RTDNTOTO 🐻 Random Thoughts Deserving No Thread Of Their Own 20 (2025)

[jumbach]

My father was the black sheep of his family. He had 5 sisters that married 5 brothers and they all had a bunch of kids. One sister and one brother passed away and the widows married each other. My father was the youngest and I was his youngest child. I was closest in age to the children of my cousins (making us 1st cousins once removed). When I was 18 I was at a friend’s house and there was a guy there in his early 20s. He was looking at a magazine and I saw the name on the magazine postage label. I asked if it was his, he said yeah. I said who are your grandparents and he says X&Y. I start laughing and he says what’s so funny? I tell him we’re cousins and his dad is my cousin. He was like damn my dad is like old and you are

I never met any of them, but famous alumni of my alma mater (Sacramento State) include Tom Hanks, Ted Kaczynski, and Joan London. I did briefly talk to Lester Holt once since I minored in journalism, before a class for about 30 seconds. We didn’t know each other or have anything more than that brief exchange about something trivial.

 

[Wannaplan?]

briefly talk

In 2007, I chatted with Michael Moore at a dinner party after a Sicko premiere in northern lower Michigan.

 

[Maister]

When you die, the dealings of your trade or profession occupy virtually no role in your 'life review'. Except perhaps to highlight how you emotionally reacted and dealt with various situations that occurred that may have happened while you were busy subsisting. I don't know about every culture on earth, but American males certainly place an outsized importance and attention to on one's roles at work. In many respects we are encouraged to define ourselves in terms of what we do at/for work. If you, say, engaged in a pattern of lying over a lifetime and some of those lies manifested at work, one's work history might be relevant, but otherwise how well or poorly one performs at their job doesn't merit any attention at all in the eyes of the Universe.

 

[Bubba]

Yep. We don’t advertise it though.

We’ve never met and it’s unlikely we ever will. (Many cousins on my mother’s side have scattered to various winds, just because that’s how life is and not for any falling out or anything.)

One of my cousins' cousins (the other side of their family) is a pretty famous country music singer and occasional actress - I'd usually bump into her (figuratively speaking) a few times a year when we were kids.

 

[JNA]