Bag of Randomness for Tuesday, June 7, 2016

• I’ve mentioned we’re a one-car family and it works out quite well for the most part since I work from home. However, our the car has been in the shop since Friday. A neighbor was nice enough to loan us her SUV during this time. When she dropped it off at our house and handed me the keys, she said she set the radio station to The Ticket because she knew I’m a P1.
• Something that drives me crazy – when a tiny speaker on a device is on a very high volume level it’s really not meant to be on.
• I love the comedy you’ll find in the Airplane!, Hot Shots!, and Nake Gun movies, so I’ve taken a huge liking towards the TBS series ‘Angie Tribeca’ which had its season premiere last night. Jon Hamm had a bit part, and I mean it was a bit part. He wasn’t even on screen for 30-seconds and his only line had three words.
• I’m a big fan of illusionist David Copperfield and The Daily Beast has a good interview with him. A few tidbits:
  • He states Leonardo da Vinci co-wrote the first book on magic.
  • Speaks about having a personal relationship with God.
  • Considers David Blane a buddy and “the real deal”.
  • States Houdini as a role model but not a great magician.
  • He holds 11 Guinness World Records but I can’t find what specific eleven, even on Guinness’ website.
• Arkansas Judge Accused Of Making Male Defendants Pose Nude, Spanking Them
• Ever wake up to a numb, dead arm? Here’s what’s happening. – Dyck explained there’s a common misconception that pins and needles and numbness are caused by a lack of blood flow to the nerves. “The more likely thing is nerve compression — nerves are being pushed on and squashed, and that causes these symptoms,” he says.
• Atlas Obscura – The Incredible Coincidence of a Poisonous Tree Growing Next to Its Antidote
• For my fellow ‘Game of Thrones’ fans who was curious as to why the show started non-traditionally with a cold open (spoiler warning if you haven’t seen the latest episode) –  Why the cold open? The production has to put The Hound actor Rory McCann’s name in the opening credits and, as GoT writer Bryan Cogman explains, that would have spoiled the reveal if fans saw his name before his character appeared.

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Last Portraits Of Muhammad Ali

The Sun

https://www.instagram.com/p/BGSvpgfF7wJ/

 

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Muhammad Ali surprises Sylvester Stallone – You stole my script, all that was me, I’m Apollo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LK2tHS_NdY

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Bag of Randomness for Monday, June 6, 2016

• The kids found a bunny rabbit in our garage, no bigger than the palm of my hand, and they instantly fell in love with it. DaughterGeeding has been asking for a pet rabbit for about a year now and thought this was a surprise gift. But after a long tender talk, we told the kids we couldn’t keep Carrots (yup, it immediately got a name). With tears in their eyes, they helped me coax the little fella out of the garage back “into the wild”.
  • Don’t read the rest of this bullet point if you are eating breakfast or sensitive. The next day I was mowing the backyard, somewhat close to the garage and ran over something . . . something that no longer had a head but the body of a bunny no bigger than the palm of my hand. I stopped the mower and groaned, “Oh mannnnnn.” The kids were right behind on the porch, and curious to what happened, started to make their way towards me and the mower. Not wanting to be known as Daddy the Decapitator of Carrots, I told them to turn around and go inside. They were confused and started to ask questions and kept wanting to look, but I thankfully got them to go inside and WifeGeeding kept them from looking through the window. After I buried Carrots, I noticed a bunny paw sticking through the side discharge and the discharge blocker. There was a bit more crime scene evidence than I expected, and I started to act like Dexter doing what he can to cover my tracks.
  • This is my second rabbit/mower killing, the first one happened about a decade ago.
• After church, we decided to eat at our favorite Medderterrian buffet in Las Colinas that we haven’t visited in a long while. We had a bad experience. Don’t read further if you are eating breakfast.
  • When we parked we noticed the place was almost empty thinking it was out of business. I mean, where was the after-church crowd? On the patio was a table that looked like it needed to be bussed from the night before, but the neon “open” sign was on, so we took a chance. Other than one couple, we were the only ones in there.
  • WifeGeeding takes DaughterGeeding to the table and I take BoyGeeding to the restroom which smelled like vomit. It smelled like that because there was vomit in the sink. I alerted the cashier and I see him talk to a few coworkers. When we finish our meal, I had to use the restroom and sadly noticed no one cleaned the vomit.
  • A mop head was laid on the floor, looking wet and out of place somewhat near the buffet.
  • I wanted a swig of Mr. Pibb, it turns out it was root beer. Out of curiosity, I got a sample of the root beer thinking it would be Mr. Pibb. Nope, it was root beer.
• Two men from Boston set off on an expedition to find the black box of Eastern Flight 980 that crashed into the Andes 31-years ago and killed everyone onboard, so don’t confuse it with Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 crash in which the movie Alive was adapted, which I did. However, those two men found the box, and it happened by randomly flipping over a piece of metal after having giving up for the day:
  • After wed[sic] given up for the evening, Isaac did something he’d done hundreds of times over the previous three days, turning over pieces of metal to check their color. Only this piece he turned over was orange, just like the previous five pieces, and it had cables sticking out of it. On a plastic wrapping around the cables was the writing “CKPT VO RCDR”.
• Curious as to when the U.S. Postal Service stopped making stamps that required licking (or applying moisture), I did a little research and was surprised that they were still producing some even up to last year. However, the overwhelming majority of stamps are self-adhesive.
• Auto loan news – Average auto loan: $30,032, Average monthly payment: $503, Average term for an auto loan: 68 months 
• Olympic athletes will sport Visa’s new payment ring in Rio
• Miami Herald – Sen. Marco Rubio blocks confirmation of judge he recommended
• Sprint’s coverage still stinks in my area – Verizon’s ‘can you hear me now?’ guy has defected to Sprint – Marcarelli addresses his defection in his first Sprint appearance, titled “Paul Switched,” arguing that the years he spent wandering the country to drive home Verizon’s expansive cell coverage don’t mean much any more — “it’s 2016 now,” he says to camera, “and every network is great.”
• GIF – Lion in a zoo tries to pounce on a little kid.
• Muhammad Ali thoughts:
  • As someone was born after his fighting days and biggest life events, I don’t think I have a full appreciation for his life as those who actually witnessed it. Heck, I used to just discount the guy because he wasn’t a Christian. However, as a lover of history and as an adult that has gotten a better idea of the trials and fullness of life, the man amazes me.
  • Some people can’t name a current baseball player, but they know who Babe Ruth is. Some people can’t name a current author, but they know who William Shakespear is. If you ask someone who “The Greatest” is, today or 400 years from now, they’ll answer Muhammad Ali. He was perhaps the best self-promoter there ever was.
  • I can’t imagine what it must be like to be considered the best fighter in the world, a title that shows individual achievement – to be recognized as one of the strongest, quickest, and healthiest – a garrulous master of rhyme creating poems in an instant – and then have it have it gradually taken away until you basically live in a fragile shell dependent on others. I would have ended it the first time someone had to wipe my own rear end. There’s a lesson to learn on how he gracefully accepted and succumbed to defeat to such a horrible disease.
  • If I were alive during his fighting days and major life events, he would have irritated me to no end and I’d root against him with all my might.  Oh, that boastfulness, him turning to Islam and changing his name, him not willing to fight for his country. Heck, I didn’t like much about the guy as a teen. But as I’ve matured and gained a better understanding of the events of the day and take a look at the entire scope of his life, I’ve gotten to be more understanding and appreciative of the courage all that took, even if he could be careless with his words and be contradictive. It takes courage not to go with the majority, and you may not have liked how it was crafted, but he was right most of the time – he had the long game in mind.
  • If he really was a draft dodger, he would have run away, but he stood firm and was willing to go to jail for his convictions.
  • Cassius Clay was a pretty cool name.
  • He really was “the people’s champ”, doing what he could to make people smile, and nobody, nobody was better at being in a photo than Muhammad Ali, either in action or posing.
  • I think the first time I ever noticed him was on an episode of ‘Diff’rent Strokes’. But the first time I really took notice of him was his lighting of the Olympic torch. I can recall watching that moment in the living room with my folks fearing he was going to embarrass himself and his country by dropping the torch in front of the world. Heck, at that time he only had a few years left in him.
  • It’s amazing that despite being dyslexic he was able to speak so loquaciously and create poetry and rhyme so quickly and spontaneously.
  • He may have been the greatest, and we know he wasn’t a saint, but it’s important to look at his entire life’s work. We tend to forget what it takes to get to the top in both athletics and in being a cultural icon of change. All the running, push ups, sit ups, dieting, waking up early, discipline, patience in knowing you can’t fix something right away, dealing with failure, letting things develop, trusting and enabling the help of others, and on and on and on.
  • Ali stated this is how he’d like to be remembered. He stuck the landing in his typical Ali style:
    •  “I would like to be remembered as a man who won the heavyweight title three times, who was humorous, and who treated everyone right. As a man who never looked down on those who looked up to him, and who helped as many people as he could. As a man who stood up for his beliefs no matter what. As a man who tried to unite all humankind through faith and love. And if all that’s too much, then I guess I’d settle for being remembered only as a great boxer who became a leader and a champion of his people. And I wouldn’t even mind if folks forgot how pretty I was.”
  • Perhaps the best interview you’ll ever see of the man was done by the late and great Ed Bradley of ’60 Minutes’. At the ten-minute mark, he plays a great prank on Bradley, and I think I enjoy Bradley’s reaction and laughter the most.
  View More: Muhammad Ali News|60 Rewind News|Live News|More News Videos

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