Where’s Goldenpalace.com when you need them?

My great idea for a cafepress store failed miserably so I closed it down. It was costing me more to keep it open than I was making. Cafepress is also a very sleazy operation. To be able to close your store, you have to agree to allow them to keep any cash you made that you haven’t received up to that point. You can not close it unless you do so. So, I won’t even get the couple of dollars I made in sales. Oh well, live and learn I guess.

I have come up with another way to try to finance my little “bicycling across the country” venture. I got this idea when I was looking around on Ebay. Seem you can sell just about anything there. I saw a couple listings where people were willing to tattoo an ad on various parts of their bodies for large amounts of cash. Some of them were trying to get up to thirty grand for that. There is no way in hell that I would have anything, let alone and ad, on me. However, I came up with another idea. Yes, this one is probably doomed to fail but it only cost thirty-five cents to place the ad.

My Ebay listing

People, namely goldenpalace.com, have spent money on goofier stuff than this so I thought I’d give it a shot.

Yeah, $7,500 seems like a lot of money…and it is….but after figuring out the cost of a trip like this it is cutting it close. You have to figure that I’m starting from scratch. A decent bike to make the trip is a minimum of a thousand dollars. Then you have to figure in the equipment. If I ever get a chance to do this trip I decided it would be best to travel light but, according to my window shopping, it would still cost close to another thousand just to equip the bike with racks, panniers, lights and other supplies. Then you have to figure in the cost of getting to the starting point and getting home. This leaves about five grand left for the trip itself. That would be just enough to cover things like food, the periodic hotel room (I’m fifty and there is no way I’m sleeping on the ground every freakin’ night), the inevitable catastrophe that you know is bound to happen at least once during the trip and misc. expenses. They always try to tell you that bicycling is cheaper than driving. In this situation, they lie.

So I opened a CafePress store

Seems like every time I do some picture that shows up on Glenn Beck’s front page someone says I should put it on a T Shirt or bumper sticker or something. Of course the couple times I did something like that no one, including the person saying I should do it were interested. Such fickle consumers. This, of course, means that my latest venture is doomed for failure before it starts but what the hell, I’m doing in anyways. I opened a CafePress shop yesterday. CafePress is kind of a Vantage Press for people who do graphics. Can’t get anyone else interesting using your work? CafePress will slap about anything on a t-shirt for you. However, unlike the Vantage Press self publishing service, it doesn’t cost you anything up front. You upload the graphic and if someone wants it on a shirt they charge them and print it out for them. They take their share and the “artist” keeps the markup. If I sell one item I’ll be shocked.

So, what brought forth this venture into capitalism? As I mentioned in an earlier post, I turned fifty last month. It’s one of those weird ages when you start looking back on your life. All the things you’ve done and more importantly all the things you wished you had done and are now getting too old to do. One of those things I dreamed of doing when I was younger was to bicycle cross country. In my late teens and twenties I was a bicycle fanatic. I started cycling because it was my only mode of transportation. I grew up in a not well to do family. Just me, my brothers and my mother. My mother didn’t drive so we had no family car. Luckily in a small town you really don’t need one. You can get to the store or school or anywhere in town on foot. Like all the kids at that time, my brothers and I did have our bikes. When you were a kid back then you went everywhere on your bike. When I got into high school a lot of my schoolmates were getting cars as soon as they got their license. We couldn’t afford a car so I was still using my bike to get around. Funny thing is I liked it. I’ve always had a bit of a hermit side to me and a bicycle just fed that. When you’re on a bike it’s just you and your thoughts. Very peaceful. In college, again, my bike was my only form of transportation. To and from school was about sixteen miles. This was usually a twice a day trip because I worked as night security at the college. You can see my trip in the picture. The red line was my route to school and the yellow, my route home. Yeah, yellow was a little longer but I did it to vary my trip. taking the same route four times a day would get a little old. My trusty Raleigh Grand Prix and I traveled many happy miles.

Back to the point. I loved cycling and always dreamed of doing a cross country trip. Of course like a lot of grand plans it was forgotten over the years. However, last year I had found an old, used Raleigh at our local bike shop and started riding again. At first I would take the bike to the store up the street and was exhausted by the time I got home. Age and sitting in front of a computer monitor most of your free time will do that to a person. I was not enjoying my periodic mile and a half bike ride at all. I thought that feeling like I was going to die after riding a mile and a half was probably a sign I should get off my butt and get some exercise. I decided to take early morning rides when it was still cool outside. I forced myself to do ten miles a day. It was not a pretty sight. However, it was getting easier as the days went by. Soon I bumped it to fifteen miles. There’s an easy way to tell when you are in good bicycling condition. That is, when you are out riding and you pass a road and think to yourself “I wonder where this goes to” and then turn onto that road to see where it leads, then you’re a real cyclist. Bicycling should not be about getting from point a to point b. It should be about enjoying getting from point a to point b and checking out points c and d along the way.

Anyways, all this cycling got me to thinking about my old going cross country dreams again. At fifty, you realize that you don’t have too many more years to even think about doing something like that unless you plan on substituting the bike for a wheelchair on the trip. Unfortunately, it’s more expensive to cross the country on a bike than in a car. So that’s why I decided to start my little shop. Who know, maybe people will actually buy something and I can put that money towards my little adventure. Probably not but at least I can say I tried. BTW my CafePress store is http://www.cafepress.com/payallin Go buy stuff. Some of it is pretty decent and trying to add more every day.

The great thing about being over the hill is that you get to coast the rest of the way

Ok, so I’m not really over the hill. The top is within sight though. Two weeks from today I hit the big 50. The half century mark. 2.4 times the legal drinking age. When Mozart was my age he had been dead for fifteen years.

In life, there are certain ages that have significance. At the age of one year, you have spent your first entire year on this planet. At ten years you have finally hit double digits. Sixteen years, you get your drivers license. When you are eighteen you have the right to vote. Twenty-one, you are allowed to experience your first legal hangover. The day you reach twenty-five the insurance industry believes, sometimes mistakenly, that you are no longer an idiot and they lower you car insurance premiums. When you hit thirty-five you can run for president. Then you have a fifteen year lull. I am now approaching the end of that lull and about to hit that next chronological milestone, the age of fifty.

I have already received my first piece of junk mail from AARP. That was quite a sobering experience. It seemed to be their way of saying, “Congratulations, you’re old. Send us money and join other old people. We even have a magazine about old people. You’ll love our articles on prostate problems”. To which I say, “Ummmm, no thanks”.

The past few months that have lead up to this event of personal significance, I have become somewhat reflective. No, I don’t shine when a beam of light hits me. Ok, there is that one spot on my head where I used to have hair and it does kinda shine when the light hits it just right. That, however, is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about looking back over all the things that I have and haven’t done in my life. This, as it turns out, has been something of a let down. I really haven’t done much of anything. Nothing of significance at least. Nope, it’s been fifty years of making it from one week to the next. My biggest accomplishment has been making it to the age of fifty. This isn’t to say I haven’t done some pretty cool things in those fifty years. I have and I have decided to try to come up with a list of these things. While in the grand scheme of things they are insignificant, they do have meaning to me. Cool things I have done.

1. I have acted in plays.

2. I was in a couple of Musicals.

There is a difference because, while I can act,  I’m pretty lousy when it comes to singing and dancing.

3. I have flown in a Lear Jet.

4. I have ridden a bicycle 138 miles in one day.

5. I have done radio

6. I have had cartoons published in magazines.

Yep, actual hand drawn cartoons. No photoshop involved.

7. I have seen the rings of Saturn through a telescope.

8. I have seen a ghost……or some shadowy thing.

Weird  story but happened when I was a kid.

9. I’ve had a letter to the editor published

10. I’ve done two magazine covers that were published.

11. I’ve built a computer.

12. I’ve given my last dollar to a total stranger who needed it.

13. I’ve fallen off a dam.

More down than off truthfully. It was kind of like a big, slimy water slide.

14. I have seen a comet.

15. I hit a home run in a little league game.

16. I scored the first basket in a charity basketball game.

17. I have been put in charge of a business that was losing money and made it profitable.

18. I have been slapped by one girl and kissed by another for the exact same thing.

19. I have been camping in the dead of winter.

Not in some place like Florida but in northern Illinois. Snow, Ice, all that good wintry stuff.

20. I have read all of the works of Shakespeare.

To be continued.

Ok, enough for now. I’ll continue this on my next post.

Go figure

One of the neat things about WordPress is that it gives you all kinds of stats on who visited your blog. I was looking at these stats earlier and discovered that I’ve had 1771 people visit here. That’s about 1771 more than I expected. Not only does WordPress tell me how many people visited but it breaks down the information in about a billion ways. One of those ways is that it tells me what words or phrased people used in a search engine that lead them to my site. Seems that the most popular search engine query that lead people to my site was “Nobama”(371 hits). Makes sense. I did a Nobama graphic and whatever search engine they used linked to it. The second most popular was “Obama Llama”(215 hits). I have a pic of an Obama Llama here so that makes sense as well. From there it starts going downhill. The search phrase “Bathrooms health” lead someone to my blog. I take that back. Not someone. Some people. There were 3 searches that used those words to bring people here. I could go on but I think I’ll just do a cut and paste the list. My personal favorite is “Car seat on the roof”.

nobama 371,  obama llama 215,  animal hybrids 34,  payallin 25,  “gerry armstrong” 19,  human animal hybrid 11,  obllama 10,  nobama graphics 9,  just say nobama 6,  human animal hybrids 6,  “nobama” 4,  nice sweaters 4,  human animal 4,  nobama pictures 4,  frasier thomas family classics chicago 3,  llama obama 3,  obama on a llama 3,  human-animal hybrids 3,  anna minzhulina 3,  ,bathrooms health,sa 3,  where can i find a cuddly dudley stuffed 2,  is your mama a obama lama 2,  “human animal” 2,  obama llamas 2,  cat on roof 2,  free healthcare 2,  nobama image 2,  dufuss 2,  nobama funny 2,  human llama hybrid 2,  car seat on the roof 2,  no-bama 2,  obama is a llama 2,  frasier thomas family classics 2,  cool obama llamas 2,  nobama html graphics 2,  photoshop animal hybrids 2,  scared kitten 2,  maisonneuve magazine 2,  human-animal hybrid artwork 2,  idiot car 2,  whatyououghttoknow.com news 2,  environment car green 1,  kittens hiding under seat 1,  obama in llama form 1,  family classics with frasier thomas 1,  ladder idiot 1,  how to climb a ladder to the roof 1,  cats climbing on the roof 1,  nobama’ 1

Now, how you ended up here reading this I don’t know.  I bet you don’t make that same mistake twice.

Is a twelve year old running PETA?

Well, it’s been a while since I posted on my blog. It’s not that I had other important things to do, it just boils down to laziness on my part. Maybe I can do better this time. At least until I get bored again.

I read an interesting news story. Seems PETA wants us to start calling fish “Sea Kittens”. They seem to believe that if we call them that we will no longer want to eat them. Who wants to eat kittens? Apart from a few Asian countries my guess is no one.

I’m not really certain who is running PETA but the whole “Sea Kitten” has Junior High School written all over it. Great idea if you’re a twelve year old girl. Crappy idea if you’re an adult.

I actually agree with PETA on certain issues but stunts like this do not help their image with the public. God help us if this idea works. Soon everyone will be renaming things. They might start calling Hamas “Desert Squirrels” or illegal immigrants “Undocumented Fluffy Bunnies”. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about this though. Associating fish with something cute and fluffy isn’t going to change people’s actions. Just look at what they do to baby Harp Seals and they really are cute and fluffy.

Update for Operation: GTKOTDR

Well, Operation: GTKOTDR changed to Operation: Return The Kitten To The Damned Roof. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get the other kittens as they would run like little, furry, four legged Jackie Joyner-Kersee whenever they saw me coming up the ladder. The headed straight for their little hiddy hole in the roof, not to be seen again, until I got off the roof. The kitten I did catch and take home was scared beyond belief. Poor thing wouldn’t eat or stop shaking. I thought a couple days would be all it took for him to adjust but it wasn’t happening. I was hoping to get at least one more of the kittens, hoping they would help each other relax but that didn’t happen. So, I thought it best to return him to be with his siblings. I felt bad but it was the only option I could think of. I didn’t abandon them though. Now I have the fun of climbing on the roof with food and water every day. The mother cat is pregnant again so I’m hoping they will be well fed and be able to climb down when she has the new batch. Worried that the new kittens will be pushed aside by the current ones and unable to nurse. I’ll probably try again with the new batch after they’re born. Hopefully, get to them before they are old enough to develop a fear of people.

Yep, this venture was a bust but they are being well fed for the moment. Soon they will start their life as neighborhood strays. Kind of a sad future they have waiting for them.

Gotta love Stephen King

The guy’s an idiot but in an, unintentionally amusing, kind of way. Here’s a nice little quote about the benefits of knowing how to read.

"The fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don’t, then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that,"

So, what have we learned from Mr. King? Well, if you can read, you can just walk into a job. I’m not sure what that means but it’s something that people have the ability to do if they can read. Then he tells us that "If you don’t read", notice he says "don’t" and not "can’t", "then you’ve got the Army, Iraq, I don’t know, something like that". So, if you don’t (as opposed to can’t) read, he tells us that you’re stuck with the Army and Iraq. However, then he tells us that he doesn’t really know. It’s not necessarily the Army and Iraq. It could just be something like the Army and Iraq. It could the the Air Force and Hawaii. That would be a pretty sweet gig.

Of course we all know the gist of what he was trying to say. If you can read you have a chance for a normal job and if you can’t you’re options are limited to something that takes no knowledge which he mistakenly thinks is military service.

What I’ve learned from Mr. King is that if your command of your mother tongue is equal to that of a first generation Russian immigrant, you can become a best selling author. You’d think that a guy who writes for a living would be able to put a couple coherent sentences together. Oh well, just because someone can write doesn’t mean that they are great or even decent public speaker. I hear the military can use people like that.

Started over

I decided to just delete my old blog and start over. It was getting a little unorganized and I wanted to give wordpress a try. Just easier to wipe the whole thing and start anew. I started a Flickr acct and uploaded a few pics. I think it might be easier to post the older ones there than posting them directly on the blog. So if you feel like looking at a few of my older pics you can find the link on the right side of the page. There are only a few pics there but I’m sure I’ll upload more.