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At 11, Older than Facebook
 With five webpages and two Facebook persona's needing to be fed, I find myself mostly on Facebook and neglecting all but one or two of my web pages. And it's the Web that's carried me over a decade to the great fame and wealth I have achieved during the past eleven years.
In July of 1999 while on a self-piloted flight near Martha's Vineyard JFK, Jr disappeared. That was my first posting to Mr Wonderful on the World Wide Web aka: the www.
Recently I humbled myself and applied at a pay-for-piecework web writing site that advertises on Facebook more than Match.com. They needed an example of my work and my resume.
Of course the example was no problem, as I took a piece of one of my longer articles off my awesome acting web page.
Then, the resume. Neither my acting nor my professional resume could be cut and pasted to work, so I came up with a one-paragraph summation of my writing and one paragraph indicating if they didn't sign me up someone else would. Perhaps Random House? For $50,000,000?
It would be neat to be able to supplement my meager income with writing. This writing opportunity is a dream come true for my persona since apparently you can be writing up to ten articles at any one time. Only ten?
The bad part is that my name won't usually be credited with the article I penned. Then again, having a feeling how the vanilla editors work, in an attempt to offend no one this side of Neptune, the article would read like an IRS notice. However, I didn't see anything in the contract indicating I could not mention elsewhere that a certain article was indeed penned by me.
 The contract, the on-screen contract, it's funny, I spent five or so minutes scan-reading it, and afterward I thought, "I bet most people don't read it," but when I went to complete the contract it told me I hadn't "scrolled through" the contract I had just scrolled through.
I finally had to refresh the page to allow my "scroll through" to register with the web site.
If Internet Explorer 8 loaded pages faster and had a spell checker, I'd gladly use it instead of Firefox 3.6, because I rarely have a link-related problem with MS Explorer.
Until I hear back from these people, I write for free.
Well I did hear back from the web writing place and they choose not to add me to their army of 200,000 writers who can't spell and would be perfectly suited for writing the next grade school history or social studies book.
posted Thursday 07/29/2010 . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Will they sell even five hundred of the 500?
While enthroned on my ivory commode, crammed between my sink and my bathtub, I read in the Popular Mechanics November 2009 issue about the first vehicle the Fiat-Chrysler venture will bring to market under the Chrysler-Dodge moniker, the Fiat 500.
 Both Popular Mechanics, and Popular Science have been totally politicized and have sided with the mad environmental schemes of Al Gore and the Obama administration. So naturally, Popular Mechanics believes the new-to-America Fiat 500 will be a big seller when it hits our shores in 2010.
Sadly that may be due to the fact that if current Washington D.C. generated economic trends continue, unemployment will be far above 10% and the masses will not be able to afford a new actual automobile and will have to settle for this 500-pounds-lighter-than-a-Mini Cooper transport that could be totaled if ever it were to be t-boned by even a heavily-laden mountain bike.
I find it odd, that since this car originates in Europe, where everything is perfect, that it has had to be upgraded to meet the our primitive U.S. safety standards. What that means in dollars and lira, is that this same car will be considerably cheaper, and remain cheaper, in Europe. That is, unless the dollar strengthens against foreign currencies, which is a doubtful prediction before the clueless President Obama exits office in year 2013 and reconnects with his half-dozen half-brothers.
Of course all the photos we see will be only from the most attractive angles of this two-door, four passenger, four cylinder, 1.4liter, 100hp, Italian designed, vehicle which is ... "more a larger SmartForTwo with a bench seat" than even a real car, real Americans, free to chose, would purchase.
However, Consumer Reports tells us this updated Nash Metropolitan will sport a fragrance dispenser. That way, when the driver craps his pants as he heads-on an H3 Hummer or Chevy Tahoe, he'll still be dead, but at least already smell like funeral parlor lilies.
posted Friday 11/20/2009. . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Piss Quest
Yesterday on my day off, at 10:27am, I was the chosen one for my employer's random drug screen. Since I had relocated from my tony Town of Paradise Valley two-bedroom palace to Phoenixico since my last random drug test (which was, oddly enough, just hours after a knock-down drag out with the number two man at corporate headquarters), I had to search for a lovely Sonora Quest Laboratories center near to my current abode.
Turned out the office was within walking distance of the house we had built in 1979 and lived in for almost a quarter of a century. I remembered taking first, my daughter, and then five years later, my youngest boy on bicycle rides on the sidewalk just outside the three story monolith sitting on the once empty desert that now was looking down on a too-green golf course fairway.
This morning after waking, I immediately closed my bathroom door so that I wouldn't accidentally empty my bladder which, during the night, had swollen to the size and the texture of an adult puffer fish.
 Arriving at my new testing center, in my old affluent neighborhood, exactly 90 minutes before my 24-hour grace period had expired, I found the Sonora Quest holding pen packed more tightly than a submarine at battle-stations. There were 21 adults packed into approximately 222 square feet of waiting room.
I imagine some were there for physician-ordered tests, some for court-mandated tests, and many there because, like myself, they labor in menial jobs that 'anyone can do' where the employer (and his lawyers and insurance agents) dictate random drug tests because obviously, any employee grossing less than $55,000 per year, cannot be trusted to not use drugs.
Oh my gawd! One woman was one-twelfth of an hour late and they showed her the door.
Why, you might ask, was I on the far end of my 24-hour drug-screen time window? Because at the moment of my notification call I was on my way to Wickenburg, Arizona and I'll be gawdamned if I re-arrange my day off to suit, well, the suits.
Back at the Sonora Quest corral, like a daring ostrich in a herd of the birds, I straightened up and stretched my neck above the mostly bent-over crowd of supplicants and twisted my head to and fro while imagining that this is how Obama's 'National Health Care' solution will look and feel.
Only it will be much more crowded and unruly since most of the clients will be the retired, the chronically ill (often one in the same) the unemployed, the children, and the tens of thousands of illegal aliens, all of whom have, not money to spend, but time. Time to spend waiting for government offered freebies.
Meanwhile, those of us employed in one or more jobs, working 40 or more hours each week, creating personal income by producing goods and services that people chose to purchase and thereby generating the gross dollars that the government snatches its too-large cut from via witholding-taxes before we've even twittered our significant other about maybe going to the movies on the coming weekend, have no time or much money to spend.
In reality, the 50% of us citizens and legal aliens who still pay the income taxes that make all government services possible, won't usually be able to afford (either in time lost or dollars lost) to spend the hours and hours needed to take advantage of any sort of national health care. That is until we are so sick we can no longer report to work and might as well waste away waiting to see a doctor, physician's assistance, nurse or (like in medieval times) a barber.
Today, for my non-appointment it was a 90-minute wait that I'd wish I had worn my Depends for. (By accident I found I could have made an appointment on-line at the Sonora Quest website.) Under a federal health care mandated system, where I'd actually be being seen by a doctor, I would guess the wait would be at least double that.
Regardless, national health care or not, it is entirely humiliating that without any rhyme, reason, cause, suspicion or evidence, in order to keep my job, I'm forced to piss on my hands while I'm trying to fill a cup with urine so some technician wearing only a "Bob" nametag can tell me whether I'm taking illegal drugs.
Just another reason for me to get a respectable job. Maybe asphalting, roofing or cesspool emptying?
posted Saturday 05/30/2009. . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
A cloudy vision
On my single day off this week, I left early for my doctor's appointment. Since the patient entry door was locked when I arrived, I ended up sitting outside and out back, of this cataract factory, watching the employees, technicians and the M.D.'s arrive.
How do you tell the employees & techs from the physicians? Easy, the doctors drive the Porsches.
I was thinking of the employees coming in to the job they just might hate, but it's different somehow when the work they may hate involves the one pair of peepers I will ever have.
But as my regular readers know, I supremely hate my job but yet deliver a stellar performance every single shift. Just ask me. I pray these people do the same.
 Even though I arrived a full half-hour before my appointment made many weeks ago, I had found a mute glass door dead-bolted closed. The white letters nearby announced that the office opened at 8am, yet my appointment was made for 7:30am.
Finally, as I was examining a late model defrangulator near that same front door, I heard the dead bolt snap open.
When I walked in I heard an apology telling me that everyone had thought that someone else unlocked the door this morning.
As I approached the elbow-high desk I saw the body behind the voice. Dressed in black and white her bulk would have put any hereford to shame.
I was given a clipboard with a sheath of papers to fill out and naturally, since I forgot my cell phone I was forced to leave some lines blank.
How funny, I thought, most other businesses are hungry for customers, but here in the medical industry, with our taxes paying one-third of the entire industry's gross annual take, I arrive to find the door locked during business hours?
I was examined by a hugely overweight but affable technician. First she checked my prescription using the Prescriptionizer Device, and found I already needed a new eyeglass prescription. Then she checked for glaucoma, and finally she checked how badly my cataracts were affecting my vision.
Shortly I was sent again to the waiting lobby with its 56" flat panel television proclaiming the goodness of Earth Day.
I was called back in to see an actual doctor (since the joint employs probably a dozen physicians), an Asian lady about five feet nothing tall. I was going to tell her the old old Anglo-centric joke about the Japanese guy saying he had "Cadillacs" but it kept coming out sounding like he had "cataracts", but I decided I would hold it back for another occasion.
 She did some more examining and told me that my health insurance coverage with Cigna, (which, unless my employer is lying to me, costs us $604 per month) would not cover cataract surgery, even though cataract surgery is covered, because my vision wasn't compromised badly enough yet.
I asked her if I should only come back only after I'm bouncing off walls, and she told me that no, that they would check me every six to nine months to see how my cataracts were coming along (and collect another $40 co-pay.)
I told her that would be fine and the interval would allow me time to save up for the deductible amount, which the Cigna website had put at somewhere more than $800.
My wife was on the inside in the 1970s when this particular cataract factory priced their fix-it surgery for Medicare. They immediately realized the government was only willing to pay for 50% of the advertised cost of the procedure. So they calmly doubled their rate before signing up with Medicare.
Since it a federal crime to give anyone a lower rate than what Medicare is charged, can you see how government getting into the medical industry has caused prices to skyrocket?
posted Friday 04/24/2009. . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Talk Radio Slight of Sound
Ever wonder how the AM Radio talk-jocks on the shows geared to answer technical questions always seem to have the answer to virtually any phoned-in question?
 Ever wonder how, during a radio interview most authors are rarely stumped by a question from the talk-jock?
For the radio shows that solve problems for consumers, like Kim Komando, the reason that she can answer the questions, seemingly off the top of her head, is that the questioners submit their questions long before the show airs, the question is then researched and answered and then they are phoned back by the show's producers so that KK can talk on-air to the person and instantly solve their problem. (Note that by using this method virtually anyone could seem to be an expert in any chosen field. Even the Presidency of the United States.)
In the meantime, those of us who e-mailed easy questions to Kim Komando during the week are encouraged, via a reply e-mail, to call in, insuring the phone lines will always be jammed.
I don't believe that The Tech Guy, Leo Laporte, uses this method, because every now and then he simply doesn't have the answer. Nor does he coincidentally, have a sometimes less-than-wonderful product to suggest his listeners' try.
I like those two things about him, and I think his uncompromising attitude towards being 100% above-board has kept him in the media shadows. I think that Leo has knowledge of many multiple times that of Kim Komando, while she has many multiple times the computer knowledge of your Mr. Wonderful. While I'm also sure neither of them carry their entire net worth a battered, scratched and scarred Starbucks card like Mark Wonderful.
I will forever remember the time I had stopped listening to The Kim Komando Show. My last listen was on the day she was simply raking the then new Windows XP operating system over the coals. Just giving Microsoft a hell of a time. I thought "Geeze, an honest computer person."
 After my work schedule changed, and I was again able to listen to Kim Komando, I tuned in as she was extolling the virtues of the Microsoft XP. Had a service-pack come out in the meanwhile to address her previous complaints? No. But the very next commercial played answered my question as to what exactly had changed her mind. It was a Microsoft advertisement.
Kim Komando had been bought off.
And sadly, it happens 1,000s of times a day to millions of people. Sometimes it's just a little thing that only her conscience has had to wrestle with, like what KK did in regards to her on-air honesty about Microsoft XP. Sometimes being bought-off can make person(s) party into throwing an entire nation into a financial recession.
 As far as authors being interviewed on the radio, Ian Punnett, over at Coast to Coast AM, spilled the beans. And the beans are, that weeks before the on-air dialogue, the author is sent a list of questions and asked to submit the exact queries he or she would like to be asked.
Then, days later, during the interview, the talk-jock simply convincingly reads the questions, one after another. While it seems to the audience that they are hearing a give and take conversation, what they are actually being presented is an orchestrated live commercial for a book.
If you listen to Dr. Michael Savage during an author interview you can easily tell that he's reading the questions. I imagine he does this not because he is incapable of reading written questions as if they were spontaneous, but that he desires his listeners to realize that he is reading a list of pre-prepared questions.
So now we know that once again, what we think we're getting, we're not really getting.
You really don't still believe 'reality tv' is reality do you?
posted Friday 12/5/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
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Prius Prevarications
How Much Does the Battery Weigh?
Remember when I wrote about compact fluorescents (CFLs), and found the Greenies, while finally admitting that these lamps contain dangerous amounts of mercury, that because of their power-saving qualities alone, we should still purchase them?
  I was thinking that if an Albertson's plastic bag lasts 10,000 years in a landfill, how long would a Prius battery survive in the same landfill? So I went on an internet search for how much the battery weighs, I again discovered the same obfuscations about exactly how many pounds does the Prius battery tip the scales with?
With no further elucidation web site after web site listed a battery module weighing 1040 grams (1000 grams = 2.2lbs). But since I knew a normal car battery weighs at least 25lbs, I knew something was missing. Finally I found an honest site that revealed the Prius battery consisted of 38 'modules' and weighed 53.3kg (117lbs) consisting primarily of the metal nickel.
Prius battery = 53,300 grams ... Grocery store plastic bag = 3 grams
The battery weighs 17,766 times more than the evil grocery bag, but apparently, once again, since the Prius 'saves energy' its eventual effect on the environment is 100% ignored.
posted Wednesday 10/21/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
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Gee! Google Reads Your Gmail
Many moons ago, I related how a certain 'digital goddess' had been on a rant on how user not-friendly Microsoft XP was. And then when, a few weeks later, I revisited her radio show I found her full of praise for the very same (and unchanged) Microsoft program.
Until her first break in the show after her praisement of XP, I was unable to ascertain what had changed her mind. After this same pause for advertising passed, I understood why she had changed her mind about Microsoft XP, for they were now one of her advertisers.
Yesterday, this same Kim Komando, answered a listener's question about why the ads popping up in Google's new Gmail e-mail service always seemed to relate to exactly what the writer was typing, when Ms.Komando revealed:
"But only Google's are contextual. Google says its contextual ads offer value to the Gmail user. Whether true or not, Google cannot be accused of pulling a fast one."
For many people, not used to the legal gobbledygook, her statement above does not actually reveal a whole lot, which, since she is now a spoke of the corporate profit-wheel, was her intent. (I am saddened by her behaviors, and I completely understand them, for capitalism is the only proven way to offer opportunity for all our citizens, but, its principals did not travel down from Mt. Sinai after being etched in stone by the finger of God.)
What it should state is, that every single e-mail sent by a Gmail user is 'read'.
Does it concern you whether a human being or computer program does the actual reading? Does it matter to you that Google has the storage capacity to warehouse these e-mails until John McCain* learns to use the Internet?
Where do you imagine Google, whose corporate mantel is: "First, Do no harm", first came up with this e-mail specific programming and why? Your Mr.Wonderful would not be making a huge leap by guessing that this is the same contextual advertising technology that is used in Communist China to filter 100% of their citizens' e-mail traffic for subversive elements.
Kim goes on to explain that "...But only Google's [ads] are contextual. Google says its contextual ads offer value to the Gmail user. Whether true or not, Google cannot be accused of pulling a fast one. It clearly explains its policy.
On its site, Google says,
'Advertising and related information are shown using a completely automated process. Ads are selected for relevance and served by Google computers using the same contextual advertising technology that powers our AdSense program. This technology enables Google to target dynamically changing content such as e-mail or daily news stories.' "
Is the above a clearly explained policy? Does mentioning "contextual advertising technology" really explain anything to most email users? Is it the same as stating what is really going on with Gmail users, and that is that Google is monitoring, via sophisticated software programs, every single syllable you type micro-seconds after your keystroke?
What would prevent Washington, D.C, whether headed by Senator John McCain or Senator Barack Obama, from requesting that certain Gmails, instantaneously and previously sorted by the Google "contextual advertising technology", containing certain specified 'anti-government' words be forwarded to the S.S. or the F.B.I. for further research and possible action?
Nothing.
( *
Due to having both shoulders broken when he was a P.O.W.,
Senator McCain cannot raise his arms to type on a keyboard.)
posted Wednesday 10/08/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
COX Snapped off in my Butt
In my continuing attempts to downsize, lower my carbon footprint, and quit wasting my cash on 'caller i.d.' that was about as believable as a Michael Moore documentary, I stripped my Cox Communications phone service down to the basic of the basic. I told the CSR that all I wanted was a phone that rang.
Then I sat back and assumed I would be billed somewhere near the $11.75 per month amount stated in their information for basic phone service.
 That $11.75 amount, plus my Cox High Speed Internet Service at $49.90, would bring my monthly invoice to around $62.00 a month.
And, thanks to the long-departed members of our Phoenix City Council granting Cox High Speed Internet a monopoly in our town (now the fifth largest city in the nation) I guess I should be grateful the charges aren't even higher.
When I went to pay Cox this morning, I was shocked to see that my bill was nowhere near the expected $62 but nearer $72. And, when you're grossing $10.50 an hour, believe me that ten dollars means a lot.
Mysteriously there was no way to view an itemized bill on the internet (a favorite tactic of telecommunication providers) so after I fished-out and examined my paper Cox Digital Telephone Service invoice, and spotted an "FCC Access Charge" of $6.30 sticking out like a menses-red baboon butt at the Phoenix Zoo, I e-mailed a CSR asking what the hell the charge was for. Here is his reply:
"This fee charges you $6.30 per line, per month. The subscriber line
charge is not a tax, but is part of the price charged by local telephone
companies.
Neither the FCC nor any other government agency receives the subscriber
line charges. Local telephone companies collect subscriber line charges
to cover part of their costs of operating and maintaining the local
telephone network."
So Cox Communications (a privately held corporation) can quote its customers' phone service at $11.75 per month and then simply tack on an additional $6.30, and assign it the official-appearing-federally-mandated-don't-ask-any-questions-line-item description of  "FCC Access Charge", and instead collect (with all taxes and fees) $18.05 a month, and increase of almost 50%.
If anyone other than a government authorized and regulated monopoly pulled that little trick they'd be in court immediately, and run out of business within a year.
In addition, I would not be a bit surprised that the fees scooped up under the rubric of "FCC Access Charge" are not included as income, but as some component of overhead, and hence, are not taxed either by The State of Arizona or the Internal Revenue Service, resulting in the nirvana of corporations everywhere: pure profit.
This is again a black and white example of no matter how bad things get, citizens in a capitalistic democracy should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, allow our elected officials to grant a monopoly to any corporation.
posted Wednesday 9/12/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
The Wal-Mart Rat Hole
Wal-Mart. What a rat-hole. Pulling in, I was almost rammed in the parking lot and, later, as I left, a car jumped over a curb rather than slow down for us pedestrians.
Inside I was met with the usual multicultural, diverse cadre of angry employees and non-English speaking customers infiltrated by loud-assed, tatoo-covered, beer-bellied, White Trash, screaming at their feral offspring while craning their necks this way and that to see that their outburst was noticed by their captive audience.
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Forcing a smile, I endured an employee-to-employee discussion of her recently purchased footlong bacon fat and beef sandwich. As she stood behind the Return Counter, I then queried her for information on bringing back items purchased at another Wal-Mart.
Her delighted 12-inch sandwich face vanished and was replaced with a stern-looking Michele Obama countenance and she became as friendly as an arresting officer reciting Miranda rights, while at the same time asking more questions than a 911 phone operator. I can hardly wait for the moment when I actually bring the items in to return them.
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I was at this horrible Wal-Mart looking for a small portable fan. With temperatures in Phoenix soaring into their normal 110F summertime monsoon season degrees, and with the electric company raising rates by 30%, they offered a huge selection. One.
They had 20 times the number of flat screen monitors on display. Of course with 'America's Got Talent' coming back to the airwaves, I guess I can understand that.
I was once again reminded of my theory that the World-Wide ultra-rich are eternally occupied pacifying the citizen-masses with movies, television shows, musical events, sports, high-fat foods, anti-depressants, acid-reflux medications that allow us to continue to pack on the pounds without stomach distress, and diabetic drugs that keep us alive (rather than simply insisting we loose weight) as they divide the world into the three classes other than themselves.
The doctors and the lawyers class (from whom the politicians come), the dumb-downed government-schooled, hourly-paid working citizen class, and their armies of imported slave laborers, aka: undocumented aliens.
posted Wednesday 8/27/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
They Cut Off My Cox
When I got home Wednesday early AM, I noticed my ZoneAlarm had detected a new network and was asking me how to proceed. I thought, "Great! The broadband supplier said that they were upgrading their system in my area (probably installing chokes to slow the transfer of videos) and they've probably done it while I was at work." Sweet.
However, after attempting all the schemes I had learned from my many previous service calls to Cox, I simply couldn't get a broadband connection.
So I called them on my Cox Digital Phone. That was a mistake, as the automaton on the answering end informed me the connection would be broken during the testing of the broadband. So I hung up.
I called back on my cell phone and began to work through my problem with the same female-voiced automaton as before.
Twelve minutes into shouting, whispering, mumbling, and singing "Yes", "No" and "Continue" I was forced to visit the toilet for some serious weight reduction.  Once there, while concentrating on two things at once and attempting to read my Vanity Fair magazine, I misunderstood what the automaton spoke and, pinching her nose while disconnecting, she said goodbye.
Well, I called her back. I put my cell phone on 'hands-free' speaker phone and now she couldn't understand any of my utterances. I was stepped through the same procedures, turning off the modem, unscrewing the coax cable to the back of the modem, spelling Chachapoyas, Peru backwards. However, on this visit she insisted that I had a network router so I played along with her little game and agreed I did.
About twelve minutes into this conversation, she told me she had a technical failure and would immediately transfer me to a mere human technician.
At that juncture I decided it would be appropriate to let out a belch so loud that it would have knocked down a house of cards from one hundred yards away. About half-way through that vocal exercise, Dave picked up the phone and the tail-end of my blue whale-sized teeth-rattling belch. Dave (while I tried, not too successfully, to not laugh out loud) told me there were no network updates in my area, but that he did see that I had a "billing issue". I asked him to transfer me to the billing department and once there, 'Priscilla' told me that they charged $5 for a human being (in Mumbai, India?) to take the billing information, but the automated system was free. She added that if the automated system should fail, that I could call back and tell a human that she told me to tell them not to charge the five dollars additional, because the automated billing system had failed.
 Soon enough it seemed I was again talking to the same female-voiced automaton as I did for my technical issue calls, and, of course the system crashed. I was forced to call billing back again and wound up paying my past due amount sans the $5 charge 'human-interaction' fee, just as Priscilla had promised.
Today, I foolishly answered my Cox Digital Phone land-line and it was the lovely people at Verizon (who have always made gasoline prices seem to be a bargain) and they were urging me to pay my two-months old cellphone bill. The gall. Imagine.
Once again, since I wanted to schedule payment for the next day, I was switched to the automated billing department, where I immediately heard the unmistakable sound of the 'all circuits busy' tone, forcing me to hang up and schedule my Verizon payment over the internet.
Thank God I paid my Cox Communications bill first, eh?
posted Friday 07/24/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Free TV isn't Free, Who Owns Geico?
OnStar says "STOP!"
If you listen to Talk Radio you've probably heard the "orderfreetv.com" ad about as often as you've heard a Geico Insurance commercial. Apparently this outfit's actual name is something like "usefreedomtv.com. Note the similarity between orderfreetv.com and usefreedomtv.com.
 I've listened carefully to the radio ad, and it has been tweaked and massaged over the weeks and now the only place you get the idea it is free, after hearing "no monthly cable fees" about three times, is when you hear the URL mentioned which is www.orderfreetv.com.
Who the hell would think that something like "orderfreetv.com" would mean it is actually free?
Uh, everyone?
Once again it is a case of a Sack of Shit advertiser wording something so that you could get the idea that it is free. Because when one visits the website, after you delight in scrolling past all the large-font horseshit you've already heard on the radio commercial for 22 weeks, and then discovering way down at the bottom,
"...and how much does this program cost? The price is a one-time fee of only $49.95."
At this point, you may be asking yourself, "I thought it was free?" But, you see, the "orderfreetv.com" is only a shortened version of the "orderfreedomtv.com". And here you thought it was free, you dummy.
And guess what pal? Today it may be a "one-time" fee of only $49.95, but I bet along comes a year and there will appear the need to make another payment in order to continue to connect to UseFreedomTV.com. This payment will be slightly less than the original $49.95, say $29.95 or $19.95, and it will be termed a 'renewal', or 'service', or 'upgrade charge', not a 'fee'.
Is it hard to imagine that a company that advertises "freetv.com", that is not free, will not hold to their promise of a 'one-time fee'?
Remember that I told you how Lying Sack of Shit advertisers will do anything, say anything, promise anything just to get you to listen to their pitch?
Because the majority of advertisers are lying sacks of shit, you cannot believe anything they say, write or video to you.
Speaking of GEICO (Government Employee Insurance Company), if you want to help the billionaire Warren Buffet add to his billions, go ahead and buy Geico Insurance, because he owns it.
And while his legions of accountants keep him paying minimal taxes on his hundreds of millions of dollars earned each quarter, (so that he can put billions into the highly news worthy and visible Gates Foundation) he wants you and I to pay more taxes. Ask yourself, if he thinks taxes remitted to the government do so much good, why does he spend tens of millions of dollars to avoid paying them?
In any case, the non-lizard voice on the Geico radio commercials is Oliver Wyman. The same voice that read the audio book, The World is Flat.  An audio book in which all the cesspools of the world, China, India, Pakistan, and Hell, are painted as filled with happy, energetic, dedicated, high I.Q. workers living in a Utopian State, while American employees are portrayed as a bunch of ignorant dunderheads, hoping to win the lottery while their eyes are glued to the clock on the wall, that is when they aren't glued to the porno on their computer monitor.
Man, what I wouldn't do to live in Mumbai, India, a short nuclear tipped missile ride from Pakistan.
In any case, I soon realized The World is Flat was simply another in a long line of hate-America-and-everywhere-is-better-than-here-rants, and tossed the many cds out my car window.
Oliver Wyman, who is the narrator on the Geico commercials, is now doing the voice on the commercials for Chevy OnStar. Listen closely, he's simply pitched his voice differently.
Speaking of OnStar, doesn't it make you even slightly uncomfortable, that without you knowing it, (Whether you pay for it or not. Whether you think you have it turned off or not), OnStar knows exactly where your vehicle is 24/7? And they can listen in without you knowing it? And, if they can unlock the doors, that they could just as easily turn the engine off?
 You say, "So what?" Well, imagine this scenario. The government decides that even though you can afford $4 a gallon gasoline, since your SUV, truck, motorhome, or Corvette doesn't get over 30mpg, you won't be allowed to drive it anymore. That's because it uses too much of a limited commodity, (gasoline) and creates a larger carbon footprint than someone who drives a Prius.
So OnStar simply flips a switch and walla! your SUV is transformed into nothing more than a four-door couch on wheels that you owe 44 more payments on.
posted Tuesday 07/15/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
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Watching Movies
Coffee Pots in Movies
I first noticed this in the 1994 movie, Guarding Tess
I vaguely remember the coffee pot used in the kitchen scene, as Shirley MacLaine had a hard time getting the coffee past the lid on the top of the coffee pot without spilling. (Go figure, she doesn't even pour her own coffee?) I think, in one scene, the top was on the coffee pot, and the next, it was gone. Vanished.
In any case, since that time, virtually every movie I've watched, that used a home-brew-type coffee pot, in every scene it was without its lid.
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In real-life, a lid-less coffee pot would quickly result in lukewarm coffee, except in Phoenix, Arizona, where during the summer, it's over 95F until Midnight during the summer.
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Battered Bucks
As many of you know, before I became a total Johnny Depp-like hermit, I regularly paid somewhere around two bucks for a horrible coffee and a seat and table at my nearest Starbucks.
When they came out with their premium coffee, I was amazed after my first visit to McDonald's (where I only buy their salads) and tried a cup of their java and found it far superior to Starbucks.
Until I was being poured a freshly-brewed Starbucks, I thought the taste problem may be over-cooked coffee. No it was not. And their new "Save the Franchise" Pike Place Roast, while some claim it is too bland, I found it identical to the normal 10-50w motor-oil-ran-6,000-miles-tasting stuff.
I think their problems with their coffee is that it is older, by far, from grocery-store bought coffee. I think they look for the lowest price, and the biggest buy of beans, and then these kernels of coffee sit and sit and sit while aging about as gracefully as Joan Rivers.
 But, when it's 105F degrees at 9pm, and a creative individual needs a refrigerated space to sit (other than his kitchen counter in his department-store-sized-dressing-room apartment), and write, and bathe in the meaningless "me me me me me" blather of his fellow citizens, for two bucks, you can't beat a Starbucks.
Plus, I usually throw in a dollar tip, if I am not ignored as I shuffle my toad-like presence up to the order counter. One thing you can say, is that at most Starbucks, (excepting the ones in Baghdad) you are often greeted with a smile and a nice, though patently rehearsed, verbal greeting.
Alas, Starbucks, in an effort to stop hemorrhaging losses, has been forced to close over 600 stores.
Some postulate this is due to the very many stores they've already opened, but I think it's because with both Dunkin' Donuts and McDonald's coming out with far superior 'premium coffees', Starbucks is seeing far less coffee drinkers who imbibe in the 'straight-up' zero calorie variety.
However, the atmosphere at a Dunkin' Donuts is far from conducive to writing, while all the McDonald's around me, here in Phoenexico, are basically picnic grounds for our massive population of illegal aliens who, strangely enough, thanks to employers like multi-millionaire Mac McGruder, are also behind the counter.
So I'll stick to sipping my travel mug of Starbucks coffee for ninety minutes before I retreat to the always-clean restroom to pour what's left down the sink, rinse out my jug, and hope it wasn't damaged by the liquid burnt toast tasting brew.
posted Tuesday 07/05/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
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An Interesting Fact
Q: Ever wonder why you fill in the circles on tests in pencil?
A: In computing, 'mark sensing' is a technique that enables pencil marks made in predetermined positions on specially prepared forms to be rapidly input and read into to a computer. The technique makes use of the fact that pencil marks contain graphite and therefore conduct electricity. A mark sense reader scans the form by passing small metal brushes over the paper surface. Whenever a brush touches a pencil mark a circuit is completed and the mark is detected.
From The Hutchinson Encyclopedia
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Revealed: The Three Step Plan
 "Hi! I'm Andy Willougby, and how the heck are you?" Says the homey voice from the radio. He's here to offer us the mysterious Three Step Plan.
For a long while, in his never-ending radio commercials, he was occasionally revealing what the three steps were:
1) You show interest
2) You send in an application
3) They might, or might not approve your application. Ooooohhhh. You might not be good enough. That's just yucky.
So there you are, The Three Step Plan. Well, Mr. Willoughby has been sidetracked by a competitor in the business, and now you can find out that if you're looking to make the $500 to $5,000 a month he talks about, (who would chose the $500?) you are going to be selling . . . Xango.
You might ask me about the claims from members making $5,000 a month you hear on the radio? (That would be moving somewhere around 40 to 50 4-bottle cases each month).
These claims are most likely lies. It's okay for advertisers to lie through their teeth any more. Those people you hear (in virtually any radio commercial) are what are known as 'voice actors.' They are very rarely the people they claim they are.
I know the last scam I investigated, inside an expensive office suite, (probably rented for the week) I was shown cashed commission checks from a few of his various distributors. The only problem was, every check had the same home address on it. Dolt.
Xango consists mainly an almost magical pomegranate-like fruit grown in the rain forests of south-east Asia that is advertised to:
1) Aid in joint flexibility (What does that mean "Aid"?)
2) Promote microbiological balance (Microbiological balance?)
3) Maintain immune system health (And how is this proved?)
4) Provide positive mental support (Oh good, no more Paxil)
Notice how the above sentences are worded: "Aid", "Promote", "Maintain", "Provide". What the hell do any of these vague claims really mean? The claims imply that it does these things, but yet if they  were required to provide scientific proof it did one damned thing other than fill Andy's wallet, they could not.
It's like the spokesman from another Utah-based (except for Quixtar most N.M. companies are based in Utah) network marketing company, Herbalife® if I recall correctly, in a not widely read article published in a Utah newspaper said. I believe he stated that if they were to test their product(s) it would cost 100 million dollars. And in the meantime, he said that they could sell the same $100,000,000 of product without any testing at all, so why test it?
In other words, "The dumb-shit consumers will buy our products based on what we claim they will do. They don't need scientific proof."
But the above four vague claims are not enough to easily close the Xango sale, so individual distributors resort to printing up their own advertising sheets, one of which I scrutinized, as a hell of a salesman, Keith, was pitching me.
Understand that in the past if an individual distributor prints up false claims, his up-line distributor isn't liable, and certainly, the manufacturer is not. Besides the major point of the pitch was not product, but how much money I could make.
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How Valuable is a Possible Cancer Cure?
"Roche Holding AG, the world's biggest maker of tumor drugs, agreed to pay as much as 500 million euros ($774 million) for rights to an experimental cancer medicine developed by ThromboGenics NV and BioInvent International AB."
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But a recent multi-million dollar settlement over claims made by a vitamin manufacturer's representatives, may put an end to that 'false claim' cover for both the up-line distributor and the manufacturer.
The sheet Keith shared with me claimed cures for everything from chapped skin to pancreatic cancer.
And how the hell does Andy Willougby make enough money to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on radio commercials? One way might be that on sign-up Andy gets your credit card number and you get so many cases a month shipped to you automatically, whether you want them or not.
That is until you figure out this Xango thing isn't as easy as you thought. And pride prevents you from returning even one case, (four bottles for $100), as you tell yourself, "I'm not good enough to sell Xango even though it cures MS, hemorrhoids and hair loss!"
And why does Mr. Willougby spend so much on advertising? Because his people are quitting in droves and he needs new ones to fleece.
The bottom line is, that you must be a genuine (S.O.S.) salesman to move the product. You must be a hard-sell salesman, and a closer. And people like that make a hell of a lot more money selling something else, shall I say, something else more legitamate? Like used cars for Van Chevrolet.
The Xango distributor's big comeback to you will be, to absolutely insist it is not selling and that you simply explain the product, give the prospect a sample, and see what they think when you revisit them and see them with their gray hair turned black, bright white teeth, eyesight improved to 20/20 and their arthritis cured.
posted Saturday 06/21/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
More Money
Everyone wants more money these days. My Hyundai's getting up into the eight years old, 100,000+ range, and State Farm Insurance can't charge that much to insure it, so now, hoping to bill me more using a mileage-based calculation, they are auditing how many miles I drive each twelve months.
 And it's not bad enough that I'm already paying somewhere around $3.80 a gallon for gasoline to drive the fifty miles per day back and forth to work. Getting 29.6 miles per gallon while I do it. And no, there is zero public transportation to where I'm going anyway.
The state license tags for this same Korean four-cylinder rocket continue to be outrageous at nearly $100 per year, with government officials patrolling apartment parking lots searching for expired plates while the owners are inside their rented cubicles sleeping and having nightmares of bicycling the twenty five miles to work.
There is apparently even a state law to prohibit residents of apartments from backing their vehicles into the parking space, thus hiding the single plate attached to the rear bumper. It'd be something else if Arizona actually performed a service in regards to the tags, but all they do is send out the bill, the police, and finally the tags themselves, for the poor, slob, owner to stick to his or her stern-mounted license plate.
I got a notice from Wells Fargo Bank the other day that, basically stated that, even though I had done nothing but make payments on time for the past twelve years, they were going to have to raise the interest rate on my Visa credit card because they did not like the way my finances looked.
Perhaps, if during the same past twelve years, Wells Fargo had bothered to minimally research the finances or even the citizenship of the individuals they were letting have $300,000+ mortgages, they would not be in the hole they are today--and trying to fill it in by going after solid citizens and consistent bill payers such as you and I.
So that corn farmers could cash in on the useless and government-mandated, ethanol-as-fuel bonanza, food prices are rocketing up. Happily this food for fuel scandal is finally showing signs of faltering as millions of Laura-Flynn-Boyle-thin citizens world-wide, perish, so some farmer in Wisconsin could sponsor a dirt track car down at Slinger Raceway and remodel his basement bar. Circle K is selling cases of canned pop at the same price as Albertson's. What's with that?
The idiot-voters of the City of Phoenix okayed another 30 years long sales tax, to build more parks  for the Illegal Aliens to habitate during the day, with the drug addicts, gangs, and bums handling the night shift.
Government is already receiving more commission from each and every purchase made in this state than the salesman who generated it. And, pray tell, what did the state do for its commission? Hell it can't even keep out a one-half million strong army of TB-infested 'undocumented workers' from marching across our southern border every year.
I'm lucky enough to have an acquaintance who retired at age forty, as what I call, "a Microsoft millionaire". He told me that the only way to keep up, is to make more money every year. With the $3.23 an hour I made working at Revlon, in the warehouse, in 1970, being approximately $7.00 an hour less than I pull down per hour today, I'd say I'm heading in the wrong direction.
posted Tuesday 06/3/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Doing Something?
We all want to be noticed, we all want someone to walk over to us and ask, "What are you doing?" And for a change, say it with a smile on their face. But only young children do that, for visible interest in strangers is squished out of us as surely as the last blob of toothpaste is forced out of the scrunched and twisted tube onto the newlywed's shared toothbrush.
As a matter of fact, one of my next bumper stickers will read: "Bright Lights, Loud Pipes, Lift Kits. You just want to be noticed. How cute."
How odd that I feel guilty somehow simply sitting here at Borders Books  because I'm not reading something or writing something. We've always got to be doing something, don't we?
Maybe that's why it is widely accepted that watching television (specifically) is doing something. So why don't I have that much more time since I threw my TV out? Actually, I threw my DISH Satellite system out.
On its apartment-manager-approved tripod, it waits, abandoned on my back porch, a white thirty foot coax cable coiled at its feet like some 'War of the Worlds' infant recently disgorged from its mother, who's moved on looking to vaporize Tom Cruise. Yes!
But obviously it is perfectly fine (especially for the advertisers) that tens of millions of Americans sit in front of their TV's imagining that they are actually doing something. They are. They are growing older.
But if you consider that even when we're watching The History Channel, with forty-two minutes of show to the hour, we're only getting a tiny sliver of the same information we'd get in a book which could take six to twenty-six hours to read.
But, no need to feel guilty, because we're doing something.
posted Tuesday 04/29/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Related blog
Corporations "Hire Stupid"
I saw the DVD "Michael Clayton" last night, the story of yet another crooked corporation. Sadly the tale was spoiled by the absolutely unbelievable actions of an attorney who, in his entire lifetime, had a single moment of conscience. 'Spoiled' because everyone knows that such a thing cannot ever happen, not even in the movies. Talking about 'willing suspension of belief.'
 I was thinking about how generally ignorant and imbecilic most security guards are while they either wait for a respectable job, or wait to pass away.
I was thinking about how my employer is breaking about a dozen federal laws and a handful of state ones, every single day. With most of these laws meant to protect the customer and only peripherally sometimes concerned with the employee-slave, who is trusted about as far as the owner of our corporation can toss his 2008 LS460 Lexus.
And I was thinking about how my direct supervisor is so dense as to not understand and then laugh at the simplest of jokes through the gap in his mouth where his false teeth used to be as he rushes out back, or to his car, to huff down his thirteenth cigarette of the morning.
Here are a few examples of how bizarro-like my workplace is. To save on paper towels, I lay wet ones out to dry and re-use them later. If I don't re-use them right away, I immediately put them out of sight in a cabinet no one else uses. The company pays for these same towels, of which we've been known to run out of for a period of more than a few days.
So, one day management decides to clean up and instructs an employee to throw my collection of 'used-towels' away. Not only that, this same employee was told to throw away my rolls of new paper towels, on which my name was clearly written on in large, black felt pen, along with two small water bottles in the refrigerator, there because the customer does not supply bottled water or a drinking fountain.
Not good enough? Not dumb enough? How about this one? As security officers we open gates using remote control clickers that look much like the old-fashioned garage door openers. These clickers wear out fairly often. The latest clicker has four function buttons, one of which, if pushed in error, can slam a crossarm onto the hood of an unsuspecting vehicle, and if the driver is a Black Obama supporter, also spark a race riot.
To forestall this from happening, I took a felt pen and labeled each button. The rest of the guards simply stab a button, turn, and rush back to the television or their cellphone conversation, or step out the back door to suck down another 25 cent cancer stick, knowing the vehicle's driver will honk or scream or something if anything had gone wrong in their choice of buttons.
So, when I came in from my two days off, and stumble back into my workplace, out of the tequila haze that continues to cocoon me, my eyes eventually focus a huge note about the newest clicker: "Remote control devices are not to be written on." And since I am the only employee concerned enough to actually note the function of each button on the devices, I know this note is directed specifically towards me. It's almost as if felt-pen-ink somehow destroys the clicker.  But I know, it is my manager demonstrating his higher status in pyramid. (I guess if you are higher up on a pyramid of shit, you are still higher up.)
In any case, I now take 'invisible' tape and stick it along either side of the pairs of buttons and write on the tape. Tape which is then removed before my manager shows up an hour early, and off the clock, to be certain I didn't sleep the night away, like virtually every one of my midnight shift compatriot's do. (Of course I have photos that are locked away in a Greyhound bus terminal in Tulsa.)
And then I thought how my twenty-one year old son told me that corporations 'hire stupid.' They prefer stupid people for employees. It protects the positions held by their marginally less-stupid managers, who, unable to actually manage, spend their days putting out fires and reprimanding their charges who are not made aware of the arcane rules until after they unknowingly violate them.
The topper is that in the horrible corporation I continue to work for (I figure if I do my Purgatory on Earth I won't have to do it again in Heaven), is that if any employee or government lawsuit is brought against this huge pile of horse droppings organized in the vague shape of a business plan, the Cro-magnon Man office managers would blame the field-manager Neanderthals who would in turn blame the chimpanzee employees, who would be let loose, since these are the only monkeys in this entire zoo the customers actually see.
And just like Wall Street, the top dog will escape richer, and more secure, and more highly feted than ever before.
posted Saturday 04/05/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Job Cement
I glanced at my DVD/CD rack and eyed the case holding the disc of Mr.Wonderful III's 12th grade graduation. And I am lucky to locate and dust off my Cortez High School annual from 1969,  long before even VHS was available, and here he's got a digital video record dated 2004. 2004. Four years ago. Four years.
I have voicemails that I continue to save on my cellphone that are two years old. They are almost all concerning my last bout of looking for a decent job. A respectable job. A paying job. A job with a future. A job that ends at 5 or 6 or 7PM. A job that has weekends off and vacations. A job where my co-workers are concerned about something other than the price of cigarettes, gasoline, the co-pay on their diabetic supplies, winning the lottery, or their planned September trip to Laughlin, Nevada.
As proof that I am insane, even though I have zero job security, I schlep twenty-five miles one way to work. Once there I literally could get murdered doing my job, I pay for my own licensing and uniforms, I must labor seven days a week to make ends meet, and I've seen my pay drop by $8.12 an hour--which forced a move from The Town of Paradise Valley, Arizona ("Don't drink the water") to my much smaller and less expensive apartment in Phoenexico.
Why? And maybe to make me feel better, I wonder how many millions have fallen into the same job-cement and are letting it harden as they also procrastinate moving on. Although I must humbly admit, many of them have no marketable talents to propel them outside of their current employ. While I possess various and sundry talents sorely needed elsewhere ... like in the presidency of the United States, maybe?
 This is so stupid. This job situation I'm in. No future. No security. No income. Hateful clients. A company owner who Donald Trump could give lessons in "how to be humble" to. Plus I hate my job. Other than that I'm doing fine at work. When I was nineteen, I held a job at Revlon, on Lower Buckeye Road in Phoenix, that paid $3.23 an hour. Adjusted for inflation, I am currently earning about eight dollars less than that an hour. After forty-four years of being in the workforce, starting with my Arizona Republic paper route at age thirteen, I'm making only one-half as much as I did as a know-nothing, long-haired, Half & Half Cigarette smoking, Coors-gulping, teenager in the 1970s.
The way out is to begin applying for a new job. And, as the way the book, 48 Days to the Work You Love says, is to apply for not five jobs a week, but five jobs every day for at least two weeks. And do you know what the best part is? It boils down not to your academic credentials, but how much they like you and ... well, how much they like you. So hopefully, I look like someone's grandfather who took them fishing and to the movies and to the football games and attended every school function while also not drooling too much or pinching the shapely ass of the geography teacher.
Someone might say fear of rejection is preventing me from applying for a new job, but how could that be, for, as an actor, I am quite used to being 'rejected'. Boy am I used to being rejected.
I think it is my huge ego, which I claim not to possess--and it is this apparatus, this ME, that holds me to this horrible job. Each one of my unspoken, "Don't you know I can, I have, I know" during each imagined failed job interview, is birthing another case-hardened steel link in the chain that keeps me in job hell.
So even though in the foundry of my mind, I alone have forged this chain that shackles me to my horrible job (with the ghost of my father working the bellows to blow superheated air into the already white-hot flames below the crucible holding the molten steel) I find this mental and metal tether impossible to break.
And that is why I must visit the man with the psychic bolt-cutter. The psychiatrist. I wonder what my co-pay will be?
posted Monday 01/21/2008 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Gasping Over Google
North of Happy Valley Road (exit 218) the Arizona highway department, being only a decade behind demand, is finally improving what we Natives call the Black Canyon Freeway,  and what wanna-be-native sap-heads know as the I-10. As such, they are temporarily narrowing it down to a single lane in both the north and southbound directions from near Happy Valley Road to the Carefree Highway. Which, in this nation's fifth largest city, even between the scheduled hours of 9PM to 5AM, means a desert-tortoise-watching-pace line of vehicles from Ahwatukee to the south and Bumblebee to the north. Addressing that reality, and needing to travel north on the Black Canyon during those hours of constriction and also needing to find a 'reading room', I decided to search out a Starbucks located along the other northern route of out of Phoenix, namely Tatum Boulevard.  I clicked over to Google Maps and in the 'search the map' block typed in 'starbucks tatum boulevard', and there popped up, along with other paid advertiser's, all the Starbucks coffeetiriums along Tatum Boulevard. Simply amazing. Sadly, in today's world, there is also a federal government agency, that by tuning in on the signal sent out from our always-transmitting cellphones, can track each one of us in the same way, only in real time and to within a matter of a few coffee beans. Have you ever wondered why terrorists are always apprehended with more throw-away cell phones than Bill Clinton has throw-away women lined up wanting to audition on his meat harmonica?
posted Sunday 06/10/2007 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
X-Rays at the Doctor's Office
"What an all-important self-centered bitch," I thought as I walked carefully past her as she climbed out of her undoubtedly European luxury SUV while shout-talking into her cellphone. She was so loud that I could discern the entire discourse about her high cholesterol--which was most likely her exact intention.  I beat "Betty" to the sign-in sheet at Doctor Bruce's office and naturally she just had to tap her manicured fingernails, which surely weighed four ounces each, as she waited for me to perfectly print in all my information. Shortly this middle-aged, a la Bonfire of the Vanities, X-Ray, Jewish American Princess, received another, no doubt critical, cellphone call--ignoring the notices on the wall asking for all such devices to be powered down. Deftly dispatching that urgent and very audible emergency, she then, in an attempt to be seen sooner, again stomped up to the receptionist's ledge. Shortly, "Betty the Bitch" (actually only "Betty") was called out before my own earlier-arrived name. A few minutes later my name was also announced and I enjoyed bumping Betty out of the room she had sulked unseen in for the last few minutes.
posted Thursday 05/23/2007 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Colonoscopy: Less Painful than a Job Interview
Being over fifty and like Katie Couric it was past time for your Mr.Wonderful to visit the gastroenterologist and have him peer up my crack.  Excuse me while I retreat to the toilet as the recently gulped three doses of Fleet® Phospho-Soda® kick in. Or should I say "out"? This procedure, a colonoscopy, is where the lower intestine (colon) is examined with a colonoscope introduced through your (or in this case) my, rectum. Four years ago Dr. Abimelech had speculated that I might have an intestinal tumor that was feeding by sucking blood and causing my iron to drop so low as to be rejected by Blood Services every time I went to donate. He suggested a colonoscopy. Instead I chose simply to eschew donating blood. Preparing for the procedure by inducing diarrhea, either by watching THE VIEW for six minutes, or downing six doses of ginger ale spiked with Fleet Phosopo-Soda, I chose the later. After slamming my Wells Fargo Visa with my $1,000 deductible (which would normally caused me to shit) and signing a sheath of release forms, I was in the infamous open-backed gown, with my awesome butt tempting all the nurses. Aware there was a slight chance of my perishing during the exam, and looking up to the ceiling as I was being wheeled to the examination room, I imagined that one day my soul-vacated corpse would also ride a gurney. Was it today? Once in the examination room, I met with my doctor and received an injection silently fed into an already existing and plumbed veinal puncture. The next thing I knew, I was in the recovery room with the beautiful nurse Lisa who was encouraging me to fart the French national anthem. Surrounded by the rumble of unseen patients flatulence I was reminded of after-Thanksgiving naps at the in-laws. A anxious-looking Mr. Wonderful III soon appeared at my side, and while even now I do not remember dressing myself, I was soon at home typing on this laptop while the boy and his squeeze watched reruns of "Charmed". Reruns of Charmed without the lovely Shannen Doherty.
posted Thursday 01/15/2007 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
Corel® Photo Album Fraud
Like many of you, your Mr.Wonderful purchased his final Dell PC in 2006. My Inspiron B130 laptop came pre-loaded with both paid-for and trial software. Other than having Windows XP and Word, I could care what free software was being thrown at me. Two Corel trial programs were loaded by Dell onto the hard drive: their Photo Album and Paint Shop Pro. 
Since I already owned the same programs in a competing brand, I doubted I would purchase either. However, I found Paint Shop Pro X (now XI) a superior product, so I purchased it. Needing only the basic features of the Corel Paint Shop Photo Album Starter Edition I decided to not upgrade and stay with the 'trial version' that was preloaded on the laptop. When my trial period on the Photo Album ran out, I began getting the upgrade reminder that I had zero days left in my trial period, every time I loaded the program and every time I unloaded the program. This would not usually not be a problem, however, the upgrade reminder box has a nasty habit of not allowing other programs to run until its obnoxious 'close' button is pushed. I went to the Corel Answers page and found out that the only way to remove the annoying reminder was to either purchase the Deluxe version of Photo Album or erase the entire program. I might understand this attitude if I had not spent well over $100 both purchasing and then upgrading Corel Paint Shop Pro, but this I do not understand. This is a prime example of why competition in the marketplace, even if it comes from offshore, is a good thing.
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Here is the exact wording from the Corel site:
"When your computer was assembled at Dell's factory Paint Shop Photo Album Starter Edition was one of many programs installed. Your picture files are set up to automatically open in Paint Shop Photo Album Standard. It is possible to turn off the upgrade reminder in the Starter Edition if you go through with the upgrade and install the Deluxe version; however, there is no way to turn this off with the Starter Edition. If you do not wish to purchase the upgrade the following article will cover changing your file associations to a program of your choice so your pictures automatically open in a different program.
This article will conclude with uninstalling Paint Shop Photo Album Starter from your computer."
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When AT&T enjoyed a government-endowed monopoly on the U.S. telephone service:  1) Talking to an operator was a daily occurrence and they were most times meaner than Hillary Clinton after a televised debate with Barack Hussein Obama 2) Due to the extreme expense, families would save for and meticulously detail, time (usually with a sand-filled three-minute hourglass) and orchestrate any long distance phone calls 3) Users could only rent the equipment and only Bell System phones were allowed 4) The typical handset of a Bell-provided phone weighed as much as a five-pound dumbbell, which explained the Popeye-sized left arms on many housewives of the 1950s and 60s 5) Since the service arm of AT&T, the 22 separate Bell Systems, also relished in this same monopoly and had no one to impress or attract, union phone crews Panzered around Phoenix in vans that could have been designed by Hitler's architect, Albert Speer 6) Do not use numbers 1 through 5 above to imagine how responsive a National Health Care System might be to you, an individual citizen, in a country of 300 million.
posted Thursday 01/04/2007 . . . . .
Mr.Wonderful Talks Current Events @ www.mrwonderful.org
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