BagOfNothing.com

• I was stuck in a moment of nostalgia when I stumbled upon some Chirggerex the other day. I had no idea that stuff was still around, it was a staple at my house when I was a child.
• I was checking DaughterGeeding’s homework last night and tried to keep from laughing. She had to use the word “prison” in a sentence. Her sentence, “I’m not in prison, yet.”
• I guess we wear deodorant (or antiperspirant) for those around us more than we do ourselves.
• You often hear how a certain type of fashion will go out of style and come back again, bell bottoms for example. I’m surprised the bullet bra, those pointy brassieres popular in the 50’s, never came back into style.
• Eerie headline –  Teen burned alive named killer before dying, firefighters testify
• ‘Modern Family’ is in its ninth season, and the actress who plays “Lily” is still the worst actor in television.
• After watching ‘Modern Family’ I caught just a little bit of ‘American Housewife’. The teenage boy had an embarrassing moment during a ballet class when he uncontrollably became aroused and couldn’t hide it in front of his peers. Those teenage years are an awkward phase. You girls may not understand but all guys know what I’m talking about. There’s a reason a lot of boys carried their books in front of them with two hands. I remember a similar event happening to a friend during our junior year in high school. The school had a special assembly to watch a student production of “Alladin”. The poor guy had one of those moments during the play and I can still remember certain people yelling and making fun of him.
• Kate Bennett is a reporter for CNN and loves fashion. She frequently tweets about the wardrobe of the First Lady (current and former), often listing the price and where you can buy it (Example1, Example2). It’s superficial, yet I enjoy those tweets for some reason. I’m guessing it has to deal with my fascination of presidential history and such.
• This was a better than expected read. NBC News’ Katy Tur covered Donald Trump on the campaign trail and he called her out many times in speeches and on Twitter. She wrote about the experience and is pushing a book, here’s an excerpt(strong language warning).
  • This is about when they first met:
    • “Don’t you want a picture?” he asks me, as if he doesn’t know why I haven’t suggested it yet. “Come here, Katy.” OK, this is awkward. I don’t want a photo. I know that our every move is beaming live into 30 Rockefeller Center, NBC News headquarters, and that my bosses, watching in real time, will cringe to see me smiling like a fan girl next to my interview subject. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to tell him no but at the same time … why in the world would he think I want a photo? I’m not a fan. I’m a journalist. This is a network news interview. So I say yes. Maybe this is a mind game. Maybe Trump is trying to charm me, knock me off balance, confuse the point of this interview. Or maybe he just figures he’s a bigshot celebrity and pre-interview photos are routine.
• Restored Prisoner’s Letter Uncovers Horrific Details of Life at Auschwitz Death Camp
• An Extremely Tense Battle Between A Moose And A Wolf – A drone pilot got one hell of a show while filming in Ontario recently.
• I never really thought it about before, and maybe it’s because I lack it, but this coach is totally right – you earn confidence, nobody gives it to you.

https://twitter.com/STLProspects04/status/918109225653501953?s=09

• The older I get, the more I have to come to grips that I will never be as country a Marie or as rock and roll as Donnie. Did you know that Donnie has his own furniture line?
• I like to play the celebrity age game with WifeGeeding because she’s so darn good at it. I’d say, at least 97% of the time, her guess is within a year of the actual age.
• I’ve been hearing a lot of people sing Toto’s “Africa” quite a bit as of late.
• Speaking of old songs, A-ha recently did MTV’s Unplugged (yup, it’s revived) and their acoustic version of “Take On Me” is great. That video has to be in the top-five of iconic 80’s videos, eh?
• I can’t identify a single St. Vincent song and I doubt I can pick her out of a lineup, but I think she has a really cool stage name. Neil Diamond, believe it or not, isn’t a stage name but his real name.
• Just in case any of you need to wake up, TD Jakes has a message for you.
• The U.S. Army awarded 20 Medals of Honor to soldiers of The Battle of Wounded Knee.
• Good behavior
  • More than 6,600 inmates have donated $53,863 from their commissary funds to help victims of Hurricane Harvey.
• I often hear football fans wish the NFL would adopt such-and-such rule from the college game and vice-versa. No complaints here, I like seeing different variations of the game.

• Longtime readers may recall my blogging about my friend Allyson’s fight with cancer, which she lost back in 2014. She left behind a husband and three boys, ages eight to twelve. I often wondered what they are up to. Yesterday, I found out the answer from an old friend and instantly regretted I even asked. After her death, in the span of fifteen months, her husband remarried, was arrested, and killed himself. All I could do was think about those young boys, what they’ve been through in that crazy two-year span, and how it took me two years to even hear about it.
• In William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, chapter 19 of the book is just one sentence: “My mother is a fish.”
• NASA astronaut Scott Kelly spent almost a year and space and he wrote a book about it, which will come out later this month. Here’s some detail he provides about a dinner he had with family just two days after returning to Earth:
  • I contemplated what it would be like to eat this meal so many times. Now that I’m finally here, it doesn’t seem entirely real. The faces of the people I love that I haven’t seen for so long, the chatter of many people talking together, the clink of silverware, the swish of wine in a glass – these are all unfamiliar. Even the sensation of gravity holding me in my chair feels strange, and every time I put a glass or fork down on the table there’s a part of my mind that is looking for a dot of Velcro or a strip of duct tape to hold it in place.
  •  I start the journey to my bedroom: about 20 steps from the chair to the bed. On the third step, the floor seems to lurch under me, and I stumble into a planter. Of course, it isn’t the floor – it’s my vestibular system trying to readjust to Earth’s gravity. I’m getting used to walking again.
  • I make it to my bedroom without incident and close the door behind me. Every part of my body hurts. All my joints and all of my muscles are protesting the crushing pressure of gravity. I’m also nauseated, though I haven’t thrown up. I strip off my clothes and get into bed, relishing the feeling of sheets, the light pressure of the blanket over me, the fluff of the pillow under my head. All these are things I’ve missed dearly for the past year.
  • And then this part, not related to the dinner, stood out:
    • A normal mission to the International Space Station lasts five to six months, so scientists have a good deal of data about what happens to the human body in space for that length of time. But very little is known about what occurs after month six. The symptoms may get precipitously worse in the ninth month, for instance, or they may level off. We don’t know, and there is only one way to find out.
    • On my previous flight to the space station, a mission of 159 days, I lost bone mass, my muscles atrophied, and my blood redistributed itself in my body, which strained and shrank the walls of my heart. More troubling, I experienced problems with my vision, as many other astronauts had. I had been exposed to more than 30 times the radiation of a person on Earth, equivalent to about 10 chest X-rays every day. This exposure would increase my risk of a fatal cancer for the rest of my life.
• James Avery creates Whataburger charm for sale
• A great two-point conversion from last night.

https://twitter.com/barstooltweetss/status/917585821582098433

• Pee-wee flag football was great on Saturday. I felt like Jim Lee Howell out there with Landry (WifeGeeding) and Lombardi (Jimi) helping. We got creamed last week but were totally dominant this last game. It’s neat seeing how some of the kids have developed and are learning and retaining things. And it’s cool seeing how some of them are coming out of their shell. But it’s still a challenge with a few of them, and it’s important those kids don’t slip through the cracks.
• I have the day off and I’m spending the morning at a pumpkin patch.
• SNL really hit it out of the park with their cold open. It’s interesting how it’s become part of the American disposition. And that “dating app” skit was simply great.
• What’s up with all the annexation in Texas as of late? This year I’ve heard Weatherford, Decatur, and Lewisville attempting annexation of nearby communities. Is something going on legally with a time constraint that it’s happening so much recently, or has it happened often I just haven’t been paying attention?
• I’ve noted how I wasn’t much of a Tom Petty fan, but since his death, I’ve started to have a higher appreciation of the man. My first memories of him and his videos disturbed me as a kid. There was “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” in which he dressed and danced with a corpse and the “Don’t Come Around Here No More” with the Alice in Wonderland theme in which he played the Mad Hatter who ate Alice when she was turned into a cake. I also had no idea Petty worked as a groundskeeper at the University of Florida, and the crowd at the game on Saturday sang “I Won’t Back Down” in unison in tribute to him. Very cool.
• Kansas State head coach Bill Snyder battled throat cancer last year and coached on his birthday with his team playing against the Texas Longhorn, who gave him a big signed birthday card before the game.  Texas QB Sam Ehlinger, who now probably deserves the starting job, had one heck of a bulldozing run.
• There was a lot of debate about Vice President Pence leaving the Colts game yesterday, in which Peyton Manning’s number was retired. But what got my attention in Indianapolis was David Letterman making a surprise appearance to roast Peyton Manning when his statue outside the stadium was revealed. Dave said that both Peyton and Eli have the same number of wins so far this year. Letterman will also be on Kimmel this week. Little known fact, Letterman sent Kimmel a box of his old ties after he went off the air, which I’m sure will be a topic of conversation.
• It feels good letting go of sports team enthusiasm. I haven’t completely done so, but the Cowboys loss didn’t affect me one bit yesterday. In the past, it would have bummed me out for a day or two. Sure, it’s fun, but I started to realize I took it too seriously and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t matter how a sports team does.