Well it happened again.
I returned it May for the same problem and got a whopping six months of life out of it. I’m beginning to think Xbox 360s are like Blade Runner replicants – they all have a self-destruct clock inside them.
This will be my third 360.
I’m kind of annoyed because I was making real progress in Fallout 3, and because the new dashboard with HD Netflix streaming comes out in just five days. Oh well.
This American Life is my favorite show on radio.
It’s full of short stories, and…well pretty much just short stories.
The best episodes feature real stories told by real people.
Whenever David Sedaris writes a dumb story about a talking cat and a chipmunk they throw that in to appease the hipster NPR hoi-polloi, but the real meat and potatoes of the show is real life stories from average joes.
This week I learned about Studs Terkel. He died recently but not before making a name for himself in broadcasting, in part by interviewing ordinary people about extraordinary things- The Depression. World War II. Race relations in the 60s.
And then of course there’s Story Corps – an organization whose entire existence is devoted to preserving oral histories of everyday Americans…or at least brief snippets of them. They have a podcast now too.
Hooray for stories!
Today I did a good deed.
This morning I was filling up my tires and checking my tire pressure at the gas station.
A lady drove up and asked if I could help her do the same thing.
So I did it for her.
She offered to pay me, but I refused.
I am a paragon of humanitarianism. Today anyway.
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