Daily Rambling
Tuesday, and no news on the hoped for new job as of yet.  Not that I'm watching my email or anything.  *cough*

I've been digging up my old stories from college, and they are surprisingly good.  I wasn't expecting much, but all three of the finished products I've read thus far have been brilliant in places, less so in others.  Much better than I remembered though.  That's a very good sign, since my first old floppy disk extractions were fragments and ideas and rough story sketches and such, and they were pretty dire.  Certainly not of the quality I'd post on this site. 

Check the fiction main page for links, I've added one thus far and should put up some more soon, and at the bottom of the fiction page is a diary sort of thing I'll be updating each time I get around to doing so.  It's basically the paragraph above this one, but in much more detail.

I added another review, this one for Star Wars Episode One.  However it's just the long thing I wrote about it in the daily update a couple of days ago, with a new intro, so don't wet yourself with excitement over my new review of a 2 year old and wildly disappointing movie.

One funny tidbit: I was working with the old floppy disks yesterday, hadn't used those for anything in forever, and sent a message to a female friend on ICQ, "When is the last time you used a floppy dick?"

Note the typo. ;) I found it funny at least, and caught it before hitting send.  Freudian, I know.

Now if she'd gotten that and replied, "Not in ages, I only deal with hard drives now." that would have been a sit com moment.

Just when you thought you couldn't hate the Yankees any more than you already do, you see an article like this.  Megalomaniac asshole of an owner, busily buying every championship, more money than the poorest 10 teams put together, and pathetically insecure anyway.

The radio stations here run ads for porn and adult bookstores all the time now, even in the day.  I remember when that sort of thing was not allowed.  Then it was only a few dirty ads late at night.  Now it's anything, at any time.  Not that I have a problem with that, but I imagine people uptight about sex (or whatever porn is), Christians and stuff, have a fit about such ads.  The fact that you really wouldn't know what they were selling from the ads, if you didn't know already, is probably unimportant.

The funny thing about the ad I heard yesterday was for an adult store and apparently combo night club/strip bar.  Wonderzone or something like that.  (No, I've never been and doubt I ever will go.) and they said, "The perfect way to kick off your St. Patrick's Day Holiday!"

Yes, Saint Paddy's day and stripping whores, the ancient tradition lives on! Do they dye them green or something?  The ad was for 2 "adult film stars" as they call it, who will be appearing and dancing there, as well as peddling their "films" at a discount price.  Get your tickets now.

Pet peeve time.

Am I the only one who is driven nuts by idiot DJs talking over the entire first half of songs on the radio?  The odds of them playing anything I want to hear are maybe 1 in 10, and half the time they do, I can kiss the first 30 or 45 seconds goodbye since the DJ just can... not... shut... up!

I was motivated enough by them ruining the start of a good song over the weekend to want to call and scream at the idiot, but I couldn't remember their number, and couldn't find it anywhere on their website. I did however find their email or submit your comments or whatever address, and sent the following to the station manager, where I'm sure it will make no difference whatsoever.  I've received no reply from them as of yet, at any rate.

My mail:

Is it some sort of requirement that the DJs talk over the first minute of every song? It drives me nuts, I mean most songs are 3-4 minutes, and they might have 30 or 45 seconds of music at the start before the lyrics, and virtually every song the goddamn DJ has to yap until right when the lyrics begin, with the music turned way down so you can't even hear the song behind them. Shut them up, please, I'm begging you.

Oddly enough, I don't listen to the radio for the DJ's babbling. I listen for the music, and on the rare occasion that a song comes on that I actually like, it sure would be nice to be able to hear it. There is a reason songs have music, then lyrics, then music, etc. The intro music gets you into the mood of the track before the actual vocals begin, assuming you can hear it over the DJ, that is. 

If the DJs must talk, tell them to do so with bumper music or silence behind their voices. They have nothing to say and are all idiots, but at least if I know they'll be shutting up when the songs come on, I can tolerate them for a minute.

Fire them all and just play recorded songs and commercials, station promos, concert promos, etc. It would be fine with me. Probably save money too.

PS, this goes for all of the Rock 105.3 DJs too, as the stations are the same company, and interchangable. The DJs all sound the same, and the play lists are about 75% overlapping also, so I seldom know which station I'm listening too since I click back and forth, unless some god awful old reggae/Pretenders or god awful old ACDC/Jimmy Hendrix comes on, then I know (and switch stations).

The other station is indeed 105.3, and you can see their website here. It's unremarkable, and their taste in music is pretty mediocre, not that there's any real "taste" involved, they are both owned by Clear Channel, a massive, monopolistic, soulless, profit-obsessed media giant, dedicated to buying up and removing any individuality or quirkiness that a local station might possess.

91X here was a long-time classic, great station.  I didn't really care for their music in the '80s and early '90s, it was too wimpy and sort of college/alt/pop in style, but at least they had an identity, playing stuff you'd never hear otherwise. Since Clear Channel swallowed them up, they suck, as I said in the mail 75% overlapping with the mindless rock station.  They play everything semi hard-alternative, all popular rock songs, heavy rotation. The only stuff they play that's unusual tends to be stuff I can't stand, old reggae, 80's alternative like Pretenders and Cure, and they do play a lot of sort of amateurish local surf punk stuff, all of it sounding like really bad Green Day.

The point is... well, there's no point.  The point was that DJs talking over the start of songs sucks, and I'm sure they do it under orders from the program director since god forbid we have any actual music.  It's lucky there aren't any bands doing instrumental stuff anymore, or the DJ wouldn't know when to stop.

Radio sucks.  It's only of use to hear new bands you might want to get into, so you can go get their CDs and listen to something besides the radio.  But they play so little actual music, and so little new music, that even that is hard.

The other annoying thing is when they play one song just to death.  Popular new single from some band, and they'll play it every hour for weeks.  Which isn't so bad if I like the song, but what I can't stand is they never play anything else off of that album. Do a "two-fer", play the popular one and then another one.  I often sort of want to get an album by a band I don't know well, but since I hear nothing but the same one song over and over again, I figure the rest of the album must be utter crap.  Sadly, this is often the case.

I wanted to write something sorta melancholy about the sunrise, which I just witnessed and was awed by.  All pinks and purples, with thousands of tiny, high, cirrus clouds.  It seemed a rare, fragile beauty, doomed to perish in moments, as the sky faded to its usual, boring, light blue, and the clouds to their usual, boring light grey.

There would have been lovely, ethereally floating metaphors and similes about the fragility of beauty, forever being consumed by ugly mediocrity, striving always to rise above and be noticed, if only for a moment.

But I didn't...  Sorry, maybe next time.

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