Today, I had planned on a Success Saturday post but, feeling a bit like Little One above, that’s not going to happen.

Evidently, I’ve not done a Success Saturday post since last August, so one is desperately overdue!

Instead, you’ll get to see Little Too glamming it up like Adam Lambert:

Naturally, I realize I should post pictures on the chihuahua blog, which has not been updated in many moons even though doing so is on my Things to Do list. Things to Do lists can be depressing… But, anyway, yes, I should update the chihuahua blog but have I mentioned this is what I feel like:

Such is life.

This miniature display model arrived in the mail today: the Phoenix which you may remember from Star Trek: First Contact. A larger, toy version is also available, but I preferred this miniature because (a) it was pretty inexpensive and (b) doesn’t take a lot of room!

I took several photographs before I got one that looked the way I wanted. I could have probably done a bit better had I setup the camera on a tripod and setup some lights too, but I didn’t feel like going through all that. So, be happy with what you see here.

Nonetheless, it is a pretty cool model, and has some pretty good detail for such a small one. It’s about 3 inches long once assembled. Assembly is easy. The ship itself comes in three pieces. Just have to align it right, which is relatively easy unless you have poor vision. Just make sure you’re putting it on right and don’t force it together. There is a certain way it fits together, and the rounded “tab” has a flat side. It’s easier to spot on the one part than the other (sorry, don’t remember which and I don’t want to take it apart). But, if you pay close attention, you’ll get it without a problem. The base comes in three parts as well. Very easy to put together. Then, just mount the ship on the base and you’re all set.

Looks nice on your desk or curio. The warp nacelles are adjustable too. They can be outstretched, ready to warp off and meet the Vulcans, or they can be in the closed position. Get yours today, and you can have your own model 54 years before Zefram Cochrane builds the real thing out of an old nuclear missile.

Meanwhile, on the topic of phoenixes…

Well, this false potato beetle did not rise from his own ashes, but he did (sort of) return from the dead.

Last summer, I caught a few false potato beetles, intending to take pictures of them. I don’t know if I ever got around to that. At any rate, they eventually died. So, I stopped putting in new food for them. I didn’t clean out the cage either, waiting instead for spring cleaning.

The other day, I happened to look in the cage, and here was this guy wandering about. I don’t know if he’s survived by not eating at all, or by eating the dried up plants in the cage (which don’t look chewed on) or sustaining himself on old, stale water. No idea. But, he’s still alive.

I remember when I was a kid, I was trying to see how long they would live in captivity. The longest I ever had one live was a few months. The longest living died on Christmas day way back when.

I think I may have had one live a month or two longer than that a few years back, but I don’t remember for certain. At any rate, I think this one must be the longest living.

I gave him some food tonight, thinking he would eagerly eat new, fresh food. He just wandered around on it but didn’t eat. Maybe he thinks not eating will make him immortal?

Scratch that. I just checked in on him, and he’s taken a few nibbles. Now he’s just standing there. Maybe he’s savoring it, or maybe his stomach is doing backflips. Who knows. Anyway, I’ll see how long he keeps on ticking.

Rumor has it that Speedy’s birthday was this week. Purportedly his real birthday, and not the fake birthday of several weeks back. Or something. I don’t know. Happy Birthday, Speedy, if it is indeed your birthday.

I am so confused.

There is nothing wrong with your computer monitor. You are entering a new dimensional shift. Please do not adjust your set. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We control the brightness. The contrast is all yours, baby. You are entering a dimension of blight and of bind. For the next hour, or however long it takes you to read this, we will control all that you see and read. What you hear is up to you and the kids screaming in the other room. We are not responsible for that. You are about to participate in something or other. Blah de blah blah blah. Lip balm and soda pop. You are heading into the middle ground between light and shadow into a nebulous grey area where plots and twists are common, except in today’s day and age when plots and twists are reduced down to simplified plots because TV and film executives can’t understand a plot more complex than 2 + 2 and don’t think you are any different. Thus, you don’t watch as much TV, the ratings tank, they drop good programs because nobody’s watching, but nobody’s watching because the show has been bounced to so many different days and times that no one knows when their favorite shows are on anymore though it doesn’t really matter because about the time they find it, they’ll have gone into reruns or there’ll be new episodes and people will realize they missed the first two episodes of the season so they might as well wait until the repeats to catch up, so then the ratings on new episodes go down and the shows get cancelled and the audience is like, what the frak is up with that? I liked that show. But, no matter. They don’t care about your letters and eMails anymore. They pay people to ignore those things for them. So, you’re stuck in a different dimension. A dimension of blight and of bind, but I’ve said that already. The signpost up ahead… nah, forget it. Yo, take me home to Bel-Air!

I pulled up to the house about seven of six, who really knows anymore? The GPS was broken, the batteries were down, my watch was on the back porch of some roly-poly little bat faced girl. There were hints and tints, and the colors all ran, when the Mandolin rain came pouring down, down on me. Oh, I wish it would rain down on me now. Now, now is the time when all the rhymes are busting the crimes. And the smooth operators and the yellow bananas all board the train for the snow pajamas. Who knows what’s in the city? It’s a city on a hill. We built this city on a hill on account of the flooding and jamming our strawberry bread. It’s like shattered dreams on a coal-winded day, when the clouds arise from the night-time slumber and away and away we go.

So far away, so far away from me. That’s what you are. Don’t cry no crocodile tears. Do crocodiles cry tears? What about wooly dears and bears? Have you ever seen a wooly bear? Not the caterpillar, silly, a ferocious wooly bear, like a wooly mammoth but a bear. Argh! Aghast, me maties! Ahoy! Ahoy! Take on me, take me under the pale blue sun of so long ago from now. Isn’t that ironic?

People often wonder how to make money doing nothing. In fact, it is the most searched phrase on Google.*

Sadly, these days, it is possible to make money doing nothing, similar to how you can succeed in American business today.

You see, making money isn’t about building something useful, providing something of value or even working at all. Unfortunately.

But, first, let’s get the political discussion out of the way by mentioning the advice that politicians should be following. After all, with the recession in full force, many Americans have come to these same conclusions. Unfortunately, the tax-and-spend-and-tax-and-spend-some-more mindset in Washington D.C. isn’t changing anytime soon.

“If you know how to spend less than you get, you have the philosopher’s stone.”
~Ben Franklin

“If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.”
~Ben Franklin

“If you would know the value of money, go try to borrow some; for he that goes a-borrowing goes a-sorrowing.”
~Ben Franklin

All those cities and states and whatnot looking for bailouts should be listening to that last bit of advice very carefully. Many banks have already learned that the hard way!

Anyway, lots of people want to know how to make money doing nothing. Well, if you have the stomach for politics, that’s one way for you. You don’t need to be smart or be able to do math or even be able to read. You don’t even need to keep security secrets either–just ask Joe Biden! Nor do you have to know history–again, just ask Joe Biden!

Oh, but enough about politics…

You want to know how to make money doing nothing. Well, first you have to be born into a rich family, then you make an embarrassing tape, which makes you famous. Then you can make money off the fact that you’re famous. You can get paid to party. You can get paid to call things hot. Whatever.

But, for most people, that’s not an option. You could resort to selling bodily fluids or even selling organs on the black market, but the organs are where the money is and eventually you will run out. You’re not going to get rich selling your bodily fluids, unless you’re already famous, in which case you can leverage your fame for money and you won’t need to sell any bodily fluids.

You could also stumble across oil, a gold mind, some long lost artifact and make money selling that. But, again, that’s not an option for most people.

So, how can you make money doing nothing?

Well, you probably can’t. You’re going to have to work for it. Or think for it. Or work and think for it. Sorry.

And, with the way the politicians are spending money right and left, you’re going to need to work even harder for it, because they’ll end up taking more of it away through taxes, which means you’ll need to make more.

The alternative is to make no money at all. Then demand everything be provided to you free of charge. But, you won’t have been the first to embrace that idea, will you?

*Not really. I made that up.

You have no idea what this is.

That’s okay. I have no idea where my story is going.

Let me rephrase that. I know where the story is going. I know how it begins, though a lot remains in flux. But, there is a whole middle section that is a complete blank.

It wouldn’t be so bad if I had an idea of how I was going to transition from the beginning to the middle, but I’m not sure how the beginning ends.

And, that’s where I end up stuck every time I look to work on the story. I keep refining the details, getting portions of the backstory to work better, but that beginning is generally elusive.

I sometimes wonder if I picked the right character to make the focus of the story, but I keep coming back to the conclusion that I have. The tough part is developing the character with his personal struggle against the storyline.

Take Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, for example. The storyline was Indiana Jones battles Nazis, but his personal struggle is developing a relationship with his father and that personal struggle is really what the movie is about. The Holy Grail and the Nazis are really secondary.

So, that’s basically where I’m stuck. I know the storyline (i.e. the Holy Grail and the Nazis part of my story) but I keep getting stuck on the character’s personal struggle. I know what it is, but I remain stuck on how to illustrate it.

When the whole world starts a-gettin’ you down and city life just isn’t what it used to be, it is comforting to know that you can pack it all up and take the whole city with you when you go…

When you go into the great beyond, where the stars shine bright and none of them are on crack.

You just fire up your polycarbonate geese and off you go, into the wild black yonder. Off you go, where moon paste comes in a tube and it turns your teeth a bright bluish white. So bright it looks like it’s glowing even without a black light. But there’s plenty of black light in space. Watch out for that dwarf star, and black holes and black matter.

Space isn’t for sissies and when you go into the great beyond, you’ll see the stars shine bright and none of them want you to watch their latest movie which was a remake of a remake of something that nobody liked in the first place.

So, off you go with your polycarbonate geese and your city and your friends who had no idea that you could do that. Everyone is in shock and panicking. There is rioting in the streets. But, you can rise above it all, because you know what’s going on. You’re filming it all and laughing it up, because you know this is going to be a killer video on YouTube. Mayhem in space! The space city goes wild!

When you go into the great beyond, you’ll wonder why you never did before. You’ll see stars shine bright, until they get pulled into black holes and all the light disappears and you realize you’re in too close, so you fire up the geese, but they’re struggling. They can’t breathe but it’s okay because they’re made of concrete so they don’t need to breathe!

Whew! You made it. But just be careful of those space deer!

This has been a response to Speedcat’s “Space Kissing Booth and the Giant Corndog Boob” post.

Have you been abducted by aliens? Are you worried about being abducted by aliens? Perhaps you should be. According to statistics I just made up, you are 85% more likely to be abducted by aliens than be involved in a plane crash. And, if you don’t fly, your odds of being abducted by aliens shoots up another 25%. Funny how that works, but the numbers don’t lie.

You need this!

You need Galactic Dew to keep yourself safe from aliens who would like to abduct you and probe your body with all sorts of things that will cause you extreme pain. On the plus side, they’ll wipe your memory, so you’ll only feel that pain during the abduction experience and forget soon after. Win some, lose some.

But, with Galactic Dew, you won’t have to worry! It is the choice of denizens throughout the galaxy to keep themselves and their children safe from those curious and troublesome Grays.

I went through a lot of trouble to get this for you. Earth is not part of intergalactic treaties, so Galactic Dew is not normally available for us earthlings, making us a prime target for the Grays. But, I came across a Centauri smuggler that was more than willing to sell me a few shuttle-fulls in exchange for some marbles and toast, which are apparently rare commodities elsewhere in the universe.

And now I am pleased to offer it to you on a subscription plan for only $149 per month. For under $5.00 a day, which is the typical cost of a fancy coffee, you can keep yourself safe from aliens. But, you must act now! Once word gets out, there will be great demand and quantities are already limited. Right now, you can lock in your price of $149 a month for a full year. Otherwise, I can see the price of this product going up to as much as $1349 per month! As I said, supplies are limited.

Galactic Dew comes with a full money-back guarantee. If you are abducted by aliens within 60 days of your purchase, we will issue you a full refund, minus shipping and handling charges of $89.50.

Contact me now to get in on this offer!

Mellow Yellow Monday and Mellow Yellow Monday

Speedy has thrown down the gauntlet and slapped me with his chain-mail glove. He thinks he can out-weird me. It is so on.

Ding ring, ring ding ding. Bama bama ding wrong. Oh dey, oh day. Oh, oh, my. Bama bama ring ding, ding ring.

The space flowers. Gotta get hip to their jive, man, or they’ll suck you up into a black hole in your own backyard. That’s the final frontier right there, man. Getting squashed like a bug getting smashed in your backyard if your backyard had a large hadron collider and the bug got smashed in it, along with an electron and the whole world came apart. That’s some serious mojo. You don’t want to mess with that.

So, you better groove with your hips and get hip to their groove, because the space flowers are coming to your backyard. The birds and the bees will deliver their seeds, baby. And your weed-eater can’t do nothing about it. These space flowers are tough like final cold core of a white dwarf star. You can’t whack that without getting whacked yourself. And that’ll hurt your ankles, and that’ll really mess with your groove. Then you won’t be hip to their groove and you’ll hear that giant sucking sound right before you get smashed into a tiny black hole.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, man.

Many people are familiar with cicadas, most notably the 17-year variety that reaches adulthood every 17 years.

Fewer people, however, are familiar with the 170-year cicada. This fellow spends nearly two hundred years underground, growing and growing each year. By the time they reach adulthood, they can reach heights comparable to a five story building.

Unlike their smaller cousins, the 170-year cicada will feast on animals as well as plants. Being so large, it is difficult for them to get their sustenance from trees, as they can not easily suck the liquids from a tree. Animals make quicker and easier meals.

Suicide is generally recommended if you should be cornered by one of these creatures. Being impaled by their proboscis and having your body drained of its fluids is a generally painful way to go. Best just to jump off a cliff or a tree or whatever height you can reach and let the creature slurp your remains from the ground after you’re already dead.

These are endangered species, so shooting at them to save yourself is against the law.

The last brood of the creatures was back in 1839. Worldwide, some 96,000 people were reportedly killed by these giant cicadas.

I have inwented green tea. Or is that, I hawe inwented green tea? How would Chekov say “have”? I don’t remember. Odd that he doesn’t call himself Chekow.

Anyway, so I have invented green tea. It’s not green tea, but black iced tea. But, wait, it’s not completely iced tea. For one thing, there is no ice, since the water was chilled so I didn’t really need ice. No, this is half tea and half limeade.

It’s like an Arnold Palmer, but using limeade instead of lemonade.

I would have put green food coloring in it, for the effect for the camera, but I didn’t have any.

As mentioned in the previous post, I will make strange images for you. One hundred bucks. Maybe more. Then I will buy food coloring and post some real green tea. Maybe I’ll even use green tea and make it green. Maybe I’ll make iced tea with green tea then add limeade and then add food coloring and put it in a recycled glass and it will be green all the way around.

Oh, yes, I’m sure someone already invented this Lime Palmer or Arnold Limer? Hmm. You see why I went with green tea? Anyway, I’ll be like Al Gore and claim I invented it. Then I’ll hop on a plane with my green tea to warn everyone of the dangers of not going green. Just don’t inhale the exhaust from the jet engine. That’s not green, though maybe it’ll turn your lungs green. No, I think you’ll get black lung. Wait, jets aren’t coal-powered. I don’t know what color your lungs will be, but it can’t be good. Anyway, please send money so I can buy myself a jet to fly around the world to warn about the dangers of flying around the world. Thanks.