Your Bag of Randomness for Thursday, February 20, 2025

  • There was an interesting Al Capone special on PBS last night. It featured the creator of Breaking Bad, Vince Gilligan. Capone didn’t serve his full 11 year sentence, about 2/3 of it. When he was released, syphilis got the best of him, a psych evaluation of him showed he was about as bright as a 12 year old. He was only 48.
  • JFK Library reopens after suddenly closing due to Trump executive order – The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston reopened Wednesday after it closed abruptly Tuesday afternoon, citing “the executive order” as the reason for the closure.

  • An ICE prosecutor in Dallas ran a white supremacist account on X (formerly Twitter). I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’ve seen Texas politics lately.

  • Opened a new jar of peanut butter yesterday, and that untouched, smooth surface is the closest thing to perfection I’ve seen in a while. And yes, I promptly destroyed it with a spoon.

  • There’s a venomous snake from Ecuador that showed up in a box of bananas at a New Hampshire grocery store. Imagine reaching for a potassium boost and getting a quick trip to the ER instead.

  • I find it amusing that when my car’s GPS says, “You’ve arrived,” I don’t feel any more accomplished than I did a minute ago.

  • There’s a new interim president at UT Austin. He was a deputy attorney general in Paxton’s office before joining the UT system and will be the first acting president since the 1800s without a teaching background.

  • Speaker of Longhorns, I always wondered how Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson would do on Jeopardy! and got my answer last night during prime time. Not as well as I expected, he even missed an easy one about one of the moons in our solar system. It appears pop-culutre and obscure history facts got the best of him.

  • I read that sloths can hold their breath longer than dolphins. This sounds like a fact I will never need, yet here I am, telling you anyway.

  • In a plot twist nobody asked for, orange alligators are showing up in South Carolina. Maybe this is how orange Gatoraide is made. If this is nature’s way of telling us we’re in the end times, I’m ready.

  • Calvin Coolidge had a pet raccoon named Rebecca that he saved from being served at Thanksgiving dinner. He even built her a little house on the White House grounds. The 1920s were wild. Source

  • I walked into a room and completely forgot why I was there.

  • I’m not saying I’m old, but I do remember when the phone was attached to the wall, and you had to remember people’s phone numbers. And, I remember the awkwardness of calling a girl, only for her parents to answer, and then sounding as gentlemanly as I could to speak with his or her daughter.

  • The Dallas Mavericks are still the Mavericks. At least we’re consistent in keeping our therapists employed.

  • I don’t trust anyone who doesn’t use their turn signal. It’s like they thrive in chaos.

  • The Week: The end of empathy – Elon Musk is gutting the government — and our capacity for kindness.
  • When you hear someone say, “I don’t mean to offend you,” just know that whatever comes next will absolutely offend you.

  • Why do we call it “babysitting” when, nine times out of ten, the baby is not sitting?

  • I miss the days when my biggest worry was whether or not I could tape over a commercial on a VHS recording.

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Your Bag of Nothing for Tuesday, February 18, 2025

  • BoyGeeding is now officially a teenager. He had two of his friends stay the night on his birthday over the weekend. I’m thankful he’s surrounded by some well-mannered boys full of respect and potential.
  • I had most of the house carpet steamed cleaned for my son’s overnight 13th birthday party. A very friendly 80-year-old man who owned the company came over. Sure, he had a middle-aged man as a helper, but I just had a feeling an octogenarian isn’t helping to steam clean carpets on a Saturday morning if he did have to. When I made the appointment on the phone, he even gave me a discount as a first-time customer. The total bill was $89, and I agreed I’d pay cash. I knew the wad of cash I had was either $110 or $120. I didn’t care to count it; I just felt he needed it more than me, even if that day was my first day of officially being unemployed. He asked that I sign a receipt and handed me a pen. After I signed, I tried to hand it back to him, but he told me to keep it because it’s one way he advertises.
  • It feels weird being unemployed. There’s so much uncertainty in my industry because of DOGE, something that didn’t even exist a month ago. I received an email from my congressman yesterday updating his constituents about how he is fighting the liberals who all are overreacting at DOGE, eliminating government waste, and how our lives are going to be better.
  • Elon Musk’s father, Errol Musk, has two children with his stepdaughter.
  • AMC has been playing a marathon of Mad Men, which is great to have on in the background as I job hunt.
  • Charlie Chaplin died in 1977 at the ripe old age of 88. His youngest son is a musician and is now 62; he was born when his father was 73.
  • Made me laugh.
  • I enjoyed watching the SNL 50th Anniversary Special on NBC last night. Seeing cast members from different eras perform in a skit together was great. But then again, I had a sense of melancholy thinking of the possibility of seeing Chris Farley working with John Belushi or John Mulvaney work
    • Seeing Jack Nicolson introduce a musical segment was a nice surprise, and I think everyone was delighted that he looked pretty good
    • Loyal friends. She died on a Saturday. Here’s how the show honored her that night.
  • I’m going to start cooling it on the Luka trade, but I saw this recently and it really stood out.

  • This is a work of beauty.

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Your Bag of Randomness for Thursday, February 13, 2025

Posted in Personal | Comments Off on Your Bag of Randomness for Thursday, February 13, 2025

Your Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, February 11, 2025

  • It felt a little weird watching Luka play in his first game as a Laker last night. Even the announcers were in awe that such a trade took place.
  • Dirk Nowitzki was in LA to support Luka Doncic’s Lakers debut last night. Just like his statue says, loyalty doesn’t fade away.
  • The Mavs are losing their fanbase fast. They wouldn’t allow this guy into the AAC to watch the Mavs the other day, and then last night, when someone mouthed “Fire Nico” when he was on the jumbotron, he was escorted out. I guess the new ownership is taking advice from North Korea.

  • While researching Groucho Marx recently, this snippet on his Wikipedia page stood out:
    • During a tour of Germany in 1958, accompanied by then-wife Eden, daughter Melinda, Robert Dwan and Dwan’s daughter Judith, he climbed a pile of rubble that marked the site of Adolf Hitler’s bunker, the site of Hitler’s death, and performed a two-minute Charleston. He later remarked to Richard J. Anobile in The Marx Brothers Scrapbook, “Not much satisfaction after he killed six million Jews!”
  • It was pretty cool seeing John Oliver make a surprise appearance on The Daily Show last night, which was hosted by Jon Stewart, who only works on Mondays. I haven’t looked it up, but I bet that means the new season of Last Week Tonight will air this coming Sunday.
  • Dallas Cowboy linebacker Micah Parsons regrets not visiting the University of Texas and stated it is only one of three colleges he will pay for his children to attend college. The other two are Penn State, his alma mater, and Duke.
  • I feel like I’m inside a glass house and about to throw a rock while saying this, but it annoys me when news articles, presumably written by professionals, are poorly written. I give myself a pass since writing isn’t my profession, and I don’t claim to be a professional. While reading this article (Super Bowl halftime protester gets lifetime ban from NFL stadiums), there was the subheadline “Here’s what’s going on in Gaza” that I thought I should read to refresh my memory of why things are the way they are and verify what I think I already understand. This sentence really bugged me for some reason:The Gaza Strip is an enclave along the Mediterranean Sea bordered by both Egypt and Israel. It covers some 140 square mile — about the twice the size of Washington and 3-and-a-half times the size of Paris. But it’s incredibly densely populated and was home to 2.3 million Palestinians before the start of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war.Not only should “mile” be plural, but the writer should have indicated if the state or city of Washington is being referenced. Good writing should anticipate potential ambiguities, and in this case, adding “D.C.” or “state” would have eliminated any confusion.
  • During the Super Bowl, President Trump said he wanted to get rid of the penny on social media. So, I thought it was interesting yesterday that he had a giant penny displayed behind him.
  • It just bugs the heck out of me when people who can place their shopping cart in the proper place don’t. I shouldn’t like that this gentleman did such a thing, but I do.

  • Just a little life advice for you young journalism majors out there.

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