One shock of recognition runs the whole circle 'round

The 'interesting times' in which we live make for many moments of bizarre connection. If you are at all like me, you tend to pride yourself on knowing the most about certain subjects, and sometimes get a hardy chuckle at your less in the know friends and acquaintances attempts to tell you about things new, impressive, or noteworthy.

That dude you work with who told you last week about Wilco and the commercials? CHUMP. The dude who discovered an author you've been reading for years? Schmuck.

The mirror of this phenomenon is when unlikely people either know more than you about a subject, or share your love of minutiae found within the culture at large.

Like at lunch on friday when one of my client's accountants busted out with "The 4 year, 4 album run from 1968-1972 of The Stones is unmatched in rock history." which led to a conversation about The Last Waltz, and the accountant and another coworker marveling at my revelation that they served the entire crowd Thanksgiving dinner before the show.

This phenomenon reveals itself in strange ways now that companies keep tabs on everything we do, and giant computers analyze our purchases to attempt to get us to buy more stuff. I am unsure, and possibly agnostic on whether this is a good or bad development.

This morning I got an email from Amazon suggesting that since I had, in the past, purchased both Terry Frei's "Horns, Hogs and Nixon Coming" and David Maraniss' "They Marched Into Sunlight," "First in His Class," and "When Pride Still Mattered" that I might want to pick up "Third Down and War to Go" by Frei, with a foreward by Maraniss. And, what if I told you could also get 34% off? Is that something you might be interested in?

Now, while I am sort of freaked out by giant corporations and Cray 3X-1 computers knowing the inner workings of my likes and dislikes better than I do, I also got a pretty good book out of the deal.

I swear there was a larger point to be explored and expounded upon, for now I will just say that if we get into a discussion about authors, understand I know more about the works of David Maraniss than you do, and that Amazon knows more about both.

To my friends Ben Burgess, Chris Krauth, and Bob Bland, I beat the odds wagered in my first post, so Baby, I Love You, but please Fuck Off.

<>D