Bag of Randomness
Friday, August 21, 2026

Something else my kids’ school does that I found isn’t a unique tradition: the week of graduation, seniors walk the halls of all grade levels. But what might make it a bit more special for them is that their school is a single campus at one address. So all schools- grammar, middle, and high school- are all neighboring buildings. In case you are wondering why I said grammar, that’s the descriptor classical education schools use instead of elementary.

Possum Kingdom Lake before water.

Love it. I plan on eating my next cookie humming the Indiana Jones theme.

At some point, Jimmy, you gotta let this go. There’s not a person alive, even Gene Jones, who doesn’t believe your side of the story.

Earlier this week, a CBS News segment covered a 47-year-old pastor playing football at San Jose City College. Curious, I wanted to know more about the guy and his background. Playfully, the first thing I told myself was, “He’s got to be an Evangelical.”

He has his own website where you can purchase t-shirts and books he’s authored, and learn how to book him for speaking engagements. On top of that, he also offers coaching:

He’s also active on social media. It appears he started posting on X late last month. Here are three X posts that caught my attention.


I have just about zero doubt that during the midterms, Trump will have masked federal agents monitoring polling stations. That’s going to feel eerie, and sadly, some people won’t mind it. If masked federal agents aren’t there, you just know a lot of masked Trump supporters will.

He’s been showing off his White House renovations this week. I’m not sure if those columns are finished; I know he posted a photo of the floor around them getting an upgrade. But it wouldn’t surprise me one iota if he adds gold leaf to the top of them or the outside of the White House.

And it’s nauseating how many things he and his sycophants keep trying to slap his name on. The latest:

And yes, that tarp he placed on the front of the Kennedy Center when his name was removed is still there.

“The Odyssey” is still drawing crowds to Cinemark Dallas

Offhand, this doesn’t seem like sound military strategy.

The U.S. Army is planning to phase out a drone battalion tasked just last year with studying and taking on board lessons on drone warfare, including from the ongoing Ukraine war, an Army official confirmed to CBS News on Thursday.

And the ending of the segment didn’t instill confidence:

“In a sign of where things stand, in a mock drone battle between U.S. and Ukrainian forces last spring, sources say the Americans were soundly defeated.“

But hey, the top of the new White House ballroom will have a drone port.

It was a long shot, anyway, but sometimes you gotta go down trying and see what you can learn from the experience.

More evidence that my local NFL franchise will not win the Super Bowl this year. A hot dog fridge?

I meant to post this story earlier this month.

CBS Evening News finally cracked more than 4 million viewers for the first time since March, according to reporting by Status. However, the show reached the solid ratings while its main anchor, Tony Dokoupil, was on a two-week summer vacation.

Nebraska’s largest school district asks police to stop using electric shock gloves on students

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha police agreed this week to stop carrying gloves that can deliver electric shocks to students in the halls of Nebraska’s largest public school district.

The decision affecting most Omaha middle and high schools came after The Associated Press first revealed Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to give officers the gloves, which are known as G.L.O.V.E.s or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitters. The devices have also been used in recent years by some jails.

Omaha Superintendent Matthew Ray requested that police working in the schools, known as school resource officers, stop using the gloves. Omaha Police agreed.

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Friday, August 21, 2026

Public Service Announcement

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