My girlfriend just texted me; “its heaven outside!” And it is. Finally a nice day. I rode my Harley out to Sheetz to get a redbull, it was as far as I could ride and still get back to campus in time to read “Radio” for my digital Story telling class. This little book is pretty much a class on making radio stories. So I took the elevator up to the third story of the library, climbed up in the “treehouse” desks and started reading. But its 70 degrees outside and riding the bike is my reprieve.

The book is written like a comic book, complete with black and white sketches and dialog bubbles. Doesn’t seem professional to me, but I forget that most of the world doesn’t write like political science literature (thankfully). I want to like it… after all its much more pop culture than the political structure of post colonial India. But I don’t. I mean I do, but not in the way that I should. I need to be learning how to write a story, but I find myself distracted by all the digressions the author uses to get a point across. Also it’s keeping me from cutting curves on the Washington Rochambeau Route.

To make this experience a bit better I turn on iTunes and start listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival, “Someday Never Comes.” The comic tells multiple stories in order to tell one, which is how to develop and edit a story for “This American Life.” I started to get interested about the Do Gooders down in Canalou but Ira doesn’t tell the whole story so all I know is that the couple tried to improve a town they used to live in and had returned sometime later. This sounds like my hometown. Somehow this caused a local yocal to shoot their house… I still don’t know why. Have you ever heard the sound of a V-Twin under you while cruising down some smooth road? It’s like Beethoven or Bach.

Back to the book. Ah on to my field, a do gooder from Rwanda who claims that NGO and International organizations that tried to improve the situation there before the genocide. This is my kinda story after all I have a certain affinity for undeveloped nations. But what do I get out of it? How to cut umms and ahms out and replace them with mm or ahhs. What the hell, just tell me how the NGOs made it worse, but that’s right this book is about how to tell a story, not actually telling one. Well it is… its telling the story of how to tell a story. And in that way I guess it succeeded since this review is better told now than it would have been before I read this comic. But either way my bike is calling me to ride it down to the river and get a bite to eat before class. Ira Glass and Jessica Abel… maybe you can tell a story about that.