Random Tuesday Morning Thoughts

• The Tarrant County DA's office is trying a murder case this week when the body of the alleged murder victim has not been found. From a defense standpoint, those "let the jury get back there and figure it all out" cases scare me.
• And in that case, the jury panel was asked if anyone had heard or read anything about the case. Only three people raised their hands. That reminded me of helping out in a worker's compensation trial (many years ago) on the day after the Star Telegram had printed a huge story entitled "Anatomy of A Worker's Compensation Case." We asked how many of the jurors had read it. The answer: Zero. (That kind of changed my perception of the public.)
• Fox 4 weatherman Dan Henry led the broadcast last night by saying, "I'm involved in a chat session right now with the National Weather Service." Really? I wonder if the forecast was delayed because he had to answer the question, "What R U wearing?"
• Drinking out of a water hose in the Texas heat is still good times.
• Oh, and the above pic? It's the Dallas Stars' "Ice Girls". I had no idea they existed. (Thanks emailer who shall remain nameless so his wife won't kill him.)
• Anyone who says, "I don't like drama" probably either (1) causes a lot of drama, or (2) perceives drama where there is none.
• How Major League Baseball can't get its first round playoff games on any station other than TBS shows just how far baseball has fallen.
• Anybody who listens to MSNBC's Jim Cramer deserves what they get. (This clip shows him yesterday on the Today Show saying that if you have money in the market that you will need in the next five years, to take it out now. And he says, "I don't want to say these things on TV.")
• This country is a mess. On all fronts. I almost feel like Tommy Lee Jones' character in the Valley of Elah where he raises the flag upside down in the ending scene.
• I think the guy that posts here about the end of the world coming on a certain date in 2012 is a nut.
• I see a lot of parents that act like their children are more of a burden than a joy.
• It's extremely rare that I ever have to take time to "clear my head" or "work things out with myself."
• Man, if Obama wins I'm camping out the next day in front of the radio just to listen to the conservatives' collective head explode.
• In another county this week, I saw a Sheriff's office car pull up to a convenience store and drop off what appeared to be a homeless man. Then the deputy drove away.
• I wonder if something is bugging Tony Romo. And T.O. is acting like he's about to have another meltdown.
• I like Kanye West's Love Lockdown.
• I don't think pit bulls should be illegal, but if you have kids and own one then you are as nutty at the 2012 guy.
• I'm not saying it's good or bad: chicotxchat.blogspot.com
• Leading sentence in a Star Telegram article today that I think is ridiculous: "New teachers may have a tough time finding jobs next year because more people are expected to compete for fewer positions, school officials said." Puhleeeeze.
• Lots of headlines around saying that "Investors Should Not Panic." I'm not sure I've ever seen a headline that urged the opposite.
• I think it is Channel 5 news that will occasionally have about six "financial experts" on stage who are there to "take your calls for free regarding your financial issues." First, that's a little broad, isn't it? And with all the nutcases and pranksters out there, don't you know those "experts" are getting whipped with calls that are either pulling their chains or downright creepy?

I'm Beginning To Like The Comments On The Dallas Morning News

There was an update to this week old story today. Some suggest that it would be difficult to push her out of the car (I've thought that myself), that she probably didn't use good judgment in accepting a ride home from a stranger, and one of my favorites on trying to find the guy: Why not check out the video from the nearest toll booth from whence he came and get his tag number?

Early Pick Me Up Alert

Normally I wait for Afternoon Depression to descend upon Wise County before I post a pic that allows us all to gain the strength to carry on with our day. (And it goes towards working off the pesky community service hours I was ordered to do.) But we've got an early one today. That's 44 year old Nicollette Sheridan. Oh. My.

Wreck

The Update mentioned that there had been a wreck on 287 in Decatur that shut down all or part of the highway. Now I just heard it on WBAP. That's makes it Triple Official.

Random Monday Morning Thoughts

• It drives me nuts when ESPN shows a football highlight and speeds up the footage to save time. They have enough time to rattle their jaws for hours on end, but they can't take 10 seconds and show a kickoff return for a TD at a normal speed?
• I like weekends more now than I have ever have.
• Slideshow of various pro and con signs held up during Sarah Palin's visit to Dallas on Friday.
• I told you I have OU/Texas tickets this weekend. Man, I'm excited. And I rarely get excited about anything. And I'm assuming ESPN's College Gameday crew will be there, but I haven't seen anything official.
• I was halfway keeping an eye on the Cowboy game yesterday when I swore I saw a Cincinnati player with more hair coming out of the back of his helmet than I've grown in the last 10 years.
• Elisabeth Shue is 45 today. I could watch her in Adventures In Babysitting until my eyeballs bleed.
• I repaired a PVC pipe this summer on a very hot day. It held like a charm. Until yesterday when the recipient of my generosity was rewarded with a flooded back yard. Power. Down.
• I've been praising The Innocent Man until you guys are sick of hearing about it, but I'm well into a new book that might be better: Tulia: Race, Cocaine, and Corruption in a Small Texas Town. It helps that the author is spot on with Texas legal concepts like enhancements, drug-free zones, and probation eligibility.
• I think I'm becoming obsessed with incompetent or corrupt cops as well as prosecutors who have blinders on.
• That book makes me feel much better about questioning multi-county drug task forces which I did while DA -- Task forces that have now been all but abolished by the legislature. What a horrible idea that was. (Think of a summer camp with no adult supervision.)
• Those GPS devices are amazing. I was temporarily lost this weekend, hit the "home" button on the sucker, and the next thing I now I'm being told to take a series of lefts and rights until I'm safely where I need to be.
• In The Spin last week, I referred to the legendary "Newark Spaceman." It wasn't until Saturday that someone finally wrote me to tell me I was an idiot. I meant "Aurora Spaceman."
• And I was wrong about the DA in The Innocent Man still being the DA. He retired at the first of the year with three years still left on his term - and he was honest enough to admit that the Grisham book had something to do with it.
• I hate getting out of bed in the morning when it is raining.
• I like looking at the laundry of the person in front of me when I'm at the dry cleaners. With that limited information, I try to make a quick judgment as to what kind of person they are.
• After hearing one of the local judges talk about it, I downloaded the free application for the iPhone that allows you to hold the phone up to anything playing a song (radio, TV, other mp3 player) and within seconds it will tell you the artist and the name of the song. It works like a charm, never fails, and knows even the most obscure song. It's called Shazam and here is a 45 second youtube video showing how it works.
• For the first time in my life, I had to yell at kids next door for being a nuisance. (Throwing rocks at animals constitutes a nuisance in my book.) Little hellions.
• I hate it when some fancy smancy car owner takes up two spaces. Over at the D Magazine blog, this guy hates it too. And calls the offender out with a picture.
• I TIVO'd the Baylor/OU game last weekend because I was going to miss it. So I'm heading home at about the time the game should be over, and I'm doing a great job of keeping away from all radio coverage so as not to learn the score. Then I see a car drive by flying an OU flag. There's no way, I thought, that the guy is going to have the flag out if the greatest upset in the history of ever had just happened. Ugh.

UNT Loses: Prepared For Game Looking For Shoes

(From Dallas Morning News story)

Limited Pigskin Happy Feet

Bridgeport 59 Graham 27

,

Sacred Heart	23
Alvord	20

I'd End Up Doing Something Like This

The interviewee is Robert Kennedy, Jr. whose dad was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in the 1960s. It's kind of hard to keep all those Kennedys straight.

Top Ten Hottest Local TV Women In Dallas

10. Tammy Dombeck, Channel 5 traffic reporter

9. Gina Miller, Channel 11 sports anchor

8. Dana Larson, Fox Sports Net Southwest sports anchor/reporter

7. Darla Miles, Channel 8 reporter

6. Susy Solis, Channel 5 reporter

5. Alexa Conomos, Channel 8 traffic reporter

4. Shelly Slater, Channel 8 weekend anchor

3. Karen Borta, Channel 11 anchor

2. Emily Jones, Fox Sports Net Southwest anchor/reporter

1. Megan Henderson, Fox 4 morning anchor As viewed from the discerning eye of Richie Whitt over at the Dallas Observer. Edit: Woah (I mean "whoa")! What?! No Lari Barager? What'd she do to Richie to be left off the list?

The Magic Of A Fall Morning

So before I got beaten down inside the Jack County Courthouse this morning, I got to wander through the pumpkin patch that local officials had set up on the steps. It was a nice moment as I got to appreciate the lovely fall morning. Then when I walked out after a mind-numbing communication failure with a court appointed client, I methodically smashed every one of them and proclaimed the Halloween was the "Devil's Holiday." The Jacksboro PD wrestled me to the crowd, handcuffed me, and then allowed local residents to taze me for $1 a piece as part of an impromptu Fall Festival. (The picture part is true. )

263-171

Well, they listened for one week. Which is one week longer than normal. Dow Jones reaction here.

Random Friday Morning Thoughts

• The debate was a big disappointment. Politicians are too good these days to screw up.
• But there were a couple of "heavy breathing" moments from Biden. And that lock of hair that covered one of Palin's eyes drove me a little nuts (and kind of jazzed me) there in the beginning.
• But both wore flag pins to prove they weren't radical muslims.
• One final debate point I stole from The Ticket this morning: Both candidates should have to wear shock collars so that once they deviate from answering a direct question they could be zapped with a pretty good jolt of electricity.
• If you're a long time DFW resident (and I mean loooooooong time), you'll be interested to know that former weatherman Warren Culbertson has died. I hadn't thought of him in 20 years.
• While you were sleeping: Wachovia abruptly broke up with suitor Citigroup and eloped with Wells Fargo.
• Lindsay Lohan is at the beach in Mexico with her girlfriend. Even I'm tired of seeing those pics.
• When Wells Fargo took over the old bank in Decatur, there were a ton of complaints about the bureaucracy that was implemented. (You'd stand across from a teller who had know you for 20 years but they had to see your ID.) But people got used to it.
• McCain has pulled out of Michigan. (Kerry won the state in 2004).
• Anybody else get the "hypothetical" email yesterday about why membership in a local church would be denied to a couple but that same couple would be welcomed in heaven after being run over by a Chaney truck? (Not sure why Chaney got thrown under the proverbial bus.)
• For two days in a row, I've had someone in my office come back to me and say, "Someone is up front and they want to talk to you about something that's on your blog." That will give rise to some brief tension. (Both times it turned out to be nothing involving violence.)
• Stock quotes no longer to be printed in the newspaper.
• I noticed Bridgeport finally received some votes for the 3A Top Ten football poll but still hadn't cracked the top ten. It doesn't help that the guy voting for the Dallas Morning News left the Bulls completely out. (Can't find that proof online right now.)
• In this month's issue of the Texas Bar Journal, they reprinted a funny deposition excerpt I sent in to the magazine in, gasp, 1990. A pdf of it is here. (And it reminds me of what a beating it was taking worker's comp depositions.)
• I learned that I was ever so briefly considered as the moderator for the proposed debate for the Wise/Jack County District Attorney's race between Gerald Hartley and Greg Lowery. That would have been great. First question: "Tell me how you feel about a gay woman who is considering an abortion so she can go fight the terrorists in Iraq."
• By the way, the debate was canceled when some basic ground rules couldn't be agreed upon. For example, one candidate wanted the other candidate to agree that he wouldn't mention his endorsements.

Possible Live Blog Of The VP Debates?

Trying to get this thing to work. We got techno meltdown right now.

"Quickie Vegas Wedding Ends in Bigamy Charge for Texas Man"

Let me get this straight. This man gets fed up with wife #3 so he marries his girlfriend in a quick and romantic little ceremony in Vegas, and now the great State of Texas is persecuting him? First you can't knock on a door in Trophy Club, and now love is apparently illegal in the Lone Star State. What in the heck is going on?

Montgomery said he filed for divorce that same month -- although it's unclear if it was before or after the ceremony at the Little White Wedding Chapel in Vegas. He said he had been separated from his third wife about four months. "I wish they would go after real criminals instead of people who fall in love," Montgomery said. "I know what I did wasn't right. But when me and Tiffiney met, I had never loved anybody in my entire life the way I love her. You can't find love every day like this. She is a wonderful woman."

Montgomery said he has been unemployed for five months and cannot afford to hire a lawyer. But he could not explain why he did not wait until he was divorced before marrying yet again.

"I wouldn't change nothing," he said.

This may be the saddest thing I've ever read. I've got half a mind to move my practice down to Waco to help this man pro bono so that he can share the kind of love with Tiffiney that only a man can share with a fourth wife. He's right. You can't find love like that every day. It's a hard road to get through those three good-for-nothing spouses before you can find the love of your life.

Can You Get Board Certified In This?

This is a blurry pic of the cover of a flyer (junk mail) I saw in the County Attorney's office a second ago. That's a whole book on the subject.

It's the Young Boy From Dazed and Confused

Or it might be the gal who is accused of killing her momma in Roanoke. (She finally made it back to Texas.) This is our first look at the little angel.

Decatur Rotary Club Providing Free Moonshine

Government building implicated. Local Baptists threaten boycott of something once they can think of what to boycott - call it "Demon Rum, but worse because it's free." Developing . . .

Random Thursday Morning Thoughts

• The Vice Presidential debate is tonight. I've decided Sarah Palin makes me tense when she talks.
• Republicans have every right to be up in arms that Gwen Ifill will be the moderator of the debate. (In case you missed it, it has been learned that she is the author of an upcoming pro-Obama book.)
• Highway 287 going into Fort Worth seems to be deteriorating at an increasing rate. It seems like there is a crew replacing a huge junk chunk of concrete almost every day.
• Sign that Major League Baseball has no idea what it is doing: If you live in Boston, your game against the Angels didn't start until 9:30 (and, heck, it might have been 10:30).
• The Dallas Morning News has an article about how MADD is excited about the possibility of legalizing sobriety checkpoints in Texas. The same old Liberties Sacrificed vs. Do Anything To Save Lives arguments can be found in the comments underneath it.
• I've gone from jogging on a treadmill to jogging outside. I started a movie (In Bruges) on DVD three weeks ago and it's in limbo until I get back on the treadmill.
• I bought Texas/OU tickets. And I'll be sitting in the Evil Empire section.
• All Oklahoma has to do is beat Baylor this weekend and Texas beat Colorado for both of them to meet the following week unbeaten and in the Top Five. Saturday may be the first time in my life I've rooted for the Longhorns.
• It's kind of hard to find pictures go at the top of Random Thoughts. As Bill Blazejowski said in Night Shift, I've got to "push all the way to edge of the envelope, and then bring it back a little bit." Edit: Some of you PREEE-verts out there claim that girl in the back is topless. I'm sending the pic into the lab for analysis. I'll get back to you on that.
• Had this email just pop up: "I am a pretty blonde girl, eager to meet an interesting man for some virtual chatting by email or Skype, or dates in reality!" Looks like I'll be a little bit busy today.
• Saw a news video yesterday of a man in India who dresses up as a monkey to scare off monkeys at a train station. Not a bad gig.
• The new First Financial bank at 51/287 in Decatur is in a good location. But the property next to it, which has been vacant since the Wise County Coop moved off of it over what seems a decade ago, is even better. Anybody know the asking price?
• Heard someone refer to the new Cowboys Stadium as the "Y'all Mahal." Clever.
• Phil King and Mike Huckabee were supposed to have some love fest in a Fort Worth hotel this weekend (and by that I mean a reception/fundraiser), but I never heard anything about it.
• It's always weird how this time of year that my my lawn stays green but stops growing.
• Tiffany is 37 today. And I know who Tiffany is.
• And "Pedro" from Napoleon Dynamite, one of the greatest actors of his generation, is 35 today.
• The George Foreman grill is a great invention. But you better scrape off the goo while it's still hot or you have some baked on goo for next time.
• If I were married to Kelly Rasberry of Kidd Kraddick fame, I'd spend all my time in a fetal position in the garage.