Lundy Says-Amusing Info from Lundy Wilder

"Yes, Virginia, there is a sales tax. With taxophobic Republicans no longer in control of the House, Forbes says this may be the last Christmas you'll be able to dodge sales tax by buying that $350 iPod or $1,200 laptop online."

This is how it goes.... An Alabama high school coach who won a case before the Supreme Court after he was fired from his job has reached a settlement with his local school board. As part of the deal, Roderick Jackson will keep his job as head of the girls basketball program at Jackson-Olin High School in Birmingham. The Board of Education also has promised to provide equal facilities citywide for all girls and boys teams. Under terms of the deal reached Tuesday, Jackson receives $50,000 and his lawyers get $340,000 for the five years it took to fight the case. Whole Story

I was going thru old newspapers tonight that had piled up while I was out of town. I found that the local paper ran my Exit Realty Printable Calendar story. AND, they included a BIG full color photo. The article is on the top half of the page covering one fourth of the total page in the Baldwin County Real Estate section, November 24-25 issue, page 2. It is on the inside of the front cover. Success !!! They used my text verbatum, it includes the main website URL three times ! And they printed the illustration that Heather made large enuf for people to actually see what photo is on the spread out calender pages. Heather did a great job on the composite photo. The Printable Calendar.

Well, one of my FedEx guys showed up today w/ my Google Christmas gift. I was hoping that I was still on the list. I received a digital photo frame, software and attachments. I have not ever looked at one of these, except in catalogs. This thing seems to have its own operating system. I have to install software and drag the photos I want on the memory to a folder the software creates. Then I hook up the frame via USB and it retrieves the photos and stores them. You can slide in an SD card (not included) for even more storage. Don'tknow if it has limitations or it it can take a large capacity SD card. The frame came w/ 3 demo photos installed. After looking at those, it seems that the thing only looks good directly head-on at eye level....not like the photos of them sitting on an end table in catalogs. I looked on ebay and someone has already listed theirs. The text on their page is funny : Google has been busy this year sending all good little Adsense publishers their yearly h...

I was overjoyed to arrive home to a check for 602 British Pounds in my mailbox tonight. Right before I left, I sent the letter and contract that I had had my lawyer make up for me to send the gal in the UK who had included my images on her crafts CD that she was selling on the UK home shopping network and online over there. I figured that my images made up 1/34th of the total images on the CD and asked for royalty payment per CD sold plus $500 for the time and trouble to mess with the whole thing. Her math did not come out like my math, but hey, she sent the ck immediately w/ an apology and that is a good thing.

The sign on the side of a food establishment in the Pritchard area of Mobile says "You Buy, We Fry", today there was an added extra,..... the portable sign said "COONS 4 SALE" Was this coons to be fried up ? Or for pets ? Or to shoot at ? I have no idea. It is not a part of town that I want to stop in to ask nosey questions.

When I woke up this morning, there were deer outside my window at Momma's and Daddy's. I think what has now happened is that subdivisions have built up all around the private road area where M & D live and the deer are now more or less captive in this 'deer park'. There are a bunch of them. The house across the street got named Deer Run. I doubt if they can use that in their address on their mail.

I have passed this spot , one mile outside of Aberdeen, MS, many times. This shrine is the largest roadside memorial I have ever seen. In earlier fall it had colorful mums around it. I see now that they have added low voltage walkway lights around the white cross. Looks like the electricity was run from a long way off. The pear trees that are planted were in full fall color today. Click photo to see large angel statue. I have heard that the DOT tolerates these memorials , as they remind people to slow down, thus reducing wrecks. On the other hand, as they become more and more elaborate, they may have the opposite effect as people divert their eyes from the road to examine (or photo ;0) them.

This abandoned gas station stands on U.S. Hwy 45 in South Mississippi. The sign must have been the last thing added to this station before its demise. While the station is dilapidated and faded, the sign still looks fresh. Maybe it is a joke !

There is so much to learn about ecommerce. How does one sell a million dollars worth of virtual weapons and currency ?? Someone PLEASE tell me. This 23 yr old student did and got deported because he didn't have the right visa for earning money abroad.

It is very difficult to do computer stuff online here in Memphis. For a while I could get on neighbors wifi, but they all seem to turn their routers on and off, most off now and the one I pick-up a signal from is too weak. I did manage to degrade some photos of Momma's and Daddy's new place to a small file size and up load to SnapFish via dial-up. I knew every reader would not care about these photos and want to wait for them all to load here. Some pix are from T'giving and some are from the day Momma and the decorator, Jim Beck went over there. Click here to see the photos on SnapFish In the photos, none of the painting has been started. The contractor 'assured' me that he would be finished by the end of this week, and that includes the hardwood floors...we shall see. I am getting a ton of little error messages on which I have to click 'OK' in Firefox, so better use IE.

"École Secondaire Mont-Bleu has banned all personal electronic devices and suspended two 13-year-old girls after one uploaded to YouTube a camera phone video of their teacher yelling at the other. After the video was posted on the popular internet video site, the teacher was so embarrassed that he stayed home from work, where he remains on stress leave. The teachers' union is now trying to get all personal electronic devices banned from all schools in Western Quebec." Read whole article Incidents similar to the one that took place in Gatineau are common, as a quick search of the words "angry teacher" reveals on YouTube.

can get really weird.... this guy got arrested and had to stay 12 hrs in jail over a rubber band ball. of course, he missed his flight....

I pulled in about 7:30 p.m., saw lots of police and radar on the usually police-free route. Just about every police car I spotted was in the act of giving a ticket. I was glad tho that my 21 yr old radar detector picked up at least a weak signal from all the police cars. Mississippi must still use the older form of radar. And, guess what, one of the neighbors around Momma & Daddy's house has a wireless signal strong enuf for me to get online. I am getting a really strong signal from one neighbor but it is password secured, but there are two more that are not, and even with 2 bars out of 5, I am online at 50 MBPS ...huge improvement over dial-up. And these houses are not close together...this one is on about 4 acres I think. Thanks neighbors who ever you are ! Poor Daddy is not looking very good. He fell a week ago and hit his head. His eyes are black and deep in their sockets. He has a HUGE knot on his head. Still. Luckily it is on his upper forehead, not in a place that would...

I'm off to Mempho today. Long drive but it is sunny, not a cloud in the sky. I wont be able to post much , if at all, from memphis, only dial-up there...just barely. Last night I went w/ Glenn to see The Guardian. I'd read some pretty good reviews. It was freezing in that theater, made all the colder by all those people drowning in icy water. Why would idiots go kayaking in the sea of death? Two things struck me, I didn't see a lifeboat anywhere on any of those sinking boats. What were those captains thinking ? And the blonde singer in the bar in the early scenes, why would an obviously well adjusted, talented, Southern woman move to ALASKA ! Not likely....... Well, it turns out that the blonde singer is none other than Bonny Bramlett ! I wouldn't have known but I saw her name in the credits. She's have a long career....I think I first saw her w/ Leon Russell when i was in college. If you go to her site, look at the "Collaborations" Page. I suppose that ...

New Orleans. Really Scary: As the city’s criminal justice system slowly gears back up after Hurricane Katrina, as many as 500 defendants, mostly in drug, theft and assault cases, have been freed because of problems with evidence, including difficulty in finding the witnesses who have moved away. Law-enforcement officials say a few of those who were freed could potentially be violent, a cause for concern in a city battling a surge in drug-related killings. And some judges say that missing witnesses and damaged evidence, like spoiled DNA samples and rusted guns, will almost certainly lead to more acquittals, even in cases of murder, rape and armed robbery. Whole article

Today I ran across a term that i didnt know (YOU probably DO), "420 friendly" ....but thanks to the remarkable internet, one can do a search and become enlightened immediately. The term "420" and its attendant traditions date back to the 1970s, but at least some evidence exists -- enough to convince any stoner, at least -- that the term has experienced something of a resurgence in our electronic times. On message boards and community sites across the Web, it's possible to find people who are "420 friendly," meaning that they'd love to meet you and smoke your dope.

Scientists may have just found out why marijuana impairs memory and why the brain's natural versions of the drug might help against epilepsy. The scientists suggest the way THC disrupts synchronized brain cell activity might help fight seizures. During seizures, brain activity becomes abnormally synchronized. Prior research suggested the brain's natural versions of THC, known as endocannabinoids, helped prevent seizures. Science Article

BRASILIA, Brazil (Reuters) - The mayor of a small Brazilian town has begun handing out free Viagra, spicing up the sex lives of dozens of elderly men and their partners. "Since we started the free distribution of sexual stimulants, our elderly population changed. They're much happier," said Joao de Souza Luz, the mayor of Novo Santo Antonio, a small town in the central state of Mato Grosso. Souza Luz said 68 men over the age of 60 had already signed up for the program, which was approved by the town's legislature and has been dubbed "Happy Penis," or "Pinto Alegre" in Portuguese. But the program has also had the unforeseen consequence of encouraging some extra-marital affairs, Souza Luz said. "Some of the old men aren't seeking out their wives. They've got romances on the side," he said. To discourage such illicit canoodling, Souza Luz said the city had decided to begin distributing the Viagra pills to the wives of the men who sig...

The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest - and, MSN hopes, most exciting - way to view photos on a computer. Software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space , showing you how each one relates to the next. Works in IE only. Maybe I can get involved and upload detailed photos of lovely Gulf Shores. Must have (basically a newish computer) : "* Operating System: Only Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista RC1 or later are supported at this time. * Web Browser: IE6 or IE7; we hope to support other browsers in the future. * Memory: 256 MB of memory is a bare minimum; 1GB recommended. ...

Google skipped right past the third dimension and landed directly in the fourth (time) by offering historical maps on Google Earth . Now you can travel back in time Google introduces historical maps in Google Earth Ever wonder when Pisa was a coastal town ? I have. It's like 20 miles inland now. I have biked from Pisa to the coast. To use this new feature, expand the Featured Content -> Rumsey Historical Maps in the Layers panel.

A man in Manchester, England has been convicted of using an MP3 player to hack cash machines. Maxwell Parsons, 41, spent £200,000 of other people's money after using the machine to read card details. Parsons plugged his MP3 player into the back of free standing cash machines and was able to use it to read data about customers' cards. That data could then be used to 'clone' cards and use them for bogus purchases. Read how...

Very interesting concept. German guy has come up w/ a new product. He says it is for schools and teaching institutions, etc.. "Aided by Chinese scientists, the workers will coat the bodies of donors in hard resins before slicing them into cross-sections to be sold around the world. A full frontal section of a human would cost 7,000 euros ($9,000), von Hagens said, adding that depending on how a body was cut it could yield up to 600 sections of various sizes." Read the article

Remember that old term...thirsty thursday , ...i have not thought of that in 25 years. I guess it jumped into my head because I am taking a moment to catch my breath while Glenn drives from Foley to G.S. and we head over to the Chamber's Business After Hours at The Wharf. Then after that is: go to The Beach Club for dinner and music. We may not need dinner tho. Usually A.H. has so much food it can be dinner. The Frank Brown International Songwriter's Festival is going on. It is a 10 day event. Tonight at The Beach Club is a great 3-some.... Larry Cordel , Carl Jackson and Jerry Salley . I have seen them a whole bunch of times. They are Nashville guys and Larry C. won the Country Music Award "Album of the Year' a year or two before Ivan. These guys do 3 part harmony and play together a lot in Nashville and I have seen them on the Turner South network "Bluebird Cafe' show. Today was event filled, ...i am looking forward to some chill time. Now I find Blogger ...

Rachel Mount has been making incredible cakes in London for 20 something years. Start w/ the slideshow then .....Browse around her site to see the cool handbag cakes, etc... bee sure to go to the home page and see the SurferGirls cake.

The movie is so funny because the funniest people in it are the multitude of unsuspecting real people who were duped into participating and now find themselves in a big hit movie on the big screen. Some are suing, some are laughing, some, like the Jackson, MS TV producer, just want an apology. Cohen's behaviour also was not funny to Dharma Arthur, who claims she was fired as a morning-show producer in Jackson, Mississippi, after being duped into giving Cohen air time. Cohen's live appearance, in which he said he had to go "urine" and hugged a bemused weatherman, led her life into a downward spiral, she said. She is seeking an apology. Read More Funny BBC article: poof Kazakh reporter Borat - aka Ali G comedian Sacha Baron Cohen - is expected to score a box office hit by offending and humiliating real Americans in a new movie. Read details about the women feminists he interviews, the Tennessee rodeo manager, etc. FHM tells about 3 of the set-ups. Funny articles. Un...

Report of an Australian man getting a 10 grand fine for using a sentence that included the word 'bomb' on an Asian flight. Read it.

T is for TRIVIA.... In honor of the event there is an online Sesame St trivia game....I have not watched in the last 10 yrs but I still made it to the bonus round in one category. I watched A LOT for about 6 years.... See how well you do.

BHNC (Big Hat, No Cattle): Adapted from cowboy parlance. Used to describe someone who is all talk and no action, full of self-importance, and/or a poser. "She brags about her 'fabulous' job all the time, but she's BHNC." PEBCAK (Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard): Tech-speak used when the "problem" is within hearing range. "I took a look at her machine and it's clearly a PEBCAK situation," said one technician to the other. Carol Mc sent me this great list of typing shortcuts. Memorize them as I will be using them often in this blog.

Saliva from humans has yielded a natural painkiller up to six times more powerful than morphine, researchers say. The substance, dubbed opiorphin, may spawn a new generation of natural painkillers that relieve pain as well as morphine but without the addictive and psychological side effects of the traditional drug. Interesting article

Villagers in Romania where parts of Borat was filmed are furious. Nestled in a narrow valley in southern Romania, the village of Glod starred as Borat's hometown in Kazakhstan where, in the film, peasants live with cattle, horses are used to pull cars and brothers can share steamy kisses with their sisters. Read the whole story Read an article about current state of affairs in Romania

Saw the funniest movie I have seen in a long time yesterday. Borat. Seems a lot of people have been pouring in to see it (not here, there were only about 6 in the auditorium for this flick) as it has been getting a lot of press. I had never seen this comedian before, I watch so little TV. But seems that the Borat character is a regular thing this guy does , he has some 'talk' show or something on Comedy Central maybe. One note: the actual movie has a 5 star raucous rating. Official Borat Website www.boratmovie.com Mark Berson, my friend, said a waitress at a local restaurant thought the guy was a real reporter !

I am on the warpath. Some guy named Mike Kelso of Loxley, AL has malfunctioning auto-dial equipment that has been calling me all thru the night and this morning also. It is pretty easy to dig outthe responsible party & their info from a phone number. He is not answering his phones. I have called the number listed as BestSouth Communications and BestSouth Systems as well as various numbers I found doing WhoIs and AnyWho searches. His fax number doesn't answer. I have notified the local phone co from whom he leases the line, the AL public service commission (at the phone companies request), Chamber of Commerce, BBB, and emailed all sorts of email addresses I have found for his various buisinesses. He has one website called www.family4life.com w/ inbound liks from all these X'ian sites. I could broaden my reach to get his attention if the calls continue. I got what may be a cell number for Mike Kelso from registration info for that site. No answer, I left him a voice mail. I d...

And you only thought today was Veterands Day and Steve Pridgen's birthday...well, it is Corduroy Day as well. 11/11 is the day that most closely resembles corduroy. Corduroy Appreciation Day

I've added lots of photos to www.ConcreteCottage.com of Jerry Nasello's big and tall DAC-ART house. Jerry has been taking the photos and coming over and giving me text to add to the pages. Best stuff is on the latest pages we've added. Some of the notes I have taken from Jerry should help me avoid similar mistakes and frustration. Ted is coming here on Monday with my plans for discussion. he is coming down to go out to the Nasello job down the street. I am bugging him to work on them and get them done. It is really great that he is coming down to the Nasello job, it saves me having to drive to Mobile and back....which takes most of the day before it is all over.

Too weird to believe..... Indian technique for collecting deliquent taxes.

Last weekend I stayed down on West Beach at my good friend Becky Gottsegen's with Becky and three of her precious Baton Rouge girl friends. We had a ball. Becky had read this small book called "A Weekend to Change Your Life" and had mapped out these little exercises for us to do. Of course, there was a lot of improvising and abreviating going on. Mostly we had fun.... Linda, Georgia, Rosalind, Becky and me. Linda made cookies, we all made pot holders ! We looked a lots of old photos...plenty when we were young and cute. We took beach walks, swam , or rather drank margauritas in the pool. One interesting thing to me, Georgia, who I had never met before, sister is married to a Memphis lawyer who happens to be the first cousin of one of my very good since childhood friends. Small world. Becky and Warren's super home is on a super stretch of beach that adjoins the wildlife refuge. The monarch butterflies were everywhere. Each year they pass thru here during migration and...

I ran across this MySpace gal who SAYS she is from south FL, but she sure knows what Alabama is all about. And she has got it RIGHT !

It was so much fun having my sister Cary and her daughter, Frances in Memphis when I was there.Frances is close to the same size that Momma was in college, so Frances went thru Momma's old party dresses and tried many of them on. Frances knows a lot about websites that deal in vintage clothing and may try listing a few. She said that some people buy older ball gowns and such just to take them apart and use them for patterns. Here you can see Frances modeling Christian Dior, etc....One photo has Momma, the original Party Girl and Frances standing in the doorway to the living room. Cary modeled a 100% cotton plaid picque formal that was mine in high school. We both still remembered that it came from Sears, of all places, as they had a special fashion show to celebrate the Cotton Carnival and had a special 100% cotton in store mini-boutique that year. On the day I drove back to G.S. , Cary , Frances and Daddy stood waving me off in the driveway. You can see the U-Haul in my rearview m...

I am just now getting around to posting some of the photos from a couple weeks ago. When I went to pick up my U-Haul trailer in Memphis, there were several of the size I needed. I knew immediately which one I wanted. I pointed to this one and told the guy that was certainly the one for me. The others had images of some places like Oregon or who-knows-where. When I went to turn it in down here, believe it or not, there was already a Gulf Shores one recently turned in here, and I thought I was really gonna surprise our little U-Haul place. This was my 3rd trip down w/ a trailer, the guy who runs the U-Haul place now sees me pull up and hollers "Hey Ms. Wilder"

Looks like a little baby cousin to my VW Thing. Fiat has created the Fiat Jolly Panda. It sounds like the name of a Japanese game show. The FJP was launched over summer where it was used to ferry VIP's on the island of Capri. The interiors created by Italian design co. Paolo Lenti who specialize in the use of innovative fabrics. Much of the design work went into the interior, with a modular arrangement of tube-frame seats covered with nautically-inspired rope and color-coordinated seat cusions. The ash wood floor, sills and rear deck continue the sailing yacht theme. Check out the original Jolly from the 50's here , and a gorgeous Fiat 500 Jolly here . In their heyday of the late '50s and early '60s, the Fiat 500 Jollys were a favorite toy of the rich and famous, including Yul Brynner and Aristotle Onassis. I think they'd be a hit on the Gulf Coast.

Tonight on the way to a songwriter festival kickoff event, a friend drove me past the Gulf Shores Steamer to show me the sign on the door. It said "Closed Until Further Notice" then it went on to say 'due to a death'. It was explained to me that the owner, a gal close to my own age, was found shot to death here in Gulf Shores, possibly by her former boyfriend. I did not know her but my friend did. When I got home tonight, I had an email w/ a short Pensacola News Journal article and it seems that PNJ now allows comments to be posted on the web page with their articles. This is a 'must read'. ....

An entry in a design competition. See all the entries in this design competition. You can spend a long time looking at the creative entries from all over the world.....

Royal Wedding in a very poor nation. Lavish wedding video sparks outrage

I spotted another car with one of those awesome paint jobs that change colors are you drive past. I used to see one with a different set of hues parked in from of a local vinyl liner pool company here in Gulf Shores. This is what I'd like on my VW Thing, but I want coral and peach shades so it look like a woman's fingernail polish rack at the nail salon. Anyone know anything about this type of paint job ? What is it called ? What's it cost. Where do you go to get it ?

Operation Falcon: Largest Fugitive Round-Up In U.S. History--MEMPHIS Video Operation Falcon, a combined state, local and federal fugitive round-up, netted 262 fugitives in West Tennessee. 103 of the fugitives were sex offenders who failed to register with the state. There were also dozens of known gang members brought in during the week-long operation. In West Tennessee, 41 people were arrested on drug warrants. 31 people were arrested on assault warrants. 32 people were arrested on burglary warrants, and 16 were arrested on robbery warrants. There were also three people caught who were wanted in connection with a homicide. A total of 47 local, state, and federal agencies worked on Operation Falcon in West Tennessee.