Leading Off (11/4/11)

Vote Early, Vote Often. Did you know we’re supposed to be voting for something? Yeah. We are. And today’s the last day you can vote early for – waitaminute. It’s not even people. We’re voting for constitutional amendments. There are 10 of them, apparently, and a lot of them look kind of important. So you know, there’s that. Even if they aren’t people.

Horrible Things. I’m not even going to joke about this, but apparently two men died after being trapped in a sewage line near Fairview. I can think of a million and one ways to die, and being swept away in a stream of sewage is way at the bottom of the list. I mean, one minute you’re doing your work, and the next minute, you’re trapped in sewage. Just … no.

Things That Are Hard to Prove. The Loch Ness Monster. The love between John Wiley Price and Maurine Dickey. Anything involving the Trinity River. Arthur and Archie. And well, the alleged insolvency of the Dallas Mavericks, when the person you’re suing includes a picture of Dirk Nowitzki holding the Larry O’Brien. So yeah, state district Judge Craig Smith kind of dismissed Ross Perot Jr.’s suit against Mark Cuban yesterday.

Occupy Dallas to Occupy Dallas Somewhere Else. Reportedly, Occupy Dallas campers voted to move from their City Hall digs to somewhere else yesterday. According to reports, they’ve had a hard time distinguishing between actual protesters and people who are just there for the donated food. Yes, this is ironic, since the people who likely want the donated food and supplies are probably part of the 99 percent. Only, then they denied saying they decided to move. So in summary, Occupy Dallas will Occupy Something In Dallas for the foreseeable future.

Did You Know … that there is still a sport being played in the Dallas area? If you clicked that link and thought it was going to be another team, I shall remind you of this. Also, college football is awesome. And high school football. You should just watch that instead of the thing I just linked. Or the thing I linked first. You can watch that, too. Those things will make you happy. The other thing will just make you have lamentations and you will drink many beers and raise your fist in the air in a brief, weak gesture of anger before letting it fall limply to your side, as your shoulders slump and you realize that Roger Staubach and Troy Aikman cannot have a football baby together that will grow up to be the best quarterback in the history of ever. So just watch the things I told you about, because thinking about that will put bad images in  your head, man. Bad.

Leading Off (11/3/11)

Lewisville Coach Quits After Being Charged With Human Trafficking. Coaches quit or get fired or whatever all the time, but I’m pretty sure this is the first one who has resigned for this particular reason. If I were a coach, I’d want to get fired for getting my kids interested in literature and so on, and then one of them discovers a gift for acting, but his father doesn’t like it and makes him quit, even after he did so well in the play, and the kid dies and the dad blames me, and now I realize I’ve  just basically typed a synopsis of Dead Poets Society. And I’m crying.

Occupy Dallas Protesters Get Ready For Cold Front. This isn’t really news. Just wanted to put it up for sentences such as this one: “The protesters do have access to coats and sweaters that have been donated.” They “have access to coats.” Oh, really? The coats are not in the vault anymore? BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SWEATERS? Ah, sorry, just noticed it says “coats AND sweaters.” Never mind. If you boiled down that story to its essence it would say, “It’s going to be cold for a few days, but they have coats and some of them are going home for a few days, and they aren’t all morons who will freeze to death because they don’t understand how weather works.” That said, I do hope they’re OK. And by that, I obviously mean the coats. And, sure, the sweaters. As long as they’re not cardigans.

Two of the Texas 7 Get Execution Dates. George Rivas, the mastermind behind the operation, is due for lethal injection on February 29, and his confederate, Donald Newbury, had his execution set for February 1. Your impassioned arguments for/against the death penalty happen momentarily, I suspect. We have plenty of room in the comments for that to segue into an attack/defense of Rick Perry, George Bush, and the state of Texas in general, as well as some brief commentary on that movie where Billy Bob Thornton played a death row prison guard and Halle Berry won an Academy Award for crying a bunch. Or whatever. Take it wherever you want. I merely set up the tents; you guys have to put on the circus yourself. Just don’t draw Tim offsides. We’re shipping a magazine, and he’s too busy to make phone calls, and at any rate, I’m still polishing up a script for him to use. A three-act structure is hard to work into one minute.

Dave Tarrant Gives Up On Sports For One Year

Why? The Rangers. Check out his reasoning here.