Paul Riddell

• 2 years, 10 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Frisco man loses his home to foreclosure while he's serving in Iraq

  And people wonder why I advocate hanging HOA enforcers by their big toes, getting a few shovel handles, and using them as Viking pinatas. Every last one I've ever dealt with gave me the impression that they were beaten up every day in high school by the anime club, and they're all gunning for revenge.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Joe Barton stickin' his post on energy committee

  Q: what's the difference between Joe Barton and a ventriloquist's dummy?

  A: The dummy doesn't sign with contentment when someone shoves his hand up its butt and makes it say what he wants.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  In the place where the Museum Tower groundbreaking ceremony will be tomorrow, the set-up crew decided to "test" the big screens by playing the World Cup on them today.

  Cool. At least they weren't "testing" it with porn. Besides, what better way to get everyone's attention. (And yes, I'm cheering on the US <i>and</i> New Zealand this weekend.)

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Texas Rangers 13, Pittsburgh Pirates 3

  (Sad sigh.) Every year. Every single year. The Rangers start out like this, and by the end of the season, we're envious of Cubs fans.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Uh oh: incidences of snakebite increase when it's hot.

  And in the US as in Australia, most of this comes from people getting close enough to venomous snakes in order to attempt to kill them. Well, either that or impersonate Steve Irwin. You know the old saw about the last words of a redneck being "Hold my beer and watch this"? When it comes to snakebite, most of those last words are along the lines of "Now, I'm gonna sneak up behind and jam my thumb up his butthole. This'll really piss him orf!"

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Giant spec home on Beverly sold

  One monstrous McMansion down, and only about 30,000 of its kin in the Dallas area to go. Seriously, head down Linden Drive next to the Pegasus News offices and note the number of insane houses, both in price and in design, that have been up for sale for the last four years. Here's the question: has the economy recovered when people want to buy those architectural thalidomide children, or has it recovered when someone finally decides to tear them down and build something sane on their ashes?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  New Denton train line will not offer night or weekend service

  Jtmbls, I hear you. I take the trains constantly, and I've become convinced that headphones and books emit a pheromone that attracts the brain-dead. Out of thirty people at a train station, who's the one person that the idiot who wants a conversation goes toward? Yep, the one with headphones on and a book open, and the idiot won't take the hint that having both isn't a sign that you want to take him home with you.

  On a related note, is it just me, or has "may I use your cell phone to make a call" replaced "got a light" in the moocher vocabulary? I held off on getting a cell phone for years, and I'd get hit on at the train stations at least once per month by somebody who didn't want to use one of the pay phones. I'd explain, truthfully, that I didn't have a phone, and each and every one would get combative about how they <i>really</i> needed to use a phone. Hey, I <i>really</i> need to use a Green Lantern ring, too, but I didn't have one of those, either, and bitching about it wasn't going to make one appear.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Dallas fire, police departments cracking down on illegal fireworks on Fourth of July weekend

  Clay, I'm pretty certain that it's Dallas County law, not just for the city proper. Most of the city ordinances and county laws against fireworks in this area are legacies of the heat wave of 1980. Between bottle rockets and wooden shingles on roofs in the suburbs, it was a fun time in this town thirty years ago.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  New Denton train line will not offer night or weekend service

  Clay, while I don't necessarily agree with you about the total money-losing aspect, I definitely agree with you about not running it while empty. The problem with the whining about the trains not running at night is that it's what we in the retail business call the "you should just" syndrome. Ask anybody who's worked behind the counter in any business about the customers who tell you "Well, you should just carry [item that's their particular passion]." If you explain to them that it's not cost-effective, or that you can special-order it for them, they'll insist that you have it for them all of the time. The moment you follow through, though, that customer will suddenly do everything s/he can to avoid buying it.

  I've heard the same arguments with other mass transit systems, and the much-hyped streetcars in Portland, Oregon are a classic "you should just" solution. They're costing the city millions of dollars on maintenance and upkeep, mostly because the hipsters who whined about getting streetcars suddenly don't want to use them once they're available. Let's focus on making sure that the Denton line works for its stated purpose first, and <i>then</i> worry about expanding the hours past work and school commuter rush hour.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Someone is already camped out at the Knox Henderson Apple store, presumably to get an iPhone next Thursday

  Kinda reminds you of the camps of Cat Piss Men waiting to see the <i>Star Wars</i> prequels, isn't it? (Actually, that's unfair. At least an iPhone can do <i>something</i> useful.)

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  AMC theaters in North Texas unleash policy smackdown on unsupervised kids after dark

  Congratulations, AMC: remember that your young viewers will grow up soon enough, and they're going to remember how they were treated back then. The <i>Dallas Morning News</i> is learning this soon enough: most of us who went to school in the area remember Burl Osborne's tirades against anybody under the age of 30 in the paper (well, against anybody under the age of 30 who wasn't from Highland Park), and those of us who got tired of his cackling about curfews and busting kids cruising on Forest Lane remembered how the <i>Morning News</i> bought out and shut down the <i>Times Herald</i>, too. This makes it really hard to have sympathy for the "Boring Snooze" these days over its efforts to attract readers who didn't send their grandkids off to fight Sherman and Grant.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Jerry Jones and Terrell Owens make Most Disliked People in Sports list on Forbes.com.

  You know, when Jones dies, I'd very highly recommend that he be cremated. Otherwise, his coffin's going to float out of the grave from all of the people he's screwed over pissing on it. (One of my many fears is that the only fossil of modern man some 90 million years from now will be Jerry's corpse, perfectly preserved in a gigantic crystal of pure urine. Between that and Nixon's name on the Apollo 11 plaque on the moon, and any future sentient species either evolving on Earth or coming here from somewhere else will get a really screwed up perspective on humanity.)

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  90 Lockheed Martin employees to lose their jobs

  Typical, especially for defense contractors. The layoffs are usually for those who'd qualify for pensions and other benefits if they remained on board for too long, so there's no incentive to move them to other parts of the company. Besides, it's always cheaper to hire fresh new college graduates, no matter how long they need to be trained before they can take on the workload of their predecessors.

  If I sound overly cynical, it's because that was Texas Instruments's MO for years, especially after Jerry Junkins took over the company in the late Eighties and drove the entire Defense Electronics Group into the ground. (Ever since SMU named its technology center after Jerry, I kept waiting for a similar groundbreaking in another field. The Charles Manson Psychiatric Hospital or the Jeffrey Dahmer Culinary School, for instance.) By the mid-Nineties, TI was so notorious for hiring fresh talent and then laying off everyone weeks or even days later that MIT and Caltech threatened not to recommend that its graduates go to work for TI. And that was for the engineers: for those of us in the general workforce, we got so used to being screwed out of promised benefits and raises that the phrase "Welcome to TI", even in jest, was the filthiest profanity you could utter at any of the company facilities.

  Of course, it could be worse. If you think this is bad, you should see how Boeing up in Seattle runs things. Boeing is notorious for bulk hiring around Halloween and then laying off everyone it can three days before Christmas. When I lived in Portland, Oregon in the late Nineties, I had a tech recruiter call me about attending a Boeing job fair in Portland. When I told him that the date of the job fair was two days after I was moving away from Portland forever, he actually sneered "Well, don't you think you should stick around for a couple of days and see what they have to offer?" I responded "Considering how Boeing treats its employees, you're lucky I didn't hang up on you five minutes ago." And <i>THEN</i> I hung up on him.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Topless woman and 20 others protested in Pegasus Plaza today

  PETA protesting a circus? Isn't that redundant?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Paciugo Gelato reaching out to different audience for new jackfruit sorbet

  Jackfruit is delicious, but the biggest problem, as most people realize, is that you have to know what to do with it. If you've never tried it before, try to get it already cut into quarters or eighths. The pulp is alongside the monstrous seeds, and I'll warn you right off that it's rather fibrous. That said, it's absolutely heavenly once you've expended the effort.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Southwest Airlines employee finds human heads on their way to Fort Worth.

  Uh oh. I have no problem with people being inspired by their favorite movies, but when that favorite movie is <i>Re-Animator</i>?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  While, somewhere in the world, news is happening

  And yet people always act surprised when July 4 weekend isn't highlighted with three feet of snow. At least, that's what you'd think when listening to the complaining about the heat.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  The Lounge on Elm Street to become "The Nightmare." It'll still be on Elm Street.

  And I have another question. Presuming that this place will be around by then, what do they have planned for before Christmas?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Dallas Morning Newsers get bonuses, but pay cuts are permanent

  Hmmm. I wonder if Robert Dechard is going to have the same sauce as the goose. I seem to remember him giving himself a minor pay cut, and then giving himself a bonus above and beyond what he otherwise would have lost.

  Considering the number of good writers and photographers the paper's already let go, and how every last freebie (from free parking to matching 401(k) contributions) is now gone, I think Mr. Dechard's announcement reminds me of another bit of Dallas history. Namely, asking "Aside from <i>that</i>, Mrs. Kennedy, what do you think of Dealey Plaza?"

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  In case you hadn't noticed, it's hot

  Yes, I know it's hot, because every time I go outside, I have at least one person, always a Dallas native, who tells me this at about 180 decibels. "It's HOT," as if our normal June activities include splashing through puddles of freshly rained liquid nitrogen. Whatever you do, avoid the Tom Thumb at the corner of Preston and Forest in the morning between Memorial Day and Labor Day: you have so many old people hanging out here who feel compelled to tell you "It's HOT" that the place sounds like a pterosaur rookery.

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Lewisville ISD looking to control teachers' Facebook postings

  Yes, because God forbid anybody should point out that the school district is nothing but a support system for the high school football program. (As an alum, I have to say that I love class reunions for Lewisville High School. There's nothing quite like stirring up everyone to sing the school fight song, only for everyone to remember that "Dueling Banjos" has no lyrics.)

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  'Gator expert's advice: "Don't try to feed it."

  "It's a big one, about three meters long. That's about ten, eleven feet. Now, I'm gonna sneak up behind and jam my thumb up its butthole. That'll really piss him orf!"

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  Mike Snyder to retire from KXAS/NBC 5

  Geez. I remember when he started, and I was a loyal Channel 5 news viewer all through high school. Where the hell has the time gone?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  The Lounge on Elm Street to become "The Nightmare." It'll still be on Elm Street.

  Mike, you don't want to steal from the show <i>Drawn Together</i> and start one named "Club Foot"?

  
  
• 2 years, 11 months ago
  Paul Riddell's comment on:

  The former AIG building in Dallas is getting a new logo

  I was wondering about that. I was out near the old tower about a week ago, and you can still see the scar from the old AIG logo.

  
  

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