More Really Random Thoughts Part 1

Frequently, I am asked where I get the ideas that I turn into weekly blog posts.  The answer is fairly simple—I have a mind like a ping-pong ball, bouncing around from one topic to the next.  For me, the biggest problem is that my memory is horrible, forcing me to write everything down in notebooks, so I have filled dozens of little notebooks with incredibly random nonsense.

 

I suspect that someday, these notebooks will be entered into evidence at my commitment hearing. 

 

In any case, come Friday night, I grab the latest notebook and select a topic that I wrote down during a meal, the middle of the night, or at some other time when I was supposed to be doing something useful.  Occasionally, either the note is too brief or my writing so bad that I can’t decipher what I meant (trying to write in the dark in the middle of the night doesn’t help, but you never know when inspiration will hit you). 

 

Some of the ideas written down are just too short—or too stupid—to use as topics.  When I have enough of these “reject ideas”, I just list them all at once for readers to peruse.  Here, then, are some ideas that never quite made it into blogs:

 

·      Can a robot be compelled to testify against its owner?  If an electronic personal assistant is an extension of a person, wouldn’t this be a form of forcing someone to testify against themselves?  The Supreme Court has ruled that a person cannot be forced to unlock a cell phone, but what about a robot?  If someone has ordered a robot not to testify, can a court force someone to order a robot to testify.

 

·      I just checked.  Every city in Texas large enough to have a freeway system has at least one large portion of it under construction.   The Gulf Freeway in Houston has been under continual construction since its inception.  Some city should finish a freeway just to let it become a tourist attraction. 

 

·      After watching my son trying to corral my three-year-old granddaughter, it occurs to me that Fatherhood is the only time in a man’s life where he tells a girl to put her panties on.

 

·      Playing Cards Against Humanity with friends teaches you that even little old ladies have dirty minds.

 

·      Is it against the law to counterfeit Confederate paper money?  If so, what country's laws are you breaking?

 

·      According to Lord Hewart, the Lord Chief Justice of the England, the detective story can only flourish in a settled community where the reader’s sympathies are on the side of law and order.  Does this mean the mystery is an endangered form of literature?

 

·      Yes, I have a Texas accent.  Once, after the first day of class, after I briefly explained the syllabus (honestly, if a student can’t figure out the syllabus on his own, why is he in college?), an exchange student from Japan raised her hand and asked very politely, “Will you ever be teaching the class in English?”

 

·      In Sri Lanka, a sixteenth century philosopher wrote that all religion was the result of malnutrition.  He was, of course, promptly executed for his heresy—probably by hungry people.

 

·      Despite any evidence that it provides a lasting benefit, politicians in this state keep clamoring for more Pre-K education.  If they really want that funding, they will probably have to start a football program in nurseries.

 

·      In any correspondence at the university, the phrase “Per my previous email” should be translated as “Bitch, can you read?”

 

·      Never make “snow angels” in a dog park.

 

·      An attempt to assassinate Arthur Conan Doyle with a letter bomb failed in 1911.  The assassins?  Suffragettes. 

 

·      The history of the communication technology is a great story of constantly improving tools for the transmitting of knowledge and eradicating ignorance and superstition.  Invariably, however, these tools are used to validate our prejudices.  Today, when everyone in the country has in their pocket a device that can instantaneously display all of mankind’s art, literature, and the details of man’s greatest achievements—we use it to watch videos of cats and to argue politics with strangers.

 

·      During the filming of The Wizard of Oz, the Munchkins were paid $35 a day.  Toto was paid $100 a day.

 

·      It is impossible to imagine a Norman Rockwell painting of a slack-jawed youth, his pants significantly below his rear end, obliviously staring into his cell phone.

 

·      When someone says they have a “butt load” of something, they are giving you a specific measurement.  There are 126 gallons in a butt of wine.

 

·      Thomas Paine had a remarkable career.  Besides his role in the American Revolution, he was an elected representative in the French National Assembly.  But, of all the remarkable achievements listed on his resume, I am jealous of the fact that he was briefly a pirate serving on a ship named “Terrible” under the command of Captain Death. According to one of the crew, after Captain William Death surrendered his ship to a French frigate, he was shot by one of his own men and his body was tossed overboard.

 

·      If you were free to pick a religion instead of being born into one, I suspect that among the more popular would be Penn Jillette’s Church of Bacon.  Anyone can relate to a breakfast that died for your sins.

 

·      Adjunct faculty work harder than an ugly stripper.

 

·      Enema U needs a sign:  In Case of Fire, Exit Building Before Posting to Social Media.

 

·      It is not true that the nature of race relations is unchanged.  Now, when you watch a horror movie, the white people die first.

 

·      People who don’t believe that Texans are in love with the death penalty should remember that in 1928, the citizens of Cisco, Texas battered down the jailhouse door and lynched Santa Claus.  To this day, no one has been charged with the murder.

 

·      Eventually, Schrödinger must have realized that the quantum state of the world outside of the box was just as unknown from the cat’s point of view.  At this point, the world should have imploded into a Lovecraftian black hole from the 7^th Dimension.

 

·      The first group of people to value the contributions of the disabled were pirates.  “Arrgh!  Got a peg leg?  Man the helm, matey!  Missing a hand?  You’re officer material—Here’s your hook.”   So, it was pirates that got the whole ADA ball rolling.

 

·      Since at least the time when Andrew Carnegie was building free libraries in towns across America, it was generally believed that the chief cause of mass stupidity was the common man’s lack of access to information.  Well, the internet certainly proved that theory to be concentrated bullshit.

 

·      Only on Facebook can people become experts in fields they cannot spell.

 

·      On average, cat toys are played with longer by humans than by cats. 

 

·      The hymn, “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”, was written by Wallace Willis.  A slave in Oklahoma at the time, he was the property of a Choctaw Native, Britt Willis. 

 

·      Politicians can safely ignore what their constituents think, secure in the knowledge that they don’t do it very often.

 

·      In March, 1865, General Grant was impatiently waiting for the rain to lift long enough for his army to take to the muddy roads and finish off the remains of General Lee’s army.  As he sat in his tent waiting for better weather, he wrote in his notebook, “Matthew 5:45”.  If you are unfamiliar with the scripture, it says, “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”  General Grant had an appreciation of weather that only an old soldier could possess.

 

·      The State Department once asked me to describe a former student who was seeking employment.  I didn’t dare tell the truth (as in, “In any attempt to cull the herd, put your rope on this specimen first.”).  So I did what they asked and described him:  “This individual is a bipedal carbon-based life-form, axially symmetrical.”

 

Well, that’s enough of that…for now.  Writing in and keeping a notebook allows you to be periodically astounded at your own stupidity.