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Some folks are collecting old vinyl records because they're cool. They have bigger pictures and you can hold onto the jacket while you listen. But some people say an LP sounds better than a digital version of the same music, which is weird. See, to get sounds onto vinyl you have to squash it and take out any loud asymmetrical events while a digital copy can sound so much like the master tape even the guy who mixed it can’t hear the difference. With filtering, compression, and surface noise you could make any recording sound like an LP. But why?

I still like klobasa and polka, though.

Well, this is vexing. Voters in the tiny Balkan nation of Slovenia have rejected same-sex marriage. I myself contain a sizable percentage of Slovene DNA, so it’s difficult to not feel a little ashamed. What up, homies? Did you forget how first the Austrians, then the Italians, then the Yugoslavs all took turns denying you the right to exist? Did you maybe think they were trying to make gay marriage retroactive, universal, and compulsory? Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. For a lot of these folks, a Slovene boy hooking up with a Croat girl is still considered a mixed marriage.

History will absolve me.

Remember how Superman would squeeze a lump of coal between his mighty pink hands, replicating the effects of eons of geological action and producing a fabulous diamond? Well, it turns out diamonds are made out of carbon. So here’s my genius plan: capture the carbon in the atmosphere, mash on it real hard until it turns into shiny diamonds and distribute the resultant tons and tons of valuable gems to impoverished persons everywhere, thereby solving the challenges of global warming and world poverty in a single brilliant stroke. Absurd, you say? Go ahead; snicker. Remember, they laughed at Jack Benny.

:30 spot radio

MUSIC ESTAB AND UNDER

ANNCR (MATURE, RELAXED):
Natural, wholesome brown sugar or toxic, soul-killing white sugar? Brown rice or white? It’s a simple choice. Brown things are just plain better than white ones. That’s where the folks at Primal Harvest got the idea for their Natural Brown Salt. White salt comes from large corporations, and it contains chlorine, the chemical element government scientists use to destroy life in our nation’s water supply. Natural Brown Salt is gluten free, and it comes from the bulk section of your supermarket, so you know it’s good for you. Primal Harvest: for simple people.

A matter of scale

Limestone is made out of tiny seashells. Layers and layers of tiny seashells, laid down over a mind-bogglingly vast span of time by generations of small critters. Then over another mind-bogglingly vast span of time rainwater will get into the cracks and stay there. In the middle of Iowa, about 74 million years ago, a rock from space bumped into the planet Earth and made a big dent, blowing all the limestone away. The crater is buried, but if you drill a well in Manson, Iowa, you get soft water, while the whole rest of the region has hard water.

Sparklers in the tailpipe

Somebody once told me everyone’s normal till you get to know them. Which is so true. A person who at first seems pretty unremarkable may turn out to be deeply peculiar, for instance an oboist or model railroader. Another time on an occasion I’d like to forget, a guy whose name I can’t remember said “I always get into trouble when I compare my insides with somebody else’s outside.” Because everybody’s life is hard. It’s like a Buck Rogers rocketship in a Republic serial. From a distance it looks like it’s flying, but it’s really just hanging by a thread.

Found wanting

My neighbor is growing his own mangrove swamp, out by the curb. Actually, right now it’s in a clay pot and stands about three centimeters high, but he has a vision of an extensive National Park sized thing, with trained monkeys that bring him icy cold martinis. This man is a genius. He has a goal which, if handled correctly, can remain unattained for the remainder of his life. I’ve wanted a 1972 Buick Riviera for over four decades now. I hope I never get one. I’d be left with two tons of rusting steel and nothing to live for.