No J.D. Granger Clone Executively Directed Singapore's Successful Marina South Vision

No. What you see here is not an artist's rendering of what the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's Granger Bay Sands Resort might look like when, or if, it is completed decades from now.

What you are looking at is not a sad little pond in Fort Worth, Texas. The body of water you see here is Marina Bay in Singapore.

That would make what you are looking at the Marina Bay Sands, a Singapore resort complex which includes a hotel, convention and exhibition centers, theaters, concert venues, stores and restaurants.

Plus a casino is in the mix, due to Singapore deciding earlier this century to get into the casino business.

After an extensive search Singapore gave the job to project engineers from the Las Vegas Sands to develop the Marina Bay site, in what is known as the new business district of Marina South.

For our purposes we will refer to this as Singapore's Marina South Vision.

No Singapore politician's son was hired to be the executive director of the Singapore Marina South Vision.

Singapore is one of the least corrupt nations in the world.

On May 27,  2006 Las Vegas Sands learned they had won the job to develop Marina Bay. Construction began soon thereafter, in early 2007.

Marina Bay Sands opened way less than four years later, on April 27, 2010.

Another interesting fact.

Marina Bay Sands is currently the world's most expensive building, costing $4.7 billion in U.S. dollars.

I guess you get what you pay for. Literally.

Which leads me to wonder how can Fort Worth's relatively puny undertaking known as the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle be slated to cost around $1 billion? Is that high cost due to the slow motion, un-funded, poorly planned, incompetently directed method of project construction?

All that Fort Worth, and those in the rest of America who Fort Worth expects to help pay for their boondoggle, get for that billion bucks, is a short flood diversion channel, a little lake, three plain bridges over the flood diversion channel. Plus the removal of levees which have kept the downtown Fort Worth zone flood free for well over a half century.

Also, how can the small multi-purpose arena, which Fort Worth voters recently voted to help fund by charging $1 to rent a livestock stall, cost almost half a billion dollars? Look at what Singapore wrought  for $4.7 billion, compared with Fort Worth's puny half billion dollar arena.

Marina Bay Sands has a well done website which gives one a real good idea of what $4.7 billion buys in Singapore. Screencap of that website below....

Go to the Marina Bay Sands website and you will see what that is atop those three hotel towers.

Oh, why make you look for it, I'll just go find a photo of Singapore's version of a Rockin' the River Happy Hour Float venue....

The Marina Bay Skypark, atop the Marina Bay Hotel, featuring the world's highest and longest infinity pool, along with other amenities, like restaurants, with a view.

I wonder how many things there are in Singapore which make other towns, far and wide, green with envy....?

In Italy Mr. & Mrs.Galtex Found A Possible Parking Lot Turned Into Turin's Piazza Castello

Fort Worth globetrotters, Mr. and Mrs. Galtex, are currently in Italy, today in the Mediterranean port city of Genoa, a few days ago in Turin, also known as Torino.

While in Turin, Mr. Galtex used Facebook to ask me the trick question you read above the picture.

I had to ponder Mr. Gatlex's trick question a few minutes and then answered with...

Fort Worth has changed a lot since you kids have been out of town, but I am almost certain Fort Worth's teeny little plaza has not grown to big city size, so I'm gonna guess the above is Turin's Piazza....

Fort Worth calls its teeny little  plaza Sundance Square Plaza. Apparently Turin calls its big city plaza Turin Piazza Castello. Does Castello mean square in Italian? Making the name of the Turin plaza, Turin Plaza Square?

Or did the Turinians have the common sense to realize redundantly naming their plaza Turin Plaza Square was a bit ridiculous?

Or maybe Turin  confused its multitude of tourists, for decades, by referring to the Turin downtown as Turin Plaza, where there was no plaza, but plenty of parking lots, which many of the Turin tourists assumed must be the Turin Plaza. And then did Turin decide to turn one of their big parking lots into an actual plaza and then name it Turin Plaza Square?

I suspect that is not how Turin's plaza came to be.

The Italian reports from Mr.and Mrs. Galtex have been causing me some serious Italian food cravings.

One of which is a craving for Pecorino Spaghetti. I have acquired all the ingredients for this version of spaghetti, except for the Pecorino.

Mr. Galtex has let me know it is difficult to replicate the made in Italy version. Mr. Galtex has tried to do so, on some of those rare occasions when he and the Mrs. are stateside, and failed.

However, I have the advantage of having never enjoyed the real thing, so I'll likely be happy with however mine turns out.

And really, how can you go wrong with noodles, butter, pepper and really sharp cheese?

From Anonymous I Learned I Am Too Ignorant To Navigate A Texas Railroad Commission Website Map

On Sunday I blogged about wondering what was up with one of my Chesapeake Energy neighbors, due to its gas pad site being missing some of its usual signage.

I took a picture of a piece of the Chesapeake signage which was laying on the ground.

Someone named Anonymous then took the "Rutherford 1H" name off that grounded Chesapeake sign to, apparently, glean production information about this particular gas site.

Basically the Anonymous comment left me more befuddled than before...

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "Wondering What's Up With One Of My Chesapeake Energy Neighbors": 

If you are able to navigate a GIS map, the Texas Railroad Commission has a much friendlier version available for your perusal.  It shows that the well (known as the Rutherford 1H) is in production for gas and, as of the last production record from July of this year, produced about 10,000 mcf of gas that month. Based on today's NYMEX Futures price for January delivery. That's about $37,310 for the month of July. I assume the lack of data from July to December is normal lag time from reporting to posting by the RRC. But I could be wrong. 

I went to the Texas Railroad Commission website to which Anonymous directed me to to see if I could alleviate any of my befuddlement about the well known as Rutherford 1H.

Below you are looking at a screencap of the Texas Railroad Commission website to which Anonymous directed me.

I entered "Rutherford 1H" into the search window to come with a no information found message. No matter what I clicked on I could not find specific info about any specific gas pad site's production records.

What I guess I have learned from this is not only am I not able to navigate a GIS map, as Anonymous suggested I do. I do not even know what a GIS map is.

Ignorance really is not all the bliss it is cracked up to be......

Anonymous Has Me Boosting The Color Of Fort Worth's Infamous Hillbilly Mudpit

A week or so ago I blogged about the fact that nowhere in the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle's 28 page 2014 Fall Update did I see mention made of what J.D. Granger has previously referred to as one of the crown jewel stars of The Boondoggle, that being the pond known as the Cowtown Wakepark, designed by The Boondoggle to be the world's premiere urban wakeboarding lake, leading Fort Worth to once again be at the forefront of the world in offering its citizens one of those precious amenities everyone in the world is clamoring for.

Someone with a name about as common as Jones, that being Anonymous, made an amusing comment about the Cowtown Park being missing from The Boondoggle's Update....

Anonymous has left a new comment on your post "28 Pages Of Boondoggle Propaganda With No Mention Of The Trinity River Vision's Shining Cowtown Wakepark Star": 

Local hero Brian Luenser needs to photograph Granger's hillbilly mud pit and show us its true beauty. I don't know of anyone who can boost the color intensity of photos like ol' Bri'.

I borrowed the term local hero from the December issue of Fort Worth Magazine and I got hillbilly mud pit from Durango Texas at Blogspot.

I have no memory of referring to the wakeboard pond as a hillbilly mud pit, but I am sure I did, I just don't remember when or where. Though I suspect, via entering the term 'mud pit' into the blog's search window, I could quickly find it.

The reference to Brian Luenser, to those outside the Fort Worth information distortion bubble, is to a guy who takes photos of the downtown Fort Worth area, including the Trinity River. Some think these photos to be works of beautiful art. Others think these photos are works of distorted propaganda, hence the remark made by Anonymous about the Luenser tendency to boost color intensity.

When I was first exposed to the Brian Luenser School of Chamber of Commerce Photography I was reminded of those photos one often sees of Seattle from the perspective of looking south from north of the Space Needle, photos in which Mount Rainier is made to look much larger than it does in reality. I have wondered, more than once, if this has ever annoyed any Seattle tourists, of which there are many, when the clouds lift and they see The Mountain way in the distance.

I have wondered if the Brian Luenser photos have ever annoyed any of Fort Worth's tourists, of which there are few, when they see the Trinity River, expecting to see what they saw in the Luenser photo's, and instead see a littered ditch without free flowing water.

I decided to see if I could do what Anonymous suggests, and see if I can apply the Brian Luenser type of photo color boosting to put lipstick on that messy pig known as the Cowtown Wakepark.

The un-boosted photo below is from a blogging from way back in 2012 titled Trying To Wakeboard Today At Cowtown Wakepark. That photo is pretty much a documentary look at what this poorly kept eyesore actually looks like. Litter and junk laying about. Green astro-turf atop a beached floating dock.

Applying a saturated boost to the above photo turns the astro-turf into an otherworldly shade of green. The pile of debris in the foreground now looks like some sort of carcass, ready for a BBQ pit. The water is almost an inviting shade of greenish blue. The grass looks so green one might think one was looking at Ireland.

Even if the Cowtown Wakeboard pond looked as good as the boosted version above, I still would not want to get in that water.....

Slowly Making My Way Through A Dense North Texas Fog To A Steaming Hot Tub

Last night in the middle of the night, as in at 3 in the morning, my phone went off with its incoming text message type noise.

After the phone woke me up I woke it up to find the message which woke me up was from AccuWeather, alerting me to the fact that a heavy fog would be blanketing North Texas by morning.

Why did I need to know this in the middle of the night? I must find out how to shut AccuWeather up. It's more annoying than Pete Delkus in Weather Drama Queen Mode.

By the time the sun arrived this morning following by me opening that which blocks the incoming sun from coming in my windows, it was obvious, without any sort of AccuWeather alert, that a heavy fog had descended upon the land.

I don't recollect seeing a pea soup thick fog of this level at my current location previously. This is like a thick fog rolling in from Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean. There is no ocean within hundreds of miles of my current location.

The foggy view in the above photo is from the vantage point of this morning's foggy hot tub soak. Normally in this view, without fog, you could see the redrock colored walls of Albertsons. This morning all you see is a wall of fog.

I do not know if it is safe to drive anywhere, what with this almost zero visibility thing happening. I suspect by the time I'm feeling like rolling any sort of wheels the fog will have lifted sufficiently to make it safe to do so.

A Chilly Bike Ride Admiring A Fort Worth Monument Before Egg Foo Yunging

In the hot tub this morning I was basking under the glow of a clear blue sky, nary a cloud in sight.

A short time after exiting the hot tub clouds arrived to erase that clear blue sky.

A noonday bike ride was on my schedule today. I was hoping the predicted high in the 60s would arrive in time for a well warmed bout of wheel rolling.

Instead of 60s I rolled in the low 50s. With the rolling wind chill I found myself getting a little cold on the fast downhill slopes. At one point my bike helmet, well, baseball cap, almost blew off.

The most pleasant part of the bike ride, other than having it over, was the stop where my handlebar horns pointed at the Molly the Longhorn horns on the big round monument which greets travelers to Fort Worth as they come into town from the east on Interstate 30.

I think I will  warm myself up now by making a nice hot stir fry, over rice, with egg foo yung.

Wondering What's Up With One Of My Chesapeake Energy Neighbors

Today, on this first Sunday of the last month of 2014, I decided to take a walk to visit my neighborhood Chesapeake installations.

On Wednesday I walked by one of my neighborhood Chesapeake Energy Barnett Shale natural gas extracting operations, that being the one across the street from Albertsons and the I-820 freeway.

At that point in time I noticed that much of the signage, such permit info, had gone missing.

I thought not much about the missing Chesapeake signage until the next day, when  I was reading this week's Fort Worth Weekly cover article, titled Shale Math: Half Full or Half Empty which mentioned among many other shale sham related mentions, the fact that former Fort Worth Golden Child, Chesapeake Energy has pretty much been run out of town, with the "divorce' being so nasty that the city of Fort Worth and other local entities, such as the D/FW airport, are suing Chesapeake Energy.

Fort Worth suing Chesapeake is such an irony. Back when the Chesapeake-Fort Worth marriage was still in its honeymoon phase Chesapeake could pretty much get away with anything it wanted to do to Fort Worth, partnered, as it was, with Fort Worth's then mayor, Mike Moncrief.

Has Chesapeake abandoned my neighborhood Albertsons installation? I found that which you see below near the base of the sign above.

I have no idea what the above means, of it in any way relates to the Boca Raton, 6699 Albertsons gas pad site.

After getting a closer look at the neighborhood's Albertsons gas pad site I decided I needed to check if my other neighborhood Chesapeake gas pad site was also missing its signage.

Nope, all the signage is still intact  on my other Chesapeake neighbor. This gas pad site is actually closer to  my abode than the Albertsons one. But, I usually do not walk by the Chesapeake gas pad site you see above, due to the fact it is a location that is missing something that is missing a lot in Fort Worth.

A sidewalk.

On My Way Today To Walk With The Village Creek Indian Ghosts I Had An Encounter With A Machine Gun Toting Santa

On this first Saturday of the last month of 2014, on my way to go bike riding with the Indian Ghosts who haunt Arlington's Village Creek Natural Historical Area, I stopped at Sam's Club to squirt some gas into the tank of my mechanized bike conveying device.

In the midst of squirting the gas I looked across the street to find myself startled by Santa Claus brandishing what looked to me to be a machine gun.

I am guessing this is an "Only in Texas" type thing.

Where even saintly Santa is an open carry advocate, jolly while waving a weapon at people passing by.

Santa is doing his gun slinging from the roof of a business located on Eastchase Parkway, across the street from the Eastchase Super Walmart in far East Fort Worth, near where Fort Worth becomes Arlington.

As you can see above, the business Santa is guarding is a Fort Worth Gun store. Santa is aiming towards those driving west on the entry lane to Interstate 30. I would imagine there has been a motorist, or two, startled at seeing this type behavior from Santa Claus.

I had no incidents with gun toting Indian Ghost aficionados in the Village Creek zone today. A lot of people were out enjoying the perfect weather.

About half the homes I saw in the Interlochen neighborhood appeared to be ready with their Christmas displays. A couple homes were lit up in the midday sun, with one of those sporting a lot of glowing purple lights glowing bright, causing me to think this house must be blindingly bright at night.

It has been several years since I braved the Interlochen Christmas traffic jam. I have no inclination to see those bright lights this year.

I will be experiencing Christmas in the Fort Worth Stockyards, though, on the evening of December 15.

I hope the Fort Worth Stockyards Santa is armed with a more era appropriate firearm, something like a Colt 45, or a Winchester rifle....

The 2034 Fort Worth World's Fair Trinity River Vision Product Nightmare

Last night I had a nightmare, a cinematic nightmare, a possibly prophetic cinematic nightmare.

The nightmare began back in the late 1950s in Seattle, where a pair of Seattle businessmen were discussing the idea of bringing a World's Fair to Seattle. One of the pair drew a tower on a napkin, suggesting this be the centerpiece of Seattle's World's Fair. A couple years later, on April 21, 1962, Seattle's Century 21 World Fair opened.

A few years later people in Spokane got the idea they wanted to have a World's Fair. Soon thereafter Expo '74 opened. Less than a decade later Vancouver decided to have a World's Fair. A few years later Expo 86 opened.

All three of these Pacific Northwest World's Fairs were much bigger projects than Fort Worth's relatively puny Trinity River Vision Boondoggle project, with the Pacific Northwest's projects coming to fruition in just a few years, while Fort Worth's Boondoggle has been boondoggling for well over a decade, currently with three simple bridges under construction, slated to take four years to build, as in longer to build than it took Seattle to build the Space Needle and the World's Fair the needle hovered over.

My nightmare became a bit muddled when the plot got to Fort Worth and its ineptly executed public works project known as The Boondoggle Product.

When my nightmare got to the present moment is when the nightmare really started getting scary.

Fast forward four years from 2014.

In my prophetic nightmare vision of the future, those Three Bridge Over Nothing do get completed, in four years. And then sit there, with no ditch being dug under them, with the Trinity River Vision Boondoggle stalled, due to lack of funding.

By the time the Three Bridges Over Nothing are finished, in 2018, we are in year two of the Hillary Clinton presidency.

Kay Granger is unable to get her baby boy any pork barrel earmarks for the TRVB ditch or any other aspect of The Boondoggle, no un-needed flood diversion channel, no imaginary island, no promenade, no parks, no more beer parties.

Nothing.

The mess just sits there as an embarrassing monument to corrupt hubris.

The years pass, those Three Bridges Over Nothing become an iconic international symbol of a Boondoggle  run amok.

And then the nightmare turns into a horror movie.

In the presidential election of 2024, Kay Granger is elected president, shocking much of America even more than when George W. Bush somehow became president after getting a couple million fewer votes than Al Gore.

In my nightmare, Kay Granger, already the oldest, and worst,  president in American history, then wins re-election in 2028.

As the nightmare continues it is as if America has sunk to being like the era of the bad Roman emperors, with Empress Kay basically fiddling while America burns in frustration over what a low voter turnout has wrought.

After year after year of promising to finally secure federal money, President Granger is somehow able to  get the  Republican majority in both houses to pour dollars in to Fort Worth to her then semi-retired son, J.D.'s, long stalled Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Product, from which he continued to draw a hefty salary, during all the decades the project sat stalled.

Stalled, except for the continuing Rockin' the River Happy Hour Inner Tube Floats in the increasingly polluted Trinity River.

With it having been years since J.D.'s dream of building an imaginary island died, J.D., in 2029, has a brainstorm of the sort that brought about rockin' the polluted river, drive-in movie theaters, the world's premiere wakeboard facility, breweries, ice rinks and more, all of which had long ceased operating, except for those aforementioned Rockin' the River Inner Tube events.

J.D. Granger decides it would be a great idea to use that money his mama, the president, is sending him, to bring about something much bigger than the long dead Trinity River Vision, J.D. decides that if other towns could bring about a World's Fair in just a few short years, well, so could Fort Worth, despite no historical record of anything but boondoggles being the result when it comes to Fort Worth trying to do anything BIG, in any sort of timely fashion.

And so, in my nightmare, the proposed 2034 Fort Worth World's Fair became yet one more Trinity River Vision Boondoggle Product.

Likely destined to fail.

However, we must admit to being impressed with the propaganda slogan J.D., or someone came up with in my nightmare, a 21st century adjustment to Fort Worth's "Where The West Begins" claim, changed to "Where The Best Begins".

After over 30 years one would think J.D. Granger would have figured out that making bogus claims based on nonsense was not a good idea, but apparently not, hence "Where The Best Begins", with zero awareness of the irony.....

Seeking Endorphins On The First Drippy Friday Of December

Looking through the bars of my patio prison cell, late in the morning of the first Friday of the last month of 2014, with the outer world a bit damp, but warmed to the relatively balmy temperature of 69 degrees, I am feeling in dire need of some serious aerobic stimulation and that stimulation's resultant endorphins.

I was in the Hot Tub and Pool last night and real early this morning. The Hot Tub and Pool really don't give me the level of endorphins that I get from bike riding or hill hiking.

I had a rough night last night, way too many disturbing nightmares. I really should not watch any Mama's Family sketches from the Carol Burnett Show prior to sleep time.

In the middle of the night during one of my awake bouts I had what at the time seemed to be a really good blogging inspiration. Suffice to say the subject was Fort Worth and the phrase "Where the Best Begins" played a prominent role. But, that particular blogging inspiration is currently stalled. Maybe a dose of endorphins would help re-stimulate me, inspiration-wise.

Yesterday's drizzle had me in Haltom City in the noon time frame for the Grand Opening of a new ALDI. I got a lot of freebies during the course of the ALDI visit. Plus some amusing aggravation when somehow a single bag of carrots at $1.39 rang up as 7 bags of carrots at $9.73. I think the embarrassment at the embarrassing mistake is why I ended up being given extra canvas ALDI shopping bags,  filled with goodies, most of which is not the type stuff I eat.

Candy bars.

I did not even like candy bars when I was a kid. In the canvas bags were a couple versions of bags of peanuts, a sweet and salty almond all natural bar, which was tasty, and a couple bags of popcorn. So, all that ALDI gave me was not of the candy bar sort, but most of it was.

I think I will hit the publish button on this blogging and then hit the outer world and see if I can find myself some of those elusive endorphins....