On this day in 1941 Germany attacked the USSR beginning the 1,418-day part of the World War II known as the “Great Patriotic War“.

All of the appropriate songs are in Russian, but this video, which I linked before doesn’t need translation.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvHX0bgoouc

The video uses several songs about the WWII, the first one is the Sacred War, signifying the beginning of the war in her story. If you watch it to the end, the phrase she writes is “You are always near!”.

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Cue the State Song of Kansas

Were buffalo used to roam there is now the Glacial Hills Scenic Byway where no one roams anymore, just an occasional car with passengers who didn’t find anything better to do on a gloomy Sunday. Scenic Byway officially starts at Ft.Leavenworth, passes through Atchison, twists and turns through Troy and stops right before the Nebraska border at White Cloud – a place still recovering from the housing bubble of 1929.

White Cloud is home to the 4-State lookout – a place where you can see Missouri, Kansas, Iowa and Nebraska at the same time.

Panoramic view from the lookout can be seen here.
Miss Teen Kansas lives here (at least until 2010):

White Cloud was voted the best place to dispose of a dead body:

Just don’t forget to “dispose of all head and guts” and leave the work area clean for the next person.

North of the White Cloud you will find an Indian Casino adorned by the symbols of past glory: Eagle Feathers, Eagle without feathers and an unfinished tepee:

At the casino zombie-looking white people are sitting in the clouds of smoke, mistakenly hoping they can fool the Indians again. Instead, their money is financing the modern-day tepees.

On the way back you can cross the river, drive past the Squaw Creek National Wildlife Refuge,and return home via I-29.

Overall, this is a pretty nice weekend trip, but it will probably look more picturesque during the spring and summer months. There is a lot more to be seen in Atchison and there is a 10-mile auto route around the Refuge.

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When the weather forecast for the weekend was published few days ago, I knew it was time to get out of town for few hours. Nothing clears out the mind like two hundred miles in rural Kansas on a first sunny and warm Sunday of the year. I started to look for a place to visit on the best Kansas travel resource but nothing grabbed my eye, so I just looked at the map and noticed a place called Admire, KS. I knew I had to go there and admire it.

U.S. Route 56 leaves Olathe, passes through the armpits of Johnson County known as Gardner and Egderton and makes its way towards Oklahoma through the fields as far as the eye can see. Rolled down windows let the fresh air in and the smell of old hay, burning leaves and an occasional skunk filled up my lungs. I was on the way to Admire.
By the way, have you ever been to Scranton, KS?

Now you have.
Much more interesting is the town of Burlingame down the road.

Burlingame looks like a worn out Mayberry…

…where Aunt B’s is the name of a restaurant.

Aunt B’s niece is getting married next week, so you’ll have to eat elsewhere.

Flower arrangements by Missy’s Flower Shop.

Meat for the wedding is already stored in the Meat Locker.

The Wedding announcement will be published in the cleverly named Newspaper (founded in 1863).

On the guest list is the frequent customer and an old-timey lawyer…

…who enjoys spending his lunch hour from 12 to 1 at Aunt B’s.

Miss Jandi and her students will also be in attendance.

Cheer-leading poodles are the only advertisement for her business.

Church is conveniently located around the corner.

Burlingame will have to wait for another visit, when I may be able to solve the mystery of the piano keys above the tire shop windows.


I still had a long way to Admire.

People in these parts still keep cannons in their front yards, just in case.

Finally I was close to my goal. While taking this photo I drove into something that I can still smell on my car and can only describe as putrid.

Admire was right in front of me.

At least it was a god-fearing town.

High school looks little over-sized for the population of 117 (0.56% Native American, 0.56% from other races, and 3.39% from two or more races. 1.13% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.) That’s .65 of a Native American, must be handicapped or something.

Every tall structure begs you to admire it.

Last Chance Cafe is the best and the only pizza deal in town.

Another water tower was built mainly to display the town’s name.

I had a short drive to Emporia…

…where Jesus Christ wanted me to stop and accept him. Sadly there was no parking.

A friendly cock pointed the way home.

I felt tired but refreshed at the same time. With my head cleared up I settled down on the couch thinking about the roads, small towns, open spaces and partial Native Americans.

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And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful, and multiply…
Genesis 1:28

Evolution is a great thing. In a world without evolution only beautiful people would be able to reproduce and the Earth would be populated with the clones of Fabio (or as someone admitted – John Edwards) and Julia Roberts. Enter an unfortunate  side-effect of the looks-based-reproduction, namely a gradual lowering of the worldwide average IQ. Here is where the evolution came up with an ingenious solution of supplying the below-average-looking fat males with small genitalia with a an amazing tool-set for seducing beautiful women of their dreams who otherwise wouldn’t even grant such males a second look.

My non-existent love life automatically makes me an expert perfectly qualified to write the following article. If you are a good-looking male, with a perfect body and an award-winning penis, this is how far you should read. I am pretty sure you are starting to get a headache from all the big words I’ve used so far. You’ve won in the genetic lottery and your existence assures that all of the mankind doesn’t look like me. Thanks for being there for us, go do a few crunches or something.

We can now continue without that one douche-bag who just left. Males of many species have different ways of attracting the most beautiful and unavailable females; from peacock’s tails to the giant deer antlers, the natural world is full of examples of males getting what they want when otherwise they wouldn’t have any chance. Just like our smaller brothers we have some things we can use to inject our ugly but smart DNA into the human gene pool. These do not require any special effort, like exercise or diet; you probably already have some or all of them as you read this.

1. A foreign accent. Contrary to popular belief, a foreign accent is not a handicap. In the love game it’s probably one of the best assets you can have. Accents drive women crazy and sometimes just after a few words she will do anything to hear more of your randomly swapped v’s and w’s or, even better, a whole word in your native tongue.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6QUFqiJx9k

Few words of warning on the accents: two similar accents cancel each other out. If you are both from Australia, all the talk about shrimps and barbies will not turn her on. On the contrary, the other person’s accent becomes annoying and embarrassing. Another note of caution: if your accent makes you sound like Larry The Cable Guy, you better have his kind of money to be able to seduce the woman of your dreams unless it’s Nancy Grace.

2. Learn to cook something from scratch. To impress a woman you don’t need to be a Wolfgang Puck, you just need to be able to cook something she’ll like preferably without using any recipes you got from watching Semi-Homemade Cooking show on the Food Network. Whether it’s a steak, a hamburger, fried chicken or borscht, it’s the process and your skill that will fascinate her, so Shake’n’Bake wouldn’t do the trick. Cooking may also include baking or cocktail making. Anything that only you know how to make will get you closer to the target.  However, don’t go too wild unless you know who you are dealing with; she may not appreciate your Coq Au Vin but may be pleasantly surprised with Chicken and Dumplings.

3. Get a pet, and by a pet I mean a cat. Dog will not allow you to leave for those romantic long weekends and will interfere with you enjoying your morning together. Other pets may be scary, disgusting, annoying or smelly. On the other hand, virtually every woman loves a cat, and will come back to your house repeatedly just to scratch your cat behind the ear. Placing a cat photo such as this anywhere in your dating profile pretty much guarantees you a constant stream of “icebreakers”.

4. Poetry. That’s right, a poem will make your woman’s heart melt. You don’t need to be Walt Whitman, start with something simple and romantic like:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
I am here naked.
Where the hell are you?

If you want to impress her even more, haiku is the way to go. I am at a disadvantage in this department since I can’t count syllables, but it doesn’t prevent me from faking it. Just make sure you always have three lines:

Writing haiku is hard,
but I try
for the hell of it.

5. Get some title or an achievement, for example you can become the Best Blogger ever or get a PhD in some obscure subject. Published works, books, photos in the local newspaper, sex tape, whatever it takes to pique her interest.

6. Impress her with your knowledge. Be careful not to bore her with a discussion on pros and cons of various Linux distributions, comic heroes and their superpowers, or some special maneuver you use to beat a game on X Box. Instead you can impress her by knowing the capital of New Hampshire, or pointing out the difference between a crocodile and an alligator.

To summarize, if you are short in all the wrong places, fat and ugly, not all is lost. Just use your accent, skills and pets to seduce the woman of your dreams and remember: it’s survival of the fittest, not necessarily better-looking.

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The shortest route from Kansas City to Memphis is via Springfield, MO and rural Arkansas where highway is controlled by the roaming gangs of deer who stand around the road contemplating if they will let you live. I wouldn’t recommend driving there in the dark.

I didn’t want to go to Memphis. Even though I learned English trying to sing along with Elvis (and that’s why people often ask me if I am from Tupelo),  I didn’t feel the need to visit his house and other Memphis attractions didn’t really seem worthy of a fairly boring 8-hour drive. Usually we try to see things along the way, but there wasn’t much to see and the only memorable item was a town called Cabool, mostly because of how out-of-place the name seemed somewhere in rural Missouri.

Memphis turned out to be a fun place for a weekend trip, with enough things to keep you busy for a few days.

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