all aboard for the Mario theme park

Welcome to the first edition of Corgi-Class Starship, your weekly peek directly into the interior of my skull; thanks for subscribing to my little experiment. 

Medium Ramble

Skippable if you're in a hurry.This first one's gonna be unavoidably meta.The whole reason I decided to do this was because (and this is going to sound egotistical, though unintentionally) I discovered not enough people I know are aware of the things I'm doing. "Oh, you have a podcast?" Meanwhile, I just put up the 35th episode.This is entirely my fault.Hence, this little newsletter. From now on, you'll get one of these in your inbox whenever I make a thing, which hopefully means every week at least. But it won't just be me crowing about my creations; you'll also get interesting links, a medium-sized ramble about whatever's on my mind, and an entry from my archive of fictional band names because this is my newsletter and I make the rulesSo let's talk for a sec about this podcast of mine.

• If you're familiar with the output of the McElroy brothers, I can explain it quickly as "basically the 'CoolGames Inc' videos on YouTube, but longer and not restricted to videogame notions."

• If you're not, no sweat. The tagline is "a guest-guided tour through the junk drawer of my brain," and it's fairly accurate.

About a decade ago, I started a practice of writing down every single idea that popped into my head the instant it appeared. Practically speaking, this meant literally hundreds of businesses, products, civic improvements, dumb theories, questions, art projects, parties, dating concepts, and who the fuck even knows what else got logged for the next ten years -- and I did nothing with them. A fair number of my friends who watched me dig a notebook out of my back pocket and scribble furiously into it for years were understandably curious about its contents, and rather than consign said contents to some invisible dustbin, I've decided to throw them out into the world in case someone else out there wants to pick up a stray notion and run with it. I'm getting my hilarious and amazing friends to help me root through the accumulated pile, and that's what my podcast is and why it's called Idea Factory Giveaway.Thanks to everyone else involved, it's a fucking blast to record, and I like to think that translates into episodes that are fun and easy to listen to; since the guests (and occasionally the co-hosts) change, there's precious little of the in-jokery that can kill a long-running podcast's appeal for new listeners. The latest episode will always be linked below in the section I named "Looky Here" in a scintillating burst of pure creativity. But first: 

Fascination Corner

I read a lot of newsletters; here are some links that caught my eye.One of my jobs requires me to read a truly staggering number of newsletters from a wide array of publications, and lots of times I see things I can't use for work but still want to show somebody. That's you; that's this section. You don't have to read this one either if you don't want to, but you might miss something cool.

• The South China Morning Post has the word on some Blade Runner-type shit coming our way eventually.

• This writeup of The Most Distinctive Baby Names for Each of the Past 7 Generations seems reasonably grounded in hard data, and yet I still flat-out refuse to believe that people post-2005 are naming their daughters Neveah ("Heaven" backwards) (SERIOUSLY). The popular boy names of that generation are straight out of an SNL skit: Aiden, Ayden, and Jayden? Please take a moment to imagine retirement homes 70 years from now.

• Give this simple but incredibly frustrating SpaceX Falcon 9 Lander game a try, then realize how amazing it is that we've got computers and software that can do it in the real world with any kind of reliability; a bite-size amount of that amazement can be had by hitting Q to turn autopilot on and watch the damn thing land itself.

• Hold up: This Mobile Reactor Makes Diesel Fuel From Plastic Waste Found in the Ocean. Assuming this process actually works and is scalable, can we finally deal with that literal island of garbage in the Pacific gyre? Since we make plastic products out of petroleum in the first place, turning them into diesel seems somehow poetic, doesn't it?

• We're all beyond tired of "how we got here" political thinkpieces and I don't want to add to the bummer heap too much, but this Fusion essay presents an interesting angle fairly concisely. 

Looky Here

Update(s) on thing(s) I made or somehow helped to bring about.Idea Factory Giveaway35 - Mario Theme Park"Jon (@ferociousj), Kate (@keightdee), and special guest Dana (@atomeve) work through something called Choose Your Own Yaoi before hashing out some amazing location-specific notions."I'm serious when I say I think of Kate as "my writer friend" these days! And yes: Crypt of the Necrodancer is a fun game, but holy hell is that music an earworm and a half. In other news, you'll have to listen to the episode to find out why I nearly titled it "Too Much Mpreg."https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/episodes/65877-35-mario-theme-parkYou can also subscribe using:iTunesRSSStitcherGoogle Play MusicYou can also just go to the website to play or download episodes:https://ideafactorygiveaway.simplecast.fm/ 

A Fictional Thing

Something made-up that somehow suggested itself to me and which I could not escape.Some of the other things I'd write down in my pocket notebooks besides stray ideas were band names. Over time, more things began to pop into my head: album titles, cocktails, food products, terrible entries for urbandictionary, etc. I put these into a Tumblr made specifically for that purpose, and I'm bringing them back here because why not. The first one will be a band + album title combination:The Vengeance of the Mastodon, This Was Where the Darkness Took Me 

Thanks

If you've read this far, I thank you. Feel free to forward this to someone you like, or inflict it upon someone you don't.