Your Bag of Nothing for Monday, September 23, 3024

  • I was supposed to go to jury duty today but I received a text saying it was cancelled. I was notified by a large postcard that I almost tossed out, thinking it was junk mail. It just didn’t look official to me.
  • It’s an interesting world we live in when the number one-ranked college football team in the country can’t be watched by traditional means, and you have to stream it. Crap like this didn’t happen in the Reagan administration. Gosh, I hope you get the humor in that last sentence.
  • Speaking of Reagan. Perhaps the most rememberable and grandest state dinner he and Nancy held was for Prince Charles and Diana. I recently found out that Nancy deliberately left Vice-President George H.W. Bush and his wife, Barbara, off the guest list. It turns out that Barbara and Nancy never got along after that, and it carried on through the first Bush administration when Nancy said something unpleasant about Bush losing his re-election bid. Nancy called to try to set the record straight, but Barbara told her to never call again and hung up on her. You can listen to that 1:41 segment here.
  • The Eagles made a Hotel California video for the Sphere, but I thought it would have been better. But, I saw some clips from some other songs that were quite impressive.
  • Allen’s pep rally went viral with all of its LED lights, smoke, lasers, and flame thrower-type contraptions. Here’s another video but without the fire and lasers.

  • Anyone remember the Gramatica brothers who kicked in the NFL? One of their sons is now kicking in college and celebrates like his old man. He should be careful since one of the elders injured himself in such a celebration.
  • It’s the 25th anniversary of the West Wing’s debut on NBC. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden invited the cast to the White House, and for fans like me, it was a delight to follow them on Twitter.
  • This is pretty funny; both guards pull in opposite directions only to run into and block each other.

  • I haven’t thought about Sonny Dykes in a while until I saw this tweet from the weekend. Dykes had that fantastic first season at TCU, making it to the title game, and then it’s been downhill ever since. I forgot he left SMU and went down the road to rival TCU. At the time, he was leaving to go to a school in a better conference. But now, SMU is in the ACC and I would say a better conference than the Big 12. Not to mention, his old school whipped his current team’s arse. I wonder if he would have been better off staying at SMU, and TCU holding on to Gary Patterson. But taking a team to the title game in your first year eclipses a lot of mistakes.
  • Hey, Cowboys fans, how about our kicker! He’s all we have to look forward to.
  • Umpires and other officials and referees often get a bad rap, so I thought it was cool that someone noticed the good merits of this guy.

  • I wonder if cancelling the whole thing was the right move, but then again, I don’t have much information to go on – Oklahoma high school cancels homecoming football game after students display racial slur in viral image
  • This is an interesting approach to solving the speeding problem.

  • I know I’m biased as a fan, but that’s some great camera work and a decent spiral.

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Your Bag of Randomness for Friday, September 20, 2024

  • A girl who was one or two grades behind me in high school reached out to me on a dating app. She’s a grandmother now, which is just hard for me to accept and process. But honestly, it was nice to know someone remembered me.
  • Yesterday, I mistakenly wrote that Mike “Fernando” Fernandez of The TICKET died when, in fact, Mark ‘Friedo’ Friedman died 11 months ago.
  • He may be the greatest baseball player in my lifetime, and that’s not even taking in his ability to pitch. Shohei Ohtani just had one of the greatest performances in MLB history yesterday:6-for-6
    3 Home runs
    2 Doubles
    1 Single
    10 Runs Batted In
    4 Runs Scored
    2 Stolen Bases

    He became the first player in MLB history to reach the 50/50 (and now 51/51) club. The 10 RBIs are the most by a Dodgers player in a game since RBIs became official in 1920, according to ESPN Research. His 51 homers also set a Dodgers record for the most in a single season. On a personal note, as someone who was bullied for having Asian heritage, it’s nice to see one be considered one of the greatest athletes of all time.

  • The Oklahoma Sooners had some trouble taking the field last Saturday.
  • I saw Vince Young trending on Twitter last night. The best I could find was a response to a popular account asking, “Name a player who didn’t win the Heisman but would die on the hill telling everyone they deserved it.” I see that argument, and I would have preferred VY to have won it, but Reggie Bush was deserving of that trophy. But undoubtedly, the greatest heist in Heisman history is when Andrew Luck lost it to a slightly above-average QB who padded his stats against cupcake teams and was on a hot streak when voting started. In this highlight reel, you see the man pass, run over tacklers, one-hand catch, and tackle. The only thing he didn’t do was special teams and catch an interception.
  • An interactive Sundown Town Map of the U.S.
    • A sundown town is not just a place where something racist happened. It is an entire community (or even county) that for decades was “all white” on purpose. “All white” is in quotes because some towns allowed one black family to remain when they drove out the rest. Also, institutionalized persons (in prisons, hospitals, colleges, etc.), live-in servants (in white households), and black or interracial children (in white households) do not violate the taboo.
  • Since my major life change several years ago, I’ve been rethinking my purpose in life, what I really want, and if nihilism is the way to go. Recently, I came across this in a book I’m reading, and I think there’s something to it. I’ve been chewing on it for a while. The author takes a bit of a back-door approach to finding an answer to that question.
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Your Bag of Randomness for Thursday, September 19, 2024

  • On a whim and had never heard of them before, I bought some Swedish dishcloths because they were on sale. What are they? Here’s a short explanation of the environment-friendly dishcloth comprised of  70% cellulose and 30% cotton:
    • One Swedish Dishcloth replaces 17 rolls of paper towels. They absorb 20x their weight, are far more hygienic than a sponge, and won’t crumble or pill. They air dry quickly, so it doesn’t breed bacteria or smell. Once you’re ready to wash your Swedish dishcloth, throw it in the washing machine or place it on the top rack of the dishwasher so you can reuse it over and over again.
  • Nine months ago, Mike “Fernando” Fernandez of KTCK The TICKET retired after producing the morning show for the past 30 years. Yesterday, in one of the station’s promotional spots, TICKET voice guy Conrad announced his death and provided information on his memorial service. He was really looking forward to retirement, and when he left, it didn’t seem like there were any health issues. Wanting to know more about it, I checked out the TICKET’s webpage and Twitter stream, but I didn’t see any mention. None of the personalities mentioned it on air. I didn’t see anything on the TICKET’s Reddit page either. Now I’m wondering if I’m imagining things or if it was played in error.
  • In other TICKET news, Line Four Guy has been unmasked.
  • Last night, I caught a little bit of an LBJ documentary. LBJ said the one thing that made him feel best about his time in Congress was bringing electricity to the Hill Country. For a while, it was even free. I’m sure most folks won’t think much about a comment like that, but when you really think about it, bringing electricity to people who have never had the luxury of using it and establishing that infrastructure, which is now a commonality of everyday life, is pretty significant. These people who lived all their lives at night by candlelight could now simply flip a switch.
  • That documentary also featured former Texas Governor John Connally. That brought back a memory, which caused me to do a deep dive, and I found some interesting stuff.
    • I first became aware of him watching television with my father in 1993 when the local news (Channel 4, KDFW, CBS back then) interrupted whatever we were watching with breaking news. They announced Connally’s death. As a confused high schooler, I looked back at my father and said, “What’s the big deal? A former governor died; why is his death so important that they had to interrupt what we were watching?” Stoicly, he replied, “Boy, he was in the same car with Kennedy riding in the front seat when he was assassinated. The bullet went through Kennedy and into Connally. He died with the assassin’s bullet still in him.” Well, that got my attention.
      • Until then, I thought President Kennedy and Jackie were the only ones in the car besides the driver. I also thought they were the only car in the parade. Later, I learned there were a total of five cars, which is why they called it a motorcade, and the Vice President was in one of them. I thought that was so odd; it was just the coincidence of all those things. The VP just happened to be from Texas riding in a car behind the president who got shot, and then he, in turn, immediately became president in his home state. For a teen, it was a lot to process.
        • It was the first time I learned that sometimes a bullet, or its fragments, can’t be removed from a body, and people have to live with a hunk of metal in their bodies for the rest of their lives.
        • That bullet according to the Warren Commission report:  “Governor Connally was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and traveled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh, where it caused a superficial wound.”
        • The suit he wore when that bullet struck him is on display at Texas State University.
    • So, for the longest time, all I knew of Connally was that he was in the motorcade when JFK was assassinated, and he got struck by one of the bullets. Later, I learned he worked in the Nixon administration and later switched parties, becoming a Republican.
    • Last night, I learned that Connally and LBJ go way back and were much closer than I ever imagined. How close were they?
      • Connally met and befriended LBJ in 1936; they were friends their entire lives. As a congressional aid, Johnson helped Connally get a job stacking books in the University of Texas campus library for $0.17 an hour. Connally managed Johnson’s campaign for Congress in 1937 and rewarded Connally for his help by taking him to Washington in 1939 to serve on his staff.
    • Before serving as governor, Connally was President Kennedy’s Secretary of the Navy. During his tenure, the Bay of Pigs occurred.
    • I think it’s safe to argue that Connally is responsible for three Texans becoming President of the United States. Obviously, there’s his connection with LBJ. But get this, he helped make it possible for both Bushes to hold the office. Party lines back then weren’t as bad as today. To my surprise, he ran himself in 1980. Here’s a snippet from Connally’s Wikipedia page about the Bush connection:
      • In 1971, Republican President Nixon appointed Democrat Connally as Treasury Secretary. Before agreeing to take the appointment, however, Connally told Nixon that the president must find a position in the administration for George H. W. Bush, the Republican who had been defeated in November 1970 in a hard-fought U.S. Senate race against Democrat Lloyd Bentsen. Connally told Nixon that his taking the Treasury post would embarrass Bush, who had “labored in the vineyards” for Nixon’s election as president, while Connally had supported Humphrey.Nixon named Bush as ambassador to the United Nations in order to secure Connally’s services at Treasury. Ben Barnes, then the lieutenant governor and originally a Connally ally, claims in his autobiography that Connally’s insistence saved Bush’s political career, leading to Bush’s eventual presidency and indirectly to the presidency of his son, George W. Bush.
  • If you are into fashion and stuff like Project Runway, I think you’ll like this “influencer.” The transitions are pretty neat, and you have to look past some of the crazy looks in the beginning, but she’s really creative with the most random of stuff.

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Your Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, September 18, 2024

  • I’ve been corresponding with my new pastor. Many of my friends would be uncomfortable with a woman leading a church and feel strongly that scripture backs them up. I’m not saying that is right or wrong, but I will admit it’s a first for me, and I’m adjusting. Recently, we’ve been discussing the Episcopal Church’s stance on “having all the questions—not all the answers.” She even used the term “sojourner.” While I’m familiar with the word, I don’t think I ever heard it used in any Evangelical, Mainline, Bible, or non-denominational church I’ve been a part of. For the heck of it, I decided to cut and paste that section of her reply in an AI tool and ask what it thought about her use of it. I liked the answer.
  • I didn’t know Texas Head Coach Steve Sarkisian’s son played for his football team. Here he is wholesomely talking about what it was like watching his son get a chance to play last Saturday.
  • U.S. Attorney Handling Would-Be Trump Assassin’s Case Is a Haitian Immigrant
  • I was reading an article on the inditement of Sean “Diddy” Combs. It says he had over a thousand bottles of baby oil. That got me wondering how that would look like visually. Well, a standard size of baby oil is 20 ounces. A thousand 22 ounce bottles would equal just under 172 gallons. An oil drum holds 55 gallons. So, that’s more than 3 oil drums of baby oil.
  • Man receives $1.4 million speeding ticket for going 90 mph in a 55 zone
  • Basically, the man has been living in the same apartment this whole time and after tracking his usage noticed something wasn’t adding up – Man discovers he’s been paying wrong utility bill for up to 18 years
  • What is racketeering? The crime, explained
  • If my old neighbor Brad still reads this, I’m confident you could land your bird blindfolded a Bhutan’s Paro International Airport (PBH) – This airport landing is so challenging only 50 pilots are qualified to do it 
  • That’s one big quarterback to bring down.

  • Dang, Miami Vice sure did have a lot of guest stars who became well-known.

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