2008 State Fair of Texas

Yesterday I blogged about this year's Big Tex Choice Award finalists. That's an annual competition to see who can come up with the most bizarre thing to deep fry and make tasty to some people's taste buds.

That's Big Tex you see in the photo.

The State Fair of Texas this year runs from September 26 to October 19. Today I was informed I will have 10 tickets to the fair. Who wants to go with me?

The Texas State Fair is a good thing. It's not quite at the level of the Western Washington State Fair in Puyallup, but it's still a good thing. For one thing the Puyallup's food is better. And you can buy things with good ol' American money. At the Texas fair you have to buy coupons and then use the coupons to buy everything from rides to food. The Puyallup Fair has way more farm animals and way fewer cars on display. And way more free stuff. I like free stuff.

Ironically, well maybe it ain't irony, just interesting, but every year at the Puyallup my favorite thing was going to this free show stage. I'd see hypnotists that did amazing things. And every year there'd be this band from Dallas, called The Shoppe, that was always very entertaining. The Shoppe should play at the State Fair of Texas. And they could use a hypnotist or two.

Go here to the webpage version of my visit to last year's State Fair of Texas.

Or watch my YouTube video of that visit to the State Fair of Texas.

Level Red Toxic Human Alert

The air doesn't look dangerous this morning. But, apparently it is. Here in the Dallas/Fort Worth zone we are still under an Ozone Alert. It varies day to day from a Level Red to a Level Orange Ozone Alert.

I wish there were Alerts assigned to humans. Mandatory testing and then you're issued an Alert Badge. Level Green for totally non-toxic, well-adjusted humans, Level Yellow for humans with some interactive issues, but not toxic. Level Orange for humans with some degree of toxicity who are likely best avoided. And Level Red for those humans who should be avoided totally due to their extreme toxicity.

With no Human Alert system in place I have to rely on instinct and warning signs.

One big red flag warning sign is if you find out someone is a religious fanatic. You probably don't want to be friends with a religious fanatic. By religious fanatic I'm meaning a member of some twisted cult thing, like Hare Krishna.

Another big red flag is if a person is on any sort of psychotropic mind-altering prescription medication. If a person needs to have their brain altered to manage to get through the day this is a strong indication that there is some seriously degraded thought processes in play which could come out at any random time in an extremely toxic manner, despite the medications.

A long history of being in therapy is another warning sign. The fact that the individual is seeking help is a good thing. But the fact that the individual needs help is a warning sign.

If you make note of a person being self-indulgent in self-destructive ways, this is a warning sign that the person could be toxic. Such sorts are self-loathers who can quickly go from loathing themselves to spouting irrational loathing at humans with whom they interact.

Catching a person in a lie more than once is a huge red flag. I have a 3 strikes and you're out policy, likely due to my love of baseball. Okay, that was a lie. I don't like baseball. I've known one or two pathological liars who lie for no fathomable reason, almost as if they want to see what they can get someone to pretend to believe. Sadly, the liar's lies are usually quite transparent. And they easily get caught in their lies, because basically liars are not the brightest lights on the planet.

Currently I am totally free from dealing with any toxicity. That's a good thing. I intend, I hope, to remain free from toxic humans. It's a lofty goal.

Stairtown Latest Texas Natural Gas Explosion

June 7, 2010 Natural Gas Explosion Kills 3 in Hood County.

Five homeowners on Carter Avenue in East Fort Worth, near Tandy Hills Park, continue to fight to stop Chesapeake Energy from running a natural gas pipeline beneath their property.

Condemnation hearings have begun.

Chesapeake Energy spokespeople and gas industry propaganda touts the safe practices of the modern gas exploitation industry. However, nothing as extensive as the hundreds of miles of pipelines flowing from well over 1000 wells has ever before been attempted in an urban zone.

So, naturally, people have their concerns. Despite claims to the contrary, there have been natural gas explosions in recent times. Just today a town in Texas, Stairtown, had a natural gas explosion.

Simply Google "Texas Natural Gas Explosions" and you'll find quite a long list of Texas explosions. Some recent. With the most deadly one taking place way back in March 18, 1937, killing 100s of students at New London School in New London, Texas. It's at the top of the list.

It seems reasonable that a person would have some reservations about having a large gas pipeline running under their property. Or a gas drilling rig nearby.

Watch the YouTube video below. Survivors of the New London tragedy are interviewed. A couple interesting comments follow, from YouTube, regarding the below video.

"This happened a month before I was born. I had at least 12 cousins killed. I went to school in the new building that's there now. I know everybody in this video."

"My mother's father was a pipeline welder that was hired to construct the heating unit for the school. He thought the design was unsafe in theory and till his death felt terrible guilt for having been involved in the construction. The family was living in Tyler Texas at the time of the tragedy and he raced there to assist in the rescue efforts. My grandfather worked in the construction of the boiler and steam heating at the grade school that I attended in Dallas in 1954."

Protesting Chesapeake Energy in Church

Interesting incoming today from the leader of the Eastside Rabblerousers, Don Young, commemorating the 3rd anniversary of a protest outside a Baptist Church in Fort Worth. If you are going to protest outside a church in Fort Worth the odds are that it will be a Baptist Church. There are more Baptist Churches here than Starbucks.

Below is the message from Don Young....

"It was a hot and humid Sunday morning on 9/28/05, but that didn't stop a couple dozen folks from picketing outside a Baptist church in east Fort Worth. This was before Just Say NO. FWCanDo was not yet named. Just say WHOA! was still a star in the sky. Urban gas drilling was in its infancy. But we knew trouble when we saw it, even back then.

The reason for the protest? Sagamore Hill Baptist Church, owned 50 acres of very rare, original Texas prairie which is next to a historic neighborhood. They had announced that they were striking a deal with the devil. The devil in this case is Chesapeake Energy who wanted to extract the minerals under the property which is also adjacent to Tandy Hills Natural Area.

With full knowledge of the negative impact to the immediate neighborhood's integrity, its residents safety, wildlife and the adjacent, natural area, church leaders signed a mineral lease with Chesapeake. When all efforts to reason with the church failed, we felt the only way to get their attention was on Sunday morning.

Chesapeake later bought the property, outright and continues to terrorize the neighborhood and the region in the name of free money. The church has abandoned the neighborhood for greener pastures.

As far as I know, this was the first public protest against urban gas drilling in the Barnett Shale, maybe the world. It will not be the last.

Stroll down Memory Lane by reading this report in the Fort Worth Weekly by Jeff Prince, who we all met for the first time at this protest on '05."

State Fair of Texas Big Tex Choice Awards

The State Fair of Texas starts up in about a month, running from September 26 through October 19. Each year there is a competition among food vendors for the Big Tex Choice Award.

This year over 40 contestants tried to be among the final 8.

Last year's winner, Abel Gonzales, who won with his Fried Cookie Dough concoction is in the running again this year, making the final 8 cut with an even more disgusting sounding dessert, this one called Fire & Ice. Consisting of a battered deep-fried pineapple ring, topped with frozen banana flavored whipped cream covered with strawberries and syrup.

Other equally disgusting sounding final 8 desserts were a Deep-Fried Banana Split, a Deep-Fried Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Deep-Fried Chocolate Truffles, Deep-Fried Jelly Bellys, Deep-Fried Chocolate-Covered Strawberry Waffle Balls on a Stick and Chicken-Fried Bacon Strips.

If I hadn't seen this type stuff with my own eyes I'd think someone was making it up, but I saw last year's winning Fried Cookie Dough. I also saw the Deep-Fried Latte and the Deep-Fried Coke.

And I saw a lot of really fat people buying this stuff.

Chesapeake Energy Pokes Another Fort Worth Hole

I left my abode today and headed in a northerly direction for the first time since my return from a northerly direction a week ago today. Before I left for my month of aversion therapy in Tacoma I'd noticed an odd giant wall-like thing growing beside a road known as Randoll Mill Road.

Today I found out what the giant wall-like thing was. Well, what it is associated with, I still don't know what it's for. But it has something to do with yet one more Chesapeake Energy drilling operation in my neighborhood. So, I felt compelled to take some pictures of my new neighbor.

As you can see, this drilling operation is very close to the road. I wouldn't want to be driving by if it decided to go boom.

Above is a view from a greater distance. What you are looking at is the intersection of Randoll Mill Road and Handley-Ederville Road. The Chesapeake Energy operation takes up the northwest corner of that intersection.

That's the wall I referenced above. It is on the west side of the drilling operation. I don't know what its purpose might be, unless it's to block some sound from reaching some upscale houses a short distance away.

The drilling rigs are always very patriotic, flying both the American flag and the state flag of Texas. There are no houses within 800 feet of this drilling operation, of that I am fairly certain. However, there are several liquor stores close by, due to this location being on the border of a dry zone. I live in a wet zone.

2008 Democratic Convention

Last week I thought I was looking forward to watching this week's Democratic Convention.

But I've not watched but a few minutes of it. I think the problem is I turn it on about 7. That is 2 hours from the primetime main part of the show. Like when Mrs. Clinton or Mrs. Obama gave their speeches. Or when Teddy Kennedy touched everyone, even Rush Limbaugh. I was in bed by then.

I recollect spending a lot of hours watching the 2 conventions in election years gone by. During the 2004 conventions I was on the west coast. And so primetime convention speeches came on at 7, hours before my bedtime. I have no recollection of watching the conventions that nominated Al Gore and George in 2000. I'm pretty sure I must have watched them. This is only my second convention season in the central time zone of Texas. Things like Superbowls, Academy Awards Shows and Conventions come on too late here.

I think part of the problem for me watching this stuff is anymore I'm easily bored and start thinking of something I'd rather be doing. I think I find them boring because the conventions don't have that spontaneous, lively, anything might happen type feel of conventions of years gone by. It is all so slickly produced, like one giant infomercial.

I'll try again tonight to make it to convention primetime, hopefully to see Mr. Clinton and Mr. Biden give their speeches. I'm betting I won't make it though.

Half Ton Texas Woman Too Fat To Kill

In another example of how obesity is a health hazard that kills, a Texas woman, Mayra Rosales, was charged with the killing of her 2 year-old nephew. Rosales' attorney has claimed Rosales could not have beaten her nephew because she is too fat to use her arms to do so.

Though Rosales is charged with capital murder she is being held under house arrest because Hidalgo County does not have a jail cell large enough to hold the half ton woman or the medical staff to attend to her needs. Hidalgo County is on the Texas Gulf Coast, south of Houston.

The mother of the murdered boy has been charged with injury to a child for leaving her son in the care of his bed-ridden aunt. The mother believes the death was an accident possibly caused when her morbidly obese sister rolled over on to the boy.

However, prosecutors claim the boy had 2 head injuries not explainable by being rolled over by an obese woman.

Sad story.

Why do people let themselves get so obese? I've had reason to ponder that up close and personal of late. When an obese person is still mobile, as in they are able to get out and about and walk, their musculature must be well-developed to haul all that heft. And their caloric needs, just to stay at a steady weight, are much greater than a healthy weighted person. Hence their ability to lose weight quickly if they decide to get healthy.

It is possible for a morbidly obese person to exercise and amp up the weight loss if they ever decide to get off the gravy train and cross over to fruit and vegetable world. Below is a YouTube video that is an example of a health motivated obese person exercising.

Tootsie Tonasket

I've developed a habit over the years of collecting some rather diversely kooky characters via email and website feedback. Way back in 2003 an entity calling herself Tootsie Tonasket emailed me with a question about the Branch-Davidians. If I remember correctly she somehow thought I was a member of that cult. This was to be the first of many many Tootsie Tonasket confusions over the years.

Tootsie Tonasket has sent me all sorts of things. I get real nice birthday presents and a big box filled with good stuff for Christmas. Okay, I know this slightly contradicts what I may have said before about me getting ignored on special occasions. That may not be exactly true. That's more directed at those who do actually ignore all the significant events in my sad little existence. Like when I turned 30. I believe I've carefully parsed the verbiage when I claim to being ignored on these highly important occasions.

Anyway, I digress. So, in addition to sending me things in the mail, some of which I really don't want to mention in this venue, Tootsie Tonasket also sends me some soap opera type drama details.

Tootsie Tonasket's emails often read like a torrid, trashy novel. For example. Her son had a baby with an older woman who left the son for a series of bad guys. Tootsie Tonasket's son then took up with the lovely lady you see above. She's posing, especially pretty, at Wenatchee's Apple Blossom Festival.

We'll call this girl Sissy. Well, Tootsie Tonasket's son got tired of Sissy. Sissy then took up with Tootsie Tonasket's husband, an old bald guy 30 years older than Sissy. This affair became Peyton Place scandalous in the little town they all live in.

After breaking Tootsie Tonasket's husband's heart, Sissy moved on to a new conquest and at last report she is now expecting a baby with a married guy in Yakima. This all took place in the last 3 months, or so.

This morning Tootsie Tonasket sent me the photo you see above of Sissy. She told me to do with it what I wanted. What would I do with it, I thought, but tell the story of why it is that Tootsie Tonasket would be sending me photos of some girl named Sissy.

None of these people get outside of MySpace World, so there's no chance they'll happen upon my blog. Unless Tootsie Tonasket directs them to it.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram Continues To Shrink

This morning I read an interesting series of comments at the West & Clear Blog regarding reader's regard, well actually, lack of regard regarding the Fort Worth Star-Telegram's current state of failure.

After having spent a month reading another McClatchy newspaper, that being the Tacoma News Tribune, it is surprising how different the 2 papers are. One would think the Tacoma paper was the one serving the bigger market, but Tacoma's population is just a tad over 200,000. While Fort Worth has over 700,000 people currently residing within its borders. I believe the Star-Telegram circulates more newspapers than the News Tribune.

But the Star-Telegram is a much smaller paper, with a lot more ads and way fewer columnists. Somehow the News Tribune can afford to have more than one columnist on its editorial page.

The comments in West & Clear about the current state of the Star-Telegram's diminishing relevancy were interesting, matching much of what I've observed, including the weird role the paper assigns itself as being a city booster, rather than accurately reporting on the city's many shortcomings.

A guy named Greg wrote an interesting comment about the Star-Telegram's shortcoming's and its resultant disservice to the community. I'll copy what Greg wrote below....

"A paper whose purpose in life has its historic roots in boosterism for the home town is doomed in the long run. It won’t get into controversies that could make Fort Worth look anything less than perfect. And that’s just not interesting. By not digging and finding things that need improvement I guess it’s assumed Fort Worth can look great. The problem is if we don’t expose what’s wrong, how do we ever get better? I mean, I love Fort Worth but I still think we have some areas that fall short of perfection.

Worse, by not digging into city failures and bad ideas the paper leaves the casual observer thinking there’s no reason to take an interest in civic affairs. And so people don’t show up and they don’t pay attention.

A free press is critical to preserving our other freedoms, but only to the extent that it does its job to inform the citizens about their government, including criticizing it. Fortunately we have the Weekly and occasionally the Business Press taking a few shots, but that’s not enough.

I don’t want to imply, though, that the S-T doesn’t have some dedicated and talented people. What it lacks is vision."