Texas Ant Invasion

We have ants here in Texas. Lots of ants. The two types with whom I've had close contact are fire ants and sugar ants. This morning I was greeted by an army of sugar ants that had invaded my kitchen, occupying one wall and one counter top.

Counter measures were immediately called for. I got out my can of Kitchen Safe Bug Spray and began the counter attack.

But my can of spray ran out before I'd finished killing all the ants that needed to die. So, I hurried out of here and made fast for Home Depot for a fresh can of extermination spray.

By the time I got back here the survivors of my first attack appeared to be in full retreat. Even so, I unleashed a fresh barrage on the remaining ants, killing all of them.

I then had to remove all the ant corpses and clean off all the contaminated surfaces. Grueling, nasty business.

Lulu told me her friend, Linda, now spending her first summer in Texas, having moved here from fire ant-free Washington, stepped on a fire ant mound a couple days ago and got stung severely. Apparently Linda was unaware of the fire ant danger we are constantly faced with in Texas.

I fear it's gonna be a really bad ant season this summer due to the new drought. Last summer there was a short plague of ants getting in the pool. That was not pleasant. They were big.

There are more ants on the planet than any other creature. Ants are estimated to make up 15 to 20% of Earth's total animal biomass. That's a lotta ants. I've done my part to reduce the ant population by a few ounces this morning.

I've had a few incidents where I've been woke up by ants crawling on me. That is very unpleasant. What if they decided to invade my bed like they did my kitchen? If the army of ants were big enough they'd have me eaten before I could wake up, like the ants do to the poor little gecko in the video below.

Largest in Texas: Zorro's Buffet in Fort Worth

UPDATE: I have now experienced Zorro's Buffet in person, July 18, 2008, for lunch. Read what I thought about it in today's Blogging.

For a couple weeks I've been seeing ads for a new restaurant in Fort Worth called Zorro's. Zorro's claims to be the largest buffet in Texas. They don't say by what criteria. Largest building? Largest buffet table? Largest selection?

Zorro's being in Fort Worth. And in Texas. Both known to greatly hyperbolize, I guess I'll have to check it out myself to see how large Zorro's Buffet is.

A few weeks ago I told you how shocked I was when former highly respected food critic, Lulu, declared that a Golden Corral restaurant in Spokane was the best buffet she'd ever been to. I'm sure Lulu would love Zorro's Buffet.

The info on Zorro's website is a bet worrisome. In that if you don't get your verbiage right on your website, how am I to trust that you will not overly salt your clam chowder? For example..."Zorro's is a haven for both carnivores and vegetarians, our homogenous gourmet salad bar..."

Homogenous? I'm guessing the word they were looking for is humongous. They didn't even spell homogeneous right, if that was the word they meant to use.

There are some missing spaces after some commas which cause me to worry about Zorro's quality control. As in, "...our wide variety of succulent meat dishes to include country cooking, Tex-Mex, BBQ, Seafood, Italian,steaks,ribs, to name a few..."

In addition to the missing spaces after commas, that phrase "to include" seems off too. Shouldn't it just be "includes"?

And then there is this, "Zorro's Legendary and Experienced management team Promises to make your visit a unique buffet adventure like no other."

Zorro's has only been open a short time. How did it get Legendary already??

In addition to the website errors that cause me to worry about Zorro's quality control, the restaurant is in a sort of seedy section of Fort Worth.

But, even though I have serious concerns, I'm sure I'll be trying out Zorro's Buffet at some point in time before it goes out of business. I'll be sure and let you know how much I liked it.

Radio Shack's Fort Worth Boondoggle

Yesterday I verbalized my amazement at the news that the new Tarrant County College being built on the banks of the Trinity River was to be scaled way way back and instead of having college classes in the new building, the classes would take place at buildings a short distance away, that being the former Radio Shack Corporate Headquarters, which Tarrant County College bought, barely 3 years after Radio Shack finished construction on their new headquarters, which is no longer Radio Shack's Headquarters.

It is rumored that Radio Shack now operates out of a former McDonald's restaurant in east Fort Worth.

Apparently I am not alone in thinking this Radio Shack/TCC "deal" is yet one more Fort Worth boondoggle, where supposedly well intentioned tax breaks and eminent domain abuse does not have the intended result.

Below is a letter to the editor from this morning's Fort Worth Star-Telegram from one of Fort Worth's reliable voices of reason, Clyde Picht.

FOCUS ON ...Who loses in TCC deal?

Before the ink is dry on the TCC purchase of RadioShack’s downtown campus, public officials like water district board member Jim Lane and Tarrant County Administrator G. K. Maenius are touting the deal as “brilliant,” “phenomenal” and “a good decision.”

One media outlet reported the cost would be about the same as the current estimate for a campus on both sides of the river connected by a footbridge. Oh, really? Let’s review the numbers. Maybe from the public’s standpoint this isn’t so brilliant or phenomenal and just maybe it is another unjustifiable move at public expense.

Recall that by selling the Ripley Arnold housing complex to RadioShack the city housing authority had to find accommodations for the displaced residents.

The authority bought an apartment complex in Tanglewood in which 20 percent of the apartments would be subsidized. The entire complex came off the tax rolls. The authority bought prime property on Overton Ridge Boulevard for another housing development. Again, it was taken off the tax rolls. RadioShack got a 20-year tax abatement and then sold the property to foreign investors. They did still pay tax to the Fort Worth school district.

Now as TCC pays $235 million for RadioShack’s real property and adds $80 million for renovation, we already have $315 million of new expense. Add in the $42 million TCC paid for land on the river bank and a probable $200 million for continuing construction, termination penalties and the like, and we’re talking about a half billion plus. A little pricey for a junior college campus.

Now, not only will the city never get any tax revenue from the property, the school district won’t either. More and more public funds because of the Trinity Uptown project. Yes they are linked. The cost of both TCC and Uptown will easily approach $2 billion. Who pays?

— Clyde Picht, Fort Worth

Barnett Shale Ruining Lives in Texas

Way back in 1971, when there was still a Soviet Union, in the Soviet Republic of Turkmenistan, the Soviets were drilling for natural gas when the drilling zone collapsed and natural gas started to spew forth. Not wanting those vapors in the air, the Soviets set it on fire. It has been burning ever since, like a window into a mythical hell. I don't know why a way has not been found to harness this wasted energy.

Meanwhile, here in Texas, holes continue to be punched through the earth to reach Barnett Shale so that some water process, called fracturing, can release the natural gas.

This pleases many here in Texas. And greatly upsets others. Mostly those who have had their lives made miserable by having drillers suddenly show up on their property.

Last week Fort Worth Weekly had a sad story about a couple in the Fort Worth suburb of Azle who'd moved here from California to their dream ranch in a formerly bucolic setting. The distance from a residence rules that exist in Fort Worth don't exist in Azle. So, Devon Energy put up a drilling site 213 feet from Mike and Annette Daniel's house.

The drillers cut down a line of trees that gave the Daniel's privacy in their backyard and pool. And then the noise and light show began. And the dust. I've been through this myself. From over a 1000 foot distance. After a few months the worst was over.

You can read the entire story, "Paradise Lost" in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's nemesis known as FW Weekly.

Go to my Texas website for more about the Barnett Shale or what I call Fort Worth Flatulence.

And below you can watch a video of the ongoing glimpse into Hell in Turkmenistan.

Amtrak From Fort Worth To Tacoma

I'm pretty sure I'll be heading north to Tacoma next month. A pair of poodles await me. Among other things.

Years ago I rode Amtrak from Tacoma to Portland. It was awful. I've never been seasick or carsick. But I got trainsick. As in, by the time I got to Portland, I was totally nauseous, with a horrible headache that stayed with me all the way back to Tacoma, where barely a couple miles back driving on the freeway I had to exit and throw up.

So, I don't know what I was thinking when I decided to see if it was doable to take Amtrak from Fort Worth to Tacoma. It is doable. But totally, ridiculously bizarre.

First off it cost $418 one-way to Tacoma. And $414 to return to Fort Worth. That's $832 roundtrip. Flying is only about $350. Driving would even be cheaper. And funner, than Amtrak.

It's the convoluted route to get back and forth from Fort Worth to Tacoma that truly makes Amtrak bizarre.

I leave Fort Worth, July 16, on the Texas Eagle and 45 hours 30 minutes later I arrive in Los Angeles where I board a bus that takes me to Bakersfield where I get on another train, the San Joaquin and ride for 5 hours 10 minutes to Sacramento where I get on another train, the Coast Starlight and ride 19 hours 12 minutes to get to Tacoma, July 19, 4 days after I left Fort Worth.

And then the return to Fort Worth is even more bizarre. August 13 I get on the Coast Starlight, again, but this time it takes 19 hours 44 minutes to get to Sacramento (it's slower going south?) and then I get on the California Zephyr for a 48 hour 25 minute ride to Galesburg, Illinois, where I get on another train, the Southwest Chief and ride 4 hours 18 minutes to Kansas City where I get on another bus for an 8 hour ride to Oklahoma City to get on the Heartland Flyer for a 4 hour 14 minute ride back to Fort Worth for the end, on August 17, of a 5 day long return journey, where I would collapse and probably need to be hospitalized.

Well, it is now no longer a mystery to me why more people don't use Amtrak. One would think it would be feasible to run small passenger trains on a regular route, I dunno, like one heading through Fort Worth passing through Oklahoma City on its way to Denver and beyond.

There are train tracks all over this country. I've seen them. Why should it take way longer to take a train from Fort Worth to Tacoma than it takes to drive a car? I can drive there in 2 and half days. And that's with 2 motels stays. A train goes non-stop. It's 2200 miles when I drive to the Seattle zone. The routes Amtrak takes is thousands of extra miles.

The Farmer Got a Texas Wife

We are thrilled today in North Texas, thrilled I tell you. In yet one more example of what the Fort Worth Star-Telegram characterizes as Reality Shows love affair with Texas, spontaneous celebrations are likely breaking out all over North Texas, even more so in East Texas.

Why you ask?

Well, on some obscure TV cable station called, I think, CW, a farmer picked a wife. Bachelor farmers across the country are flooding the CW with applications to be the next farmer to get assistance in finding a wife.

The Farmer who so desperately wanted a wife is named Matt Neustadt. His fiance is named Brooke Ward. She is from somewhere in East Texas. The Star-Telegram has let us know countless times that Brooke Ward attended some college in Fort Worth. So, the celebrating will likely be quite big here in Fort Worth. I do not know, at this point in time, if there will be an official city wide celebration like there was the time a little known D.C. lobbying group put Fort Worth on some self-serving list of Most Livable Cities, or something like that. Most towns who got this bogus honor ignored it. But not Fort Worth, we had a celebration!

Radio Shack's Fort Worth Troubles

Last week a mouthpiece for Fort Worth's ruling junta objected to me suggesting Fort Worth's Trinity River Vision would likely turn into yet one more Fort Worth Boondoggle. Well, we had some prime Fort Worth Boondoggle material in the news today.

You are looking at what used to be Radio Shack's Corporate Headquarters in this photo, with what used to be Pier 1 Imports Corporate Headquarters in the background. Radio Shack's Headquarters was built with $86 million in tax breaks.

Radio Shack's Headquarters opened in 2005. To build their headquarters, Radio Shack used what was, to my mind, til the Dallas Cowboys out did them, the worst case of eminent domain abuse I'd witnessed.

Radio Shack booted hundreds of low income dwellers from their homes. Radio Shack also obliterated one of Fort Worth's few unique things, that being a free subway that ran from huge parking lots, also obliterated, to downtown. It used to be so easy to park downtown.

A short distance from Radio Shack, Tarrant County College was building a new campus. It's design was pretty interesting. I commented a couple weeks ago that this building might finally give Fort Worth an iconic structure that people in other parts of the world might recognize as being Fort Worth.

A powerful local, last name of Bass, a man with demonstrably bad taste when it comes to architecture, objected to the design of the new college, a design which included a pedestrian bridge across the Trinity River to more college buildings.

Well, that Bass man has gotten his way, there will be no bridge across the Trinty, no campus on the other side of the river, no sunken plaza. In other words, all that made this building unique has been taken away.

But what about the college? Well, Radio Shack has been on hard times for a long time. It always seemed bizarre to me that they would build such a palace for their headquarters, structures that seemed totally at odds with the tacky, run-down, trashy look of Radio Shack stores.

Like I said, Radio Shack got $86 million in tax breaks from Fort Worth to obliterate those parking lots, get rid of the subway, evict all those people and build their headquarters.

And now, Radio Shack has sold its corporate headquarters to Tarrant County College for $238 million. TCC estimates they will spend another $80 million renovating the Radio Shack buildings into class rooms.

Meanwhile, back at the original new TCC construction site, the parts already under construction, will be finished and turned into mostly administration offices.

As for Pier 1 Imports, they also have been having troubles. Soon after opening their new headquarters they turned off a bright light that shot skyward, to save money. And now their headquarters has been taken over by Chesapeake Energy, which has enough energy to turn the light back on.

So, Radio Shack lasted less than 3 years in its new headquarters. It's estimated the taxpayers are out about $100 million.

Does all this sound boondogglish to any of you?

Soon, another Fort Worth tax break beneficiary will be completed, that being the Omni Convention Center Hotel. The thinking for subsidizing the hotel was that the lack of a good hotel near the convention center was the reason that not many conventions took place in Fort Worth's Convention Center. No hotel builder saw the economics as justifiable to build a hotel, hence the tax breaks. Other cities, like Seattle, that do get a lot of conventions, do not have to subsidize the construction of hotels near their convention centers.

So, I predict that soon after the Omni Hotel opens there will be noises that its losing money due to many many empty rooms. Two years later it will shut down. Fort Worth will then take it over and turn it into their new city hall.

Meanwhile in far north Fort Worth there sits another underperforming beneficiary of Fort Worth tax breaks, that being the customer shy sporting goods store called Cabelas. Now, when Cabelas decides it needs to shut down its underperforming store I'm thinking it'd be a great building to makeover into a north campus of Tarrant County College.

In the end the taxpayers do get something from these Fort Worth Boondoggles, besides getting it in the end.

Matt Damon's Fat

Way back in 1996 Matt Damon played a heroin addict in a movie called Courage Under Fire. He had to lose 40 pounds in 100 days for 2 days of filming for a movie that I don't think ever got released. Damon had to take meds for years after this, due to damage done to his adrenal gland.

And now, 12 years later, Matt Damon has gone the other direction, as you can see in the photo. While he appears nowhere near being obese, it is clearly obvious that Matt Damon has decided to contribute to the National Strategic Fat Preserve.

Matt Damon may be endangering his health, again, for a movie, this time one called The Informant.

Narcoleptic Poodle

My sister in Tacoma has a pair of poodles who think I'm their uncle. They are named Max & Blue. Max & Blue have a blog. This morning Max & Blue blogged about a Narcopleptic Poodle. And complained that my sister was also narcoleptic because she wouldn't get up and get them some grub. Max & Blue constantly crave McDonald's Cheeseburgers.

Go to Max & Blue's Blog and watch the video about the Narcoleptic Poodle. It is both funny and sort of sad.

Texas Insomnia & Saharan Dust Storms

I had a bad bout of insomnia last night, for the first time in a couple months. I'd been taking sleeping pills, but last night I didn't remember I'd run out of my supply of knock out pills.

Last night I was tired, I was yawning, I'd have no problem falling asleep, or so I thought. I watched Hell's Kitchen til 9. That may have been too stimulating. I was then at the computer til 10. Again, maybe too stimulating. Then I went to bed and read a book I've almost finished, "Voices From the Third Reich." Again, likely too stimulating.

I turned off the lights coming up on 11. At about 11:30 that idiot Puerto Rican I've mentioned before called. She knows I go to bed early. The phone ringing was too stimulating. Of course, I did not answer it when I saw who it was. And then a minute later the voice mail tone went off. Again, too stimulating.

I lay in bed, over-stimulated, wondering if the Puerto Rican had called, all angry, due to reading something I may have said about her in my Blog. So, I got up and listened to the voice mail. I quickly deleted it when I could tell she was drunk and was calling me at almost midnight to tell me she'd watched the finale of Desperate Housewives again. That it was real good. That I should watch it.

So, back in bed, any sleep impulse totally evaporated. I tossed. I turned. The overhead fan made me chilly, so I turned it off. Still not asleep, coming up on 3am, I turned off the A/C and turned the overhead fan back on.

Sometime just after 4am I feel asleep for about 15 minutes. During those 15 minutes I had a nightmare involving my deceased grandma and me trying to help my now shrunken grandma navigate the kitchen floor at the house I grew up in, in Burlington, Washington. I woke up overheated.

I fell asleep again sometime after 5am. This time the nightmare was a Nazi stabbing another Nazi and another Nazi telling him to stop and the stabbing Nazi then slicing his own throat. Of course I woke up instantly and then laid there pondering what the significance of this nightmare was. I'm still pondering.

Sometime about 6am I heard the Star-Telegram hit my front door. So, I got up, made coffee, laid on the floor drinking the coffee and read the paper, what little of it there was worth reading. Then I got on the computer, saw how much Google money I made yesterday and then proceeded to blog my grumpy disdain for that recurring Star-Telegram inanity of pointing out Texas connections to people in the news. No matter how trivial.

It's gonna be a very long day. I am constitutionally unable to take naps. My first chance of being able to sleep will come sometime past 9pm this evening. I will need to brave going to Wal-Mart today to get a fresh supply of knockout drugs. I'd rather be a drug addict than suffer through another night like last night.

This is the last WWII book I'm reading. I must cut down on the amount of stimulation I subject myself to.

And as if my personal misery weren't enough, today north Texas is being blighted by a dust storm that has blown in from the Sahara Desert. That's in Africa for those of you who didn't know when the American Civil War took place. I hate it when we get a Saharan Dust Storm here. It makes me sneeze.