Machine-dispensed information 24-hours a day

Totally blogalicious! The News Tribune has invited a select group of citizen journalists (including moi) to blog for the newspaper. What a hoot! I just posted my first blog there. Below you can read the text of it. What fun! EmeraldPrincessOnline

http://blogs.thenewstribune.com/neighborhood

During the years of my career in broadcasting I had occasion to become acquainted with countless interesting characters. Not just my coworkers, but the listeners who called in and/or wrote to me.

One listener used a customized rubber stamp on the back flap of every envelope. The rubber stamp said, “machine-dispensed information 24-hours a day.” There were two phone numbers on the next line.

I tried to imagine what sort of “machine-dispensed information” he was making available to those who would call either of those two numbers, but I never could have imagined just how bizarre it could actually be.

Eventually my curiosity got the best of me and I dialed the numbers to see what on Earth it was about.

One of the numbers played a 3-minute recording of him detailing not only his vital statistics, but even what his annual income, how much he budgeted for food, et cetera. He explained in the first recording that he had made these two numbers available for anyone to dial-in and listen to his thoughts, just in case anyone might want to know his thoughts.

Anyone.

He worked in a cannery where his only contacts were the people at work, but due to the noise of the machinery, there was no conversation that could be heard. He had no social life outside of work, but longed to be connected in some way. So he had devised the “machine dispensed information” concept. (The second recording was a full 30 minutes in length and he changed it out daily with rambling messages about various scenarios, all simply top of mind.)

I reflect back on his desperate effort to reach out, to find someone who would care to communicate somehow.

As bloggers we write what is in our hearts and on our minds as a means of potentially reaching out and connecting with the unseen and unknown reaches of the Internet. He had his “machine-dispensed information” and now we enjoy the modern equivalent of it that we call blogging.