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| Nick Danger, Third Eye!Artwork by William Stout |
I don’t have a radio in my truck… never did. I bought it that way brand new. It has no a/c either. No power anything as a matter of fact. It’s a little 1991 Nissan 4x2 and I love it. It’s always had great mileage, hauled everything I’ve ever wanted, and is not the kind of thing people want to steal or break into. It's also easy to fix, which is why most mechanics love it too. It's a throwback to the days when vehicles were made without computers to complicate things.
See where this is going after the jump...
No built-in radio however means I’ve always had some sort of portable music device on the seat with me when I drive. Over the years there have been cassette players, Sony walkmen, AM/FM radios, and CD players, but nowadays it’s an 80 Gb Apple iPod. Every album of music on my computer is on it along with a variety of podcasts I enjoy… things like NPR’s Fresh Air, Studio 360, Times Talks, and a few others.
So there’s a wide variety things to choose from and depending on my mood I’ll listen to either a playlist, a podcast, or sometimes just a total random shuffle of all the music files (some 31 Gb and counting) on the gizmo. It’s amazing how entertaining modern math can sometimes be. Last night was one of those “random shuffle” days on the drive home from work that turned out to be a real flashback from the past.
There was a time long ago when a full credit load in an engineering program on a Big Ten campus wasn’t enough. I had to memorize comedy albums with my friends too. Our favorites by far were Firesign Theatre recordings and their total off the wall humor. Bits and pieces of those recordings are scattered in permanent locations throughout my brain always ready to fly, unannounced, out of my mouth in daily conversation before I realize it. The astonishment of the nearby uninitiated only makes whatever comes out even more funny.
Many of my favorite lines come from one album in particular, Side 2 of “How Can You Be in Two Places at Once, When You’re Not Anywhere at All?”, and “The Further Adventures of Nick Danger, Third Eye”. So when the random number generator came up triple 6's I was transported back to a simpler time.
It was great!
(Part 2 of the radio adventure is -here-, and Part 3 -here- for anyone interested.)
Hahahaha, I came out of a frustrating two-hour title meeting, saw REGNAD KCIN, and I am still literally laughing aloud at my desk. This made my day!
ReplyDelete"It all began innocently enough on Tuesday. I was sitting in my office on that drizzly afternoon listening to the monotonous staccato of rain on my desktop, and reading my name on the glass of my office door--regnaD kciN."
Wow. never heard it before, but for the time it was aired, must be really something.
ReplyDeleteSomething that only if you lived it you connect with it.
Interesting. :)