As I write this I’m sitting back, sipping on some Aviation Gin, and listening to the Stillhouse Junkies… I didn’t buy the bottle of Aviation on purpose. I was standing in line at the gas station, it was Friday night, I needed gas, but I was also in the mood for some Seagram’s or Bombay. Sadly, they did not have any of the 200 mil bottles, but as I asked about different brands and looked at the shelf behind the attendant, the line behind me was growing. Trying to be helpful, she pointed her finger to the sky:
“I think we have something in the back!”
Standing there I could feel the eyes of everyone in line on my back; “Jesus, what’s taking her so long,” I thought to myself. It really wasn’t that big of a deal, I was just asking casually, if they didn’t have any gin, I wasn’t going to buy any.
She came back with a full-sized 750 mil bottle of Aviation… It wasn’t the brand I wanted, and was actually way more--both in volume and price--than I expected, but with a line of people behind me I just bought it and went on about my way. The attendant also seemed really happy to sell me the bottle and told me to let her know whether or not I liked it.
Just a few moments ago my wife asked me (after I regaled her with the story about about the gas station attendant), “so what does it taste like, is it any good?” I had to stop and think about it for a minute, and my response seemed apropos:
“It tastes like it’s made in Portland and Ryan Reynolds is the spokesperson.”
“So it tastes like fragile masculinity? Not much flavor…?” My wife’s quippy retort left me with a deep belly laugh that left me just agreeing with her.
“Yes, I suppose that’s one way to describe it.”
Can’t remember where I heard this, but someone expressed the brilliant notion that with all the noise out there in the infinite void of the internet, content creators are no longer the next big thing, rather, curators will be the ones that people look for… We’ve already seen this with the way that social media attempts to tailor a feed to personal tastes. Machines will never have that crucial human element though. I've had an idea for a podcast that would effectively just be me rambling about all the interesting things that I’ve come across on the internet. Well, I haven’t really gotten off my ass to record anything. In lieu of that, writing a blog post outlining the premise might be the next best thing, and could possibly be the script for an episode of the podcast? At least this will get the idea out there in the ether, and writing it out right now will give me a structure that I can reference in the future if find that I’ve sufficiently compiled enough random links to warrant sitting down with a glass of gin or a bottle of beer and whispering into a microphone for a few minutes.
In order for the show to not be entirely chaos I would need to have specific categories to talk about, based on my typical surfing habits I would probably limit most of my scope to these:
Video Games
This has been a central preoccupation of mine for many years… I did quit playing video games and paying attention to the industry for a while between 2005 and 2009, but shortly after I re-joined the workforce and had a job where I could afford to build a new PC, I started gaming again. In the last twelve years I’ve watched as my niche nerdy hobby has gone full-on mainstream and become ubiquitously pop culture. There’s always something going on in this area, and I may run into one or two interesting stories a day for this topic, but I would most likely keep it to the more obscure news article, Reddit post, or YouTube video.
Politics / General News
Every now and then I like a good political debate. I like to think that ascribing to libertarian philosophy throws me somewhere in the middle between right and left, but most of the time I’m probably just a Sometimes I dig into an intriguing conspiracy theory. These days it seems like the line between the two is blurring. This section might end up just being a place for me to rant about elites or the government, and how everyone is clueless and self interested power-hungry oligarchs, or stupid and ill-informed… Though I will make a general effort to try and find positive stories to share. It’s possible that I could throw some local news stories in this section.
Music
People who do not have an overt infatuation (at least on some level) with music are not to be trusted, and are not people that I choose to associate with. I grew up listening to all kinds of different music, and with parents who liked to sing along to the radio on long car rides. My wife and I even purchased a record player as a joint anniversary gift to ourselves this year, and then proceeded to buy random records. Our local record store has grab -slash- mystery bags, most of the vinyl is in relatively good shape too. I had never actually ever listened to, or even knew about, Paul McCartney’s “RAM” album. Turns out it’s really good, and we effectively got our copy for a dollar. But I digress. This section won’t ever be music news or necessarily be focused on new music being released, it’ll probably just be whatever I happen to be listening to at any given time.
Science and Technology
I follow quite a few good sites for science, space, technology, and stuff in that realm; Inverse, Freethink, Futurism, blog posts directly from NASA, etc. Occasionally someone will post something on Reddit that will blow up but not be popular on Facebook, Twitter, or any of the other social medias, and it really is an article worth reading. There’s also always the big story of the day. If not a fairly unique or underappreciated article or story, I’m sure I’ll have an interesting take or some sobering commentary to put forth. Today was “self-replicating robots.” Well, with that one I really don’t have anything interesting to say, just Terminator comments.
Comic books
This one could be a bit of a throw-away category. Our spare bedroom closet is filled with comics, but I’ve slowed down on my purchasing a bit, and I haven’t really been reading comics like I have in the past, or even like I was just last year. But I go through phases. If I’m not reading new books, I’ll be digging through back issues from the 90s to relive some of my childhood.
I won’t be buying Aviation Gin any time soon, but I’m thinking that I might call my non-podcast “Radio Free Hour Of Our Time.” Radio Free being a prefix used by the CIA appended to various stations set up to disseminate news to countries strategically important to the foreign relations of the United States. Hour Of The Time was the name of William Cooper’s shortwave conspiracy theory radio show.
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