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.
Coming into Phoenix, heading south on the I-17 (Black Canyon) Freeway, I noticed a lot of
dust ahead. Too much. I whipped out my handy Cannon Elph pocket camera and snapped this photo. It's
hard to see, but the white Taurus (beneath the red dot) moments before headed south, apparently spun out in the dirt
divider area and ended up pointed north on the other side of the freeway. The skid marks crossing the yellow
line, may be from that vehicle but I'm not certain.
With my community shrouded in the pewter gray cloak of darkness,
and my residents sleeping under the single bedsheet allowed them by
the dregs of the summer heat of Scottsdale, Arizona, I was driving their streets.
While gingerly picking up beige-stained bottles of Starbucks' frappuccinos,
Cuban cigar butts and smelly jars of caviar,
I was attacked by this thick-as-a-man's-forearm Western Diamondback rattlesnake.
Shaking its cheeto-sized rattle, it gave warning, and then struck out at me.
I dodged and it missed, my Zen-like response took over my limbs and as it was drawing back for its next strike,
my own hand struck out, snatched the creature right behind his fanged and poisonous open jaws, and held his windpipe closed
until he expired. I gave him reptilian last rites and flung him into the desert. Later as I drove by the same spot, on my
way to my combination guard shack and shoe-shine hut, I could hear the cackle of cactus wrens and ravens fighting over his
defeated flesh.
At the emission testing station. Why are we there? Because crime rates have gotten so low
that in North Scottsdale our "Officer Friendly" is left cruising parking lots for the vehicles
of native-born citizens that have escaped the registration process. In this case, the blue
1996 (which the Arizona Department of Motor Vehicles had in their data base as a "1993") Sable,
which runs $58 per year to register (remembering 'registration' is simply a soft-sounding
word for yet another tax) was snagged by a brave, Kevlar-vested, Glock, Taser and mace side-armed, Scottsdale police officer in broad daylight. Who then, via a hand-written warning notice in script a first-grader would be proud of, threatened my son with towing the of his aging Mercury to an impound yard. We need more men in blue like that! Scottsdale police, it seems, are increasingly tasked with boosting the already tsunami-sized flow of revenue into the coffer's of government, more than they are with actually stepping-out and protecting the legal-citizens whose tax dollars (collected under whatever name) fund their paychecks. Remember, do not phone Scottsdale Police if a friend or relative is suicidal. Because when the Scottsdale Police arrive, they will kill your friend or relative.
The left-tipping-liberal pollster, the bearded Earl de Berge, over at his
Behavior Research Center, makes front page news by declaring
the citizens of Arizona have unfairly exaggerated the presence
of Illegal Latino Aliens in our midst, defying what your Mr. Wonderful, working
at six different guard gates in the state, sees every day while talking to (or attempting to talk with,
for many refuse to learn even rudimentary English, instead, expecting their far more intelligent and ambitious American hosts to learn Spanglish) nothing but car after car after truck after
van full of individuals who speak not more than two words of English and drive vehicles without
the benefit of driver's training, driver's licenses, emission testing, registration or insurance. But
Mr. Earl de Berge would only blame that on us too.
Why had we not registered the vehicle with the photo-radar
license plate cover? Because we knew it would not pass emissions and we couldn't afford the needed repairs.
Guess what? It didn't pass. And, according to Johnny, our AAA certified Goodyear garage mechanic, repairs to this ten year old rumbletrap, will run over 890 dollars American, with the caveat that it still may not pass emissions. Honestly, the life of an Illegal Alien certainly appears easier than that of a citizen . . . it certainly is far cheaper. When will the rest of Arizona's citizens get as mad about this grossly unfair situation as I am? (The total repair cost came to over $1,300.)
Even though unleaded fuel remains amazingly high priced, Arizonan's with
their addiction to SUV's the size of World War II Sherman M4 tanks, continue to
pump gas at such a prodigious rate that they wear out rows of gas station
dispensers every week.
Preparing to finally repair the wires that the pack-rats had chewed through last Fall, I opened the hood of my Hyundai to discover that these industrious little bastards, with the puff on the end of their tails, had crammed almost five pounds of Palo Verde tree seed pods under my hood. It gets extremely hot beneath the bonnet of any car and I was incredibly fortunate to have not lost the vehicle in fire fueled by the winter larder these energetic miniature mammals had so carefully stocked.
While taking my normal batch of daily photos, I noticed this plume of white smoke approximately
fifteen miles to the west of the Troon North area of Scottsdale. Turns out the 1,000 plus acre fire was begun today at 9:30 a.m. after an auto crash on the Phoenix-bound lanes I-17 about a mile south of the Carefree Highway. This particular stretch of road is traveled by your Mr. Wonderful ten to thirty times per month. While maintaining a 69 MPH cruise-controlled velocity (the absolute slowest I can risk in the 65 MPH Speed Limit without ensuring a rear end accident featuring me) I am appalled at the unsafe driving practices I regularly witness. I am genuinely surprised there are not more violent accidents.
Because my rat-infested Hyundai can no longer reliably idle in the construction traffic on Pima Road, I took Happy Valley home this afternoon. What drew my attention to this dirty Jeep Cherokee was its huge roof-mounted rear brake lights, that even in the Arizona sun caused me to flip down my sunglasses as they glared red in front of me. When the vehicle turned southbound onto Pima, I noticed it had a breadmaker-sized white GPS roof-mounted antennae, several brackets with unknown devices attached, a powerful external cell phone antennae, serious off road tires along with a roof mounted spare and most curious of all, a black three-inch diameter flexible hose that ran from inside the driver's compartment, along the outside of the front fender and ended near the grill at about headlight height. I believe this was a Department of Homeland Defense vehicle designed to sniff out bio-toxins and other weapons of mass destruction that terrorists might use to murder the tens of thousands of pale, white-skinned and brittle tourists who visit Arizona during our mild winters. As if to emphasize that I was taking a photo of something I was not supposed to even notice, the vehicle quickly pulled off onto the wide dirt shoulder of Pima Road and with the passenger side door flying open, a very fit physique garbed in military dress, leaped out and expertly leveled a 9mm Beretta automatic pistol at your sweating Mr.Wonderful, stuck gripping the steering wheel of his surging and sputtering Hyundai wishing I'd taken that job with Princess Cruise Lines. The shot was blocked by a massive Airstream Land Yacht 390XL motorhome adorned with plates announcing "America's Dairyland" coming between me and the stationary Cherokee. Got milk?
Another shocking day at the Shell gasoline station. I remember getting rid of our Suburban Assault Vehicle because
it ran forty dollars to fill it up with forty gallons. Today I paid $31.21 . . . for a dribble more than ten gallons
of premium unleaded. But I feel good, because the money is going to a worthy cause: the good-hearted Muslims in the Middle East. Who demand we all convert. Or die. Women and children first.
Seen once again is a City of Scottsdale photo radar van. And once again anyone who
believes it is anything but another revenue vehicle for city hall most likely also believes
that the stains on Monica's blue dress were from a Krispy Kreme powdered cake donut and not a DNA-tagged spurt from The Passion of the Clinton. Like Mr.Wonderful, and other less well known Conservative commentators (like Rusty Limbaugh) have told you again and again, "Government will never be satisfied until they tax and steal 100% of what
you earn. And then they will complain that you do not earn enough."
There are a few occurrences that keep me in my job where I am often handled with the same disdain that a warm rabbit turd found stuck to the pencil thick heel of a wealthy North Scottsdale Manolo Blahnik designer shoe might face. Those occurrences are the varied visual delights: from the decades-old desert tortoise ambling across the driveway or the five foot long bull snake streaking across the same asphalt, to the tear-evoking lonely sunrises and the occasional eagle swooping down for a breakfast of quail or a ghost-like mountain lion fading in and out of view among Man's artificial constructs. A few of my resident's believe me to be a childish, moronic, imbecile, always snatching up my binoculars, running outdoors and searching the skies, or swinging around snapping photos. While they, being more civilized and cultured, concentrate on the important things of life: drug rehab, their latest divorce, eviction and why Robb & Stucky delivery trucks are so darn noisy. Today, from the northeast I heard coming towards me such a rumbling, roaring, racket that it could only be a World War Two aircraft of some sort. Shaking the gate house as its four unmuffled engines pulled it through the clear blue desert sky, this B-17 was no doubt bound for a bombing run on the Princess Hotel and the Tournament Player's Club golf course.
In order to pay off my 'debt' incurred for Taxable Year 2004. Near the 15th of every month, I mail the Internal Revenue Service a check for one hundred dollars. I owe because I am employed and (under monstrous pressure) I stay employed: I work sick, I get my flu shots, I don't take vacations and labor over many holidays. Just like you do. Where is the 'Service' in Internal Revenue Service? As I was applying Preparation H ® this morning to the only area I've ever found government servicing me, I was thinking, "Who exactly does the I.R.S. 'service'?" Their own statistics expose that the upper one-half of taxpayer's pay 97% of all taxes collected and that top half consists of virtually anyone who has a job for six months
out of any year. One might ponder why the bottom 50% of taxpayers, the same 50% who receive most of the largesse paid for
with our tax dollars, my $100 a month check included, pay only 3% of all taxes? I've heard of charity
but this is far beyond charity. This is insanity.
Why don't WE complain about taxes anywhere near as much as we do about gasoline pump prices coming close to the price of bottled tap water? Taxes, fees, registrations, licenses and permits take almost one-half of every working man and working woman's gross income.
With that overly long build up, here is a photo of an
Arizona Department of Public Safety Courtesy Van that searches our highways and assists stranded motorists.
Granted, many of the individuals it will aid are most likely Illegal Aliens broken down in their Edsel sedans converted into pickup trucks, but finally, the average tax paying Arizonan has at least
chance (he hopes he never has to use) to get a 'free-service' paid for with her own tax dollars.
By the way, our D.P.S. is the last branch of Arizona government that needs good P.R. like this,
as I've found its officers' to be the most helpful and professional of any department of
Butch Napolitano's administration ... and, unlike Butch, I've been in Arizona since 1951.
Here we see a humming bird relaxing on a twig so small that it would sag under
the weight of a June bug in October. And true to their name, while it was relaxing, I could hear it humming the
"Colonel Bogey March." Incredible.
At 6:24 am Tuesday, the 18th of October, we see the clouds gathering for a blissful Fall Season north Scottsdale, Arizona storm. A storm that brought driving rain and popcorn kernel-sized hail, ending with a rare mountain-shrouding fog and a drop from a predicted high of 92F/33C degrees, to a chilling noontime temperature of 55F/12C degrees. Add a brief and slightly frightening sighting of a huge cottontail-rabbit-fattened bobcat looking for shelter and it became a delightful day. If I wasn't a security officer, that is.
A black helicopter buzzes the gate house of your Mr.Wonderful.
They are attempting to surprise me outside of the protection of brick and plaster so a .223 round
can be swiftly inserted into my cranium
by an agent of the Syrian Secret Service via a Steyr Scout Tactical Elite sniper rifle. This is
the same lethal firearm that Phoenix police officers gunrack in their MD500 Notar helos.
In the furor over photo-radar and anti-photo radar license plate covers that attempt to blur the eye of the camera and halt the delivery of a moving violation via process
server; some drivers have gone overboard. Witness a license plate cover so effective that it blocks even the prying eyes of Mr. Wonderful, much less those of a photo radar setup.
Who says us mammals cannot learn from reptiles? After all, the Evolutionists insist
that life on this planet surely evolved from the same organic toilet water-level-scumline
of a lone, pre-historic Earth-visiting Extra-Terrestrial star traveler. In this photo
we see proof that the Sylvilagus audubonii (Audubon's cottontail) in his never ending battle against his primary predator, the Automobilus fastus firestoni, has evolved the uncanny
ability (similar to lizards) of detaching his 'cotton tail', which momentarily distracts and pauses the hungry Automobilus, while the big-eared rabbit smiles and scampers off to the nearby safety of man-made desert landscaping.
Seen on Dynamite Boulevard, aka: Road, looks like the car itself
lost a boxing match to an Hummer or was clipped by an Amtrak train at a
railroad crossing.
On the interchange from the Phoenix, Arizona 101 Freeway West to the I-17 North (Black Canyon Freeway)
I am glad I was not on hand to witness these rivulets of black scars being created. I am also certain that the pilot simultaneously birthed skid marks in his Fruit of the Looms. After all, Arizona has become the home of the multi-tasking highway driver.
Being an avid bird watcher, your Mr. Wonderful can easily tell that what appears
to be a red, red Cardinal is actually an English Sparrow dressed up for a Halloween
party in the branches; maybe even at the Longbranch.
can be swiftly inserted into my cranium
by an agent of the Syrian Secret Service via a 
