Saddam's Doritos and UT baseball

Well, it's a great evening tonight as UT beat Tulane easily by a score of 5-0. The defense was outstanding and they made the Tulane pithcer, a number one draft pick of the Astros, look pretty bad. I'm a big UT baseball fan and watching them defeat Ole Miss to get to the College World Series, and then handle tough teams like Baylor and Tulane once there, has been great. I hope they keep it up and think they will.

In other news, I read today where soldiers that guarded Saddam Hussein for over a year in Iraq claim among other interesting details that he enjoys Doritos chips and sprinkles water on them before eating them. I don't know if this is good or bad news for Frito-Lay, but I thought it was interesting. I wonder if they have the Jay Leno policy of "crunch all you want. We'll make more" or if he only gets a bag per day, week, month or what? There was no word however about what type of underoos he wears in terms of brand name.

One other note for what it is worth - yesterday at the HEB Central Market store in Austin I received a 1950 $20 bill in the ATM machine. Amazing! First off, most bills you see in circulation are usually no older than three or four years due to wear. Secondly, the US govt has undergone an extense anti-forgery campaign by twice changing the looks of the $20 bill over the last several years to the point that the newest version has little 20s written all over its back and has so many different and odd markings that it resembles Monopoly money. Finally, most ATMs will dispense new bills that are so crisp and fresh that sometimes they even stick together. Well, this one is the real deal. It looks old and worn, but isn't torn. It's clearly got the signatures of President Truman's then Sec. of Treasury as well as the US Treasurer. It also notes how the bill is backed up by gold. The gold standard - now there is an idea that folks have forgotten. I'm not a money collector so I have no idea the value of this bill (it may just be $20 still) but I think I'll keep it. Getting a $20 bill that is over 50 years old from an ATM has got to be up against some very long odds.

Finally this evening, I'd like to thank Ron Gunzburger for mentioning this new and very rough blog on his stellar site, www.politics1.com, today. Hopefully over time this blog will become more enjoyable for the reader. At this point its simply something I enjoy doing. Oh, I guess I should throw in some quick political news too since the readers from Politics1 might be wondering why this blog is mentioned on that site. Well, on Sat. June 11th Austin had a single run-off election for city council in which a 32 year-old rookie candidate defeated a much more seasoned and hard-core liberal candidate by a 54-46% margin. This was a bit of a blow to the city's enviro-green wing, but what has really got to be bugging them (since even I've noticed it) is that the winning candidate (Jennifer Kim) has still got her signs all over the town on virtually every road, intersection, parking lot, and other spot in which a sign could be stuck. It's been over a week and yet the signs persist. Perhaps she should organize some sort of effort to take them down or is she already running for re-election?

Good night from Austin.