I’m all for watching every Mavericks playoff game, but I can’t be the only one sick and tired of Wing Stop’s commercial that starts out with, “No flex, zone!”
The Cowboys haven’t made it to the Super Bowl or played in the NFC Championship game since 1996, but the Mavs have made it to their league’s championship series three times. If you told me that in 1996, I would have said you’re nuts.
How crazy is it to buy an NBA franchise in December and for them to go to the Finals that season. Our new owner is the epitome of a spoiled, bratty, rich kid. But that’s harsh, I know nothing about the guy and said all the right things accepting the conference trophy.
I don’t often clip coupons, but I saw some from Arby’s that I thought I should get the scissors out. After clipping a few, a warm childhood memory came to mind. I thought of how the sunlight would hit my mother on Sunday mornings as she clipped coupons, doing what she could to provide for the family.
Well, this was a great idea.
Ok. Absolutely impressed. @DallasStars fans watching right now at @AACenter treated to real time AI tracking of the game as it happens in Edmonton. On the jumbo, and on our home ice. Wow! pic.twitter.com/rD72jZWhWd
Has the media even tried interviewing any Alito neighbors at either property?
DaughterGeeding turns 14 today. She’s your typical teen. Dad is no longer cool. It’s kinda hard.
A father and bride forgo the traditional dance at the wedding reception and instead pull a Ray Kinsella and decide to “have a catch.”
I have a few Canadian readers. I keep in touch with one of them on a normal basis, and we often ask questions about each other’s cultures. Yesterday, after the verdict, he made me laugh by sending this text, “Donald Trump is a convicted felon, so he’s not allowed into Canada.” Later, I saw a tweet state convicted felons are barred from voting in Florida. If true, and if I understand correctly, that would probably mean Trump will be the first presidential candidate not to vote in his election. He probably won’t need his own vote, I just have this feeling we’re gonna get a second (and maybe third, regardless of the Constitution) Trump term.
This meme, or whatever you call it, was popular on Twitter yesterday.
“As it turns out, character DOES matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world!”
Those words came from James Dobson of Focus on the Family in September 1998. I wonder if he thinks they still apply to his party’s nominee for president.
I’ve written about my pastor friend and his pastor father losing the matriarch of the family and how impressed I was at how the father was handling the loss of his wife of 51 years. Well, judge isn’t the right word, but I was too quick to judge him from what I saw at her funeral. I was so impressed with his joy and gratitude, but should have known better. He is also human, and the toughest moments come when everyone goes home, and you adjust to the new normal.
I’ve noticed that someone always states the player’s name in every commercial featuring a WNBA player. That’s because they don’t have much celebrity status, and name-dropping is a must if you want the viewer to connect. That makes me question if the company has hired the right spokesperson. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to a LeBron James, Steph Curry, or Serena Williams. Right now, the only Caitlin Clark commercial I’ve seen is of her wearing her Iowa uniform.
I’ve always been that person who will napkin blot the grease from a pizza like nobody’s business.
A friend sent me a YouTube video of a sermon about how if things don’t go right in your life, then you focus on the “next best thing.” One example in the sermon was a divorced parent not getting as much possession time as they’d like. Later in the day, I watched a video on the history of the Batmobile. Stay with me here. In a 1950 comic, Batman wrecked the car he was driving and broke his leg. He couldn’t fight crime with a broken leg, but while recuperating, he did the “next best thing” and designed and made the Batmobile.
It’s nice to see a regular Joe get a moment in the spotlight. The music starts at the 3:25 mark.
Few things are sadder than watching your well-disciplined dog walk out to the far end of the backyard during a big thunderstorm just to take a dump. He’s such a good boy and certainly deserves a treat. I saved him the dignity of not taking a photo.
Can someone out there kindly be proactive and keep Sen. Ted Cruz away from all things Dallas Stars and Dallas Mavericks related at the American Airlines Center until the start of July? He’s more than welcome to attend as many Astro games as he’d like.
My whole day yesterday seemed off, as if the time and date didn’t seem right. I guess part of the reason was that I didn’t have to work on Monday. What didn’t help was not realizing I was watching a newscast I thought was new but was recorded the previous day. After each segment, I simply thought not much had changed from yesterday. But since I blogged about Bill Walton’s death yesterday, it dawned on me I was watching an old newscast, or Walton died twice.
For the first time in a very long time, I didn’t use self-checkout at Wal-Mart because a cashier somehow became available. The cashier’s necklace caught my attention, so I asked her about it. Her answer was rather curt, telling me it was her name. She wasn’t wearing an employee badge or nametag, and the necklace appeared to face the wrong side, so I asked her for her name. All she told me was that it means “sand.” As in sand from the beach. I didn’t press her any further; I just said, “Ah, okay,” and moved on. She was probably having a bad day, but I’m still curious about the name.
Remember the Garfield car window toy craze of the ’80s? I recently found out it only happened because of a manufacturer’s mistake. Jim Davis, Garfield’s creator, told mental_floss in 2014:
He took a plush Garfield and attached Velcro to his paws, hoping people would be amused enough to hang him on their curtains. When he got the prototype back, the factory had made an error and placed suction cups on instead. Davis wasn’t too bothered; since they adhered well to glass, he assumed people might want to apply them to residential windows.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness for Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Dallas is ‘this’ close to being a professional sports mecca of champions. It’s too bad the Wings of the WNBA are the only team holding the city back from sports greatness.
Gosh, I hope you can tell I was being a bit sarcastic in that last bullet point. But really, even if you haven’t followed the Mavs and Stars very much, I hope you can acknowledge how special and rare this sort of thing is for a city. It’s one of those moments you should let your guard down and take in the moment of being part of a community. Surely, you will admit it’s better to come together as a city for sports than it is for grief over a mass shooting.
NBA Hall of Famer Bill Walton has died. When I was in college, NBC just hired him and I couldn’t find a single person who liked his commentary. The man annoyed me for the longest time. Then, I slowly saw a man who was always at peace with himself and sought happiness without infringing on others. And, that’s a pretty cool thing.
The job posting by Ashburn-based Arthur Grand Technologies Inc. was published in March 2023 and said that the company was only looking for “U.S. Born Citizens [white] who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, TX [Don’t share with candidates],” according to a Justice Department news release.
Republican Party of Texas delegates voted on a platform calling for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment requiring statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.
Stay with me here. Prohibition happened because zealot Christians were trying to impose their beliefs on others. I have a feeling Trump is going to win and a lot of similar pro-Christian stuff will be implemented in all forms of government. Then, like prohibition, people will wise up and realize things were just fine the way we had them, that all this isn’t about Christian values but Christian power, and revert to separating church and state again.
And with all that said, I’m looking forward to watching this film.
Watch ‘God & Country’ at home today!
Now available on Prime, Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play, VUDU and other VOD platforms. pic.twitter.com/QG5pijO3O2
— God & Country Movie (@godcountrymovie) May 24, 2024
Pope Francis was accused of making homophobic slur in a closed-door meeting. The newspaper articles, which were translated from Italian, claimed the Pope had said there is “frociaggine” – which translates in English to “faggotry” – in some seminaries. I’m willing to bet he’s not the only top-level church official associated with a branch of Christianity who has used a version of that word recently.
The last time I got together with my scholarship buddies, we talked about many friends we no longer keep in touch with. One of those we talked about was someone who came out after we all left HSU, and he went off to a well-respected grad school. One of my friends, the man who is the son of a preacher (and recently lost his mother to cancer) and has been preaching at the same church for over 20 years, mentioned that his biggest regret in college was all the gay jokes we made around him and how that must have made him feel. That friend kept shaking his head, saying, “I even roomed with the guy, and there’s no telling what I said out of humor that made him feel terrible inside. I wish I could take it all back.” I never knew he felt that way, and it was sincere. It showed me he’s grown a lot over the years. One person I’d like to recognize for the great man he turned into today is his devoted wife.
I knew there was more to that viral video of the single mother crying and making her own birthday cake. It’s all too common, and it’s been pointed out to me often. Either way, kids should get equal time with both parents as long as there’s no real safety concern and child support is being paid.
Remember the single mom who went viral crying & baking her own birthday cake?
I enjoy etymology, the study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history. I even subscribe to the podcast/show A Way with Words. I encourage you to give it a try for at least ten minutes. I mention that because the Gettysburg Address was referenced in a Far Side comic, and I always wondered why “score” meant twenty. The term “score,” meaning 20 years, has an interesting origin. It traces back to Old Norse and Old English terms: “skor” (meaning notch or incision in rock) and “scoru” (meaning “twenty”). Shepherds would count their sheep by making notches in a stick for every 20 sheep, which led to the association of “a score” with twenty. Now, I’m wondering why the shepherds didn’t make a notch for five or ten; what made 20 so great?
Thinking like a Vulcan, that is, thinking more logically and scientifically than emotionally or spiritually, I considered the concept of marriage—something reasonable for those trying to find some wisdom after a failed one. In particular, the modern marriage. From a spiritual standpoint, I support marriage as a lifelong commitment. But from a legal or societal standpoint, I’ve been exploring the idea that a marriage should be renewable five-year contracts. The divorce rate continues to linger around 50%, and I’ve noticed a lot of people who have been married for around 20 years (give or take five) are getting divorced. Divorces are expensive and emotionally draining for a family. Hear me out.Traditional marriage is a blending of church and state. I don’t want to touch the church standpoint, just the legal standpoint. In my proposal, a married couple can choose not to renew their marriage contract after five years. So, from a legal standpoint, they are no longer married. From a religious standpoint, they would still be married. I know some Catholics do something similar. They believe divorce is a sin or not even an option, so they never get a divorce, but the couple no longer loves or lives with each other.So, what are the benefits of doing it this way? With a fixed-term commitment, couples feel less pressure to stay together “forever,” allowing them to focus more on the present and nurturing their relationship without fearing a lifelong obligation. It also provides a built-in opportunity for couples to reassess their relationship regularly. This periodic review can encourage open communication, mutual goal-setting, and proactive problem-solving, potentially strengthening the relationship. Ending a marriage after a contract term expires would be less contentious and legally complicated than traditional divorce proceedings. Contracts provide clear terms regarding finances, property, and other important aspects, reducing conflicts and misunderstandings. Life circumstances change (career shifts, relocations, family dynamics), and a renewable contract allows couples to adapt their commitments to their evolving needs and goals. Lastly, a new industry would be created: the five-year marriage renewal party planner. It would be like a gender reveal party, a great excuse to get together.
One thing led to another and I started to research Charles Lindbergh’s plane, The Spirit of Saint Lewis. I have a vivid memory of watching that Jimmy Stewart movie with my father. It amazed me that there was no windshield or any way to see straight ahead, and all the measures he took to reduce weight, like cutting the borders off on a paper map. Here’s one thing I didn’t know. A small swastika was painted on the inside of the propeller spinner, along with the names of all the employees who designed and built it. It was meant as a message of good luck before Lindbergh’s solo Atlantic crossing, as the symbol, when it faces left, was often used as a popular good luck charm with early aviators. That reminds me of a time in high school when I was in the Baker Hotel in Mineral Wells with the grandchild of one of the owners. He showed me a bathroom that had swastika tiles, which were put there before Hitler became popular. And yes, I know there’s a connection between Lindbergh and Hitler, and if Lindbergh were alive today would be campaigning to re-elect the 45th president.
