Now that the smoke has settled a little on the tragic death of Robin Williams I want to say something: I felt a little spooked when he died. Three particular coincidences occurred right around his death that made me wonder just a bit. In tonight’s blog post I want to briefly discuss these coincidences. I will start with the least dramatic instance and end with the most significant one.

Coastal Carolina Commencement Speech: On Saturday morning, Coastal Carolina University held its summer commencement. The speaker was CCU professor Arne Flaten. His speech was titled “Carpe Diem: Of Dead Poets and Epistemology.” Of course Arne referenced Robin Williams, “Seize the Day,” and “Dead Poet’s Society” throughout his address. If you are sitting there thinking what a cliché subject to speak about, please know that Arne beat you to it by taking several shots at himself for picking such a topic. But that’s not the point…the point is that just a couple days after that address everyone around the world was putting “Carpe Diem” in their Facebook statuses.

A photo I took of Arne Flaten delivering his “Carpe Diem” commencement address on Saturday.

Omitting Gooooooood MORNING: There is an ESPN personality by the name of Jonathan Coachman. Quite frequently he will fill in on the radio show Mike & Mike. Whenever he does so (I listen to the show each morning) he will open by exclaiming GOOOOOOD MORNING in the exact same way that Robin Williams did in “Good Morning Vietnam.” I am talking identical. This past Monday morning Coachman was once again subbing on Mike & Mike. I always look forward to him opening the show with GOOOOOOD MORNING so of course my ears were happily open. However, for the first time ever he didn’t give his normal greeting. I was so puzzled and disappointed that he didn’t start the show in his normal way that I tweeted him. Eerily the exact time that Coachman omitted his normal tribute to Robin Williams was around the same time that investigators said the actor took his own life.

I sent this tweet out to Jonathan Coachman because I thought it was really strange that he didn’t open with his usual greeting.

The Keystroke of Death: Monday evening I was in the middle of composing a blog post on the past ten Redbox movies I had watched. One of them happened to be “The Angriest Man in Brooklyn,” one of the last films that Robin Williams did. I trashed the movie. Five minutes after I finished writing about it the news broke about his death. I felt really weird. I almost considered going back and changing my review of the movie out of respect. I decided against it and instead just wrote a footnote under the review and devoted a couple of lines to Williams at the end of my post.

My quick review I did of “Angriest Man in Brooklyn”….just a few minutes after writing it I learned that Robin Williams was dead.

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Have you ever read the Lincoln and Kennedy similarities before? I used to have the poster displaying them hanging in my room. Thinking about my Robin Williams coincidences made me think about that. May the souls of all three men rest in peace. Don’t Blink.