Photo Index
is an easy to use, index web page listing links to hundreds of my original photos. Clicking the link
will send you to a page of photos decorated by unique captioning that has been capturing the attention
of the entire WWW .
My most popular pages are at:
Recent Buys and Bedstand Books of Mr.Wonderful where I list the most recent books I've bought, with their Barnes & Noble sales ranking, along with the publishers' comments.
The MW Review of Books is where I issue eloquent and frank book reviews the everyday reader can comprehend and use as a factor as to whether to purchase the book or not. Go figure, a book reviewer you can believe.
A well-fed coyote walked within ten feet of your Mr. Wonderful. By the time
he was in the open again I was only able to snap this digitally-magnified fuzzy photo.
Wednesday, your always sky searching Mr.Wonderful witnessed this yellow and red tinged sundog in the breathtakingly blue Arizona Fall sky. When individuals report sighting UFOs, they are often accused of having mistaken one of these sundogs for a thirteen hundred meter long, earth-rumbling, pewter gray, wart and antenna-skinned mother ship from planet Kolob.
Once a rare sight in Scottsdale, Arizona, a now fairly common V-8 powered Ferrari flies by Mr. Wonderful
on the narrowing, and usually harrowing, two into one merging on-ramp feeding the 101 South. Meanwhile MW's four-cylinder silver Hyundai Sonata (which at a mere 56,121 miles was already throwing timing belt teeth ... $500) in an attempt not to be crushed by the Doughboy-sized tires of a fully engorged cement mixer encroaching from behind, buzzes second gear to 4,200 rpm.
I found this creepy thing in a drawer at work. After I coaxed it onto a sheet of paper I deposited it outside to terrorize insects its own size.
It's a solifugid and a member of the arachnida family, as are spiders. It is one of the few insects that eats scorpions and it makes sense that, after fifty-four years in Arizona, I finally saw one because this particular
area is infested with scorpions. This is one of the fastest moving insects without wings that you will ever see.
In this copyrighted and un-retouched photo you can clearly see hovering over Pima and
Pinnacle Peak Roads, an Unidentified Flying Object approximately the size of say, a
Met-Life advertising blimp.
Finally, finally, the worst Mexican Food Restaurant, the Garcia's at Tatum
and Shea Boulevard, succumbs to the wrecking ball. Even though this eatery
served food that was no better than the frozen Mexican dishes packed in oven-proof
cardboard forms, sold at the nearby Albertson's it always seemed to be packed.
I mourn for all the Snowbirds who, having eaten here, think they actually consumed
(Arizonanized) Mexican cuisine, made by Chinamen in the back room.
Once again a fearsome, Chupacabra makes its presence known to your
Mr.Wonderful. I saw it perched on the horizontal limb of the antenna in the right of the photo, and by the time
I could draw my .22 caliber, long rifle equipped automatic pistol (all I had folks) and
my camera, it was flying away. It is so hard to discern in the dark, I put a red dot next to
its flying form. Believe me, it is quite a bit larger than it appears in this
hastily snapped photo.
Gasoline prices take a dive. I'll never complain about $1.75 a gallon
gas again. Sadly, in Europe, due to their socialist tax-especially-the-poor schemes,
on a good day, due to the additive, 'massive taxation,' petrol runs around $1.75 per liter.
We spied this freaky looking creature spraying himself with catsup as he was
poised atop a step van. Grasping a javelin-sized hot dog stick, my son guarded me while I snapped this photo.
Tuesday, I awoke, nude and shivering, curled in the fetal position laying on the rough and refrigerator cold asphalt of an isolated cul-de-sac in a north Scottsdale gated community. As I creaked myself into a standing position, brushing off loose gravel, my Hyundai sat patiently waiting for its driver, engine quietly tick, tick, ticking, driver's door open, while the 5 candlepower dome light bathed the interior of the Korean-made POS in piss-yellow. The radio, set to 97.5 FM, as Frank Sinatra crooned a melody from last century. Warm inside the dash mounted player, the silver Slaughterhouse 5 audio book CD waited, unspun. My uniform shirt and pants were neatly folded and laid on the passenger seat. Freshly polished shoes, with dark socks draped over them, waited on the floor mat. The digital clock read 5:55. When I reviewed my SD200 Cannon digital camera, this was the last photo. Date-stamped 5:26AM, November 15, 2005.
What happens when a big truck stops running? They send out a big tow truck. This photo was
taken near the Scottsdale Airport at Pima Road and the 101 Freeway interchange. If you look intently
at the blue sky far above the cab of the white truck, you can see a general aviation airplane coming in for a landing.
The mountains in the background are the McDowell's, where the McDowell Mountain Ranch master planned community has been created. Within M.M.R., the guard-gated Cimarron Hills subdivision swells like a white peaked pimple peeking out of a wrinkle on the underside of an unclean and diseased testicle. This is where the rudest, meanest, most inconsiderate, malcontents, make-believe millionaires and spirochetes in all of Arizona metastasize. Cimmaron Hills is a truly horrific place to attempt to earn your daily bread at.
Sure enough Tuesday Morning I must have been abducted. Because this weekend, while on patrol far north of Phoenix, I was stopped by an extra terrestrial. Well, I wasn't really stopped, like he froze me with a Frigidaire® raygun or something, I had to stop. Anyone would have. You can see by his size, that even at night, even with my patrol truck's spotlight out of commission, that Extra Tom could not be missed. "Extra Tom," that's what his name sounded like when he said it. And I'm not even sure how he said it or how I heard it, whether it was by voice or telepathy or a little of each. Extra Tom and I had an interesting discussion, ranging from space-time warps, anti-gravity and God to pondering if Sheriff Joe is becoming senile. Unlike most Americans, who are so pissing puppy-dog eager to tell everyone and anyone (even via a loudly spoken, one-sided ear-mounted cell phone discussion while in line at Albertson's) how important, how loved and how rich they are, your Mr.Wonderful's side of the conversation was a brief one sentence question, followed by a respectful and appropriate silence, while my immense guest uttered the secrets of the universe . . . to me. Only me. Extra Tom, Dr. Doolittle-like, was able to persuade a prancing, stinky, skunk, who happened to be prowling the half-built neighborhood in search of half-eaten jalepeños, into snapping this photo. I know Extra Tom probably doesn't look like what you expected in an E.T. but, we've got to realize that what we see on the movie screen is simply a Hollywood writer's idea of what space visitors would look like. This is real.
Every now and then, actually quite rarely, and even more rarely caught on film, one
can see hot air balloons attracting gawkers who have traveled from further away than
Wisconsin. I put a red dot next to this airborne snowbird. I wonder, if like our earthbound
snowbirds, he left his turn signal on since the Kirkwood Gaps outside of Jupiter?
Merging onto the southbound 101 from the deadly Pima Road on-ramp and missile launch,
I photographed this traffic stop. The Jeep Grand Cherokee in front of the Department
of Public Safety SUV contained the offending citizen. Must have been serious, because as
I flew by, trying not to be gobbled up by the shiny toothed grill of roaring, McDonald's-sized
Copenhagen truck, I witnessed a slim young lady being handcuffed by one of our state policeman.
(You interject that Arizona doesn't have 'state police'? Au contraire mon ami. As proof, simply read the text on the side of any Arizona Department of Public Safety [DPS] cruiser.)
Looking down on the north Scottsdale and Phoenix area you can see the
brown cloud that is generated by the tens of thousands of unregistered and
massively polluting vehicles that our native population of illegal aliens
use to get to and from their employment provided by American's who put personal profit
before America.
Heading back to my tony Town of Paradise Valley apartment from my in-laws in Peoria, Arizona
(a forty mile journey that, prior to this rubberized-asphalt padded freeway being built, would have taken an hour and a half on city streets, with my car taking two or three hits from 9mm bullets) this pair of D.P.S. cruisers went flying by me. The were skimming the asphalt, most likely, in a preemptive effort to ruin one drunk's Thanksgiving Day, while possibly saving the day for numerous other stuffed bird eaters. I cannot believe how recklessly my fellow citizens (and undocumented workers) drive. Their most common and outrageous risk? Following one car length behind the vehicle in front of them, when they are traveling at speeds over 65 MPH / 105 KPH. Idiots. I thought it quite humorous at work today when resident's with English, German, Swedish and Hispanic accents all wished me a "Happy Thanksgiving." Think about it.
