good morning, my special, special princess. Today will be full of rainbows and porpoises and lots of princesses.

The Weather Princess waves her sparkle wand of damaging straight-line winds: So, weather and stuff? Like, up in Gladstone and Pleasant Hill? Last night, a friend said he heard one of the local meteorologists talking about the hi-def Doppler radar, which is like regular Doppler radar with visible pores. And the weather guy said there might be a funnel cloud somewhere "between south of Olathe and the racetrack." So, pinpoint accuracy and stuff? That's all according to this guy I know who I met up with last night. I didn't see any weather at all. Hi, I'm a reporter! Today, there will be some weather. This has been Chris with The Pitch Inaccu-Weather Forecast.

Red light green light: Yes, we all knew stop light cameras were coming, but now the plan has been officially approved by the City Council. So, hey, you'd better stop, or the cameras will photograph your license plate and the Traffic Princess will send you a ticket for the princely sum of $100. I don't have a picture of the Traffic Princess. But she has pictures of you. The cameras will definitely keep me from running red lights because I will fight the Man only insofar as it does not cost me more than $10. I'm a budget rebel, and I reject whichever of your precious rules has the least potential impact on my pocket-book, old man!

Why so polite, Barry Obama? You guys, here's my impression of every big network news anchor: "REVEREND WRIGHT REVEREND WRIGHT REVEREND WRIGHT REVEREND WRIGHT FART!" Here's how politics works: Find somebody stupid who says something shitty, and then tell people that Barry Obama said it.

It only works for Obama, apparently, because nobody talks about Hillary Clinton's actual unsavory associations. Who, if the Rev. Wright is "fair game," should be even "fairer game." Like, Webb Hubbell? One of her top legal partners? Who got himself installed in the Clinton-era Justice Department, and then went to prison? This article discusses Hubbell, Hillary Clinton's brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, and an array of other figures nobody asks Hillary to reject or denounce. Barack Obama doesn't talk about any of Hillary's creep acquaintances because the Princess of Politeness dumped a bag of fairy politeness dust on his head (See fig. A).

The Literacy Princess gets her budget line cut: So, here's a thing: President George W. Bush's proposed 2009 budget completely eliminates funding for Reading is Fundamental (RIF), one of the oldest children's literacy organizations. Yes, I know only 28 percent of the potential readers of this blog would still consider inviting President Bush over for a sleepover so they can do each other's hair and talk about boys. Least popular president in modern history, etc. etc. There's absolutely nothing surprising about any of this, but if you want, you can click the Literacy Princess to learn about saving RIF's funding:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

My, what a pretty dress you're wearing: It's May Day! The day we — I mean you — prance around a pole and sing medieval songs about cuckoos, the asshole of the bird family according to bird scientists. WHO WILL BE CROWNED THE QUEEN OF MAY DAY? I nominate one of those attention-hungry hobbits from the Renaissance Faire.

Pictured: you and your friends.
Not pictured: me.

Somebody help the Bombardier: I'm still waiting for my economic stimulus money to come from the government, and when I get it, I'll stimulate the economy right where economists say it's the most sensitive: in its taint. I'm buying up $600 in shares of Canadian aerospaceplane manufacturer Bombardier Aerospace in advance of a hopefully massive series of tax breaks it will be receiving from the state of Missouri. That will enhance shareholder value in the form of money that I will then spend on a new lifestyle involving private aerospaceplanes, huge bags of Costco rice, and hamburger-Twittering my new best friend, Diablo Cody.

Although now Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields wants the committee to consider a new version of the bill that substantially scales back the $880 million in tax breaks Bombardier would receive over 22 years. GAH! As Scottish poet Robert Burns once said to the retarded man-child who followed him across the American dustbowl, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft agley." My plan is gang aft agley! DAMN YOU, CHARLIE SHIELDS!

Who will teach the children about narrative structuralism, you guys? You guys, here's another article about expanding pre-K education. Note: in Kansas. I think this means teaching babies that dinosaur bones are actually the Jesus sticks Adam and Eve used to build their Bible factory. For some reason, the first three grafs are in italics. I thought maybe it was accidental, but those three paragraphs are in past tense. Oooooooh, somebody's trying to have "style!" Right after that, the italics stop and everything goes present tense, ending the avant-garde narrative temporal dislocation the author failed utterly to achieve.

Principal Debi Apple of the Morse-Lamb Early Childhood Center says, "It's really sad, telling a parent we can't take a child." That must be the hardest part of being a principal at a pre-K school, right after dumping sawdust on vomit in the hallway and also that verse about the snake in the song "Little White Duck." We need to expand post-K education, is my thinking, because what about the undergrads whose heads are so hungry for delicious knowledge? Maybe 18-year-olds have to shoulder a staggering burden of debt to purchase an eduction in your apocalyptic dystopia scenario, but in my imaginary fantasy life, all world knowledge is pumped electronically into the heads of children as soon as their skull bones knit together over their little fontanelles.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

MyFox doesn't hate you. It just doesn't care that you're alive: If I had to pick a favorite local news channel, Fox 4 would definitely be in the running. Because in this crazy old Good Luck Chuck-making world, you need at least one island of stability, and I know for a fact that no matter how much the world changes, Phil Witt will always look exactly the same as he did in 1979. It's weird. But comforting!

Pictured: Phil Witt and his Cindy Crawford beauty mark, reporting live from the apocalypse 80 years from now.

Anyway, I occasionally link to stories on the Fox 4 Web site, and I owe you two kinds of apology for that: the regular, retroactive kind of apology, and also the pre-emptive kind, because I know I'll do it again in the future. But I'll do it soberly, the way you amputate a leg in order to save a dying puppy, because the Fox 4 site is the most disastrously bad site of all the local broadcast stations.

That's like being crowned the king of the floating island of human excrement that's choking off aquatic life around the Florida Keys, because all those Web sites are terrible. But in addition to its obvious retina-searing ugliness, the Fox 4 site loads, like, 12 different scripts and hijacks your browser for 20 or 30 seconds, apparently in order to launch a javascript newscrawl — just like the one on the Fox News channel! Whereas the one on Fox News says stuff like, "Cannibal sex parties: New trend for Democrats?" the one at the Fox 4 site says, hilariously: "Make myfoxkc.com Your Homepage." Why does that particular phrase have to crawl across a frame in your browser? I don't know. Science indicates that it actually will fit on your screen in its entirety.

So I hereby apologize for two things: (1) suggesting that there is a floating island of human excrement around the Florida Keys, which would be awesome from a news-gathering perspective, and (2) the following link to Fox 4.

MyFox Fan Fiction: Fox 4 is expressing journalistic outrage on behalf of you, the common man. The problem? A new road-tax system that penalizes the drivers of older cars. Did the treasury slip it through "on the quiet"? According to Fox 4, yes! The station tentatively adds the following piece of speculative, science-fiction-like journalism: "News of the levy is likely to provoke fury among motorists who have already been hit by soaring fuel costs." But how likely? Seventy-five percent? Eighty? If we're dealing in probabilities, the news copy-writing staff should take a page out of meteorologist Mike Thompson's book and switch to the time-tested Pop-O-Matic Bubble method of reporting. Otherwise, you need to cite your sources: "According to my ass, motorists will be furious."

Bumper sticker polemics: Oh! The federal excise tax on gasoline isn't actually used to fund the government department responsible for cataloging all the varieties of indigenous dust mites. What a surprise. The Hillary Clinton-John McCain plan for summer gas-tax relief would actually cut off funding for roadway projects. That's no problem in Kansas City, a town so tough, the streets are actually made out of steel plates, like the skin of a battle robot. But if you get the impression that I think the whole proposal is a whorish, pandering attempt at garnering the approval of blue-collar voters who can barely keep their heads above the payments on their gas-guzzling F-150 pickups, you've obviously seen the sticker in my car's rear window:

It's not pithy, but framing my arguments in formal "Calvin pissing" dialectic is my Fox 4 way of appealing to you, the common man.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Stimulate This: Your free money from the government is coming early. How awesome is that? We're all getting a $600 check from Grandma! The IRS has started direct deposits of economic stimulus payments. Did you know that Wal-Mart will cash your economic stimulus checks at no charge? I'm going to spend my free government money on some Yosemite Sam mudflaps for my house. And I'm not going to think about the desperation of bureaucrats who would give away money from the treasury to smelly old regular people.

There Will Be Super Premium Unleaded: Are you prepared for $10-per-gallon gasoline? HAHA! Of course you're not. That's like preparing for heart cancer! Nobody plans for heart cancer. I guaran-damn-tee it's not penciled in on my — whatever, my list of "things to watch out for." And if I get bad news from the minimum-wage teenagers who run the clinic at Wal-Mart, I'll probably just spend my economic stimulus check on a Sam's Choice coffin.

But anyway. There are these two oil industry analysts? Who work at some think tanks? And they say gas prices in the United States are about to get heart cancer. Globally, this isn't a big deal — in John Kerry's Europe, gas already costs whatever the metric equivalent of $10 is. It's crazy over there! They have tiny cars that get, like, 700 hectometers to the decilitre.

They're the size of the Jarvik 12 artificial heart you're going to have to buy when you get the heart tumor. Additionally, the Europeans also make a kind of "transportation" available to the "public." This will come as a shock to Americans, though, because even our artificial hearts run on two-stroke internal-combustion motors. The Jarvik 12 starts with just one pull!

Is your vote available for purchase? Just asking: Sen. Hillary Clinton is strongly in favor of petroleum-based government money handouts in the form of a suspension of the federal excise tax on gasoline during the summer travel season. That's, like, 18 cents a gallon. Nice! They might as well go ahead and crown her the President of Transportation now, because her elitist opponent and incandescent new star of Fox Sunday, Sen. Barack Obama, says that approach would save consumers little and wouldn't curtail oil consumption. How out of touch can you get? Game, set, match, Muslim terror agent Barry Obama. We'll be listening to the antiseptic, monotonous drone of Hillary Clinton reciting her policy bullet-points for the next eight years.

Come back to the raft ag'in, Huck honey. The awesome thing about college fiction-writing workshops is the sheer number of short stories set in coffee shops, in which every character smokes cigarettes. And the other short story produced by freshmen authors is about a girl who gets pregnant and has her asshole boyfriend leave her. Optional: The climactic abortion. This is the 19-year-old girl version of a post-apocalyptic nuclear scenario.

But now, UMKC students will be writing short stories about abortion-having 20-year-olds who float down the Mississippi. The Mark Twain Creative Writing Workshop returns to UMKC for the 29th year June 7-29. Also: It's totally not restricted to students. Anyone of college age or older can participate. Call 816-235-1305 for more information. Here is an actual scene from the claymated life of Mark Twain:

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Mark Russell would sing this to the tune of Camptown Ladies: Missouri Rep. William Lacy Clay is a supporter of presidential candidate Sen. Barry Obama, so if you were expecting him to say anything nice about the wife of the former "first black president," you are very confused but sexy, like Amy Winehouse, and also in for a giant shock: "If you have any, any kind of loyalty to the Democratic Party," says Clay to Hillary Clinton, "perhaps you need to rethink your strategy and bow out gracefully in order to save this party from a disastrous end in November."

Even The Kansas City Star's Steve Kraske is openly calling for undecided superdelegates to pick sides, and he's doing it with the grammatically correct pronouns and formal modes of address you would expect from a man whose parents' car bumper still boasts about their Honor Roll Student: "So Mr. and Mrs. Undecided Superdelegate, whom do you back for president?" he asks, adorably, serving as an example to those of us who use harsh language and ignore the who/whom distinction as a general rule.

It's tough out there for a cartoon mascot: KMBC Channel 9 says that some national right-to-life organizations are urging Johnson County District Attorney Phill Kline to run for re-election. Kline's record as the JoCo D.A. doesn't lend itself to a lot of feel-good campaign spots, no matter how you rearrange it. I even tried creating campaign literature that replaced unlovable old bureaucrat Phill Kline with Kernel Kobb, an adorable cartoon cob of corn who owns a Southern plantation, and the results were mixed at best. You can check my math:

Yep. It all looks pretty bad for Kernel Kobb, but at least he'll be able to command some high, or at least mid-range speaking fees.

You guys, sex is a big responsibility: Y'know, you don't have to have sex to be "cool." Just ask uncool Jaleel White. Contents under pressure, you guys! Jesus, listening to this was a mistake because it has been playing in my head for the last hour. Please also consider not doing drugs, not drinking, not not going to school and also please don't huff WD-40 fumes. I'll try to find awesome celebrity raps about those subjects later in the week.

By CHRIS PACKHAM

State of the Union of the City: Oversized novelty Mayor of Kansas City Mark Funkhouser gave his State of the City address Thursday, promising to lure 50,000 new residents to the metro with light rail, his own sheer animal charisma, more Power & Light Districts than you can shake a Cajun-style batter-fried stick at, and the "reconstruction" of Kansas City's sewer system, also known as the oldest surviving veteran of the Civil War (as movingly narrated by historian Shelby Foote in the Ken Burns documentary series There's Poop in Brush Creek). Remember back when the previous sentence started? How young and innocent we were?

The mayor says he envisions making areas like 27th and Prospect as sexxxy as the 63rd Street and Brookside neighborhood, and he's holding a brainstorming symposium to figure out how. Which is AWESOME, because in ancient Greece, a symposium was an intellectual drinking party dedicated to the discussion of a topic, and it's my firm conviction that alcohol has been absent from public policy discussions for way too long. Although I can certainly testify to alcohol's contribution to the ailing medium of print publishing. FRIDAY OFFICE BEER — WOOOOOOO!

Kansas City is a little less Hoenes-y today: TV personality Meredith Hoenes has been fired or has resigned or has mysteriously disappeared from KSHB Channel 41. General Manager Rick Iler sent an e-mail to staffers:

Hello Everyone, Meredith Hoenes is no longer an employee of KSHB/KMCI. Please do not allowed Meredith in the building without the knowledge and consent of Craig Allison, Tracy Wakeman or myself.

Channel 41 staffers: Why not send me some details? I absolutely guarantee total anonymity, including the editing of identifying grammatical errors. Have you followed Iler's orders not to "allowed" Meredith into the building? How did she take it? Are there any more Hoenes-related e-mails from General Manager Rick Iler? Any unrelated e-mails with grammatical errors I can make fun of? Send them to me! I will totally make you a friendship bracelet with both of our names on it.

New Daily Briefs Feature: GET THE FUCK OUT! This is a feature in which I tell you something that happened, and then I tell it to GET THE FUCK OUT!

Wait, whuuuuuuuuuuut? Do you honestly expect me to believe that you can see a quantum Hall effect in the absence of an externally applied magnetic field in a goddamn fucking bulk crystal of bismuth-antimony? GET THE FUCK OUT, scientists! Plus — to put icing on the cake — NBC will replace Conan O'Brien with Jimmy Fallon on Late Night. WHAT? Dane Cook is a WAY more unappealing douche — wasn't he available? His delusions of film stardom haven't evaporated yet? SRSLY? GET THE FUCK OUT!

By CHRIS PACKHAM

Imagine there's no mathematics: You guys, it's actually not statistically possible for Hillary Clinton to win enough delegates for the nomination. But none of the news orgs will say so! Sure, I'm saying so, and I work for a media outlet, but yesterday I said syphilis was known as a "Pennsylvania head cold," so it's not like anybody takes me, or my math, seriously.

Hillary Clinton is demanding a lot of suspension of disbelief. It's like she's become a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. I'm supposed to pretend that her nomination and subsequent candidacy won't bring out all the Republican voters who would otherwise have stayed home; I'm supposed to pretend that she actually can win enough delegates for the nomination; she wants me to pretend that she's the only one who can answer the 3 a.m. hamburger phone when the world's eggo is preggo. She also wants me to pretend that she never voted for the Iraq war, but I totally do not go to Michael Bay movies because they are made out of shit and lies.

Business Proposal: Remember when the Sandstone Amphitheater was called the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater? Well, forget everything you ever knew about the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater, because now it's called the Capitol Federal Park at Sandstone. Oh, sorry -- I meant to say the

WHOOOO! Feel the intensity! Brought to you by Capitol Federal Savings Bank, True Blue for over 110 years. Mushroom cloud courtesy Condoleeza Rice. I'm now thinking of selling off the corporate naming rights for Daily Briefs. In keeping with my commitment to Kansas City, I'm looking to partner with a local business. The Erotic City/King of Kash Daily Briefs sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Hint hint.

It's also how Katie Horner reports about thunderstorms: Charles Dale Osborn is accused of stealing thousands of pounds of copper from the Lake City Army Ammunition plant in Independence and selling it -- probably, I'm guessing, to buy cartons of GPC cigarettes, cases of Stroh's and new tires for his house. Alternatively, according to news-squirting aperture KCTV Channel 5:

Filtered through the developmentally disabled lens of local broadcast news writing, Osborn is allegedly Carlos the Jackal, bent on the violent execution of his political ends. Here's KCTV's lede: "A Missouri man accused of trying to sabotage efforts in the Iraq war made his first court appearance Wednesday." It's like they hear the word "sabotage" in a federal indictment, and turn into fucking Radio Free Baghdad.

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