Okay, maybe it's because I can't sleep and it's almost one in the morning, but I'm in one of those moods where I feel like I'm really hearing something for the first time even though I've known it for years.

"Kansas City" by Wilbert Harrison. Is it me or is it a really sexy song? Not so much the words (they're pretty unromantic) as the phrasing and the beats and the way the song is sung. I love it when someone sounds like they know exactly where they're going! :)

If you've never heard the song before or you haven't heard it in a while, give it a listen and let me know if it's just me:)

The part I really feel the whammy kick is when Harrison sings "Well, I might take a train. I might take a plane. But if I have to walk..."

Here are some more facts about the song:  read here

The most recent New Yorker (the August 15/22 issue) features an article by Dana Goodyear called "Grub: Eating Bugs To Save The Planet".

read abstract here

It offers up lots of interesting facts, but one of the most compelling (and a convincing argument for possibly consuming insects) is that lobster, shrimp and crabs are all far more disgusting eaters than insects. The former literally scrape the bottom of the barrel (or the ocean, in this case) while insects often feed on lettuce and flowers.

Goodyear references a fascinating 'pamphlet' from 1885, "Why Not Eat Insects?" by Victor M. Holt.

You can read it here!

I'm not saying I'm ready to start eating insects anytime soon (they all freak me out except for bees and butterflies) but the argument for doing so is unlike any I've seen before:)

When I was in college I took a migraine-inducing class called "Being and God." It most certainly wasn't boring and I definitely didn't hate it, but at the age of eighteen I felt I wasn't ready for paradoxes and existentialism and figuring out how God came into existence...I just couldn't accept (without at least trying to think it all through thoroughly) that He Always Was and Is...

Our teacher stood at the podium, small and gentle, a lot like "Sophia" from "Golden Girls," but without the wisecracks. She spoke quietly and wisely and everyone pretty much hung on her every word because she was so fascinating...and old. (I've always been a sucker for the wisdom of elderly people.)

As I turned the pages of The Philosophy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained some of what we learned came rushing back at me, most of all my least favorite philosophical theory, Pascal's Wager.

The Philosophy Book is actually a pretty good review for people looking to refresh their memory and a great introduction for those new to philosophy.Anyone who is well-versed in this area would probably be just a little bit bored:)

One of my favorite movies ever is the 2004 remake of "Dawn of the Dead" and there is one scene in that flick that is made all the better precisely because of Richard Cheese and his delightful lounge act take on "Down With The Sickness."

The heavy metal band Disturbed also recorded "Down With The Sickness" (in a much more seemingly appropriate ferocious manner), yet (somehow) Cheese's is the one that taps on the absurd cruelity of passing time while being stuck in a mall, surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of zombies.

Once I tracked down Cheese's "Down With The Sickness," I thought I wouldn't care about the other songs, but this guy does things to classic 80s songs like "Relax" and "Hot For Teacher" you wouldn't believe without listening to yourself.

Now, some of the album is possibly offensive to a delicate sense of humor and definitely explicit, but some of this Cheese-y charm actually works on me. Yikes!!

I love this quote...

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.”
— James Baldwin