Netlflix online streaming is great for swiftly pulling up a long list of movies to watch, but I can flip through the list of suggestions for so long, with no interest, that I get bored, give up and do something else. First world problem, I know. I start out thinking there’s got to be some great movie, enlightening documentary, or hilarious Louis CK masturbation joke that will broaden my horizons. Netflix is limited by whatever feasible licensing deals they can manage, and they seem to be making a killing at securing utter shit cinematic bombs. At least you have a choice of what shit to watch, and the long chance for a serendipitous discovery. On broadcast television and radio you are almost certainly locked into abysmal mediocrity. The big outlets cringe away from taking any chances and from missing the center of mass of the broadest audience.

Not that there is an indie online streaming video service out there, other than something like Vice piggy-backing on youtube, but there are still some great non-lowest-common-denominator broadcast audio streams out there. For one, I’d like to commend the local high school radio station KOHS (91.7 FM) for transmitting whatever the kids in 4th period Communications felt like playing, with just the occasional US Army recruiting ads. I have also really enjoyed the surprizes on a daily basis as I listen in on the diverse programming on KRCL 90.9 FM. (I accidentally landed there when I couldn’t figure out how to get back to NPR.) I have only been completely transfixed on that station for the last couple of months (because I can’t figure out my radio dial) but I have been able to take some time and try out some styles a little outside of my envelope. Throughout the day there’s Midnight Train, Psych-Out, Women Who Rock, Smile Jamaica, and Jangly Hillbilly. (You decide which one’s the fake.) Their killer app here the playlist, which they update consistently online, so you can bypass posting in Missed Connections.

I mentioned live365.com last time, and I have felt like the individual online streaming concept has become an underdog compared to Pandora, which “learns” your preferences, but pretty quickly steers you back into a mainstream gutter. There are many, many stations on live365, with an unlimited spectrum between tasteless/lazy and clever/tuned-in programmers. You can start searching with a genre and try out playlists, and you will eventually find yourself sticking with a station that matches your mood and introduces intriguing new music (or masturbation jokes). Years ago I thought it would be cool to put up my own station online, but for longest time I couldn’t get over my hangup about actually paying for anything on the internet. Now at $4 per month and the infinite void of death drawing nearer, I indulged.

Now I have a station named sense&sound with a list of 80 tracks at a decent bit-rate, just within my 250 MB quota. I spent the weekend painstakingly drawing together and uploading representative tracks. To adhere to the copyright laws, I had to make sure not to bunch up multiple songs by the same bands, so it was tough to find just one each. The playlist turned out to be very chill and to have hipster levels of French. As I listen in on the station, I adore every one of the songs and I get excited about every track because it’s just the playlist I want to hear. Inversely, that reminds me of flipping through Netflix and passing into a section with a surprising convergence of good matches for movies I really like, and then deflating my positive prospects when I see the heading “Watch It Again.” Instead, the whole menu is a relentless buffet of unbearable turkeys based on some other bulbous foul I allegedly looked at for two minutes. That’s like a radio station locking you into 80’s Spandex Rock because you accidentally couldn’t figure out the radio dial in time to stop listening to Bon Jovi once.