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For those of you who also like to read Barry’s LiberallyLean.com, you will temporarily need to go through WiseCounty.com or use this old link. Rumor has it that you can only complain about the current administration so much before they take you down (half-joking).

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

See ya tomorrow.

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Bag of Randomness
Monday, April 17, 2026

I recently posted about my children’s high school football team “encouraging” freshmen to kiss their mother before getting out of the car. Well, I guess that’s not as unique as I thought it was, because on Friday, Steve Hartman had a segment on an Oklahoma school that takes it up a level. The entire senior class gets involved, to the point that they push car doors in, keeping the freshman inside, until they kiss their mother or father.

And here’s another Steve Hartman segment I wanted to post because it made me literally laugh out loud, something I rarely do anymore. Seeing those two play is just darn cute. Ducks are my spirit animal, I think. How many species can walk, fly, and swim?!

Praise God the dog and duck are on the socials (LinkTree)!

There’s so much material I’m tempted to post, but I fear I’m getting duped by an AI image, video, or article.

DaughterGeeding recently had to get her blood drawn. Interestingly, the person who did it attended high school with my older brother. He noticed her last name and said, “Oh, Geeding, huh? I went to high school with a — Geeding in Mineral Wells.”

Mark Cuban’s pharmacy steps in after insurer denied a 26-year-old heart transplant survivor her anti-rejection drug

Adam Driver is going to be in the future X-Men movies. The man has already ruined one of my other favorite franchises; why must he ruin another? He’s a very talented actor, and from what I understand, a good human being, but he automatically ruins any movie he’s in. People tend to overrate the guy. He annoys me more than the 30-seconds I see Nicole Kidman introduce an AMC movie. They just suck the life force out of me.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath told legislators the state lost 75,000 students in one year.

  • “We cannot tell you the precise cause of this,” Morath said.
  • Bob Templeton with Strive Public Policy said the decline is not expected to stop soon. Templeton said the state could lose another 120,000 students next year and 400,000 students four to five years from now. He pointed to declining birth rates and an increase in families choosing homeschool or private school options. Some lawmakers questioned how vouchers could widen the gap.

Students surprise teachers by asking them to autograph their old high school photos.

The only thing that annoys me is when the teachers ask, “Where did you find this?” Sheesh, everything is online. Anytime I search for an old high school classmate, I’m usually directed to a website that hosts old high school yearbook pages.

This article about Stargate, one of the country’s largest data centers, being built outside Abilene states that the average rent is now higher than in Austin. It also states the Abilene City Council gave Stargate an 85% tax abatement.

This photo in the article also caught my attention. They are obviously not part of an HOA, lol. And personally, choosing red for a cross to display outside your home is a bad move. For one, a red cross typically distinguishes the rescue organization or military medics. But those crosses have the same width and height measurements. Red crosses that are longer vertically are only seen in horror movies or goth-type events.

The worst argument anyone can make with me regarding HOAs is: “What if your neighbor wanted to paint their house purple?” Dude, I’m the neighbor who wants to paint my house purple. And I’m the neighbor who wouldn’t care if my neighbor hung an absurdly ugly red cross on the front of their house. My job is to love my neighbor, not to deny them life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness like those socialist-nazi HOAs, and the people who support them.

All of that reminds me of this old news story about old houses that display swastikas. Most of the houses were built before WWII, and the Navajo and other tribes considered them good-luck symbols, which leads to a lot of modern-day confusion. I recall touring the Baker Hotel and seeing a bathroom with small floor tiles with that symbol. Something a lot of folks also don’t consider, Nazi Germany used a tilted version.

An interesting Sojourners article that I know most of my Evangelical friends won’t take seriously, since it references several seminaries or schools they claim teach “liberal theology.” Rather than giving anything they state the benefit of the doubt, they simply dismiss it, which is frustratingly sad.

Reckoning With the Youth Groups That Raised Us – We were meant to live for so much more. But we lost ourselves.

“IF YOU TRACE youth group history, most of these groups are about social control,” says Liz Moore, the assistant director for the Institute for Youth Ministry at Princeton Theological Seminary. “They’re deeply connected to how you live in your body. And I would say that that as a strategy did not pay off for young people in the long run.”

I noticed a new Texas Lottery commercial, played ad nauseam during the Cowboys preseason game, that solely features a very well-known Baylor alum the university likes to showcase. I wonder how the ultra-conservative school reconciles one of its own endorsing gambling. My close friends who are Baptist preachers are so firmly against gambling that they won’t accept any tithe or donation from gambling money, no matter the amount, even if it were in the millions.

Personally, I have no issue with any of it. I’m just curious to understand their perspective.

For those of us who labored installing a ceiling fan, it’s about to get a lot easier. I tried to embed the two-minute YouTube short, but for some reason, it ain’t working.

How THC shops are dealing with Texas’ new ban

Scott Pelley Wins Award for 60 Minutes Segment 2 Months After His Firing from the CBS News Show – The newsmagazine’s “The Bus on Route 62” report earned an Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Writing

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Monday, April 17, 2026

Bag of Randomness
Thursday, August 13, 2026

Both of my children are now officially high schoolers. BoyGeeding officially started his freshman year yesterday.

Their school does an excellent job of fostering respect and encouraging students to support one another, and there is no worry about bullying or hazing. That said, the football team encouraged freshmen to hug their moms as they got out of the car. I had zero problem with this.

As for DaughterGeeding, it was the first time she drove herself to school.

Meet the teacher was earlier in the week. Now that Texas requires the Ten Commandments in every classroom (for the most part), and knowing how conservative the school is, I was curious to see how each teacher would display them in their classroom. Surprisingly, not one classroom I visited had them displayed, and I doubt any parent would complain. Heck, I bet I was the only parent who had this in mind. However, I did notice the Rhetoric teacher had this frame artwork on display. I’m sure it’s been hanging in his classroom for many years, but I found a bit of humor in it, all things considered.

The way our school does Meet the Teacher is by simulating our child’s class schedule, spending about 10-15 minutes in each class and being dismissed by the bell. In one classroom, the teacher said something that I wanted to know more about, so I decided to do some quick research on my phone. As I was reading, all of a sudden I heard the teacher say, “Isn’t that right, Mr. Geeding?” My heart fell straight into my stomach. I felt so bad; I just embarrassed my son, who is about to start his high school experience, in front of his classmates and their parents. But as I looked up, I quickly realized he was speaking to my son, and not to me. Whew! However, that experience has taught me to be more mindful and respectful.

This reminds me of those old Southwest Airlines “Wanna Get Away?” commercials.

This graphic, accompanying an Axios article on the start and end of school across the nation, caught my attention. It stated one reason that the Northeast starts late is to protect summer tourism by maintaining a seasonal youth workforce at beaches and camps.

Here are a handful of stats from the article and one of its sources, MDR Education, A Dun & Bradstreet Division.

  • District calendars show nearly half of all schools will open by Aug. 16. Four in five will open before Sept. 1.
  • Nearly all public schools in the Deep South open before Aug. 16. Almost none in New England do.
  • Districts largely set their own calendars, but some states mandate start dates. In Minnesota, for example, districts generally cannot begin the school year before Labor Day, with limited exceptions.
  • Early Opening Window: The largest share of schools open before August 16, representing 42,835 schools in the current-year state data.
  • Middle Opening Window: 32,442 schools open between August 16 and August 31, making this the second-largest opening window.
  • Late Opening Window: 13,991 schools open after August 31, with late openings most concentrated by count in New York, New Jersey, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Washington.
  • Early Closing Window: The most common closing window is before June 1, accounting for 50,636 schools.
  • Late Closing Window: 11,536 schools close after June 15, with late closings most concentrated by count in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Washington, and Virginia.

What are the Texas-specific stats? I’m glad you asked.

Texas School Open Dates

  • Before Aug 16: 6,948
  • Aug 16 to 31: 1,108
  • After Aug 31: 1

Texas School Close Dates

  • Before June 1: 7,626
  • June 1 to June 15: 352
  • After June 15: 79

That one school caught my attention, so I had to see what I could find. I believe it’s Sweet Home ISD in Sweet Home, Texas, a small community in Lavaca County between Hallettsville and Yoakum. According to Wikipedia:

The district has one campus, Sweet Home Elementary, which serves students in grades pre-kindergarten through eight. Students in grades nine through twelve are eligible attend either Yoakum High School (Yoakum ISD) or Hallettsville High School (Hallettsville ISD), with most opting for Yoakum.

I still can’t get over this story.

Venomous snake found in Arkansas high school football player’s helmet

It was a two-foot-long cottonmouth, and the kid wore the helmet for about an hour. An hour! How does the snake not get agitated after an hour of the player running around doing football drills?

I haven’t seen any reports on when they think the snake got in the helmet. Did it crawl in there while in the locker room? Did the student take the helmet off during practice and lay it somewhere?

Heck, I had a hard time spotting it inside the helmet the first time I saw the story.

Sportico once again named the Dallas Cowboys the most valuable franchise in sports, valuing them at $15.5 billion.

Jody Dean couldn’t have put it better, especially the first part.

The average fan looks at this and says “Imagine what they’d be worth if they actually won a Super Bowl”. What the average fan misses is that Jerry’s definition of “winning” has evolved.

Agreed. Even though he played for a rival, I always respected and admired Darrell Green. It also helped to know he grew up in Texas.

CNN Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward has started an interesting new series about the wives of dictators. I think it’s only available on Instagram, and it’s named “First Ladies of Fear.” The first feature is on Madame Mao.

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Thursday, August 13, 2026

Bag of Randomness
Monday, August 10, 2026

I still can’t get a ticket to see The Odyssey in 70mm. Even the 2:30 am showings are sold out. That got me thinking about the handful of IMAX 70mm projectionists qualified to operate the very specialized equipment. They must be sick and tired of that movie. Unlike other projectors, they can’t just be set and forgot it.

Little wonder why locals refer to this data center as “The Dungeon.”

What a view!

This small business located outside Naval Air Station Pensacola made the Blue Angels’ ceremonial flight suits for 43 years. Not anymore.

According to sam.gov, the Navy has awarded a new $1.69 million five-year contract to a company in Virginia to take over that role.

“The Sewing Box” on North Navy Boulevard says they’ve now lost their biggest customer. Owner Candy Whitehurst says she’s nothing short of heartbroken after outfitting the team for decades.

“I would have never ever thought that my Blues would treat me like this,” Whitehurst said. “Not in a million years.”

WEAR: “How many Blues uniforms do you think you’ve made over the years?”

Whitehurst: “It’s so many I can’t even really tell you.”

WEAR: “Thousands?”

Whitehurst: “Yes, thousands.”

I’m guessing it’s a mom-and-pop type shop since their website is very 1999. Heck, they even use an iStockphoto.

Stars and Stripes provides some additional information.

  • The value of the deal with Aquila is more than double the nearly $700,000 paid out since 2008 to the Sewing Box, according to data on USAspending.gov.
  • The shop was awarded additional sole-source contracts since, one for $99,250 in 2024 and another for $126,750 in 2025.
  • In 2018, the Navy sought an $81,600 sole-source contract with the Sewing Box, stating that it had to go with the company, which had made the flight suits since 1976, because it owned the design and the Blue Angels could not send it to other vendors.
    • The 2018 justification also cited the Sewing Box’s proximity to the team, saying a local vendor was needed to accommodate the flyers’ demanding show schedule and occasional on-site measurements.
  • The Blue Angels had been the largest customer of the shop, which had produced, custom-fitted and tailored thousands of flight suits since the 1970s, Whitehurst said.
  • Aquila isn’t new to working with the Blue Angels. Since 2024, it has outfitted the squadron with flight gloves, compression garments and other athletic apparel, company co-founder Todd Kelsey told WEAR on Tuesday.

Don Nelson was such a likable guy, and talk about living a full life. One of my favorite Nelson moments was when he bowed up to Karl Malone in January of 2000. If you don’t remember why this moment occurred, it’s because he always stood up for his players when they were getting bullied. The player in this case was Shawn Bradley, who is now sadly paralyzed.

As for the aftermath:

Friendly reminder that a 20-year-old Malone got a 13-year-old pregnant. That child played in the NFL for the Bills and Eagles, and was last signed by the Dallas Cowboys

Bo Jackson was in the dugout when Robin Ventura charged the mound, and Nolan Ryan beat the heck living daylight out of him. Here, he gives you a bit of the backstory and what it was like to be a part of it.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/W9ezYlHl9Ak

The instantly recognizable music of the Peanuts cartoons was primarily composed by Vince Guaraldi in 1964.  He only lived to the age of 47, dying in a California motel room while taking a break during a nightclub performance in 1976 from a ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm. 

As most of y’all know, my last vehicle was a Nissan Leaf. There’s a post on Reddit about a Leaf in the UK that was converted into a hearse. To fit a coffin, the passenger seat had to be removed, and I can’t get over what it must be like for the driver to have a body directly across from you.

Sidenote: For some reason, I always want to be a “t” in the word “hearse.” I do it verbally all the time. It’s probably because I’m so used to hearing the nearby city of Hurst.

For those of you who care if your professional football player loves Jesus.

The article first highlights Patrick Mahomes and mentions his father, who now wears an ankle monitor and was an elementary school student in my children’s grandmother’s classroom.

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Monday, August 10, 2026