Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, July 1, 2020


Yesterday I had a daily multi-vitamin bottle in my hand and grabbed the vitamin-D bottle only to find it hasn’t been opened yet. I needed to break the seal on the vitamin-d bottle, but was having the darndest time doing so with the multi-vitamin bottle in my hand. Now, I could have simply put the multi-vitamin bottle down and easily opened the vitamin-D bottle, but in my mind that felt like defeat and my masculinity score would have dropped a few notches. I never could break the right plastic seal on the exterior of the bottle with my fingers, so I resorted to using my teeth, which worked out.


When President Trump said the country would reopen by Easter, I guess we didn’t know he meant Easter 2021.


Stolen from WifeGeeding’s Facebook account.

Coronavirus explained in craft terms – You and nine friends are crafting. One is using glitter. How many projects have glitter?


I didn’t know that in Texas, the justice of the peace had to take classes to retain their office. Per Wikipedia: “New JPs are required to take 80 hours of legal, state-mandated classes the first year, and 20 hours each year thereafter during their tenure in office.”


Texas Monthly – Do You Have What It Takes to Be a Master Auctioneer?Eight days inside America’s Auction Academy, learning the secrets of “the dynamo from Dallas.”

Live bid-calling is like a series of contracts, and when an auctioneer says “Sold,” accepting the bid, the highest bidder is on the hook. Therefore, each part of the chant is crucial. “A chant is made of three components: a statement, a question, and a suggestion,” Jones began. The jumbles of syllables between the numbers are called filler words. The basic chant Jones proposed—the one we would employ for the remainder of the class and that would provide a soundtrack for all our dreams and nightmares—was “One dollar bid, now two, now two, will you give me two?”

This chant was the “Dick and Jane” of the form, the starter set upon which we would build our own auctioneer identities. A chant is as much a trademark to an auctioneer as James Brown’s scream and Bob Wills’s high-pitched holler were to them. All chants, Jones stressed, must be conducive to rhythm, melody, and clarity, exploiting words that easily roll off the tongue. Filler words and phrases like “bid ’em at” and “gimme” and “I’m bid” and “how ’bout” are better than “what about,” since consonants that use the front of the mouth (like b) require less breath than letters like w. Jones asked us to hold our hands in front of our mouths to compare “who” to “gimme” to demonstrate how much more breath was required for the former. The numbers need to be clear; the filler words are there for pleasure—to add an energetic, pressing, hypnotic quality. Filler words should give buyers time to consider their next offers but not so much time that the rhythm of the chant is broken. A clunky chant could lead to a hoarse auctioneer and confused or sluggish audience members, reluctant to bid.


I only watched a handful of episodes of Frasier, but I thought Peri Gilpin (Roz) had a very attractive voice. I had no idea she was born in Waco, grew up in Dallas, graduated from Skyline, and was a Longhorn.


Something for my fellow mask-wearing Hamilton friends. I thought this was pretty clever and funny.


Edmunds expert Mark Takahashi takes his automotive design criticism to the next level by highlighting why some modern car design trends need to go away.

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One Response to Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, July 1, 2020

  1. Ben W. says:

    JPs are the only judges in Texas who aren’t required to be lawyers, thus the need for the training. I’ve had appearances before 7-8 different JPs, and in my experience they generally want to get the law right. They don’t always do that, but most of them try their best.

    For my money, Frasier is one of the top 2-3 sitcoms ever, and I encourage you to give the entire series a chance. It is a perfect mix of high-brow and slapstick and, somewhat unexpectedly, quite a bit of heart.

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