Archive for the ‘Bagatelle’ Category

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Don’t get a boo-boo, Boo Boo.

Saturday, March 29th, 2025

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of days, but kept forgetting. I think it is relevant, especially since FotB Joe D. and I have discussed this in the past.

“These are the 10 deadliest national parks in the US — with one seeing more than 20 fatalities per year”.

Spoiler: Surprisingly, the deadliest “park” is…Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which averages 20.88 deaths per year. I say “surprisingly” because I would have figured Grand Canyon or Yosemite. But thinking about it, Lake Mead is mostly water, and there are a lot of ways to die around water.

Grand Canyon National Park comes in second (12.7 deaths per year), Yosemite National Park third (11.1), and Yellowstone ends up in tenth place (4.94 deaths per year).

Posted in Bagatelle, Safety | No Comments »

Drink!

Friday, March 21st, 2025

Shot:

A scientist at an isolated Antarctica base allegedly assaulted and sexually harassed colleagues while the team is confined together at the edge of the Earth for a year, according to a shocking new report.
The researcher’s “deeply disturbing” behavior was shared in an email by a fellow team member who was cooped up with him in the SANAE IV base, home to a South African research team.
Inhospitable weather has made it too difficult to evacuate anyone from SANAE IV, meaning everyone is stuck together for the foreseeable future, according to authorities.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle | No Comments »

Bagatelle (#128).

Monday, February 24th, 2025

I shared this with Lawrence on Saturday, and he was amused (in the “WTF?!” sense):

“Georgia man sentenced to 20 years for bombing woman’s home, planting python to eat her daughter”.

In case you were wondering: 20 years. Federal time, so there’s no parole.

(Also on the “WTF?!” front, a very quick review of David Lynch’s “Mulholland Drive”: pretentious navel-gazing crap.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Explosives, Law, Movies, Reptiles, Snakes | No Comments »

Short art, damn it! Art! watch.

Tuesday, February 18th, 2025

This is not something I regularly get a chance to cover, especially since 2020. So when it comes up, I can’t help but make note of it.

“‘The Gates’ was a huge art sensation 20 years ago — and it wasn’t the only vision Christo and Jeanne-Claude had for NYC”.

The NYPost article includes concept art for some of their other proposed, but never completed, projects for NYC.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude had an obsession with oil barrels. “They were so easy to stack and you could paint them all these different colors,” said Yavachev. “You could use them almost like pixels.”

Posted in Art, Bagatelle, Christo | No Comments »

Bagatelle (#126).

Friday, February 7th, 2025

I don’t know how many of my readers are familiar with the story of “The Man Who Rode The Thunder”, Lieutenant Colonel William Rankin.

I know Lawrence is, because we’ve talked about it before. FotB RoadRich may know the story as well.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a good brief overview from Dr. Dabbs. Elevator pitch: LTC Rankin was forced to bail out of his F-8 Crusader…into a thunderstorm.

I have a paperback copy of The Man Who Rode the Thunder in a box somewhere, but I don’t remember it being in my elementary school library. If it had been, I would have been all over that like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.

Posted in Bagatelle, Books, Heroism, Planes | No Comments »

Bagatelle (#125).

Tuesday, December 17th, 2024

Shot:

Quincy, M.E., season 5, episode 1: “No Way to Treat a Flower”.

A teenage girl dies from a disease that mainly affects the elderly. A few hours later, her boyfriend dies of the same symptoms. Quincy later traces it to a the marijuana they smoked, which was treated with a poisonous fertilizer. Quincy then decides to go after the magazine that advertised it in order to try to keep more kids from dying from the tainted weed. He also must find out where the kids got the weed from.

Chaser:

Two men from New York died from pneumonia they contracted from bat feces — after they used the excrement as fertilizer to grow marijuana, a new study found.
The unidentified men from Rochester, ages 64 and 59, smoked pot that had been tainted with a fungus found in the bat droppings, known as guano, that caused fatal lung infections, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Disease earlier this month.

Posted in 1970s, Bagatelle, Mammals, TV | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#124).

Thursday, December 5th, 2024

Shot:

Chi-Chi’s is returning after closing 20 years ago.
The Mexican chain once had more than 200 locations before the last restaurant’s doors shut in 2004.
Now, the founder’s son is spearheading the comeback with a plan to reopen Chi-Chi’s locations in 2025.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle, Food | Comments Closed

As God is my witness…

Tuesday, November 26th, 2024

A woman is delivering Thanksgiving turkeys to her neighbors living off the grid.
For the last three years, Esther Sanderlin has been loading frozen turkeys onto her plane to drop them off to Alaskans who live off the road system.

(Hattip: my beloved and indulgent aunt and uncle.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Birds | 1 Comment »

Bagatelle (#122).

Thursday, November 7th, 2024

A few food related things Mike the Musicologist and I saw while running around:

The New Braunfels Rotary Club has gone up to $16! for the sausage and potato pancakes plate. Thanks, Joe Biden!

(Seriously, I think it was $12 the last time I went to Wurstfest.)

Because it just isn’t charcuterie unless it is on a stick. Also, that raclette sounds really good.

(We’ve driven past that cheese shop when we’ve been in New Braunfels, but I’ve never been in. May have to fix that.)

They’re not just pork rinds. They’re “small batch” pork rinds. I don’t think they are “artisanal”, however.

Posted in Bagatelle, Cheese, Food, On a stick | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#121).

Friday, November 1st, 2024

Shot:

Chaser:

“The thing I hate most in life,” Ballmer once said, “is arenas where you have to wait in line for the bathroom. I’ve become a real obsessive about toilets. Toilets, toilets, toilets.”

Posted in Bagatelle, Sports, Urine | Comments Closed

Smoking hyenas update.

Thursday, September 12th, 2024

I haven’t had a lot of time today, but before I turn in, I wanted to note: NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban resigned today. (Previously.)

Part of the reason I want to get this up is rumor control. The interim commissioner is not this guy:

though he does have NYPD and leadership experience. The interim commissioner is also not this guy:

though in my humble opinion, the NYPD would be vastly improved by a commissioner who carries an old-school Fitz Special.

(I’m sure you were expecting the second one, but I couldn’t pass up a chance to make a reference to the Fitz Special.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Cops, Guns, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Reminder.

Tuesday, August 27th, 2024

The Catholic Church has more compassion for people who have died by suicide than science fiction fandom.

Posted in Bagatelle, Religion | Comments Closed

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