Idle Thoughts: We're All Going to Die

Tweets from April, 2019:

• Apr 2 2019: Sen. John Cornyn on health care: "In the end we're all going to die, I hate to tell you. Don't dwell on it though!"
• Apr 3 2019: The Highwaymen (2019): Two retired Texas Rangers track down Bonnie and Clyde. This pair is less charismatic than the outlaws, but Costner/Harrelson can carry a movie. They are always a little too late on the scene, making for a slow movie. Seeing Texas in the 1930s is a treat. B-
• Apr 3 2019: Jim Schutze describes Dallas mayoral candidates pandering to whites at the Citizens Matter forum. Schutze calls it the Loons Matter forum. About Jason Villalba, he says, "That man just straight-up loves him some Confederate stone."

After the jump, more idle thoughts.

---

• Apr 4 2019: DMN headline: "Woman won't be prosecuted."
  Could this be any less informative? I guess the DMN considers it more important to know the victim's sex than she was an assault victim who was charged with a crime.
  Why not go with "Victim won't be prosecuted."
• Apr 4 2019: "Two Arkansas men have been arrested on suspicion of aggravated assault after police say they shot each other while taking turns wearing a bulletproof vest."
  Florida says, Thank you Arkansas.
• Apr 4 2019: Even Republicans who won re-election after years of stiffing public education suddenly saw the light after 2018 and supported better funding of Texas schools. Elections matter.
• Apr 4 2019: TIL: What the "Molly" symbol is. I'm from a Dallas suburb and not Fort Worth, and my ignorance is all on me, but Fort Worth might want to know that I had no idea what the "Molly" symbol was until I saw it mentioned in a tweet. I Googled the image. I would have said "Bevo."
• Apr 4 2019: Telephone call: "Do not hang up, blah, blah, blah."
  So, I did not hang up.
  After getting transferred to real person, I said to her,
  "Do not hang up. Please put me on your do-not-call list."
  She hung up.
• Apr 4 2019: Biden hugs women in public.
  Trump grabs them by the pussy.
  To-may-to, to-mah-to.
• Apr 5 2019: Fyre (2019): Documentary of a music festival on a private island in Bahamas that turned into a clusterf*ck. Behind it? A giant con, where luxury was sold up front w/o ability to deliver. A producer of the doc also produced the Fyre Festival promotional video. The con goes on. B-
• Apr 7 2019: Headline: "Suspected Rhino Poacher Trampled by Elephants and Eaten by Lions in South Africa."
  I'm not proud to say it, but true confession: I'm feeling a little schadenfreude about now.
• Apr 7 2019: Rick Perry may be coming home to Texas...the border anyway. Trump is considering him for DHS. This is Trump on Perry in 2016:
  "@GovernorPerry failed on the border. He should be forced to take an IQ test."
• Apr 9 2019: Fahrenheit 11/9 (2018). It feels wrong to review this Michael Moore documentary because he's not just making a movie. He's warning of an existential threat to the American Republic. He shows bright spots of good guys fighting back, but he warns that it's not enough. B-
• Apr 9 2019: Ted Cruz has such an ego. Literally inserts himself, a politician, into the dramatic closing seconds of a tight national championship game. Almost Trump-like. And then, karma, he jinxes it for Texas Tech Red Raiders. Such a dork.
• Apr 11 2019: DMN headline: "GOP leaders seek a 1-cent sales tax hike."
  Good for DMN. GOP leaders tried to make it sound like they were cutting property taxes. Sales taxes are regressive. Property taxes are progressive. Balancing the budget on the backs of the poor and working class is bad.
• Apr 11 2019: News: "Trump says he'll be in Normandy, France for the 75th anniversary of D-Day on June 6."
  Did he by chance say which side he'll be honoring?
• Apr 12 2019: RT @cjtackett: "Empower Texans: Grassroots or AstroTurf? I looked at their PAC over the last decade. Definitely not grassroots."
  A billionaire-funded PAC pretending to be a grassroots effort.
• Apr 12 2019: @marklamster, how about doing a feature sometime on the remnants of "colored" restrooms in historic Dallas buildings?
• Apr 12 2019: Richardson's own Chris McNutt doubles down on drawing attention to himself by getting into "pointless macho posturing" with Texas Speaker of the House over guns.
• Apr 13 2019: "The Common Core standards seemed to spell the end of [cursive writing] in 2010 when they dropped requirements that the skill be taught in public elementary schools."
  Aha. I now understand why Common Core has unhinged so many old people.
• Apr 14 2019: Tiger!
• Apr 14 2019: I think the most important goal should be to remove Trump.
  I'm suspicious that Sanders' primary goal is to reshape the Democratic Party.
  The two goals can be aligned, but aren't necessarily so.
• Apr 15 2019: Vanity Fair (TV 2018): Modern adaptation of Thackeray's satire of Victorian London. Ambitious social climber Becky Sharp is a charming knave who looks directly at the camera and winks as she schemes and betrays. Makes me want to read the original. B+
• Apr 15 2019: By lashing himself to Trump, is George P. Bush at risk of tarnishing that Bush brand that W and Jeb have maintained by being Never-Trumpers?
• Apr 16 2019: Fun fact about Notre Dame Cathedral. The Rolling Stones' Keith Richards was a choir boy in the cathedral when it opened.
• Apr 16 2019: Chip and Joanna Gaines wrote to French President Macron this morning offering to spend a whole season of Fixer Upper on Notre Dame Cathedral. Joanna asked Macron, "What do you think about shiplap?"
• Apr 16 2019: @BridesBlush
• Apr 17 2019: RT @fauxly: "when i say i'll have something by EOD, i mean literally 11:59PM.
  I once had a job where I had to take someone else's work output and process it...immediately. If they gave it to me at 11:59pm, that meant I had to work after midnight. Not cool.
• Apr 17 2019: Definition of irony: seeing an ad for something called "Ad Remover" on a webpage, an ad that promises I won't have to see any more ads if I give them my money. Nice webpage you got here. A pity if something happened to it.
• Apr 18 2019: Shirkers (2018): Documentary about making of a movie in Singapore in '92 by young filmmakers and a charismatic mentor who disappears with the raw footage. Their youthful passion comes through 25 years later in this engrossing detective story about a cult movie that never was. B+
• Apr 18 2019: News: "Colorado city votes to drop the name 'Swastika Acres' from a subdivision. The neighborhood in the Denver suburb was named Swastika Acres decades before the symbol was adopted by the Nazis."
  Better late than never I guess.
  An example of why people think govt takes forever to do even simple, obvious things.
• Apr 18 2019: Texas Rep. Lance Gooden reminds me of that great line in "A Man for All Seasons" where Thomas More confronts Rich and exclaims, "Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wills Point!”
• Apr 19 2019: DMN headline: "Probe details Trump efforts to foil inquiry."
  Checks dictionary...
  Foil: verb. block, curb, cut off, hamper, hinder, impede, inhibit, interfere, retard, stall, stonewall, stymie, obstruct.
  Obstruct. Thought so.
• Apr 19 2019: Impeachment hearings may be needed to get the information voters need to make an informed choice in 2020. Why?
  1. The unredacted Mueller report might never be made public.
  2. Mueller was charged with investigating only one matter that might be impeachable.
• Apr 21 2019: "Developer Unveils New Identity for Richardson Main Street."
  New York City is the Big Apple. Richardson is the Core.
  Um...nope.
• Apr 23 2019: City of Richardson resident living in Collin County? Wondering where to vote? Asking if you really have to vote two separate ballots? I have the answer and a simple solution to your problem. Move.
• Apr 23 2019: "They’ve painted this narrative of this outraged gun activist. It just makes me looks like a complete nut job." -- Richardson's Chris McNutt.
  Well you have to admit he at least knows what he looks like.
• Apr 24 2019: Site of Richardson's Wildflower concert festival goes on the market. No word on whether this will affect Wildflower.
• Apr 24 2019: "We Have Reached Peak Orwell."
  That's the headline I saw in my RSS feed. I deleted it w/o reading, thinking it was a hyperbolic piece about Trump's post-truth world. But my peripheral vision noticed it was by TexasGOPVote. I then had to consider that the TexasGOPVote's propaganda itself might be "Peak Orwell."
• Apr 25 2019: Black Leopard, Red Wolf: Epic African fantasy. Violent, vulgar, confusing. What is truth? Who is lying? Who can one trust? You'll know no more when you finish than when you began. C+
• Apr 26 2019: A slur against apartments is that they bring crime to our neighborhoods. The slur is right in one sense: they are guilty of crimes against good architecture.
• Apr 28 2019: RT @leachfortexas: "I’m not trying to 'prevent cities, counties and school districts from speaking out about state legislation' as you allege. Just don’t believe taxpayer dollars ($41m in 2018 alone) should be spent to hire lobbyists to, in many cases, advocate against the interests of the taxpayer."
  Not buying it. Local voters can decide who runs our local school districts. I don't remember seeing Jeff Leach on the ballot for RISD trustee. Quit making our trustees' decisions for us.
• Apr 29 2019: "Angela Paxton obviously has a personal interest in the outcome of her husband’s criminal prosecution, so her actions could be a conflict of interest in violation of the Texas Constitution." -- Matt Angle
  Isn't anyone in that family on the up and up?