Bag of Randomness for Friday, December 6, 2019

  • LiberallyLean has a bit in which he’ll point out what he believes are hidden paid advertisements. Sometimes I think his net is cast a bit wide, such as when Blue Bell announces a new flavor and the local press picks up on it because it’s folksy. I thought of him yesterday and could relate when I heard the Musers on The TICKET do a segment defending the new Peleton commercial. For a while, I’ve felt like Peleton has been paying them for passive mentions. I picked up on it when Bob would playfully bring up the time an instructor called him out by name. Then, there was the time the Musers decided to organize a mall walk at Northpark and kept mentioning they meeting place would be near the Peleton entrance, and yesterday we have them defending the latest commercial. There’s just a little too much casual name dropping for this to be a coincidence.
  • Subway sues journalists for reporting its chicken is only 50% chicken—and loses
    • They sent samples of Subway chicken, along with chicken from A&W, McDonald’s, Tim Horton’s, and Wendy’s, to a lab at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario, to test how much of it was actually, you know, chicken. They weren’t expecting anything to come back as 100%—things happen during processing and seasoning—but most of the tests came back showing between 88.5% and 89.4% chicken DNA. Except for Subway. Subway’s “oven roasted chicken” tested as 53.6% chicken and its strips were 42.8%. The rest was soy protein. Perhaps, they thought, there had been a mistake in the lab. But when they tested again, the results were the same.
  • I intended to mention these two CBS Sunday Morning stories earlier this week.
    • This story is about a model family. The father, mother, and their five kids are all models and their full-time job is doing family shoots for name-brand companies you are familiar with – Brooks Brothers, Hanes Pajamagram, Bass Pro Shops, Dell, Disney, and Coca-Cola to name a few.
    • This story started out with a big family feud:
      • “My mother got in a huge argument with her brother when I was 10, and bought all the remaining spaces in the family cemetery so he and his family couldn’t be buried with the rest of us. That was the meanest thing she could think to settle the score.
  • Young boy invites entire kindergarten class to his adoption hearing
  • Elementary School Headmistress In Poland Staged Active Shooter Situation, One Student Jumped Out Of The Window, Other Kids Have Trauma.
    • The headmistress in the Polish school got a very bad idea, when she called in people with guns and balaklavas to school and staged a fake terrorist attack at her own school. Nobody but the headmistress knew that this was a fake attack.
  • Iceland puts well-being ahead of GDP in budget
  • Color news
  • The world’s first poop database needs your help
    • Artificial intelligence will soon be able to decode your poop. That’s the ultimate goal of a campaign to collect 100,000 fecal photos to build what developers say is the world’s first poop image database. The campaign, launched by microbial health company Seed, dares you to “give a shit” for science by uploading photos of your feces so that scientists can use it to train an AI platform launched out of MIT.
  • Here’s a fun little office gift, it might just be better than a red stapler.
    Scotch Magic Tape Dispenser, Record Player
  • And I thought I was watching the original all these years.
    • Ironically, it was commissioned by The Coca-Cola Company, and if not for this mega-corporation, this anti-commercialization-of-Christmas special would not exist. Their sponsorship tags would be cut from subsequent broadcasts, although the studio also used this to their benefit to correct the clearest and most fixable animation errors they could notice (while adding a few more in, ironically), the end result having been a disaster in the eyes of Melendez and New York executives in the first place.
      The version that has been broadcast and remastered since is the revised version, while the original print would not be screened ever again except during special screenings from an vintage 16mm print. One of these prints was offered to ParamountCartoons, member of the Internet Animation Database forums, who dissected as much as he could from this version, and the print was soon shared as an MKV at the Lost Media Wiki for all to enjoy and dissect, and in this video will be compared in split-screen with the changes made in the final cut.
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Bag of Randomness for Thursday, December 5, 2019

  • Yesterday, DaughterGeeding was getting her braces worked on and I couldn’t help but notice the snowflake above her and the assistant’s head and wonder how’d they react if the adhesive hook suddenly gave way. I noticed every patient being worked on also was in the same predicament. As one person on Twitter said, this wasn’t quite Final Destination, more of “Midday Detour”. Truth be told, this is a phobia of mine. You won’t catch me sleeping directly underneath a ceiling fan and back in the day when restaurants would hoist a heavy CRT TV near the ceiling I’d refuse to sit underneath it.
  • Not long ago, WifeGeeding revealed to me that she had an affinity for arrows and if she would to ever get a tattoo, it would be an arrow. While in the orthodontist waiting room, I noticed Lindale native Miranda Lambert had an arrow tattoo on her hand. WifeGeeding is also a Lindale native. So, the only logical conclusion is that WifeGeeding wants to be Miranda Lambert.
  • I’ve always wanted a doggie-door. We couldn’t get one installed in my childhood home because the door to our backyard was a large sliding glass door. This week, I fulfilled the dream of owning a doggie-door, here is a picture of DogGeedingII and OtherDogGeedingII teaching BoyGeeding how to use it.
  • We haven’t decorated Christmas one iota.
  • U2 are getting a channel devoted exclusively to their music on SiriusXM sometime next year.
    • “[U2X Radio] will feature music from U2’s acclaimed decades-long career,” the company said in a statement. “Never before heard interviews and live concert recordings; favorites and surprises from the archive; band curated playlists sharing personal influences both new and old; plus content celebrating their Dublin roots and much, much more.”
  • Netflix’s Movie Catalog Has Shrunk By 40% Since 2014
  • https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1200429771794059264
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Bag of Randomness for Monday, December 2, 2019

  • Yes, I know the above nativity scene is neither theologically or historically correct. Obviously, Tootsie Rolls didn’t exist during biblical times.
  • We’ve lived in our house for about 13 or 14 years and for the last several years we’ve been one cooktop upgrade from having matching stainless steel appliances for the first time. I decided to make that a reality on Black Friday when I spotted a unit on sale marked $450 off. I tend to be skeptical of any sale when I’m told how much I’d be saving because, in essence, I have no idea what they intended to sell it for in the first place. But this deal hit a price point I’ve been looking for and sometimes you just feel a “need” to buy something because you’ve been putting it off for so long. WifeGeeding and the kids were in East Texas visiting her family on that day so I decided to install it myself and surprise them when they came home the next day.
  • It’s funny how intimidating anything can be when you first become a homeowner, but over the years your confidence starts to add up as you tuck another endeavor under your belt as they become slightly more complex. I’m at the point in which I prefer installing a lot of things myself because I think I can either do it better or just enjoy trying to tackle the challenge. The gas range made me pause because I have a fear of natural gas from all those house explosions due to a small gas leak. To better calm my fears, I had my neighbor who installs kitchen countertops to inspect my work who spotted something I would have overlooked. Other than that, it went well.
  • Later that day, our 15-month over-the-range microwave decided to act up by not turning off. When turned off and the door closed, it was making a loud humming noise and the metal felt warm. I kept the door open and that worked, but after a while, the sound came back. After some trial and error and a lot of research, it appeared the magnetron needed to be replaced. The part would cost about $120, I’d have to wait for it to be delivered, then I’d have to take it down, disassemble and reassemble, test my repair and hope that it worked, and then would have to reinstall it over the cooktop and attach it to the wall. I chose a slightly costlier alternative. All the chains were advertising the exact same model microwave for a Black Friday price of $200 and two of the closest stores had them in stock.
  • While visiting her family in East Texas, WifeGeeding’s brother and father went hunting near what they call “the river bottom”. They stayed out later than normal, I think it was around dusk they started to drive home. As they neared a narrow bridge, they notice a man on the opposite side of the road approaching them. Her father, being his typical small-town friendly self, slowed down to strike a conversation. The man walked up to the driver’s side window and pulled a gun. WifeGeeding’s brother yelled something like, “He’s got a gun, go, go go!” and his father took off. They never looked back; however, both heard three gunshots and neither was injured and quickly called 911. The police met them in a church parking lot and they were able to determine their truck was hit two times (a picture of one of the bullet holes is below). There were actually three bullet holes, but one bullet made an exit and entry hole. As they waited in the church parking lot for the police to arrive, an older woman (with several missing teeth) drove up in a beaten-down car. WifeGeeding’s brother warned her not to drive any further down the road, but her reply was something like, “Oh, that’s my son,” and then drove off. WifeGeeding’s brother was too caught up in the moment to get the make, model, or license plate of the car. As far as I know, the man was never identified, questioned, or arrested.
  • Loosely related – Once when I was dating WifeGeeding and visiting her family, a lot of drove to Shreveport to visit the riverboat casinos. At one point, her father wanted to visit the local Bass Pro Shops and I chauffered him. While there, he told me how he noticed a lot of vehicles as of late had bullet holes. I explained to him those aren’t actually bullet holes but decals and were able to find some in the store. He was bewildered why anyone would want to have a fake bullet hole on their vehicle and politely questioned the sanity of the younger generation.
  • Survey: You need an annual salary of $113,000 to be happy in Dallas
    • A survey from Purdue University and GoBankingRates.com found that you need an annual salary of $113,085 to be happy in Dallas. It also found that people need to be making between $64,620 and $80,775 annually for their emotional well-being.
    • The survey also found that in Los Angeles you need to earn $204,855 to be happy, in New York City, you need to earn $219,765. Nationally, the study says that the ideal salary needed to be happy is roughly $105,000, they say that’s generally enough to make people feel comfortable and happy enough to explore bigger goals.
  • Nearly 40 percent of online Black Friday purchases were made with phones
    • While working on my graduate degree, I remember writing a paper about the future of “mobile tech” and the ability to make on-line purchases. I never thought it would take off, thinking no one would want to punch in a credit card number on a tiny two-inch square gray screen, but this was years before the first iPod or iPhone.  (Heck, the CueCat never took off!) I’m certainly no visionary.
  • Dwayne Johnson and Danny DeVito crash a wedding after wrapping film promotion in Cabo Mexico. The video really isn’t great nor all that entertaining, but it got me thinking if a celebrity ever crashed a funeral. That sounds like something Tom Green wouldn’t have done.
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