Fossil Fuels. They're A Gas: Teaching Children How To Sell Out In Fort Worth

Interesting incoming from Don Young about yet one more Barnett Shale Natural Gas Drilling Industry Texas Takeover....

The cute, new eye-catching billboard, located along I-30 near downtown Fort Worth, appears harmless at first glance. What could be more benign that a little green, cartoon dinosaur with a puff of gas coming out its, um, tailpipe?

Ah, there's the rub. The message brought to you by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History is not really about dinosaurs or fossil hunting or even most fossil fuels. It is about natural gas. It's about convincing citizens of shale that natural gas is nothing to fear. More than that-

The message on the billboard is a symbol of the rot at the core of this fabled Fort Worth institution.

In an effort to satisfy the demands of their new oil and gas benefactors, the FWMoS&H, has dabbed a little cartoon lipstick on the filthy fuel that is poisoning the air, land and water of north Texas. They have used dirty energy bucks to create an ad campaign that rewrites and distorts history.

Among the victims of this perversion are the children of the shale whose still-growing lungs, brains and endocrine systems are more impacted by the significant pollutants coming from thousands of gas well facilities in north Texas.

How is it possible that one of Fort Worth's most trusted institutions could stoop to this level? Why did they sell out the children of the shale? The answer lies in the list of corporate donors who contributed to the construction of the recently completed FWMoS&H building. Meet the REAL owners of the museum:

-XTO Energy
-Encana Oil & Gas
-Dale Resources
-Devon Energy
-Enron Oil & Gas
-Exxon-Mobil

The museum's Board of Directors was infiltrated and or influenced by these energy companies. The Energy Blast exhibit, a fawning glorification of natural gas in the Barnett Shale would never have happened without them. Representatives of these companies wormed their way onto the board with promises of big bucks to make big dreams come true. But there would be strings attached to this faux-philanthropy.

You are looking at one of those strings.

DY

A Saturday Fosdic Lake Bird Buffet With A Human Cancer

It has been a gray Saturday in Texas. A balmy high nearing 60.

Around noon I took off for Town Talk with a stop at Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake. I am such a pathetic creature of habit.

As you can see in the picture the Fosdic Birds were having themselves a fine time today, with a lot of feeding going on. The Fosdic Birds make quite a loud racket when they are all happy about getting fed.

As I walked today I found myself being quietly contemplative. There really was no other option than to be quiet. I was dwelling on Human Cancers and Toxic People. I don't mean cancer of the sort that attacks humans. I'm talking about Humans who are like Cancers.

I used to know an extremely Toxic Person. I did not realize til I removed the Toxicity that dealing with the Toxic Person was like having a Human Cancer being a tumor on my good humor. It was not long after a good dose of radiation, chemo therapy and bitch slapping, that I found myself in full remission.

Getting rid of a Human Cancer is a smart move. I recommend it if you have any such tumor bugging you.

And then a couple days ago, out of the blue, the Human Cancer was back, as Toxic as ever, invading in new areas.

But, the Human Cancer was found early and I zapped it with an extremely strong dose of my own personal brand of radiation. I am prepared to increase the dosage, should the Human Cancer re-appear.

I suspect I am Human Cancer free again. I can only hope.

Tootsie Tonasket, aka Princess Thunderumper of the Tonasket Tribe, called today. Princess Thunderumper was being rather amusing. I don't get how she stays in such a good state of mind with all the soap opera that swirls about her in her little Eastern Washington town.

So, that's been my exciting Saturday, so far. Up really early, FTP nightmare solved, actually managed to stay in the pool for the longest time of the new year, Fosdic Lake walking, Human Cancer treatments.

And now I am heading into Saturday night, which if anyone ever pays any attention, notice might have been made that I rarely make mention of anything that happens after 5pm. My no mentioning things in the blog time zone is from 5pm until 4am. I rarely violate that rule.

Facebook Is All Messed Up This Morning While I Visited Washington's Scrabble Queen

The Temporary Scrabble Queen of Hawaii is back on the mainland, resuming her Scrabble Queen of Washington duties.

I think she beat me 3 times in the past week. Just when I start doing better at coming up with words, the Scrabble Queen amps it up and starts inventing words I've never heard of, worth a lot of points.

I virtually visited the Scrabble Queen when she was on Kauai, via Google Earth. If you've not installed Google Earth on your computer, you really should. It's free. Just Google it.

With the barest of hints I've tried to use Google Earth to visit the Scrabble Queen in her home port in the Skagit Valley. I only found one candidate the seemed to meet the criteria. Except I could see no obvious horse pasture.

I was going to send this photo via a Facebook message, to the Scrabble Queen. But Facebook is all messed up this morning.

It appears Facebook got the message that its users were not pleased with the changes that showed up recently, and is reverting to its previous format. I don't use Facebook all that much, but enough that I found the changes pointless and confusing.

Another Queen has gone missing this morning, that being the Queen of Wink. Yesterday she told me, when she got home from school, at around 4:30, she was going to send me some important information and instructions as to how I could help with a project of hers.

I have received no Royal Decrees. I am very perplexed.

Protesting Injustice In Pecos & Fort Worth Texas

Last night the Queen of Wink blogged about school kids in Pecos, Texas refusing to go to school in protest over the firing of the school's Athletic Director, last name Hensen. I do not know if Hensen has a first name. The Queen did not mention it.

Apparently the Kermit ISD School Board in the notorious town of Kermit, Texas, booted their Superintendent, last name Lujan. Again, I don't know if Lujan has a first name. The Queen did not mention it.

The Lujan guy somehow landed a new Superintendent job a short distance away, in Pecos, where he continued his bad boy ways with the ouster of the well liked Athletic Director.

Which led to Pecos kids refusing to return to school.

That is quite a display of gumption on the part of those West Texas Pecos kids. Very impressive.

The Queen of Wink makes a very good point. As in there are issues here in Fort Worth and its surrounding areas that it would seem would cause citizens to rise up in protest.

Case in point. Chesapeake Energy and its lapdog, the City of Fort Worth, continues its unwarranted, outrageous, uncivilized, indecent, fascist, corrupt, unfair persecution of Steve Doeung.

On March 4 Steve Doeung is back in court, fighting Chesapeake Energy's abuse of eminent domain, in their attempt to install a non-odorized natural gas pipeline under Steve Doeung's home.

Now, I am thinking here with my Pacific Northwest mindset, where protesting is a way of life. You may have seen some of that going on at the Vancouver Olympics. If what is being done to Steve Doeung were happening in the Pacific Northwest, and trust me on this, nothing like this would happen up there, but if it did, you would see large numbers of people protesting the trampling of one American's Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness by corporate and government thuggery.

I'm thinking a very large group needs to be causing a ruckus in downtown Fort Worth on March 4. Anyone agree?

FileZilla Quit Being A Monster & Cooperated With Me

Saturday is off to a good, early start. As in I got up before 5.

I was vexed all day yesterday by being unable to FTP website files to a Yahoo Business account. By day's end I had downloaded and installed 4 different FTP programs.

To no avail.

In all the years I've been doing this Internet stuff I'd never had any problem with FTP. Nor with uploading files to a website that wasn't cooperating.

Anyway, this morning I re-started my computer, then re-started the FileZilla FTP program, that Yahoo recommends. Why Yahoo recommends this program, I do not know. It is very clunky to use, unlike my good, long lasting WS FTP program that's worked fine for years.

But, clunky as FileZilla was, I successfully connected and uploaded the fixes.

So, now the sun is up, the birds are chirping, it's 52 degrees, and I'm going swimming after it gets a bit brighter out there.

Chasing A Fast Running Arlington Armadillo In Village Creek Natural Historic Area

Today I decided I needed to alter my ongoing Groundhog Day tendency and be real wild and different.

So, instead of going to Oakland Lake Park to walk around Fosdic Lake, today I went to Village Creek Natural Historic Area to walk around Village Creek.

Such a drastic change has been very stimulating.

We are not hitting 60 today. I was a bit under dressed for today's walking. So I walked real fast to try and warm up.

As I was walking along it crossed my mind that I'd not seen an armadillo in a long time. I wondered what those funny little beasts do when it freezes. When I do see armadillos they are always in heavy duty rooting around for food mode.

Well, about 10 minutes later what do I see? An armadillo. It was a mid-size one. When I saw him/her it was standing on its hind legs. This I had not seen before. I quickly got out my camera, but not quick enough.

Armadillos do not have good eye sight. They rely on sound to warn them of danger. I was making no sounds. But the armadillo took off running. I had not seen an armadillo run before like this guy did. I chased after him, snapping pictures on the run. The little guy out ran me and disappeared into the brush.

I did not get single picture of the armadillo.

Why was this guy such an alarmist? Usually you can walk right up to one. You can easily pick one up if you want to. An armadillo makes a funny squeaky noise when you pick one up. I thought the armadillo defense when scared was not to run, but to roll up inside the armor. I've seen that behavior before, I've not seen the speed demon armadillo defense before.

My previous armadillo run-ins have been like the one in the picture, where they could care less that you are right by them. These guys were in River Legacy Park having themselves an ant buffet.

I was laying on the sidewalk taking pictures. One of them must have thought I might be a fresh log full of ants, so it started coming towards me. I kept waiting for it to stop. It was like a game of chicken. I blinked first. I did not want that armadillo snout trying to suck ants of me.

Being Perplexed By Ah, This Is Great! Dispels Many Misnomers I've Had.

For weeks I've been getting blog comments like the ones you see in the picture. All from Anonymous.

The blog comment spam always has links to some fool thing. Like a Viagra purveyor. How do so many know of my need for this product?

But, these "Ah, This is great! Dispells many misnomers I've been having" type comment has no link.

Why is some one or thing going to the bother of doing this. And slightly varying the wording?

This is very perplexing to me.

Brush Bash 2 Canceled But The Trout Lily Walk Will Walk As Scheduled

Tomorrow's Saturday February 20 Brush Bash has been canceled.

Fort Worth's Parks Department is unable to help due to still trying to clean up other brush left in the wake of last week's record breaking snowstorm.

The weather is also predicted be possibly a bit wet tomorrow.

The Trout Lily Walk with Master Naturalist, Jeff Quayle, is still going to take place.

If you need more info about the Tandy Hills Natural Area Trout Lily Walk you can email Don Young or call 817.731.2787.

Filezilla & Luluzilla Are Vexing & Perplexing Me This Morning In Texas

I'm having me a frustrating morning.

I have tried 4 different FTP programs to try and upload website files to a Yahoo account. I was able to successfully connect with something called Filezilla, and I got some of the files transferred, but then it balked, something to do with unallowed characters.

And then this morning I found that a scary Big Ghost from my past was stalking my blog and my co-blogger's blogs, this after this Big Ghost has long said she was out of my life, she's now back in full Toxic mode.

At least I'm not having to look at her in person, so I guess I should be thankful for that.

It is sort of frustrating, when you think you are well rid of something and that something has pretty much faded from memory, and then to have it back. In any form.

This is not the first reappearance of this particular irksome pest. A few months ago she emailed me asking if I wanted to re-start a website we did a long long time ago called Lulu & Durango in As The WWWeb Turns. I declined the offer, reminding Lulu that the original version did not work out very well.

Looking at that picture of Lulu, taken the last day I saw her, that's a year and a half ago, I wonder how much bigger she's grown? How is she able to get on an airplane? That's sort of an impressive feat.

Anyway, anyone with a Yahoo FTP solution, please step forward and identify yourself, or just give me an anonymous answer. I need help.

Saturday Is High Noon In Cowtown With Brush Bashing & Debra Medina

This coming Saturday, 2-20-2010, there is a Big Event in Fort Worth. That being the Tandy Hills Brush Bash 2. Brush Bash 2 runs from 10am til 3pm.

Also taking place on Saturday, at the Fort Worth Stockyards, in the Cowtown Coliseum, is a political event called HIGH NOON COWTOWN.

I have been invited to both events. Very politely invited.

I confess, I've paid no real attention to the Tea Party/It's Time For A Change/High Noon movement, if that's what it is. From my understanding, admittedly likely limited, this group skews to the right and to the somewhat reactionary. I know this is not universally the case, it's just the direction it skews.

Looking at the HIGH NOON COWTOWN website I see this event starts at noon and runs til 3pm. Three hours long, of what appears to be listening to a long list of political candidates, only one of whom I have heard of, Debra Medina, and what I've heard, about her, is not pretty.

Debra Medina is running for Governor of Texas against the current Governor of Texas (it's so bizarre this guy is the governor) Rick Perry and Texas Senator (it's so bizarre this woman is a Senator) Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

What happened to the good old days when Texas gave America politicians like Sam Rayburn, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Barbara Jordan and Anne Richards?

So, Debra Medina was being interviewed by Glen Beck. Beck began inquiring of Medina about something called "9/11 truthers."

Medina was a bit obfuscating, so Beck asked her directly, "Do you believe the government was in any way involved in the bringing down of the World Trade Centers on 9/11?"

Now, anyone, with any common sense, let alone a politician running for office in Texas, would know to instantly respond that that was the stupidest thing they've heard since they don't know when. Or words to that effect.

Instead, Medina said, "I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard. There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that."

Uh, is this not a your political career is over level of idiotic mistake?

I wish Beck would have asked Ms. Medina if she was a Holocaust Denier.

So, why in the world would this HIGH NOON COWTOWN event have this Medina trainwreck as the last speaker of the day? She can not possibly become the governor of Texas at this point, can she? I would think this woman would be shunned by serious political sorts at this point in time. Not asked to speak at high noon, well, actually closer to 3, in Cowtown.

It's just all very perplexing.