While I am a bit distracted with things going on in my life, though it’s not like I don’t have time to blog. I’m still trying to figure out just where and what I am going to take the Stonegauge to with regards to blogging…

Keep ranting about personal stuff? Take it more pop culture with entertainment things that I can’t always speak for when it’s current? (My Adaptation review was an old post, I comment on old songs, previously released movies, published books, etc) Political rants which are done better on other blogs and are the norm on the blogshere, and certain people I’ve met with Boltsmag talk about local issues pretty well….

Then we have the fact I do talk about sports here and there — Boltsmag is a success just because I really timed this shit well :smile. There’s writing stories I could give but those are about failure. Medical stories I could tell but those seem irrelevant…

This is the personal homepage of John Fontana but then again? I want the Stonegauge to be a place to stop by and have something worth looking into, commenting on or discussing. Not the garbage I’ve had lately. My April entry spurt was brought on by a certain someone who does a real good job of showing up when she needs a crutch, but avoids really well when things don’t fit her current schedule, which includes friendship..

I want to give “a better ‘Gauge on things” but damnit – I want it to be relevant in some way shape or form. It isn’t at this rate.

US 19 for example).

But here we have someone from Alaska on a key committee and he pushes for bridges that will lead to no where. That will do nothing to aid these areas besides providing jobs during the construction of the bridges. This is the epitome of wasteful spending that every American should be infuriated by.

I’m big on a lot of things that can be considered pork — the Space program, medical research, and I guess other stuff on a case-by-case basis. But these bridge proposals in a time when the US Deficit is at an all time high, is just insanity.

The city of Clearwater has plans on being a vital part of Pinellas County’s (flawed) Monorail plan that is on the Metropolitan Planning Organization’s drawing board. The monorail would run into downtown and then across Clearwater Harbor and arrive at Clearwater Beach as an alternate mode of transportation.

Overkill. Over costly and not a sure fire way to bring in tourists or re-vitalize downtown.

I came across a thread on Skyskraperpage that talked about Sky Gondola’s that will connect Detroit with Windsor, Ontario and I thought that it was a perfect mode of transit for a link between Clearwater and Clearwater Beach. Why? First off, it would be a surefire tourist attraction among those who are out-of-state visitors along with drawing the curious from in and around the Bay area. Secondly, it is a much less costly mode of transit than a monorail between the two land masses.

Another part of why I like this idea is because you can really obtain a better termination point for the Gondola because the station would not have to take up a lot of land (I think?). I would think that a terminal close to the main strip of the beach (and much closer than the termination point / terminus of the Monorail system) and the main drag would be a possibility. Depositing people in the heart of the area would be outstanding instead of letting people get lost trying to find attractions.

Of course, the biggest positive of this idea is getting people out of cars and onto their feet. Pedestrians are much more manageable than cars and a ton of traffic. Plus, if you are going to the beach to begin with, don’t you want to get out in the sun?

It’s an interesting concept and a viable one at that…. The question is, will Clearwater even consider looking into this (I wrote the City Counsel and Mayor a letter with regards to this)? My guess is no, but you never know….

OK, so I did it. I think I did it anyway. I had been screwing around with a design that incorporated Moveable Type on the site like what Kill the Web has, or much like what Howard Dean is using on Blog for America.

What’s the benefits of this anyway?

Well, you can just clicky on the comment link and have your comments for each individual journal entry logged instead of through a guestbook as i have been doing (the guestbook shall survive the transition). You can also click on TRACKBACK (which contains some stuff you may or may not understand) and find a link directly to one of my journal entries for personal reference… You COULD bookmark old entries but then again – their location and URL kept changing and it wasn’t a very effecient design at all. Poo on that!

SO will this catch on? I know not. I may be right back to the HTML version of entries soon enough so don’t fret if you don’t like the layout of this. AND there is this little thing where I may have the last 5 entries displayed at one time or another. You guys can comment and let me know if I should continue that habit or not.

Sometimes you never want to face up to someone’s argument when you are on the opposite side of the door of an issue when it’s full of bullshit speculation. At least that’s how I am feeling right now. I do not want to put up with someone trying to argue for an outlandish plane system in order to save Albert Whitted Airport in downtown St. Petersburg and at the same time the guy keeps sending out his opinions to me (his desires) as facts. His bending of the facts to give people the idea that they very much should support his effort.

He wants to piggy-back a space-age-plane-transit idea on the Florida amendment for High Speed Rail. An amendment that is already neglected, maligned and considered a waste due to lack of support from the government.

He’s a pilot that doesn’t want his airport (personal airport) in downtown St. Petersburg closed. He wants political support to save the airport… Yet the airport isn’t anything grand. In fact I learned to detest it when I went to the Tall Ships festival last year (and got buzzed over and over again by private planes)….

The city of St. Petersburg is losing tons of money with this airport and if they need / want to close it – so be it.

Yet my new “friend” wants not only the airport to stay open but a new “Mega Airport” to open in Florida to FURTHER support air transit.

Right…

In a state that’s already bowed to too much development and has not centralized it’s cities, air transit and complex air plans are only going to further encourage sprawl by letting distant places seem closer. That’s the last thing I want. I’d like to see city centers become just that with RAIL connections to the suburbs. Not distant suburbs several dozen-to-hundred miles away get connected by a plane-taxi like service.

It’s groovy, it’s space age, it’s a plan that everyone would have wanted for the 2000′s to be — easy travel by air — but it’s not plausible. Not now. Not in this state. Not in this ms-developed county.

Well, I’ve
been out of touch and out of taste with my journal entries lately because of
what is becoming very futile with my Moveable Type transition. Complex coding
and greater HTML know-how is required in order to successfully use the alternate
journal (I don’t know Cascading Style Sheets and that factors in – sorry to
give the average user a bit of confusion there if they don’t know what that
is) and I’ve just thrown up my hands with even trying with it for now

For now.

SO here
I’m sitting on Monday evening and I’ve been cleaning off my desk which further
needs to be cleaned after I shuffled several of my papers and folders somewhere
else. In other words — I’ve done a very unconvincing job of cleaning even though
I claim that i have been cleaning

I got a
lot of props for my entry about Adaptation
because of the fire and emotion I showed in the entry. Well, at 2AM all you
are going to do is show fire, emotion and perhaps incoherent rambling. The latter
is what I was afraid the entry would turn into when I wrote it and in a lot
of ways – it is.

But I was
truly impressed with the movie.

I’ve watched
a few flicks the last few days – Catch
Me If You Can (that really made my heart ache over Frank W. Abagnale
Jr having to run form the girl he was in love with because she hadn’t been strong
enough to deal with the feds), The
Animatrix, and a few others that I can’t think of right now. In fact
I’ve been keeping tabs on my
Netflix Profile and I have rated and viewed a LOT of movies over the years.

So anyway,
I’ve got to finish cleaning here and I’ve got to sit down and write again…
Need to keep that trend. Need to drown reality in the figment of my imagination
or I will go insane.

I don’t get it. I honestly don’t fucking get this.

How come an opinionated asshole like myself has written dozens of rants on topics from local roads to Dubya and had them published as letters to the editor in the newspaper, has had thousands of rants (be they sports related and or political related or music related or what) posted on message boards across the Internet, and yet I don’t feel comfortable at all writing out this non fiction assignment?!? UGH!

I mean, you do a search on Google for me + the St. Petersburg Times and the following is just some of what will show up (you’ll have to scroll down for each of these letters most of the time:

Abolish the DH

"Mass
Transit Could work if Counties combined efforts"

"Self Serving Voters"

"What if views had been conservative?"

"We Didn’t Deserve the Olympics"

Scientology and Anti-semitism displayed in St. Pete Times letters section

Elian Gonzales

That’s just a brief glimpse of stuff I’ve ranted about. Plus those who know my journal know full well I have ranted on and on about other things and other concerns of mine in here… I already made mention of that in a recent entry into this journal.

It drives me friggin’ INSANE knowing I can write all these short quips about things that concern me but now that I have to write 1000 words on them I’m shit out of nerve to do it. Someone pinch me, someone cuddle with me and someone re-assure before smacking me and telling me to snap out of it and get with it, that this is no big thing and I’m making a mountain out of a molehill.