the MARTINI SHAKER

Throughout my life I have been blessed/cursed with an immutable desire to share my thoughts, ideas and voice with the world. Some of you who follow me on Facebook or Twitter might argue that I share my voice a little too much with you, but there’s been a pattern here, and an interesting one, I feel.

In the beginning, which was roughly sixth grade, I shared my written thoughts via a self-published ‘zine that I made using my mom’s copy machine in her home office. I only made a couple of issues, and time has lost any examples and made me forget what the ‘zine even was about. But, there it was, my first attempt at self-expression, as sweet-smelling as the toner powder that it was comprised of.

During this time I also made a number of home movies. I want to call them short films but can’t do so in good conscience. They most definitely were not short films. Short, idiotic skits perhaps. The technology was markedly more advanced, but the idea was the same: to express my ideas to as many people as possible. In this case, as many people as possible meant about 3 people (oddly enough, the number of people featured in the videos).

During college, a viewing of Pump Up The Volume left me inspired to express myself in a whole new way: over the airwaves. I bought a small FM stereo transmitter kit from the back of Popular Electronics magazine and assembled it. The initial range of the transmitter was about 500 feet. With a little bit of antenna modification, I got the signal to reach about 1/4 mile. I began hosting my own pirate radio shows at night in my dorm room. My friends and I came up with ridiculous segments and played typical early 90’s grunge music in between. This was a lot of fun, but I wasn’t satisfied.

Willham dormitory at Oklahoma State University had an old, unused intercom system that was installed in every room of each wing of the building. I dismantled my intercom unit, did a few circuit tests with a multimeter, built a small interface circuit, and tapped my mixing board into the system. For one glorious evening, I had a captive audience as every speaker in the building broadcast my show for roughly 45 minutes to an hour. I got caught, but luckily my punishment was no more than a small slap on the wrist and a half-hearted admonishment (the RAs were actually pretty impressed by my accomplishment).

Now, I have a much simpler, more ubiquitous and markedly more legal method for broadcasting myself. The blogging revolution was this boy’s dream to allow the demon monkeys that live in my hair to have their voices heard. And, boy do I let them talk. Between this site, my vlog, my tumblr, my Twitter stream and any opportunity that a small group will allow me to stand in front of them and talk for an hour, I’ve pretty much got it covered.

Thanks, technology!

I wonder if my son will be as interested in expressing himself as I have been, and I also wonder what fantastic new ways will be available. Whatever it is, you can bet that I’ll be there too, embarrassing Nathan every step of the way.