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i never saw the 1975 movie, mahogany, but that doesn’t stop me from singing the theme song when i can’t figure something out. the lyrics are:
do you know, where you’re going to?
do you like the things that life is showing you?
where are you going to?
do you know?
when max (our cat) jumped on the computer desk this morning, and clawed at something invisible on the wall, i sang these words like diana ross:
do you know, what you’re looking at?
what do you see on the wall you crazy cat?
is it some kind of gnat?
do you know?
…and then i looked up the chords and played it on my guitar.

last week i paid my property taxes in downtown olathe. i parked a block away to get my exercise, and walked by the old doughnut shop where i used to be the delivery guy– except now it’s a new pastry shop! park street pastry to be exact! they have their own facebook page and everything!i talked with the new owner, bought a granola bar, and snapped a few pics before heading over to the county office.

i don’t know what real silence is. there is never an absence of sound because a brushy electronic white noise static hum is always going on in my head. it’s something i’ve gotten used to, and i hardly notice it most of the time– but i REALLY became aware of it during our last trip to jenny’s hometown in rural nebraska. her brother steve drove us out to a bridge one night that was miles away from everything. we got out of the truck to look at the moon and the stars, and jenny said “listen to the silence!” everyone got quiet. no one said anything for a minute, but i could still hear the sound of a paused cassette player with the volume all the way up.

“DON’T COMPROMISE WITH SOCIETY. CHANGE.” this is what happens when two guys react to a ton of inspirational posters that say the same upbeat predictable things like Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement or Make your life a masterpiece. Peder Jorgensen and Jesper Sundnes made something original when they created Inspirobot. this artificial intelligence resembles HAL 9000, and combines stock photos with random “inspirational” quotes.

vic sage posted this banana splits pic on facebook earlier this morning. he’s a regular contributor to the retroist blog. if there’s an old commercial for this 1969 kid’s game, i couldn’t find it. it reminded me of some other cool games that my folks got me over the years though:

no, these aren’t the actual girls from A-POWER, but they have the same “best friends forever” spirit as two young british girls who believed they were destined to be recording artists in the 1990′s. on a recent mortified podcast they shared cassette recordings they made themselves. i loved listening to this, because it reminded me of stuff that i did as a kid. heeeeeere’s A-POWER:
-how the band started
-stay & stay away
-dream boy

…everywhere a family family! couldn’t resist posting this awkward family photo. jenny & i got to see andrew play upright bass at olathe northwest high school monday night. before everyone took his picture, i was holding his bass for him while he gathered his stand, case, and music– and then the next thing i know he was posing for his mom. i didn’t get out of the photo in time. that’s andrew under the white arrow. there were 600 students playing in five separate orchestras at first. then they all joined at the end on Orpheus in the Underworld by Offenbach. this is from our thanksgiving trip to curtis. that’s marijo, georgia, jenny, molly, thaddeus, and maku.molly and fernando have a groovy kind of love. marijo is always trying to find the answer to something on her smartphone.

everyone that i know has one memory they will never forget. if you could revisit a moment that defines you now… would you do it? heavyweight is a podcast hosted by  jonathan goldstein that explores those moments. so far there are 21 stories that range from Sven who regrets his jury vote that sentenced another man to death, to an abandoned suitcase full of letters that reveal a love story between two people that didn’t stay together. i know those two examples sound like major bummers, but it’s a really good show.

“when the sun came up, and the snow finally melted, i was glad to see their lifeless forms exposed in the daylight”— this is the ending to a story that began monday morning. i was scraping snow and ice off of jenny’s car when my keys fell out of my pocket. i didn’t realize it until 15 minutes later & by then i only knew they were somewhere in the driveway. i didn’t have time to do a search and rescue, so i just grabbed a spare truck key and left the back door to the house unlocked. later in the day i imagined that my keys reacted to the confines of my pocket the same way an inmate reacts to reality of imprisonment: there’s a desperate desire to escape and be free. in my mind, the keys hatched a flimsy plan that depended on chance and gravity. they took the chance that there would be a distraction (snow), and they were hoping that the pocket that usually detained them would finally come unraveled so they could fall to the ground (it did). while the keys were missing, there were sirens, horns, and dogs in action, but i knew there was really no point looking until the snow melted.

no bathroom is safe when there are plastic dinosaurs in the house. hey folks, it’s dinovember! it’s that time of year when refe and susan tuma deliberately trash their home for one month & blame it on dinosaurs! they have been doing this since 2012 for their children, and i personally think it’s awesome. last week their 10-year-old pitted battlesaurs against battlebots and posted these pics on the dinovember facebook page:more info in refe, susan, and dinovember can be found on their website.