Robogames, Mankend, and the travesty of TJ's

After a week and a half of going on a sojourn for just the right words, actually sitting down and writing, an mostly just editing, Robogames is just about in the books or on the air. The amount of work that goes into producing a single story for Crosscurrents still amazes me. Like a finely mixed cocktail the slow production process is one part I'm new at it and two parts no overwhelming sense of urgency for stories about robots. I guess the robots will show us one day when they take over the planet!

The toughest part of the entire process perhaps was voicing the piece. My voice is a real live wire. I wield a lot of authority and sound like an announcer even while speaking with friends and family. I really had to tone it down and talk at a level out of my comfort zone for this one. After an hour of throat clearing-water sipping excitement, I finally produced enough usable tracks to make the story. Note to the friends/family who I announce to on a regular basis, some voice acting classes would make the perfect birthday gift (November 18th, wink-wink).

Working in radio is clearly one of my favorite things to do. Even when a story takes a long time to produce or eats away from my free time I still enjoy the work. Something that is increasingly not my passion is working at the store. I've been there for over a year now and the needless stress is starting to get to me. I haven't learned anything new in a long time and the work is the same everyday. I realize most jobs are repetitive and not very exciting but as a reporter I have been trained to want more. I feel like something is lacking if I'm not learning something new every day, expressing myself through my work, and striving to get better at what I do. A working environment that doesn't engage those qualities is boring at best and soul crushing at worst.

Once in a while there are glimmers of light that come out of the retail darkness. Just last week a guy decided to wash himself under the nozzle in the store's parking lot. The man was stark naked at 6 o'clock Friday night bathing himself as customers came and went from the busy store. Management called the police, but in San Francisco citations for public nudity are not high on the to do list. The cop arrived about 10 minutes after the gentleman finished his leisurely shower session. Events like that don't happen often, so fortunately I have other outlets for my creativity and to blow off steam.

Enter Man-kend, its like a weekend where you do manly stuff. Candace and our roommate Veronica were both out of town last weekend. As a result Veronica's boyfriend, Ian and I decided to get some guys together. We started by catching the hit movie Kickass. Then made our way back to my place where we drank beer and started talking about the state science funding in America, military spending, British politics, the Arizona Immigration law, and finally strip clubs and boobies! You can probably spot in the previous chronologically written sentence where the beer started having its effect.

Soon we started a longer than necessary walk to The Pig and Whistle, a so-called British pub on Geary. The journey was longer than necessary because "We're men! So what the hell do we need a map for! The meal was very unmemorable partially because of the band of 60 year old rockers trying to recapture their youth through playing really annoying/terrible music at decibel levels scientifically proven to cancel out brain waves. One other thing made the meal less than notable, the food sucked! Even Tom, our token British friend, thought so!

After the meal that made us all hope for Amnesia we started walking down Geary looking for a place to throw some darts and watch some boxing. We found such a place at 5th and Geary, the Abbey Tavern. There we watched Mayweather defeat Mosley, had a couple of drinks, watched the current version of Ian have a dance with Ian 40 years from now, and started chucking darts! All in all a fun night. One that no farm animals were harmed in the making of, always a bonus!