Love/Hate

Love - This American Life 

This American Life is a weekly hour-long radio show that's been broadcast by Chicago Public Radio since 1995. Hosted by Ira Glass, every show focuses on a theme, and tells stories regarding variations on the theme. Oddly enough, the first time I found out about the program, it was through the short television season they produced through Showtime. The show too the same format, variations of the same theme, but shot documentary style. The show was pretty amazing, something completely new and different from what was/is on TV, it actually felt real, compared to all the popular "reality" programs. Once the season was over, it was nearly impossible to find episode online or anywhere else, but I did find out about the weekly podcast, and since then have been hooked, they are just as good, if not better than the show. I will be the first to say it's not for everyone. I can definitely see people saying its boring, or they don't get it, but there's definitely an audience, it's the number one audio podcast on iTunes. Examples of themes have been "books that have changed your life", "frenemies", "middle of the night" and "mindgames". The thing is, you might think "Books that changed your life" would just be people talking about books they read that they really liked, but the stories just have to passively relate. One of the stories was about a man who was a construction worker, who became obsessed with the story of Lewis and Clark. He began to collect original editions of the books, to the point that he lost his marriage and found himself deep in debt, but he had to keep collecting. He eventually completed his collection upon buying the most rare edition of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and sold his entire collection to University for millions of dollars. It's a pretty wild story, and told by the man himself. The podcast itself is also an awesome thing to listen to when your trying to get to sleep, gets the imagination going and you just crash. Heres a link to the website and if you want to subscribe to the podcast its free, just look it up in iTunes. 

Hate - Wipers on Headlights 

I really do not know how prevalent these are in the world. But there was a volvo station wagon in the parking lot the other day, with headlight wipers, and it really made me think. Are they really that necessary? It's not like you need them in the rain, I can't see snow being a huge factor. Maybe if you were out rally racing in the mud, they could possibly be useful. But whose rally racing a volvo wagon, or a mercedes sedan? Gah.