The Dare

I understand that many of the things I do aren’t really logical, for example, I’ve taken to burning my junk mail. I can’t explain why. Anyhoo, many people don’t seem to realise that some the things I do are fun for me even if other people don’t find then fun. I’ll start at the beginning.

I’m listening to Movies You Should See, you know, as you do, and the hosts were telling a story about when their car had broken down and had to call the AA. While the AA guy was fixing the car, they tried to take a picture of him without him realising. They then proceeded to dare the listeners to try to take a picture of their bus driver or equivalent on their next commute. As I was on my home from college yesterday, my bus and another were next each other. My bus driver recognised the other driver, stepped out of his bus driver section, opened the front door and had a conversation with him. It’s not just me, that’s strange isn’t it? Not just strange, it’s very dangerous. Upon seeing this, I remembered the dare. I tried to take a picture of the driver with my phone but missed.

From this point on, I knew my objective for the rest of the day. Whilst I was still on the same bus, someone sat opposite me. One word: Opportunity. I expanded the dare to include passengers. I got a great picture of him.

I take two buses home to I took another attempt at getting a picture of a bus driver. Problem; I live in London and I have an Oyster card. It takes me less than a second to touch my Oyster card against the reader so there’s not much time to get a picture of the driver. The result:

 

As my picture didn’t turn out so well, I extended my journey home. I took four extra buses home and I got these !

 

 

I also got a bobby on the beat.

 

Now, if you happen to be in one of these pictures, even though that’s quite unlikely, I shall remove it if you wish.

Hold on! I was telling a story! Back to why I was talking about the things I find fun. I found this picture taking experience very fun. As I was changing buses the first time, sent a message proposing the dare to most of the people in my address book. Many people where wondering why they should do such a thing and why I would even ask. Firstly: It‘s a dare. Secondly: It’s fun! No more reasoning is necessary. Not everything needs to be logical or make sense. A lot of fun can come from illogical actions (even if Spock wouldn't agree).

Podcasts was it?

Right...podcasts. Ahhh yes. On the last most I made a little promise to talk about podcasts in this post. Good on me.I think i'll start off by defining what a podcast is. A podcast, according to pcmag.com 

can be defined as:

(iPOD broadCAST) An audio broadcast that has been converted to an MP3 file or other audio file format for playback in a digital music player or computer. The "pod" in podcast was coined from "iPod," the predominant portable, digital music player, and although podcasts are mostly verbal, they may contain music.  

Many make the mistake of thinking that podcasts were invented by Apple for iPods and iTunes; this is not the case. Podcast were availiable online before iTunes put the little Podcast tab on its left hand menu. Apple was very smart and decided to name these little audio broadcast after the iPod and adopt Podcasts as their own. Pure Genius.

I listen to quite a few podcasts, I think I’ve mentioned some before. The main podcast that I listen to is Movies You Should See from the interdependent podcast network, Simply Syndicated. I stumbled upon MYSS back in my hardcore Star Trek days. I was on the Star Trek message boards every day, my whole life was Star Trek. (It sounds like I’m in an AA meeting well, STA Meeting). Anyhoo, the people of Simply Syndicated left a post on the Star Trek message boards about their Star Trek podcast, Make It So. Being the Trekkie I was, I went onto their website and listened to the two Make it So podcasts they had done so far, one of which was about swearing in Star Trek. It was hilarious, much better than Treks in Sci-Fi but I’ll get onto that later. As Make it So was so great, I listened to Movies You Should See. They had podcasts on quite a few movies I’d seen. Movies You Should See was even better than Make it So shock/horror. Due to the humour, I say humour but I mean comedy that may leave you aching from laughing so hard I wouldn’t suggest listening to Movies You Should See or Make it So in public.

Another podcast I listen to from the Simply Syndicated network is The Definitive Word. This features Will Tristram, an occasional guest on many Simply Syndicated shows, as he and his guests discuss the arts, society, popular culture and life in the 21st Century. There many intellectual debates such as “Top Ten Cartoon Ladies”. The Definitive Word is none other than perfection in audio form. Despite the example that I gave, it is possible to learn quite a bit (largely from the Hong Kong law episode) as well as have a good old laugh.

Or do you think that’s just bollocks, well, do you? Or do you think that’s just bollocks is yet another podcast from the Simply Syndicated team. It stars “Ranting” Richard Smith the tech wizz of the group as he, as you may have guessed, rants about any topic he wishes. Some, I must say, are close to my heart such as the nonsense that is Virgin Media (stealing my Sky One). If you want to have a rant, you can even send in an audio file of yourself ranting and be heard on the air. Great.

In my list of podcasts I have three more from the Simply Syndicated network but I don’t listen to two of them very much. The final Simply Syndicated podcast that I regularly listen to is Left Field Cinema. It’s highly dissimilar from Movies You Should See. Left Field Cinema is hosted by Mike Dawson, who reviews and analyses films whilst analysing the film-makers as well.

A podcast that I used to listen to but can’t really be bothered to listen to anymore is Treks in Sci-Fi. Each podcast the host, Rick A Dostie gives a detailed episode commentary on an episode of Star Trek. It’s not the most exiting podcast, that the main reason why I seem to have left it for the other podcasts.

The ultimate podcast for the Geeks out there is GeekNights with Rym and Scott. Geeknights is a late night show for geeks, featuring anime, comics, gaming, sci/tech, gadgetry, and general geekery New episodes every weeknight Monday through Thursday. (I kind of stole the description from iTunes). I’m not really into anime or know anything about the kind of board games to Rym and Scott play so I don’t subscribe to the main feed. Each day on GeekNight has a different theme, Monday is Science and Technology, Tuesday Gaming, Wednesday is Anime Manga Comics and Thursday is a bit random, they may talk about anything, and they do. As each day has a different theme they put each day in a separate feed so it’s possible to only download the things that you’re interested in. GeekNights is very entertaining, It’s most certainly worth a listen.

Any fans of Kevin Smith out there? If you’re really a fan you probably know that Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier have a podcast named Smodcast. If you don’t know who I’m talking about, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier are the writer/director and producer of such films as Clerks, Mattrats and Dogma. If you like their humour, you’ll like Smodcast. It’s basically the two (occasionally with some guests) speaking about any topic with jokes throughout. Good Times.