The Rebirth of Media

I grew up in the 80s, and while some people love 80s pop culture, I was never a fan. The music was, in my opinion, abysmal and what got played on radio or made it to you in records or cassettes went through very few large music labels. While I'm no fan of Madonna or Michael Jackson, I do respect that pop-culture is something very difficult to do well, because you have to appeal to such a large segment of society. We got to choose between very inane sit-coms like ALF, Who's the Boss, Family Ties, and the Wonder Years. In the early 90s we all watched 90210 because everyone else did...and this may be one of the worse uses of my time given to me on this planet. I saw the birth of MTV, a channel who's sole purpose was to try and tell teens what is cool, and I really despise few things in pop culture more than the stupidity that flows from MTV. Anyway I lived with pop culture and although I may have never embraced it there weren't many alternatives out there as far as media sources.

Today pop culture may be even dumber than it was in my youth. Shows like The OC, Jersey Shore and The Real Housewives of (some city)  are shows that appeal to only the lowest common denominator in all of us. Musicians (I use the term lightly for some) that appear today are in many ways even more vapid then the pop stars who came before them. While I'm sure some are very impressed with the likes of Lady GaGa or some of these American Idol types that fill up gossip columns and entertainment headlines more often than the airwaves, there is a very good sized part of the population that won't pay them much attention. The internet is killing pop culture and I couldn't be happier about it.

Technology & Travel

My first big trip was back in 1999, it was a 2 and a half month backpacking trip around Europe. back then there wasn't much in the way of communicating with people back home. Internet cafes though were just becoming common and it was definitely nice to be able to send some e-mails back home in order to let everyone know where you were and that things were going well. I suppose you also had phones, but calls overseas were quite expensive and I have always traveled as a budget traveler even when I've had plenty of money...it's the only way I know to travel.

Fast forward to 2001/2002 and Kim and I are traveling fully around the planet for about 9 months or so. The internet has become a much more communal resource that even my parents are using quite often at this point. Digital cameras are also now commonly available allowing us to share our adventures with people back home in pictures and not just words. Another big development was the proto-blog sites, ones that allowed us to put up stories and post our pictures and our friends to post comments or messages to us as we traveled. All of this really made it easy to stay in touch with family and friends as we moved from one region to another.

A Flaming Disaster Isn't The Worst That Can Happen

Sometimes we go through life and we really don't pay it much attention. You go to work, you eat meals, chat with friends, complain about that pebble in your shoe. Once in a while you do some things that really make you realize how little opportunity there is to get out there and really take part in life, you do have a finite number of years after all. Sometimes when we don't pay attention you end up just pissing precious time away.

I spent my 25th birthday sailing down the Nile River on a boat with a bunch of people from around the world that prior to that ride I had never met. We were getting toward the end of a ten month trip that Kim and had spent travelling around the world. Our past travels had brought us through the south pacific, over NZ and OZ over through Indonesia and up the Thai Peninsula, over to Nepal down through India and over to Egypt. After my birthday we would go on to Jordan, Turkey and Greece, and after a brief stint in the states we would spend over three weeks in Peru. Ever since this trip I have without pause listed it as the best thing I ever did with my life.