My WordPress stats state this is my 22,778th post using their platform. Of course, I’ve also used other platforms to publish this blog, but 22,778 is nothing to sneeze at. I mean, let’s say it took me, on average, ten minutes to write a post. That means I’ve spent 3,796 hours and 20 minutes. Which, if you ask, seems low to me.
I’ve been watching and really enjoying Apple TV’s horror-comedy Widows Bay with the great Matthew Rhys, probably best known for his role on The Americans. However, during the first two episodes, I couldn’t help but think the lead role was written specifically for Jason Bateman. Another of the main characters is played by the under-appreciated Stephen Root. It’s a funny mixture of Parks and Rec, Jaws,The Shining, and Twin Peaks.
Fun Fact: The series is created by Katie Dippold, a former writer for Parks and Recreation. Dippold actually submitted the original, much lighter draft of the Widow’s Bay pilot as her writing sample to get hired on Parks and Rec in 2009. There are certain elements of the show that have a real Pawnee, Indiana feel.
If you’re a fan of the series, then you’ll appreciate this Google Easter Egg when you search for the show.
Here’s a teaser trailer for the series if you’re interested.
Several articles I read yesterday about the weekend box office used the word “creepypasta.” That’s a new one for me.
Norway’s team photo for the World Cup is pretty badass.
I have a feeling the screwworm is going to dominate Texas news over the next several months. I hope I’m wrong.
Well, if you get fired from the most prestigious news magazine, the best thing you can do is have an hour-long uninterrupted interview with the Paper of Record.
What I took away from the interview was that integrity and character still matter. And I couldn’t help but think of my favorite poem If while watching this interview.
Meanwhile, President Trump walked out of an interview because he can’t take any pressure to be held accountable for making up stories, and that he’s the epitome of being a coward. Compare and contrast that with how composed Pelley answered any question that contradicted his actions. He chose courage over cowardice.
Andy Rooney famously tackled the disappearing “pound of coffee” in his classic 60 Minutes commentaries. He frequently pointed out how manufacturers would advertise a pound of coffee but quietly reduced the net weight of coffee cans, dropping from 16 ounces to 14, then to 13, 12, and even 11 ounces, while charging the same price. I thought about that when I saw this sign in my neighborhood. Mini-gallons?!
In light of Scott Pelley’s firing, this short segment with the late Morley Safer about story approval and management oversight is very telling of how 60 Minutes is getting murdered by Bari Weiss.
Long-time readers know my admiration for Scott Pelley, who grew up in Lubbock and got his start locally at WFAA. He’s just a great, salt-of-the-earth, kinda guy. A man from another era.
Other than CBS Sunday Morning, I’m not sure I’ll watch any of their programming.
If you were wondering about the letter the Musers were reading from Keith about the percentage of high school football playing surfaces that are now synthetic, with a brief mention of Santo, TX- yep, that was me.
I recently took both dogs to the vet for a check-up and vaccinations. DogGeedingII is 15, and I was told that his mother, who is four years older than him, died earlier this year. I was pretty optimistic going into the appointment. However, he’s been diagnosed with a bad heart, and I have to give him medication twice a day.
Ted Turner died last month on May 6, 2026. I sorta had a negative impression of the man, but I recently watched a five-part documentary on him and have changed my tune.
However, the funniest comment I read about his death, and I’m sure he’d even get a kick out of it, was this tweet. And for anyone of my generation who doesn’t get it, shame!
The documentary also referenced the Turner Doomsday Video. He chose that song because he learned it was the last thing played on the Titanic.
The Turner Doomsday Video is the internal title of an apocalyptic video intended to be broadcast by CNN at the end of the world. The video, created at the direction of CNN founder Ted Turner before the network’s 1980 launch,is a performance of the Christian hymn “Nearer, My God, To Thee” performed by multiple members of the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine bands in front of CNN’s original headquarters at the Turner Broadcasting Techwood Campus in Midtown Atlanta, Georgia.
The recording was made right after “The Star-Spangled Banner” was recorded for CNN’s sign-on (which also appeared in TNT’s sign-on from 1988). After they recorded it, Turner asked if they would record a song just in case the world came to an end. At CNN’s launch, Ted Turner declared, “Barring satellite problems, we won’t be signing off until the world ends”:
We’ll be on, and we will cover it [the end of the world] live, and that will be our last, last event. We’ll play the National Anthem only one time, on the first of June [1980], and when the end of the world comes, we’ll play “Nearer My God To Thee” before we sign off.
I hope they prove me wrong, but there’s no way DART rail will run near the future home arena of the Dallas Mavericks. Like Jerry, there’s just too much money to make when it comes to parking. They call that area of 635Hell-BJ for a reason.
City records show the decision comes after a RedSpeed traffic study looked at 31 school zones across 29 campuses. Investigators discovered severe speeding issues at 18 of those locations, with daily averages ranging from 200 to more than 3,000 violations per school zone.
Cameras counted 17,044 total vehicles and flagged 6,043 speeding violations, which averages out to 3,021 violations each day. The data tracked speeding during morning arrival, afternoon dismissal and the standard school hours.
At the first divorce support group session I attended, I made a friend, and we’ve remained close, especially since our experiences were eerily similar in many ways. He said he would never marry again, and he would do everything he could to prevent me from doing the same. However, he met someone and quickly fell for her. Next thing I know, he surprised her with a trip to Paris to watch the Olympics and proposed to her while eating at the Eiffel Tower. They even had a child together, who I think just turned two. He called me yesterday to talk as he left the courthouse after filing for divorce.
WIRED He Blew the Whistle on DOGE. Then His Brakes Were Cut – A federal IT staffer filed a complaint about DOGE, then went public. Shortly after Elon Musk boosted a post calling his claims false, his brake lines were cut. Now he’s suing for defamation.
Now he says that bill “may not make it into my priorities the next seven months.”
ESPN has an article that has just about everything you’d probably want to know about that UFC stage sitting on the front lawn of the White House. Some highlights:
It’s owned and being constructed by a Belgian event-staging company called Stageco.
The company shipped most of the equipment in 18 containers by boat and flew other pieces from Germany and Belgium.
It was assembled in Pennsylvania for a test run, then shipped in 14 trailers for the Secret Service to inspect as it was guarded at a holding facility.
Disassembly will take seven to ten days, though I’m sure you’ve heard Trump tease it will be a forever structure like the Eiffel Tower.
I’m surprised the article didn’t mention that U2 had a version of the claw, four of them, actually, that was part of a world tour.
DaughterGeeding turned 16 yesterday. That will come as a shock to some of you, longtime readers, all of whom I really appreciate.
I used to mark DaughterGeeding and BoyGeeding’s height on a door frame when we all lived at GeedingManor. Before we sold it and moved out, I actually cut the thing out and took it with me. It’s been a while since I last measured them. It looks like DaughterGeeding won’t be getting any taller, but BoyGeeding (age 14) has had a nice growth spurt.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The race over whether incumbent Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, will keep his seat is one which has gained national attention after former Democrat congresswoman Mary Peltola threw her hat into the ring, but Peltola is far from the only person running to unseat Sullivan, and the latest name is one familiar to both Alaskans and Sullivan.
Because it’s Dan Sullivan.
Dan Sullivan, a Petersburg candidate who has the same name as Alaska’s sitting U.S. senator, announced Friday that he’s entering the race for the senate seat. And no, he’s not the former Anchorage mayor, also of the same name.
For some reason, this article about Snow’s BBQ thought this cut of brisket looked appealing. Snow’s is legendary, and it’s a shame that photo was used. I highly doubt Ms. Tootsi would cook such an abomination.
ESPN obtained Zapruder film of yesterdays handshake and dropped the investigative hammer
“Boston Dynamics’ Spot robots are being deployed at designated World Cup venues to perform perimeter security inspections and will be used to assist security personnel with investigating things like suspicious packages or other potentially hazardous materials. The robots do not have facial recognition capabilities.”
The series usually airs as a marathon on Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and I always make an effort to watch it. So, reading this People article meant a lot to me. Granted, there’s not much more than the headline.
Past research has found that Republicans’ hesitation to vaccinate against Covid-19 has meant they suffered more death from the pandemic than Democrats. But O’Brian’s study showed that even different vaccination rates don’t completely explain the difference in health outcomes – a lack of overall trust in the medical system is also contributing.
The study relies on survey data collected in 2024 and O’Brian suspects that the health gap has only continued to worsen during the second Trump administration, which began in January 2025.
I didn’t know a Stranger Things-like music video of a kid being dared to go to the top of a haunted Baker Hotel on Halloween existed. Two thumbs up on his costume choice of “Benny the Jet” Rodriguez from The Sandlot.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness Monday, June 1, 2026
I’ve been a huge fan of HBO’s Hacks. I’m a sucker for anything when it comes to the art of stand-up, and Jean Smart is a brilliant actress. Last night was the series finale. It was heavy, and I think best described as a long goodbye.
I’m about 75% sure I visited this cemetery when I returned my mother’s remains to Vietnam in the spring of 2006. It was a long trip driving north from Mỹ Tho, and this place wasn’t far from the beach where we scattered my mother’s ashes. During the trip, I distinctly remember one sign for “Vietnam’s Only Golf Course.” A quick Google search tells me there are now 65-70 operational golf courses in Vietnam.
You can read the article here. While I want to respect the dead, y’all know I’ve never been one for burials or preserving a dead body. Really, who visits the grave of anyone beyond a grandparent? But I do get an uneasy feeling of bothering the dead, and would feel weird living on land that used to be a cemetery. But that may be traced to a movie I saw as a kid about a neighborhood that was built on a slave cemetery: Grave Secrets: The Legacy of Hilltop Drive.
EDIT: Oh, what do you know, the entire movie is on YouTube, and it stars Patty Duke. The scene that freaked me out was a child can be watched here (41:07 – 42:03), I even have it queued up for ya. It’s a nothing-burger, but as a kid, it freaked me out. The woman who played Happy Gilmore’s mom is in it.
Yesterday, the Musers discussed FIFA, the NFL, the use of natural-grass fields, and the priority on player safety. I was led to see what percentage of Texas high school football fields use synthetic turf vs. grass. After all, wouldn’t we want to do what’s best to protect our children?
Sources vary slightly, but I found approximately 48% of Texas high school football stadiums feature natural grass. The remaining 52% have transitioned to artificial synthetic turf.
While attending a game in the small town of Santo, I asked a fellow parent how the school board and community could justify the cost of their fancy-looking turf field. According to him, it came down to not having to water or maintain the field during the summer and early fall. Basically, drought conditions and water restrictions led them to install the fake stuff. Of course, Idiocracy solved this problem by watering fields with Gatorade.
Second graders and high schoolers would learn about the so-called Black Robe Regiment, which the board proposal describes as a group of colonial pastors who preached about freedom and served in the revolutionary forces.
The term appears to have been popularized by David Barton, an evangelical activist and former vice chair of the Texas Republican Party who served as an advisor on the board’s social studies overhaul. It has been primarily used in some modern-day evangelical circles as a rallying cry for pastors to become politically involved.
Ken Paxton went to Baylor. Figures. He earned both a B.A. in psychology (1985) and an MBA (1986) from there, and served as student body president. The apple doesn’t fall very far from the tree. I can never get past the Dave Bliss, Art Briles, Ian McCaw, and Ken Starr stuff (Starr also served on Jeffrey Epstein’s legal defense team, helped secure Epstein’s controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement, and even had him on campus in 2012 and referred to him as a prince), especially when it comes to a Christian university. And I used to be such an admirer of that institution, but it turned evil with two big scandals within 20 years. Two other notables are Robert Jeffress and Louie Gohmert. Paxton later earned a law degree from the University of Virginia.
During the football team’s sexual assault scandal a decade back, the brotherhood tied a rug to the back of a pickup, and the brethren, carrying brooms, swept things under it. This did not go over well with the pearl-clutching set at America’s largest Baptist college. “That outraged people,” said Robert Darden, an emeritus journalism professor at the school. “But that’s the point.”
A new report from KURU Footwear in 2026 identified Dallas/Fort Worth Airport as having the longest walk to its farthest gate at 1.50 miles. Conversely, Trenton–Mercer Airport was found to have the shortest walk, measuring just 0.03 miles.
Posted inPersonal|Comments Off on Bag of Randomness Friday, May 29, 2026
