Stargazerdesigns.net

http://www.stargazerdesigns.net/

Did I mention... Stargazer Designs? Yeah, I know. Bought a new domain for the shop, and will be working on that for a while. The other links still work, but this will hopefully help with some "brand name" recognition. We hope.

Sick

Yep. Sick. So much for me being disease-free in Arizona. Tired, coughing, congestion... the usual. The fever seems to be gone, though. That's a plus. I'm quite tired, yet I can't sleep. That's nice and frustrating. Still, I haven't been sick since we moved, so that was a nice hiatus from feeling like crap.

Stuff

Haven't put words on here in a while, so here's a brief recap:

Went to see Bill Cosby for Deb's birthday. Not for a lunch or anything, but an actual concert type venue. He was quite funny, and I learned he has very visible glaucoma.

I've been doing web design work. Sorta. I'm customizing people's CafePress shops. On purpose, you know, because they ask me to. And pay me. That's an important detail. It's fun, and makes a nice break from trying to crank out designs.

Today marks the first day since March or so that I've worn pants all day. No, not because my kilt is at the cleaners. We're sick. Kinda. It's weird. Deb got symptoms first, and actually felt bad for more than ten minutes. I got them late the next day. She's mostly better. I think I'm OK. But then, I've gone to work with fevers and other nasty ailments, so I'm not one to talk. I guess I've been bragging too much about not being sick since moving to AZ. If this is "sick", though, I'll take it.

Nothing much other than that. We're terribly, terribly dull. And we like it that way.

Yippikya.com

No, I haven't snapped. Well, haven't snapped more, I guess. I have been spending far too much time at Yippikya.com. No, it's not about cowboys. It's one of them there social networking sites, but with a twist. It's geared towards creative types. Artists, designers, singers, musicians, photographers. I like it so much, I even wrote a yippikya squidoo lens about it. Doing that brought me to the attention of one of the founders of the site. (Yes, really.) I was nervous at first, because I thought he was going to be pissed. I don't know why, that's just the way my brain works. He was actually happy that I wrote the post, and even invited me to visit their offices. Of course, they're in Houston, so it'd be a bit of a long trip just to say "Hi", but I appreciate the gesture all the same.

If you're interested in joining, here's my affiliate link. If you're not interested in joining, that's fine too.

Just To Prove Sam Wrong

... and because I'm too tired to think more clearly about it. The meme regarding writing strengths. In no particular order:

1. Relentless, ever-functioning internal spell-checker. The thing that makes me curse and/or twitch whenever I leave the apartment and read something with typos.
2. Not to steal from Sam, but I'm also visual. Probably has something to do with that art stuff. I can see the scene in my head, play it out, pause it, rewind... it's like having a DVD player wedged in my skull. Only without the searing pain. usually.
3. Stories pop into my head nearly fully-formed. I just have to "watch" them, and write it all out. Very little editing required.
4. Completely unnecessarily good memory for trivia. Why does that matter? I wrote a story in 7th grade that my teacher really liked. Want me to tell you about it? I can. I can take the parts that were good then and make them even better now, remember what worked and what didn't. But I can't remember where I left my keys or my hair. Go figure!
5. I have a 19th century vocabulary. By that I mean I use words like "propinquity" and never stop to think that the reader doesn't know what the hell I'm on about. If I write "singular" it doesn't mean "alone" or have anything to do with astrophysics. (Usually.) For me, it means "unique".

There you go, Sam.

Explicit Lyrics

We stopped at our friendly Verizon Wireless store today to upgrade our cell phone. Part of the contract renewal, not because we're phone-happy. (We're decidedly phone-unhappy people.) The transaction complete, the nervous anime-eyed sales rep asked that we fill out a customer satisfaction survey online. I completed the survey, and it presented me with a button to close the window. I clicked on the button, and started to laugh. Why? Because I saw this:

How, exactly, do I close the browser window explicitly? Is there some sort of flourish I'm lacking when I click buttons that make my actions not as explicit as they should be? Do I need to adjust my chair if I'm going to start doing explicit things with my browser? I'm going to have to do some research into this. There's a whole world of internet inactivity that's thus far escaped me!

Half News

I'm really tired of the news. That is, news programs such as CNN. It's annoying not only because it's the only channel we watch with any regularity, but because of the way the news is dished out. Half a story or less, with occasional facts thrown in there, all for the sake of ratings? Shouldn't ratings not matter when it comes to the news? Shouldn't the news be, well, news? Facts? Things that are currently happening around the globe, as well as across the nation? I don't care about celebrity custody battles. Save those oh-so-juicy stories for the entertainment shows. And... hey, media? I know there's a big hullabaloo about the Navy building that looks like a swastika from the air, but could you maybe provide some facts for people? You know, like how that particular symbol has been around since the neolithic, has been used in all manner of religions and cultures the world over, and to focus on its history since 1920 is really just a drop in the bucket and does nothing but feed into the negativity associated with it. Learning from history means all of history. As far back as we're able to go. Not just to when talkies were a novelty. Despite what creationists may think, humans didn't just pop into the scene a hundred years ago. No need to spend $600,000 taxpayer dollars on fixing a building just because it looks like something, OK? There are many, many other things that need fixing first.

Or, the short version: stop being stupid.

Border Potty

On the right side of the image, you'll see one section of our existing border fence with Mexico. It's slightly higher than waist-high on me, which means that most adults can step over it with ease. Those that can't step over it can easily go under it. This is, of course, assuming that they were able to pass the daunting barbed wire fence. It's barbed! Ooooooh!

On the left side of the image, you'll see a convenient port-a-potty. Situated so that illegal immigrants can shit on America right away.

We also got to see the new fence. Well, what is hopefully the early stages of the new fence. They have yet to install the land mines, laser-guided typhoid vultures, and moat of flesh-eating bacteria. I believe those are later stages. I'm not going to post a picture of the new wall, because it makes me angry. I'm also not going to post a picture of the (currently) dry riverbed with all the footprints in it. That makes me really, really angry.

Instead, I'm going to sit in my chair and hum happy songs to myself while I complete the designs of these laser-guided typhoid vultures.

Reason # 8,529,458* That My Wife Is Amazing

Why, you ask? Yesterday I had a bright idea. As is so often the case with my bright ideas, it involved one of the computers secluded in one of the rooms of the apartment. I put up a good fight for a couple hours, but eventually the need to try it overwhelmed this "patience" thing normal people seem to have. So, I started my little project. A couple hours later, I was drenched in sweat and cursing. "But that's normal for you", you say. "Bite me", is my rejoinder.

Eventually, I finished, and believe it or not my wacky idea worked. Believe me, I was shocked too. The Mrs. wasn't shocked, though. Go figure.

(*Don't make me list them. I'm stubborn enough to do it.)

9/11 - Six Years Later

A year ago, I posted a write-up about Jonathan Eric Briley, one of the victims of 9/11. In the past few days, hits to that post have gone up dramatically. I assume that it's because school kids are doing reports about 9/11 victims. I found it interesting that many of the hits came from the UK. It's more than a little sad that my post comes up on the first Google page of a search for his name. (And Yahoo page. And ask.com...) Sad, because there really should be more out there than just what came from me. I don't just mean about Jonathan specifically, but everyone who was killed that day. We should not be as we are, or at least as a recent survey CNN yammered on about... people couldn't say what date the 9/11 attacks were. Not the year, the date. And the question asked was: "On what date were the 9/11 attacks?" That's atrocious. I also learned that Tucson has a 9/11 memorial. I understand the spirit of the gesture, but I think it's misplaced. Monetarily and physically.

Ah well. If you do nothing else today, just remember. That's all. Remember.

But don't forget, folks, that's what you get, folks...

While watching the news today during our midday repast, we were treated to the musings of Whoopi Goldberg and her take on the whole Vick thing. While I understand the point she was trying to make, she used a lousy example. If she had perhaps said that it would be along the lines of a Hindu being horrified at anyone who ate a hamburger, since eating a cow is right up there with having a Jesus sandwich. Rare. Instead, she said it was a part of his "culture", because he's from the south. Now, I realize I'm no beauty queen, but last time I checked a map "the south" was still a part of the good ol' U.S. of A., and in all of them there states it's illegal to do what he did. Period. If it's part of your culture to engage in human sacrifice, as soon as you do that in a country in which it's illegal your ass is going to jail. Same same. Personally, I think he and his little friends should be forced to fight each other, and then electrocuted, burned, and everything else they did to those dogs. Revived, if necessary, to fight each other all over again. Make it a pay-per-view event, and the proceeds should go to animal shelters across the land. Anything less isn't justice. If you think I'm not being rational, that's a lovely opinion for you to have. I'd tell you where to stick it, but you can probably figure that out for yourself. I've always liked dogs a hell of a lot more than I like people, and the older I get the more that conviction is vindicated.

Verdant

Catalina State Park beckoned us once again. When a state park calls you, you must heed. That's in the state park bylaws. We heeded our way out into the 101 degree temperatures to walk around and take pictures. This is one of several ways you can tell we're not natives of Arizona. We're too stupid to stay inside when it's friggin' hot. The picture is not representative of all the trails we traveled yesterday. It's just an example of a little bit of erosion from all the rain we've been getting. Another example is how friggin' green the place was. It was downright verdant.

Viz:

Remember, this is the desert. Cacti and lizards and stuff like that there. Not lush groundcover ivy that's going all over the place, nor green grasses waving softly in the breeze. (Of which there was very little.) (Breeze, that is, not grass.) It was like a second spring. As if Vertumnus himself came and frolicked a bit in the park before heading off to another party. (You know how those Roman gods are.) (Or Etruscan. Whatever.)

The barrel cacti seemed to like it. They were blooming like bloomers. Without any suffragettes to be found, though. They may have gone south for the winter already.

Zookoda

No, I didn't sneeze. Zookoda.com is an email marketing service for bloggers. It's supposed to help you build your readership by sending e-mails of your posts to subscribers. It's free, so like many free things I checked into it.

For starters, the home page has the word "Yeh". Here's a message for all businesses out there: it's not cool to be illiterate. If you want to be professional, stick with "Yes". If you want to be hip and casual, it's "Yeah". If you want to sound as if you were just hit in the stomach with a wayward elbow, it's "Yeh". It's one small step up from "Ug".

For seconders, the signup page isn't secure. If you want me to type in my personal information, you better make sure that nifty little "https" is up in the address bar. I don't like submitting information in the open. I did anyway for two reasons: even when it's printed, few people can spell my last name correctly; and I want to write a review that's more than five syllables.

The "About" page has the "yeh" as well. I'm reading it as I wait for my confirmation e-mail to arrive. Oh, that's another personal note... I call it "e-mail". Running the letters together, without the dash, makes the word sound like "emale" in my head because that's how English works. So stop it. Use the dash.

It was 10:30 AM when I signed up. I had to wait for an e-mail before I could continue. It's now 8:22 PM, when I got the first confirmation e-mail. I'm now waiting for another before I can actually do anything with the service. Color me not happy.

8:52 PM, and I'm finally registered. Here we go...

Typo on one of the templates. The grey one. "Enter You E-mail". They need to hire a pirate, so they get an extra R. I got a site timeout once, and it loads slowly. The majority of the templates are Blogger templates, with one Zookoda template. Meh. Hopefully they'll have some more templates soon, but as it is it's not bad. Not great, but not bad. There is an option to make a custom template of your own, though. I may revisit it once I actually get going, but for now I'm going with one of the Blogger templates. Different than the one you're currently viewing. It's good if you've got a default Blogger blog, since the e-mail's theme would match your blog. Sort of a brand recognition kinda thing.

I can't send anything yet. Seems I've not been authenticated. So, if I was a spammer, I'd be stymied. (That means "stopped cold", for those of you unfamiliar with slang from 1928.) Your outgoing newsletter things will all have your actual name and mailing address. Well, they'll have whatever name and mailing address you provided when you signed up with the service. As a real person who has gone to some lengths to keep his real name separate from his internet name, I don't like that. However, it's a necessary evil in this age of Spam and roses. Without the roses. Legitimate subscribers will have to be patient before they can send anything. Legitimate subscribers can be patient, so that's OK.

After all is said and done, I don't think this is for me. It may be good for someone, but I'm not that someone. I thought it may be a viable alternative for the default newsletter option for our shop. But I really don't want my name going out like that. If that's the way it has to be, then no alternative is going to suit my needs.

Oh, one last thing... they call the members of their community "Zookodans". As an Arizonan who is a Tucsonan, I say go with "Zooker" or something. That's where you can get your hip, edgy made-up word jollies out all you want.

Lumen Squeak Force! Twist Meat!

This is the funniest spam I have ever received and or read. I present it in its unedited glory for your amusement. I laughed so hard, I had to read it to Deb. It's much more enjoyable if you read it aloud.

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One Of The Healthiest Things I've Ever Eaten

Corn, black beans, red and green peppers, onions, and diced chicken in a flour tortilla. Yes, I made it. It's also as close as I get to eating salad without death threats. (Even with death threats.) See, mom? All you had to do to get me to eat vegetables was move me 2,000 miles away! I'm surprised you didn't do it sooner. (I'm sure you thought about it sooner...)

PayPerPost

As you can probably tell by the title of the post and the purple button on the sidebar, I have signed up at payperpost. It is not an intentional misspelling of "paper post", but rather it is a service which provides opportunities for bloggers like yours truly to make money. The money is made not through the normal means available to bloggers (i.e. blood donation and black market kidney auctions), but rather bloggers get to give their opinions, thoughts, ideas, and rambling diatribes about a variety of services and products available. In other words, you get to read what I think about stuff. Pretty much the sole purpose for most blogs out there, no? Advertisers get to build "buzz" about their product or service or whatever, and the blogger gets a little extra spending money. (And also gets to keep whatever major organs he or she still had.) Not a bad deal! I think it's an equitable trade for both parties, really. I don't expect it will enable me to buy a mansion or a yacht any time soon, but a few extra dollars never hurt anyone. Well, unless it's in the form of pennies, in bags, dropped from a skyscraper. That'd be bad. Luckily, that's not how they pay. PayPerPost uses the more logical and far safer choice of PayPal to complete transactions. I learned about the service thanks to Sam and her recent efforts to embiggen her blog empire. She has been using a wide variety of tools which have made me look at my blog in a different light. So, thanks to Sam and PayPerPost, you'll be seeing a few unusual posts here from time to time. Oh, I'll still rant and blather on about different things that happen to me in my sheltered life. Brushes with humanity still send me off into Rantville. I'll be writing more, and posting pictures less, as my days are spent up to my bald head in pictures and I really don't seem to find the time to make "unsellable" ones just to put here. So, I'm going to ramble more, and render less. That's good, because my writing has been lacking of late. My typing, I mean. Not my handwriting. That's an entirely different story.

Boy, it's a good thing they don't have a maximum word limit! I don't call this "Wontar's Ramblings" for nothing. If you're interested in PayPerPost, just click on the purple button with the same name off to the right. If you've got a blog, have time to write about stuff, and don't want pennies dropped on your head, it's worth a look. Share your thoughts and opinions, and get paid for it. Not too shabby!

The Calls Are Not Coming From Inside The House

Yesterday was a wee bit strange. I woke up after having a rather bad dream. Remembering a dream is itself unusual, because I normally don't. In this dream, I was back at my old workplace, trying to get from one part of the room to the other. Boring, you say? Oh, did I mention that I was stopped every few feet by people asking me questions, so a trip across the room that should have taken seconds lasted hours? The thing is, with slight exaggeration, that used to describe a trip across the room for me. I may never get over this "don't want to deal with people" thing if I have any more dreams like that to remind me what it's like.

Roughly twelve hours later, we were struck with more weirdness in the form of a phone call. The caller ID said it was from our friend, but the voice that came out of the phone was decidedly not our friend's voice. The biggest clue was that the person on the phone was yammering on in Spanish. Our friend does not speak Spanish, and neither do we, so the sounds coming out of the phone had an even greater level of incomprehensibility than they normally would. We then tried calling her husband's cell phone, but got no answer. We tried their home phone, and got the machine. It wasn't terribly late at night, but when two out of three alternate forms of communication come up empty after the first has been compromised, one tends to worry a bit. Toss in the fact that they live somewhat close to the border, and have had incidents with illegals literally in their back yard, the worry becomes a bit more pronounced. By "pronounced" I mean that we decided to call the cops.

Yes, really. We called the cops.

Not 911, but their town's police department. They redirected me to the county sheriff's office. To both departments' credit, though, they were very good about listening to me blather on about our non-Spanish speaking friends and the mystery phone call. They also got to our friends' house reasonably quickly. They were there when our friends finally got home. They were fine, of course. She just lost her phone, and the person who found it was calling everyone in the phone's book.

None of whom speak Spanish. Unless you count my ability to count to 10 thanks to Sesame Street, but that severely limits communication in anything other than binary. Not terribly popular.

It's nice that the person who found the phone tried to contact people who knew the owner and didn't just abscond with it. However (and here's where the rant comes in), you mean to tell me that you couldn't find one friggin' person who could speak even a little English? In America?!?!?!?!? Call me racist, I don't care. America = English. Speak it. You don't have to speak it well, you don't have to write it well (we got that one covered already). Speak the damn language. Yeah yeah... "America doesn't have an official language!" My rebuttal: bite my hairy ass, it's English. American English, but it's English, dammit.

That's a mini-rant, as I could just type about this for hours on end. I just hope she gets her phone back, even though they have to find a friggin' translator to do so.

Condensation

It's been quite humid here lately. Cloudy, rainy, floody... It has rained on occasion during our time in AZ, but it's been so sporadic that it's really helped me to see that humidity really makes my head hurt. A lot. (Hear that, family?) Sure, our high temperature today didn't get above 79, which meant that we got to leave the windows open and enjoy the cool weather. In August. But I've been eating Advil Migraine tablets and sitting near-motionless with an icepack on my head for two days. Humidity sucks, and this monsoon season can end any time now, thank you.

The cooler weather can stay.

Gravity and the News

Four people died in Phoenix when two news helicopters collided with one another while filming a fleeing suspect. I have no idea why the news helicopters were filming it at all. Do people really need to see the live action thrill of a car chase so much that it needs to be covered by five news helicopters? Five? You know who needed a helicopter there? The cops. That's it. If a news station has a helicopter, then it also has a station owner who has severe issues with his penis. Or her penis, as the case may be. There was another big ol' car chase in Texas yesterday. We were watching the news while eating lunch, and the reporter said: "We don't know exactly where this is, or whether it's a man or woman driving, or why they're being chased, but here's the chase." It's like a nation of magpies attracted by shiny objects. Ooooh, a speeding car! Let's watch! Um... why? Maybe it's the NASCAR gene, which I thankfully lack. People like to watch speeding cars for whatever reason. Or speeding anything. Chariot races, cars, whatever. I guess watching things move around in a circle is hypnotic. Toddlers get the same effect watching water (and such) get flushed down the toilet.

You see the metaphor here, right?

Anyway, regarding the Phoenix crash... the driver who was being chased (not chaste) may be charged with the deaths of the four people who crashed in the helicopters. Yes, the person on the ground may be charged with the deaths of the helicopter pilots and passengers who were in the air and crashed into each other. I think that's ludicrous. If anyone should be charged with their deaths, it should be the station owners who sent them out after a friggin' car chase in the first place. (Somebody grew up watching too much CHiPs.) There was another incident a week or so ago where a robbery or some such was committed, and the officer responding to the call died en route. The robber was charged with the death of the officer. If you're going to use that logic, don't just stop with the robber. I mean, come on! This is America! There are many more people to sue, and many more people to blame for your own actions! We can blame the robber's parents for screwing up at their parenting job. We can blame the car manufacturer for not including enough safety measures in the cop car. We can blame the cop's supervisor for not ensuring that the cop take his requisite defensive driving classes. We can blame the cop's parents for not providing good enough genetic material to give the cop superhuman cop reflexes. Of course, if the cop collided with another driver, there's a whole tree of blame to follow. If the cop collided with a stationary object, there's yet another avenue of litigation and finger-pointing to traverse.

Personally, I'm going to blame the city of Phoenix for the helicopter crash. I mean, really... why isn't the entire city covered in soft, spongy foam?

I Want To Buy A Ghost Town

Really. How cool would that be? Nice and isolated. Quiet. Scenic. Sure, I'd have to farm. Or have supplies air-dropped in. Satellite internet, of course. Solar and windmill for electricity. Oh, did I mention the land mines? And the giant moat filled with electric crocodiles? See, I want to keep the stupid out. I'm not sure how else to do that. What the hell am I talking about? Deb was taking a break from our marathon shop-maintenance stuff, and she was flipping through channels of suck. I went in to see what she was up to, because my wife can find her way to mischief quickly. (Oh wait. That's me.) She had stopped on the new Candid Camera show. I have no idea what it's called, but it's a hidden camera show, where they set up people with all manner of wacky shenanigans which results in a family-friendly laugh riot for young and old. Feh. I shouldn't call it Candid Camera, because Candid Camera had personality. This one was made by mimes, because nobody talks. Only goofy music that Benny Hill rejected. Anyway, the bit was that an old woman needed help carrying a box of groceries to her door. The unsuspecting victim was carrying the box. The wacky bit came into play when a skunk was released into the old woman's front yard. (See! Comedy gold right there! How could you not love the show?) The part that made me sit up and curse was that they had digitally blurred out something on a woman. Not on her clothing, and not to mask an expletive.

They blurred out the cigarette in her hand.

I'll say it again: They blurred out the cigarette in her hand. I do not smoke, yet somehow I doubt that the wee children watching the funny camera clip show are going to run out and grab a pack of Lucky Strikes because they saw the skunk lady hold one in her friggin' hand! Now there's a push to make movies that depict smoking have an automatic R rating.

Maybe it's because I listen to old radio shows so much. Everyone smoked, everyone drank, and everyone was quick to commit murder. I honestly don't think that everyone who listened to these old shows went out on a killing spree, nor do I think they plotted and schemed in order to get their rich uncle's fortune by pushing him down a flight of stairs/giving him 18 doses of sleeping powder/playing a recording of ghost sounds in order to give his weak heart that final push over the edge in his haunted mansion. In fact, I think a very small percentage of radio listeners ever killed anyone. Fewer still inherited anything. People smoked. People drank. People died. You know what? If you don't smoke and you don't drink, you're still going to die. You might live longer, but you're going to be boring as hell and won't have any good stories to tell. So you'll be boring, dead, and people will smoke and drink over your corpse. That's a life well lived, right there.