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ISSN: 1525-898X
Observations by and for the vaguely disenchanted by Kevin G. Barkes

 

Conceived above a saloon, delivered into this world by a masked man identified by his heavily sedated mother as Captain Video, raised by a kindly West Virginian woman, a mild-mannered former reporter with modest delusions of grandeur and no tolerance of idiots and the intellectually dishonest.

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network solutions made me a child pornographer!
The sordid details...

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Anniversary

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Requiem for a fictional Scotsman

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Oh my God! They killed Library!! Those bastards!!!

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Elegy to a Mostly Maine Coon

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It's a Hap-Hap-Happy Day

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A Pittsburgher in the Really Big City

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Da Burg Annat

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I Have Issues

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Yeah, yeah, I'm inspired

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At least the rivers freeze in Pittsburgh

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He knows if yinz is a jagoff

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Please support KGB Report by making your amazon.com purchases through our affiliate link:
 

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dcl dialogue online!

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no. we're not that kgb.

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KGB, CIA linked

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The Carbolic Smoke Ball
Superb satire, and based in Pittsburgh!

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Americans United for Separation of Church and State

"No religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."
Article VI, U.S. Constitution

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Geek of the Week, 7/16/2000

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Cruel Site of the Day, 7/15/2000

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miscellany

Hard to describe.

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"a breezy writing style and a cool mix of tidbits"

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Our riveting and morally compelling...

Privacy statement

One of  51,847 random quotes. Please CTRL-F5 to refresh the page.

	kgbreport.com Web

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(July 2000 and earlier)

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Saturday, June 28, 2008
posted by KGB at 8:15 AM (permalink)

****+* Wall-E

Pixar is like the sun. Unless something goes horribly wrong with the fundamental underpinnings of the universe, you can always depend upon it.

Wall-E is secretly a date movie, a screwball comedy where the characters actually have screws. But it also deals with the ageless topics of loneliness, sacrifice, loss, love, and the dangers of uncontrolled capitalism.

It's definitely not a kid movie. Kids will love it, but- like Chuck Jones' classic Warner Bros cartoons- there's much more there than slapstick humor and exceptional photo-realistic animation.

Wall-E is destined to become an iconic character, instantly recognizable, like R2D2 or ET or Bugs Bunny.

And despite the anti-capitalistic undertone of the movie, Pixar and Disney are definitely going to make some money off me on this one. Wall-E replicas have already been demoed at toy fairs, and some of them have impressive capabilities.

Someone better warn our dogs and cats. It's going to be an interesting Christmas..."

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posted by KGB at 12:14 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

You know the one group I never criticize? Politicians. Politicians are put there by the public. Garbage in, garbage out. You get the leadership you deserve.
-George Carlin

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Friday, June 27, 2008
posted by KGB at 3:45 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

On the other hand, getting found in the shuffle isn't necessarily all that hot, either.
-The Covert Comic

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posted by KGB at 12:05 AM (permalink)

Photo of the day

Hmph. What good are opposable thumbs if you can't always land on your feet?

(Original photo and caption at icanhascheezburger.com, via Leslie)

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Thursday, June 26, 2008
posted by KGB at 9:36 AM (permalink)

Quotes of the day

Pearl S. Buck, (June 26, 1892 - March 6, 1973)

Every great mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied.

It is better to be first with an ugly woman than the hundredth with a beauty.

Perhaps one has to be very old before one learns how to be amused rather than shocked.

The young do not know enough to be prudent, and therefore they attempt the impossible, and achieve it, generation after generation.

Our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them, for the test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members.

You cannot make yourself feel something you do not feel, but you can make yourself do right in spite of your feelings.

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posted by KGB at 12:05 AM (permalink)

Photo of the day

Outside the parking garage at Mon Valley Hospital:

I just hope the handicapped valet's disability isn't like, you know, impaired vision or something...

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Wednesday, June 25, 2008
posted by KGB at 6:12 AM (permalink)

E-mail of the day

From my friend Peter Stumpf, commenting on the post revealing I have an outstanding balance on the hospital bill for charges related to my birth:

"The doctor shouldn't give you a hard time about the $1.10 still owed for your circumcision. After all, he did get a nice tip."

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Tuesday, June 24, 2008
posted by KGB at 12:19 AM (permalink)

More on Carlin

George Carlin was more than a comedian... he was a philosopher and a staunch defender of the truth. He was particularly incensed at the way in which the English language has been distorted by "smug, greedy, well-fed white people [who] invented a language to conceal their sins." And he had a very clear vision of what America has become.

These blunt, not safe for work rants are how I'll remember him:

 
Quote of the day:
 
"Jeez, he was just here a minute ago."
-George Carlin, suggesting his epitaph.

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Monday, June 23, 2008
posted by KGB at 6:51 AM (permalink)

Quote of the day

People say when you die, you can't take it with you. Well, that depends on what it is. If it's your dark blue suit, you can certainly take it with you.
-George Carlin, May 12, 1937 - June 22, 2008

More Carlin quotes here.

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posted by KGB at 12:05 AM (permalink)

Television dialogue of the day

From Fox's House, MD:

INT. MORGUE
HOUSE systematically opens the freezers,
checking the bodies.

CHASE
What are you looking for?

HOUSE
I called my mom, she didn't pick up.
What did the angio tell us?

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Sunday, June 22, 2008
posted by KGB at 12:05 AM (permalink)

29¢ gasoline, $5 circumcisions...

I'm converting all my paper records into digital formats, and yesterday I stumbled across something I hadn't seen in quite a while... the bill for the maternity charges associated with my birth in Homestead, PA on September 11, 1954:

Mom accumulated the bulk of the charges, of course:

A whopping $184.50. It's actually much worse than it seems. According to the U.S. Department of Labor's Consumer Price Index comparisons, $184.50 in 1954 dollars is equivalent to about $1,481 in 2008 dollars. If you look at the bill, you'll see dear ol' mom spent eight days in a semi-private room. The charge for a semi-private room in 1954 was $12 a day. The average price of a semi-private hospital room in Pittsburgh today is $342. If medical fee inflation had tracked with the average CPI, that semi-private room should only cost $96 in 2008 dollars.

As for Baby Boy Barkes:

$47 total. You can't make it out on the scan posted here, but in red pencil, someone added: "Patient owes for circumcision. $5.00 Dr., $3.90 credit, Dr. $1.10 balance."

I'd like to see them try to collect...

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Copyright © 1987-2024 by Kevin G. Barkes
All rights reserved.
Violators will be prosecuted.
So there.  
The kgb@kgb.com e-mail address is now something other than kgb@kgb.com saga.
kgbreport.com used to be kgb.com until December, 2007 when the domain name broker Trout Zimmer made an offer I couldn't refuse. Giving up kgb.com and adopting kgbreport.com created a significant problem, however. I had acquired the kgb.com domain name in 1993, and had since that time used kgb@kgb.com as my sole e-mail address. How to let people know that kgb@kgb.com was no longer kgb@kgb.com but rather kgbarkes@gmail.com which is longer than kgb@kgb.com and more letters to type than kgb@kgb.com and somehow less aesthetically pleasing than kgb@kgb.com but actually just as functional as kgb@kgb.com? I sent e-mails from the kgb@kgb.com address to just about everybody I knew who had used kgb@kgb.com in the past decade and a half but noticed that some people just didn't seem to get the word about the kgb@kgb.com change. So it occurred to me that if I were generate some literate, valid text in which kgb@kgb.com was repeated numerous times and posted it on a bunch of different pages- say, a blog indexed by Google- that someone looking for kgb@kgb.com would notice this paragraph repeated in hundreds of locations, would read it, and figure out that kgb@kgb.com no longer is the kgb@kgb.com they thought it was. That's the theory, anyway. kgb@kgb.com. Ok, I'm done. Move along. Nothing to see here...