Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Stutters and Stammers Too Much

Okay, I'll admit I have a personal problem with not liking it when someone stutters and stammers and says 'um' a lot. I always think, why don't you get your thoughts in order before you put your mouth in motion. It really is probably one of my pet peeves.

So, I turned on the TV while I ate lunch. All the cable news stations were covering Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's news conference live.

I have seldom, if ever, witnessed a public figure, in a position of such responsibility, stutter and stammer as much as this guy. It did not inspire confidence. Quite the opposite. Where did George W. find this one? Same place he got that Brownie guy that George thought did such a good job during the Katrina debacle?

I am aware it shows extreme shallowness on my part, but I'm just not comfortable with the idea of letting someone who stutters and stammers oversee the spending of $700 billion with a who knows if it's a good idea plan to save the world from total economic meltdown.

We live in scary times. Meanwhile I got gas today for under 3 bucks a gallon.

John McCain's Rage is a National Security Concern

Fort Worth Dumbness About ZLB Plasma

I recently learned yet one more thing that makes me cranky about how the Ruling Junta of Fort Worth runs things in this backwater town that doesn't know that that's what it is.

In one neighborhood of Fort Worth the residents can not get the city to shut down something that is making them miserable due to the smells coming from the Big Cheese Rodent Factory. Yes, the city is allowing a mice breeding operation where people live.

Meanwhile in my area of Fort Worth a company named ZLB Plasma has a branch office doing a good deed. They are so successful they bought a nearby bigger building to move their operation to so they could do even more good deeds.

But, the city of Fort Worth's Ruling Junta thinks this business attracts an unsavory crowd that lingers in McDonald's and the bus stop and make residents nervous. At least that's part of the excuse given to denying a permit to open a bigger clinic in a bigger building which would attract even more unsavory characters.

ZLB Plasma extracts blood plasma from willing donors. Plasma is used to make products that treat patients suffering from bleeding disorders, immune deficiencies, shock, trauma and burns.

There is an urgent, critical need for products that can only be made from plasma.

Every day, but Sunday, 100s of people show up at my neighborhood ZLB Plasma clinic to do a good thing. They are paid $25-$40 per donation. If you donate plasma a second time in one week they give you $40, one time you get $25.

So, you've got all these people, healthy people, well-tested before plasma is drawn, willing to do this good deed. You've got a company willing to locate in Fort Worth to do this good deed.

And you've got an idiotic city bureaucracy that does not work with them, instead, works against them. ZLB had no idea what sort of backwater place they were dealing with. They naively went ahead and bought the new, bigger building. Likely because the company had never been located in a place where permission to make a move to a bigger building would be denied.

Someone needs to overthrow Fort Worth's Ruling Junta and install a working democracy. I think maybe the Ruling Junta is running a WMD operation at the Big Cheese Rodent Factory. Time for some pre-emptive striking for the greater good of the good citizens of Fort Worth. America, please takeover this town. You'll be welcomed as liberators. I'm almost certain of that.

Disneyland and Six Flags Over Texas

Since my first visit when I was 13, Disneyland has been one of my favorite places. There was a time when I'd go to Disneyland just about every year. In the Los Angeles zone I also had fun at Knott's Berry Farm and Magic Mountain. I was a theme park fan.

When I moved to Texas I thought I'd be getting an annual pass to Six Flags Over Texas and go there multiple times during the year. But that was before I actually went to Six Flags Over Texas. Sadly, it is no Disneyland.

That old bald man you see above is sort of Six Flags mascot. While Disneyland has Mickey and Minnie.

Disneyland creates its own world, with the outside shut out. Walls keep you from seeing the outside world at Disneyland. At Six Flags Over Texas you can view the outside world through cyclone fence topped with barbed wire. Like a prison.

The entry into Disneyland is very efficient. You pass through the gates and walk under a railway and suddenly you are looking at Main Street with a castle at the end of the street. You know you're somewhere special. At Six Flags you go through a clunky entry that opens to a little plaza with an old Carousel spinning around.

Disneyland is neat and tidy. No chipped paint. No litter. Everything bright, shiny and clean. Six Flags has water with litter floating, broken TVs hanging above you while you wait in line, areas in need of paint, dead landscaping.

Six Flags Over Texas is very odd with the theming. The area that is supposed to be France is the closest Six Flags comes to Disneyland's quality level. Mexico has some stuff that looks Mexican and other things that seem out of place. I don't know in which 'country' the log ride is, but it is one disturbing ride. Because it's supposed to be in a north woods type setting, the water is dyed an unnatural shade of blue. Disneyland's log ride is quite elaborate, Six Flags is barebone.

The first visit to Six Flags I got in for free. A few years later I got another free pass. That was the year the Titan Hypercoaster opened. There had been some improvements. More flowers, less things in need of paint, cleaner. But the landscaping for the new Titan ride appeared to be dying due to lack of water. I've never seen anything dead or dying at Disneyland.

After the first visit to Six Flags I never again entertained the notion that I'd like an annual pass. I don't know that I'd go again even if I got paid to go.

A one day pass to Disneyland costs about $70. Six Flags Over Texas is under $30 if you buy online, $49.99 if you buy your ticket at the park. You get what you pay for. Compared to Six Flags, Disneyland is a bargain. Only 20 bucks more for an excellent high quality experience, vs. a glorified carnival.

Let's Talk About Libraries Fort Worth

Last week I mentioned that the Ruling Junta of Fort Worth was holding their final "Let's Talk Fort Worth" meeting. This had been a series of town hall type deals where the citizens of Fort Worth could let the Junta know what they're thinking. This current "Let's Talk Fort Worth" was the 3rd time in about 50 years the Ruling Junta has solicited such citizen opinions.

Today is the day the Ruling Junta puts its full page ad in the Star-Telegram, called "City Page." Under the headline, "Residents Share Their Dreams at Let's Talk Fort Worth," there is an embarrassing propagandish version of what the citizens of Fort Worth had to tell the Ruling Junta. There is no mention of the large protest that preceded the meeting during which Fort Worth citizen's let the Junta know what they think of all the gas drilling going on all over town.

The article also made no mention of the many people who verbalized their gas drilling concerns to the Ruling Junta during the Let's Talk meeting.

The following paragraph really rubbed me the wrong way. After you read it I'll tell you why it annoyed me....

"Several speakers praised Fort Worth's quality of life, it's neighborliness and cultural attractions, and its peaceful ambiance and low crime rates. Also mentioned as favorite things about Fort Worth were its thriving downtown and associated entertainment, dining and shopping and the urban villages burgeoning in various parts of the city...."

Before I get to the part about the above that really bugged me I've got to say, first off. Shopping? In downtown Fort Worth? Fort Worth is the only city in America with a population over 400,000 with absolutely no department store downtown. Not a one. Very meager shopping opportunities. Contrast Fort Worth's downtown with smaller in population Seattle. Seattle has at least 3 vertical malls downtown. More than one grocery store. Several department stores, like Nordstroms and dozens of other stores, in addition to Pike Place Market. Seattle has a thriving downtown. Fort Worth has the deadest downtown of any downtown I've ever seen. Just look at photos I took of downtown Fort Worth on the busiest shopping day of the year, the day after Thanksgiving.

Okay, now the thing that really bugs me. Beneath the article on the "City Page," singing the praises of Fort Worth's alleged livability, is another article. This one making note of the city's library's new operating hours. Due to budget shortfalls the city of Fort Worth decided to save money by laying off library employees and cutting back operating hours. Every time I have been in my nearby Fort Worth library it is real busy. Everyone of the computer terminals being used by people I assume don't have a computer. People wait outside the library's entry waiting for it to open.

What sort of city that has any sort of pretension regarding caring about its quality of life would cut back on the access of its citizens to its libraries?

Tonight's Debate Among Other Annoyances

I'm not in the mood to blog about anything. Usually I've got too much I'm in the mood to blog about. But not this morning. Maybe my blah mood is due to a bad dream last night. Maybe it's due to being nervous because the financial meltdown seems to be getting worse. I'm still cranky at Washington Mutual and their bad banking practices.

I only made it through half an hour of Dancing With The Stars last night. I got bored and then I got sleepy. I'm sure I'll try and watch tonight's debate. It's likely McCain, in desperation, is going to be all Mr. Fiesty Pants, accusing Obama of cohorting with terrorists who did bad deeds when Obama was only 7 and living in Hawaii. If the debate turns ugly at least it will likely hold my interest and keep me wake. Appalled, disgusted and awake.

My bad nightmare last night was very very unsettling. I'd blogged yesterday about my aversion to Christmas and family holiday get-togethers. So, last night my nightmare had me up in Lynden at the annual combo Christmas/Birthday party for my long gone Grandma. Well, in the nightmare there was Grandma. It was like I was living it in 3-D. I was glad to see Grandma. I actually sort of enjoyed those times at times. The gift exchange was usually amusing.

And then after I visited Grandma my nightmare turned macabre. My long gone Uncle Ivan, who I really did not know all that well, was there, not looking good. And then I turned to my left and there was Uncle Mel. Uncle Mel has been fighting a battle against prostate cancer for years now. It's a battle he's been gradually losing.

I last saw Uncle Mel at my nephew Jason's wedding in April of 2006. When I turned to look at him Uncle Mel had tears in his eyes and said "I'm so glad I got to see you again." And then he faded away. I woke up instantly, very unsettled and I've been unsettled all morning.

To take my mind off of all my annoyances I have been making webpages like a maniac this morning. Adding all sortsa content to my Eyes on Texas website. That thing is getting way too big. If only I'd designed the original layout with the eventual size in mind, things would be so much easier. But it's like a bad house that someone keeps putting add-ons on til it's like a patchwork of cobbled together messiness, that's perfectly livable, but really could have been done way better. I guess it's not so bad, only I can see the mess, the viewer, not so much.

We are under a high wind alert all day here in North Texas. It's only 66 out there with an hour or so to go til noon. Brrrr. No swimming this morning. It was time to shock the pool. That's pool maintenance talk meaning chemicals had to be mixed in to keep the water all nice and clean.

Christmas in Texas

Today, for the first time this year, I heard a phrase I hate hearing, as in "the Holiday Season is almost here." Said as if this is a good thing.

I've been seeing Halloween stuff in stores for a couple months now. I'm sure if I looked closely I'd see some Thanksgiving stuff. It's probably only a few weeks before Christmas starts its yearly appearance.

I've never enjoyed much about the Holiday Season. Okay, I do like turkey dinner. Last year I got a turkey from Sprouts and made a real good turkey dinner. That's way too much bother. I doubt I'll go through that again this year. Maybe I'll have turkey hot dogs.

People who talk about how busy they are during the Holiday Season, acting sort of like it overwhelms them, with so much to do, annoy me. Why not just opt out if it's too much for you? I pretty much opted out decades ago and I've not suffered too much.

I think, maybe, part of the reason I have an aversion to the Holidays is it always involved way too much family interaction. Going to a combo Christmas/Grandma's Birthday deal a week or so before Christmas. That seeming to come up before I'd recovered from whatever the family Thanksgiving thing for the year happened to be. Followed way too closely by Christmas.

One year for Christmas Eve I had my mom and dad and baby sister over and made Chinese food. That was fun. My baby sister does not remember this, but at the time she was all pleased at the unusual Christmas Eve dinner.

For years my strategy for avoiding Christmas and all it entailed was to simply leave. I spent more than one Christmas in Reno. I enjoyed those Christmases. From Reno I'd go on to LA and have a fine time at Disneyland and playing in the LA zone. I remember the last time I did this was Christmas of 1994. Spent that Christmas at Disneyland. Best Christmas ever.

I did have a good Christmas experience in the year 1999. Right before that millennium thing happened. I'd been up in Washington. It'd been a scary drive north. Way too much ice and snow. So, I decided to return to Texas by heading south down I-5 and then east across the Southwest.

This plan put me on the path to Yuma. Where my mom and dad lived at the time. So, heading south there was much debate along the lines of Disneyland for Christmas. Or Yuma. Yuma won the debate. It turned out to be the right decision. Christmas Eve my dad drove us around Yuma looking at the lights. It was a totally different Christmas. Due to being warm, people were outside, like having a party. These luminaria candle things were everywhere. So many people outside sitting in their yards watching the people drive by.

Christmas morning mom and dad took me to their favorite casino so we could have the 99 cent Senior Citizen Special for breakfast. Me, not being a Senior, but hungry, had 3 of the specials. After the casino we took off for Algadones, Mexico to do some Christmas shopping. That was fun. The best part was watching my mom chasing parking tickets, blowing in the wind, because each one was redeemable at the casino. Which is where we went Christmas night.

Christmas of 1999, in Yuma, may end up being the last time I get to spend Christmas with mom and dad unless I make an effort to get to Phoenix. Phoenix would probably be fun for Christmas. It is very similar to Yuma. Plus they have an In & Out Burger joint. Best burgers ever.

Wal-Mart's Bad Flag Etiquette

I was at the Eastchase Super Wal-Mart today in East Fort Worth to witness another badly abused American flag on display here in Texas. The previous incident was at my nearby U.S. Post Office.

I took several photos of the Wal-Mart flag. When I got back to my vehicle a strange thing happened. A large woman in a large car drove up to me, rolled down her window and started yelling at me, asking why I was taking pictures of her. It was oddly reminiscent of a YouTube video I posted some time back. The large woman in the large car ended her diatribe by taking a photo of me. It was all very unsettling.

Back to the bad Wal-Mart flag. This is what I found when Googling about Flag Etiquette...

"If the edges become tattered through wear, the flag should be repaired or replaced. When a flag is so tattered that can no longer serve as a symbol of the United States, it should be destroyed in a dignified manner, preferably by burning. The American Legion and other organizations regularly conduct dignified flag-burning ceremonies, often on Flag Day, June 14."

Now, I'm not some sort of fanatic about flags. I don't care one way or the other is someone wears a flag pin. But if you're gonna fly the flag it seems really tacky to me to fly one that is all torn up, blowing tattered in the wind, as if it'd been pummelled in a war zone. Wal-Mart should be ashamed. About this bad flag thing too.

Chased By An Armadillo Under Stormy Texas Weather

We had our first thunderstorm in a long time, this morning, followed by the first rain in a long time. I went swimming in the rain, again. I like swimming in the rain.

Around noon I went to Village Creek Natural Historical Area to walk under the dripping oak trees. They weren't dripping too much. But the ground had turned sort of muddy. Which made it good armadillo foraging ground. I've seen a lot of armadilloes at Village Creek this year. Today was no exception.

I came across the armadillo you see in the photo with his snout buried in the mud sucking for goodies. I got real close to him to take a pic, which was easy because he was eating. If their faces are above ground the armadilloes can be a bit skittish and run away. But, if you stand still you pose no threat. Armadilloes do not see very well. If you stand still, I've had them move towards me, like they're trying to see if you might provide some good bugs to eat.

This guy came right at me. He got a bit disoriented when he got on the sidewalk, but he kept coming towards me and I started stepping back, taking pics as I did. Armadilloes are cute, and harmless, but they are also sort of creepy little throwbacks that somehow survived the extinctions of the dinosaur era. Or so it seems.

Continuing on from my Armadillo encounter I came to Village Creek. It was running a lot of water due to today's rain. I've seen it running a lot more water, often to the point where it floods over the bridges and the park has to close. Today did not get near that, but it still made for some good wild rapids.

Google Feedburner Burning Me

Some of this blog stuff I really don't get. Like why does one want to burn a feed? And then subscribe to a blog feed? Why not just read the blog like you would any ol' website?

Even though I don't quite get the point, long ago I used Feedburner to burn a feed of this very blog you are looking at right now. I soon found I had subscribers. The number of subscribers goes up and down.

When I log into my Feedburner account there is a tab you can click on called 'Monetize.' I tried to monetize my Feedburner feed a long time ago, because I'd noticed that the Feedburner feed of my blog did not have the Google ads.

So, the Feedburner account supposedly ties in with the Google AdSense account. When you monetize and choose your ad style, Feedburner then generates some code that you have to insert into your blog's layout code.

I did so. And what did I find happened? No ads appeared in the Feedburner feed of my blog. But new ads were placed under each of my blogging posts in my regular ol' non-feed blog, thus screwing up the rule that you can place no more than 3 add units per page.

So, I de-monitized my Feedburner feed.

And then, about a month or so ago, when I'd log into my AdSense account, there was an option to add AdSense ads to my blog feed. So, yesterday I did so, thinking, once more, that ads would show up in the feed thing. Google had me burn a new feed, even though my Feedburner feed was part of my Google Account, since Feedburner is part of Google.

The Google AdSense thing burned a feed of my blog and gave me it's URL and told me it'd be active in about 10 minutes. Now a day later this is what you see if you go to my new Google AdSense feed where ads are supposed to appear. That's right. It's a blank page.

I thought maybe the ads show up if you subscribe to my feed, which is something I'd not done before. So, for the first time I clicked on 'subscribe to this feed.' I then chose Google Reader as my feed reader. My blog then opened up in Google Reader. With no ads.

I've no clue what to do. Google is not the best at getting back to you with answers to questions. As in they never do.

Maybe I should delete these feed things. Why would I want people reading my blog ad-free? I want them to click on ads. It's as if they are subscribing to a TV Feed and then getting to watch TV shows with no commercials.

Very vexing.