Alliterator Animal Sh*t List: The Letter 'Z'

This is the end, my only friend, the end. Next week I'll post an Index so you can easily click back to your favorite one. Everyone has favorites.

Zangy Zesty Zebra Zingers

Creating New Words

I make up words a lot. I discovered today that new words are called Neologisms. You have to go to Wikipedia to get a more detailed synopsis.

My favorite is when something tastes really good, it is leckerlicious. Lecker is German for delicious.

Anyway, today at work, we were taking a break and decided that there needed to be a word for the process of creating a new word. What do you call it when you put sounds together to create a new word? Is there already a word for it?

We created the word abspewtulate. To abspewtulate is to create a new word.

I was just in the act of abspewtulation when the tornado sirens went off and the wind started blowing and the electricity gave out. Luckily my computer and Internet are on UPS. I have 30 minutes to finish writing this post!

I briefly had to go downstairs and hide out with my bean bags in the room my kids like to call, "The Harry Potter Closet". It's the closet under the stairs.

Moving to a New House and Updating Information

I moved last year (around August). As most of you know, when you change addresses there are a whole myriad of things that must be done. You have to send out change of address cards. You have to update billing addresses. You have to turn on utilities. You have to turn off utilities. You have to get insurance. You have to get lawn service. You have to get phone numbers. And on and on and on.

Well, in today's world, sometimes you also have to update email addresses. At my old house I had Charter for my ISP. I also used Charter as my main email service. gar@charter.net was my email address. I bought a domain. I've had the domain for about 5 years.

In all the hustle and bustle I forgot to tell the domain that I was moving. At my new house I have Verizon instead of Charter. When I moved I decided that I didn't like having to change my email address so I purchased a semi-permanent email address by purchasing the hosted domain (digigar.com). I just changed all of my forwards from my old (now temporarily defunct domain) to my new digigar.com domain.

The old domain (which expired and I'm not going to tell you what it was), sent my expiration notice to gar@charter.net which I never saw. Now I am not getting 75% of my emails. It expired on June 5. It's amazing how fast services gets turned off in the digital world that we live in. It's also amazing how much you miss these services when they are gone.

I've now sent off lots of emails and raised lots of alarms (and paid some money) to get my old domain turned back on! Here's hoping for success.

Why do I tell you all this? Because if you sent me an email since June 5th, I might not have received it. You may have to try and try again. It will be rectified.

UP at the Cowboy's Stadium

I've never been a fan of people getting kicked out of their houses for commercial expansion. A home is where the heart is and sometimes no amount of money can relocate someone's heart.

I recently took the kids to watch the new movie from Disney's PIXAR called "UP". I'll try really hard not to spoil anything for you. In fact, I'll stick with the first couple of scenes.

This man and his wife build a house and live there for their entire marriage. When the "Jerry Jones" comes to build his new commercial empire, the guy refuse to sell his house. It has too many memories of his wife. In fact, his house has become his wife after she died.

The "Jerry Jones" in the movie is younger and wears sunglasses a lot and doesn't say much. I think Durango said something about Jerry's speaking ability just recently.

At one point they are building their empire all around the guy's house. He's politely ignoring the noise when a guy working for "Jerry" comes and offers him 3 times the previous price. But the old man can't seem to put a price on the memory of his wife. He finally tells the negotiator that "Jerry" can have his house... when he's dead.

I was living in Bedford when the Northeast Mall of Hurst decided to kick people out of their houses to expand the mall. I thought that was a travesty. I remember one old man going through his house showing all the murals his children had painted on the walls over the years. That was before they destroyed it for the new Northeast Mall parking garage.

But I hate football stadiums. We have over 100 football stadiums in the DFW zone. I think football has played a role in messing up the school systems. Even the higher education school systems whore themselves out for the commercial profits of football. It's definitely not worth destroying someone's heart and memories for a bigger stadium. Especially when there's open farm land within an hour.

If you're willing to pay $100 for a ticket and $14 for a hot dog, I think you can afford to drive an an extra hour for the game.

But, in all honesty, is this a Texas thing? Or is it just a Tarrant County thing?

Something Positive

There is an online comic called Something Positive. Ed has commented several times with links to some of the comics posted there. I just recently started getting my daily dose of it.

I read through their bios and it seems that one of them has some background in the DFW zone that Durango loves so much.

Today's comic was about Euless. I pasted the comic here. I'll probably get in trouble for it, but it was the only way I could think of to show people what great fun it was since all of my readers are lazy and they won't click on any of the links unless encouraged to do so by a graphic. I encourage all of you to go sign up for their RSS feed for your daily dose of sarcasm.

The bottom of this particular strip reads: "Get to know Tarrant County...And hide from it".

Alliterator Animal Sh*t List: The Letter 'Y'

After last week's fun with X, I was tempted to go hit the dictionary line by line in search of fun Y words. I opted out. I decided to go with the original from 1985.

Yesterdays Yellowing Yowling Yak Yuk

All Your Eggs Belong to US

What is that old idiom, "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"? Meaning, I assume, that if you drop the one basket, you will lose all your eggs.

And yet millions of Americans are forced into doing this very thing. Besides the self employed, how many people have more than one job that can pay their monthly expenses?

Today I was listening to the GM executives make all their apologies leading up to the mass layoffs that are sure to continue as GM goes through bankruptcy proceedings.

And it occurred to me. Why are employees forced to put all their eggs in one basket? Couldn't an auto worker spend one week at a GM plant and the next week at a Ford plant?

People get bored of doing the same thing every day anyway. What if you could have two careers. What if you could be an Astronomer at the McDonald Observatory in Fort Davis for one week and the next week be a store manager at the McDonald's in Alpine. If either job evaporates, you will have the other one to fall back on while you patiently look for another.

Granted companies would have to hire and train twice as many people, but at about the same monthly rate. Instead of paying 1 person $100k/year they'd pay 2 people $50k/year. If done right, it would be less risk to the company. After all, they don't want to put too many eggs in one basket either. I can't tell you how many times one of my employers warned me about documentation in case I got hit by a bus.

Theoretically, it would help the economy because if we lived like this we'd never hit bottom. We'd possibly hit 50% for a spell, but it would be much more difficult to hit zero. As they say, "one is too close to none".