So my super-cheap MP3 player went out of commission a while ago. Towards the end it was held together with a rubberband. Then, one day, mid-MP3, it just stopped working. <\/p>\n
This may have been connected to the time I dropped it in the bucket of bleach water and then shook it out until it worked again. Or maybe ten months of constant use in a bakery was too much for it. Or maybe it was just cheaply made. <\/p>\n
So I ordered another ebay super-cheap Chinese media player, one which had four-times the capacity for slightly less money (my co-worker Johnny Motard predicted that in another five years they’ll be a hundred times as powerful, hook up directly to your brain, and they’ll be mandatory). <\/p>\n
But it didn’t work, so I had to send it back. So I’m without my podcasts at the moment. I went to Target to see if I could get a cheap interim player, but they were all about eight times less value than the cheap ebay alternative (presuming that the cheap ebay alternative ever actually works).<\/p>\n
I had no idea how sucky my life was without podcasts. Over Thanksgiving here at the bakery I peeled and cored about two-hundred pounds of apples, all in excruciating non-entertainment. With the media player my mind was engaged, pink and vibrant. Without it, I was like one of those super-max prisoners who slowly eat their own hands.<\/p>\n
Radio hasn’t been much use. Public radio in Austin is dominated by the super-sucky John Aeilli<\/a>. Listening to his morning radio show is like listening to marshmallows on a chalkboard. He makes me want to eat his<\/span> hands. But that wouldn’t shut up his inane pot-choked ramblings that he does between every single song<\/span>, even though they’re probably two different versions of the same song<\/span>.<\/p>\n God, John Aeilli sucks so bad.<\/p>\n But then a miracle happened. As I was swinging the dial between KUT and KMFA (the classical station), somewhere around 89.9 FM there popped up this micro station<\/a>. <\/p>\n There were never any call letters, it just announced that it’s the Genesis Communications Network (GCN). Every show is a symphony of crazy. It’s the ideal programming lineup for every Ron Paul bumper-sticker loving, pot-smoking, chem-trail spotting, libertarian survivalist hippie with a gun.<\/p>\n \nThis morning we listened to a show where a "doctor" warned everyone of the dangers of breathing gas. His website is GassingAmerica.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n The shift before there was a show that sounded like the world’s longest crazy answering machine message. It sounded like he had simply called up a tape player somewhere and didn’t stop talking about the "Obama fascist corporate state" for an entire hour!<\/p>\n There was a guy from AnotherUntoldStory.com<\/a> who did a five-minute monologue about how gun sales are up in America post Obama election because everyone knows that there’s a Muslim-communist-socialist-pogrom on the horizon.<\/p>\n But the best thing about this station is the commercials. They advertise gold of course. And then there’s also the Alex Jones site PrisonPlanet.com<\/a>, and PepperSpray.com<\/a> (apparently pepper spray is the perfect Christmas gift!), and a company that sells heirloom non-GMO seeds<\/a> in five-year supply bundles so you can be self-sufficient after the complete collapse of civic infra-structure, and an ozone machine that cleans the impurities from everything you own<\/span>, and survivalist gear suppliers who actually use the phrase "survivalist gear" in describing their product, and what has got to be the worst-designed website in history: "LearnTheSecretToYouth.com<\/a>".<\/p>\n Yeah, it’s all sheer schizophrenia. <\/p>\n But it’s better than John Aeilli.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So my super-cheap MP3 player went out of commission a while ago. Towards the end it was held together with a rubberband. Then, one day, mid-MP3, it just stopped working. This may have been connected to the time I dropped … Continue reading