News Ticker: May 22

Timbaland throws some D's, Debbie Riddle dresses for success, and Harold Simmons calls in another favor. Repetition is on the News Ticker.

• Like a Klein bottle filled with white gravy, the Texas Lege keeps spurting out the same stuff. Each session Rep. Debbie Riddle will show up to the floor wearing inscrutable fashions. But we're glad to see her trips to Hobby Lobby were not in vain.

• Richly grained leather wallet Harold Simmons will invariably contaminate some bill's debate.

• Bills will confuse plots to Chuck Norris movies with actual state needs.

• And the usual drips will keep important issues from coming up for vote. Some droughts have nothing to do with water.

• Meanwhile, "Tech-sus" continues to make headlines. Apple has announced they will be begin manufacturing some Mac products somewhere in the state.

• Famed beat-master Timbaland has put his money behind one of Austin's Open Labs music apps.

• And NASA, still ruefully unable to avoid the Noid, is funding the world's most expensive pizza party.

• Like a bureaucratic Wolf Blitzer, Williamson County may not always ask appropriate questions.

• After a scavenger hunt, a rousing game of Skip-Bo, and a particularly unfortunate incident with a divining rod, the selection process for Austin's Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission is more than halfway finished. The eight lucky lottery winners will now hold a Hunger Games-style death match to select the remaining six redistricteers.

• This may come as a shock to many long time citizens, but apparently Austin is a pretty good beer town.

• Freddie Krueger, Pinhead, that giant desert anus in Return of the Jedi? They all wish they were as terrifying as the new Big Tex.