Radio! Radio!

[atthesametime]

Continuing my long decent into total fucking loon, I got a short wave radio. I am just beginning to figure the damn thing out. Turns out the world of shortwave is more complicated than I expected. The truly foreign or weird is much more elusive than I naively thought. Stations don’t broadcast 24 hours a day and reception is generally poor. This

Comments

[purejuice]

this reminds me of the shortwave radio my parents took to africa. they expected to be able to listen to the BBC in the jungle. due to the night reception issues you mention, the only station we got was radio pakistan, and due to the weird nature of no electricity except when the generator worked, and weird house construction, every time you touched the switch you got a shock. and lots of calls to prayer and jihad.

[atthesametime]

BBC world service was one of the things I was looking forward to as well but haven't been able to find. Apparently BBC has cut way back on their shortwave service and are instead putting their resources into internet radio and other boring stuff.

[springheel_jack]

They don't have a north american transmitter anymore. You're better off trying to stream that.

[atthesametime]

I am more interested in trying to rig my fire escape as a giant antenna and getting the Africa broadcast.

[th3_s1kh_g33k]

I think your wife and my wife need to start a support group.

My wife wasn't sure what to get me for Christmas because everything I seemed to get excited about was, "something musty on eBay written by some long-dead magical magician."

She was absolutely right.

[atthesametime]

I actually got this radio for Christmas, my father is insisting that I bring it back up to CT next time I visit. This might go a long way in explaining why I am a crazy person.

[pomo_drunkard]

I only glanced at the name and image on this post before I started writing it, until I got to the mention of "wife" I read this assuming it was villagecharm writing it. I guess I just made assumptions when the sentence started off with "total fucking loon."

[pomo_drunkard]

On a (slightly) more serious note, reading you and charm talk about your interests makes me feel kind of embarassed, as my interests feel very conventional and completely not esoteric enough. It makes me feel like a sell-out.

[atthesametime]

Perhaps you are confusing well adjusted with sell-out?

[pomo_drunkard]

I feel like I"m too maladjusted to be well-adjusted.

[pastels_badge]

I'm still surprised when people outside of Austin know who Alex Jones is, although I shouldn't be. I remember when he was just a dude on public access tv talking about Waco. He was much more wistful in the beginning, waxing nostalgic for the days when he could just paint and work out before his mind got blown by the whole New World Order situation. Also, he had a phase where he did all of his shows in front of a green screen and his paintings were on rotation behind him. You could tell he really liked Van Gogh.

[atthesametime]

Alex Jones is big time on the conspiracy circuit now. I listened to about ten minutes of his program last night, part of which was taken up by his endorsement of a company that sells "heirloom seeds" which apparently you are going to need in the coming enviro/political apocalypse.

[springheel_jack]

He's massive. He's way big around here.

[springheel_jack]

Heirloom seeds are a real thing - they're older cultivars that have survived in small-time cultivation. They often have advantages in taste and other characteristics over more commonly-grown cultivars. We've grown a whole bunch of heirloom tomatoes. Delicious!

Sad to hear it on Alex Jones, though. Sad to hear anything at all about him.

[springheel_jack]

Got a ham radio yet?

[atthesametime]

Not yet, but boy am I thinking about it.

[springheel_jack]

That's a Whole Thing. I never got into it, but it seems a thriving world still.