Blacklisted

I'm blacklisted.  Email blacklisted.  Don't know how or why or when this dubious honor was bestowed upon me.  So, I'm doing this post to see if anyone has had a similar experience.  Maybe we can help each other out of this shit hole and avoid future holes.  If you've been blacklisted I'd like to hear about your experience.  Here's my story.

For the past year or so, every email sent to my brother bounced back with a 'failed' notice.  I thought my bro had accidentally listed me as an unsafe sender in his email files.  I visited brother recently, got on his computer and discovered that that wasn't the case.  Then, I noticed that there was a notepad attachment (details.txt (404 B)) on the failed notice from the email postmaster.  I opened the attachment, found a bunch of meaningless numbers and computer acryonyms and the words 'blacklisted by user'.  What the hell?

Did some google research and determined that my internet protocol (IP) address was somehow associated with spamming and phishing and similar nefarious actions - none of which were initiated by me.  Some SOB or SOBs unknown used my computer (or my computer's IP address) to pursue their nasty objectives, thereby placing me in said shit hole. 

There are numerous blacklisting websites/services.  Their mission is to watchdog, list and block spammers and phishers and other assorted SOBs.  If, like me, you get on one of those lists, you have to beg them to let you off.  You send an email to them and explain that you're a dummy, don't know how this happened, wouldn't even think of doing those nasty things, blah, blah, blah.  The blacklister provides you with a 'ticket' number, runs some kind of test, and, hopefully, sends an email saying you've been delisted.

I've been delisted on one incident that was detected by one blacklister.  Trouble is, the blacklister has a long list of these incidents, about 30 of them in various categories (phish, spam, indecent exposure, reckless walking and attempted crawl, whatever).  I asked Mr Blacklister to clean up the whole mess in one fell swoop but doubt that's gonna happen: one incident, one ticket, no exceptions, piss off, go suck an egg.  To be continued.

Flicks

We like flicks.  We get 'em in the mail, we get 'em from Redbox, we stream 'em, we see 'em at the cinema.  We abhor commercials and advertising of any kind but especially the radio and TV kind.  Thus, we have satellite radio in our cars and watch maybe 8 hours of TV a year: academy and CMA awards and the Superbowl.

Recently, we've re watched some old favorites.  Relatively old.  We're talking Lee Marvin & Clint Eastwood-old, not Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy-old.  Westerns: Paint Your Wagon, Cat Ballou were recent oldy-goodies; Waterhole Number 3 coming soon.  Billy Bobs: Pushing Tin and Bandits; both of these are hoots and Trish hadn't seen them before.  Our last trek to the cinema was to see The Avengers, loved the droll humor and special effects.

Although TV is out, TV series are not; we get them via streaming or DVD.  The Closer and Mad Men are both high on our list and we were sad to see Doc Martin come to an end.  There have been numerous others that didn't make the cut.  I'd guess the go/no go ratio is about 1:5.  Currently, it's The Defenders, Burn Notice and Dollhouse - okay but not fantastic.

Okay, readers, your turn.  What great flicks might we be missing?  And what TV series that have run more than one season?  Broaden our horizons, if you please.  Don't bother with horror, supernatural, vampires and so on.  Never did get into that crap.

PS: After posting this and going back to do the spell check I forgot, I noticed the proximity of this post to the previous one about wabbits.  That brought to mind an excellent flick set in 1931 Australia, called Rabbit Proof Fence.  Seen it?
 

Wabbits Wedux

See my post of 3-6-11 for first episode of the Wabbits saga.

By Elmer Fudd with a nod to John Updike.

The homemade bwew of gawlick and peppaw sauce didn't do it so I bought a bottle of Liquid Fence.  Pwoblem is, you have to weapply it evewy 3 weeks.  It's a woyal pain in the ass and oh my gawd, it weally stinks!  I clamp my nose shut with a clothes pin when applying the wotten stuff.  Didn't weapply it befoaw a wecent camping twip, came home to find that the fuwwy little bastawds had eaten big bunches of leaves off my owange twee.

I'm giving up on the stink-em-out appwoach, seems to stink me out more than the dwatted wabbits.  Besides, I'm not heaw in the summaw to apply it wegulawly anyway.  Gonna put a fence awound the owange twee, maybe the fan palms, too.  How high can wascally wabbits jump?  I'm thinking 2' is high enough foaw the fence; these awe just little cottontail cwitters, aftaw all, not big jack wabbits.    

Roadkill

"Been there, done that, got the T-shirt."

On our return to LHC yesterday, we drove historic Route 66 for several miles, stopping in Seligman for lunch.  Seligman is one of several small AZ towns that capitalize on the tourism value of Route 66.  The standard shtick is a 50s motif with diners, cars, signs, gas pumps, movie posters, Burma Shave signs, jukeboxes and the like.  It's fun to cruise through these little towns and see the creative, period stuff the business owners have come up with.

Route 66 ran from LA to Chicago.  It figured prominently in Dust Bowl times, the movie Grapes of Wrath and, of course, the TV series of the 60s, and the Get Your Kicks song.  It had many nicknames: Main Street of America, The Mother Road, The Will Rogers Highway, and The Great Diagonal Way.  The interstate highway system replaced the popular road for the most part, with only short segments of the original road remaining.

I don't know if there's a connection between roadkill and Route 66 other than the Roadkill Cafe in Seligman where we had lunch.  Who could resist the siren call of Roadkill Cafe?  Not me.  No way.  I simply had to stop there, no choice whatsoever.  Don't know if Trish was similarly driven but she readily agreed in any case.  The lunch, BLTs for both of us, was okay but not remarkable.

T-shirt front.

T-shirt back.

City in the Sky

Jerome, AZ is nicknamed The City in the Sky.  It's a mile high and clings to the steep slopes of Cleopatra Hill.  Its roots are copper mining, a typical boomtown of the early 1900s; population was 15,000 in the 30s, less than 100 in 1960.  It was a ghost town for many years before it was rediscovered by the artsy-craftsy crowd and various historians.  It now boasts a population of 444.  If you want to make it 445, there are still plenty of vacant buildings to choose from.  

Jerome from state historic park mansion.

Tourists doing squat exercises in foreground.

The town is only about 7 miles from Dead Horse SP so we toured the 'City' and had lunch there.  We also toured the state historic park, which is housed in the 8700 SF mansion built by one of the early mine owners in 1916.  The mansion is adobe, built from materials found onsite and was thought to be the largest adobe structure in the country at one time.

Mansion/historic park from 'downtown' Jerome

Mansion facade.

Don't even think about taking an RV through Jerome: narrow streets and extremely tight switchbacks are enough to make a VW Bug driver wet his pants.  A 40' Class A motorhome?  Upgrade the wet BVDs to full scale heart attack.

2700 pounds of azurite and malachite.

Closeup of the rock that's at bottom center in first picture above.

4 Parks & 1 Town

Grand Canyon South Rim
As magnificent as ever, it inspires an awed silence: words are simply inadequate.  They've added 4 shuttle bus routes since our last visit, running every 15 minutes and stopping at the best viewpoints - most of which are not accessible by private vehicle.  We had breakfast at El Tovar, the grand old hotel that was once part of the Harvey chain, now owned by Xanterra.  The view from our breakfast table didn't compare to that of our last GC breakfast in the North Rim lodge but it was still pretty neat.  We took lots of pix but none do it justice.  You can find better pix online.  That said, I've included one shot just to prove we were actually there.

Dead Horse Ranch SP
In the late 40s a MN family decided to buy a ranch here (Cottonwood, AZ).  They looked at the available properties and chose one that happened to have a dead horse lying alongside the access road.  The state acquired the property in '73, with the condition the name be retained.  It's not photogenic so am not including any pix.  We're camped here for 3 nights while we explore the area.  Not to be outdone, Utah has Dead Horse Point SP, right beside Canyonlands NP; we stayed there 4 years ago, awesome views.  This is horse country for sure, many large fenced areas with horses of all colors.  Okay, not all colors - all horse colors.  Didn't see any dead ones.

Slide Rock SP
A few miles north of Sedona, Slide Rock was a commercial apple orchard for 50 years before becoming a state park around 1970.  Oak Creek has several areas where the rocks are so smooth they serve as a natural water slide.  Trish and I neglected to bring our sliding gear and weren't in a  wedgie mood anyway, so we skipped the sliding bit.  The 3 pix below were taken in the park.

The Sedona area may have the most spectacular red rock formations in the country.

Sedona
We stopped in Sedona for a tea/coffee break.  Got our brews at a Starbucks that was part of a Hyatt Hotel/art gallery/wine shop complex; very upscale stuff, very attractively done.

Coffee break.  The pillar is native rock enclosed with steel rods and heavy duty wire mesh.  Cool!

Aha!  Found the dead horse.  Appears to have died of starvation.  Sad.

The critter on the left is a goat that appears to be biting the horse's tail but not really; the angle of the shot just makes it look that way. 

 Tasteful arrangement of pots and plants.

Red Rock SP
A few miles south of Sedona, this park lacks the wow factor of the aforementioned.  It's pretty but to quote one of Trish's favorite sayings, 'amazingly adequate'.  Here's a couple pix, anyway.

Red rocks, red sidewalk and the pavement is mostly red, too.

South Rim

In mid September, 1989, I met my brother Pat, his wife Julie, his son Bill, and my sister Mary in Utah.  They had driven down from MN; I flew in from Portland.  Pat, Bill and I had made arrangements to hike the Grand Canyon, rim to rim, starting at the north rim, overnighting at Phantom Ranch at the bottom, and hiking out at the south rim the next day.  The ladies would drive the car from north rim to south rim and pick us up there.  We spent a couple nights in one of the quaint log cabins on the north rim before the hike.  There was frost on the ground each morning but it was 90 degrees at Phantom Ranch when we arrived there mid afternoon. 

If hiking's your thing, put this one on your must-do list.  It's about 24 miles: 14 miles from north rim to the Ranch, 10 miles from Ranch to south rim.  You descend 5800' going in, ascend 4800' coming out.  You can backpack it, taking your own food and sleeping gear but I gotta recommend Phantom Ranch: comfortable beds in dorm-style cabins, great meals and interesting folks to chat with.  And, of course, a lot less weight to haul around.

Trish and I are doing an RV trip later this month, staying on the south rim 3 nights and another 3 nights at Dead Horse Ranch State Park near Cottonwood.  I've stayed on the north rim 3 times, have never stayed on the south - just spent a couple hours there after the hike.  The south rim didn't float my boat: too touristy, too noisy, too busy.  Compared to the quiet, idyllic setting of the north rim and Phantom Ranch, the south rim was just a shopping mall with a view. 

It's been 23 years since my initial south rim exposure.  I'm wondering: will I like it better this time?  It's a relative thing because, after all, the GC is my favorite natural wonder of the whole world.  Even with all the tourists and retail bustle, it's a fantastic place.  To be continued.