Very Random Thoughts - October 2017

• Were the original Houston Colt 45's (now Astros) named after the gun or the malt liquor? 
• Sometimes in sports, especially in baseball, we talk about a player air-mailing a throw, pass, shot. Is air-mail still even a thing?
• Somebody needs to write an app that shocks people when they say "like" or "whatever" or "you know" or "I mean". Other obnoxious phrases to be added as needed. 
• Most popular does not mean BEST.
• I wonder which baseball player discovered you could make a double play? Was the first one a traditional 6-4-3 or was it a line drive that caught the runner off the base?
• I hate it when a website won't display the price of an item or event until you get most of the way through the checkout process. Show me the price upfront.
• Where and how do you think those Taco Bell fried egg "taco shells" are made? A perfect but off-center yolk.
  
• I think the baseball "championship" celebrations have become too staged and predictable. It used to be spontaneous and mostly beer. Now it is champagne, goggles, plastic draped locker rooms, cameras, and preprinted t-shirts and hats. Plus, we now have division, wildcard, wildcard game win, divisional series, championship series and finally the World Series celebrations. That's a lot of champagne.
• I get crazy about the righteous indignation of politicians, both Republicans and Democrats. 
• When I was a kid, my Mom would tell me not to pick at scabs. Didn't work then and I still do it today.
• Wouldn't it be nice if TV broadcasts turned down the background noise so that we could hear the people speaking? Sports are the worse, but not the only offenders. Old ears have trouble separating background from foreground. 
• OK Apple. We now have the iPhone 8 and the iPhone X (10). Where is the iPhone 9?
• I just opened a bottle of cheap wine to be used in a recipe. It is OK for cooking, but you wouldn't really want to drink a bottle. Largely displayed on the label is 600+ Medals Won. Doesn't say what color or who awarded them. Marketing BS.
• There are two baseball stadiums named for orange juice companies. The Astros Minute Maid Park in Houston and the Rays Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg (Tampa Bay). Has anyone ever actually drank orange juice at a ballpark? Now Coors Field and Miller Park make perfect sense. 
• Remember that old commercial for the United Negro College Fund? The tagline was "A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Waste". I often think I have been wasteful. 
• Oxymoron - The Korean demilitarized zone is heavily militarized.
• Does every damn 30 second video on a webpage full of advertisements have to have a 15 second video advertisement?
• Why is it that sometimes I can point the remote directly at the TV/cable box and it doesn't work? Other times I can barely touch it while it is pointing in the wrong direction and the channel changes.