I stopped listening to rock radio in ’98. The rock station in Buffalo needed every weekend to be an *event*. When a blockbuster movie opened, it would be a >fill in the blank< Movie Weekend. That’s ok if the movie is a gargantuan thriller like Lord of the Rings or a Star Wars or something. *Children of the Corn VI* does not quite live up to the excitement needed to revolve your weekend plans around it.
They would broadcast from some off-site “party” location. The opening weekend of a theme park, or at some big concert, that’s ok. When you’re left with the grand opening of a new gas station mini-mart, dude, you’re about as far from “cool” as you can get before you get so “uncool” that you begin to re-enter “cool” territory again.
It’s like this:*We’re here on a sloppy February Saturday at the grand opening of Frank Greenberg’s new Noco Mini Mart on Genesee Street going towards Williamsville. There’s some wet snow flying around outside, but inside we got a ton of give aways and specials like 2 hot dogs for $1 and free samples of pizza minis!*
Yeah, the only less-cool place would be broadcasting from the offices of the high school newspaper – which I’m sure that they tried, except that the local high school is shut down on the weekends.
And why do they have to broadcast like there’s a 24/7 keg party going on? The other day I’m trying to listen to the traffic report because there was a basketball game downtown, and that makes a big difference where I drive. I usually hate traffic reports. They never say anything that makes a difference and they jam through them so fast you never understand what they’re talking about anyway. But this station decided that even rushed through, they were too boring and everyone would change stations if subjected to this crap for 10 seconds. So, they crank background music throughout the report. I couldn’t hear a damn word. I got stuck in the game traffic, too. Thanks, guys.
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And the debate between old and new technology rages. I heard some guy cutting down CDs in favor of records, saying that CDs don’t have any soul or some other crap. CDs more faithfully present the sound actually generated by a live band. When I first got a CD player, I noticed each note, whereas the same sound on vinyl and definitely on tape would be far less clear.
For instance, I could hear the faint slide of a guitarist’s fingers on the strings in between the notes on some occasions. And, you just can’t play vinyl in the car or go jogging with it. Vinyl is more expensive to make. Vinyl scratches easier than a CD. The needle wears out. After you listen to a vinyl album several times, audio quality declines. I mean, should we just hold on to a piece of old technology that provides no advantages just because of some immeasurable, subjective quality called “soul”?
The same argument is being applied to the recent demise of Polaroid’s Instamatic film. They’ve stopped making it. Some die-hard fans are just torn up saying that they could never do without it. And the “soul” argument was used, too. I could see that argument with high end film cameras, but an Instamatic? It was point and shoot and the focus was honed in on whatever was closest. Some lady was interviewed who did professional photography used instant film, and got hers specially made to be 20”x20”. Each snap of the camera cost her about a hundred bucks. She believed that knowing that each shot cost so much, the photographer would take greater care to get it just right. But 100 years ago, wouldn’t that have been the argument of the portrait painters against film camera? Anyone could just snap a picture, but it took a true artist to get a painted portrait just right. You could snap a hundred pictures in a day, but a portrait took a week. Film cameras have no soul! Same with all this light from electricity. Light shouldn’t be as convenient as just flicking on a switch. We should go back to gas lamps. No, even better - candles and torches. Wildly inefficient, smoky, and an enormous fire hazard, but they had SOUL.
And boo-hiss on tap water, too. Too clean, too reliable and too easy. You drink the same tasting water in the summer as you do in the winter? That’s not living! Buckets of water laboriously hauled up in all weather conditions make you appreciate each drop. Water from the local scum laden pond has SOUL.
Music, especially rock music, grew up as singles. Now, I guess we’re moving back to that, and people are lamenting the demise of album orientation. It’s like the way this guy invented a way to pull the pits out of olives before they’re pressed for olive oil. The olive oil aficionados say that the pit lends some taste and that’s the way it has been made for centuries. The guy who invented the pitter responded that the ancient Greeks used to pit the olives before they pressed them, so his way was actually a return to the REALLY old style and not a new fangled style per se. However, modern recipes are written for the merely centuries old olive oil, and I’m sure that if you add the wrong kind of olive oil you would incinerate the delicate palate of your canned green bean recipe.
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I’m still training for my race. I dreamt last night that I was on the starting line and I was drunk and unprepared. I hadn’t even tied my shoes when the gun went off. But then again, the race was taking place inside a gigantic shopping mall, so I can’t see it being some kind of telepathic message sent from the future. Then the bikini babes came out. It was around then that I began to suspect things weren’t real.
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60% of MBA school is stuff that you could have figured out on your own. But if you say “I would have thought of that myself!” I say “Yeah, but ya didn’t, didja?”
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There’s a switch on the wall outside my office with no discernable purpose. Normally, such things are of no consequence and can be safely ignored. But this is a red LED lit switch. I shudder to think of what Earthly catastrophe could take place if it were turned off. What is behind this switch? What can it be? Oh, I’m just so tempted!
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My high hopes for the current Rex Morgan storyline are dropping precipitously. Instead of moving on with the story, Rex got bogged down in one of those conversations with his wife, June. That’s instant plot quicksand. Next week, no new developments, but Rex is concerned!
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But what do “they” know, anyway? “They” also say that George Washington wore wooden teeth, and that ostriches bury their heads.
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I’ve started to read books in song format even when they don’t rhyme or have any kind of meter. How do you sing a book of prose? Badly. Last night, my entire audience walked out during an operatic performance of Cinderella. I thought I got them hooked when the rhythm turned a-rockin’ when she ran down the palace steps at midnight, and then I got slow and sad as the coach turned back into a pumpkin. But that’s the moment when the kids took off. Ah, I expect a poor review in tomorrow’s Times. But, damn the critics! Yes, I sing absurdly and I have no talent, but damn them anyway!
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I read an interesting article on willpower. It’s apparently a lot like muscle. You can achieve great feats of will, but then it leaves you less capable of such feats in the near term. Over time, you can build your willpower, like you would build your athletic ability when you’re training. So, if you begin a new training regimen, you will more likely slack off in other areas. That may explain why so many people who quit smoking, for instance, quickly gain weight soon afterwards. I’m using my willpower to train harder, and I don’t have that much left over to resist many other temptations. Americans work long hours, and that seems to result in overspending, overeating and under-exercising. No, the article didn’t carry the theory the extra step to chide America on our collective bad habits. That’s my personal touch. By blowing my willpower budget on waking up early, I don’t have much left to run the miles hard. To answer why I’m running them at all is because what the hell else are you going to do when you wake up at 4:00? That’s so goddamn early that I don’t even think the internet is awake.
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I never understood this “elephant in the room” thing. What, like elephants are so common in rooms that no one mentions it? Very, very tiny elephants, perhaps made of ceramics? I can’t figure it out. Does it have to do with those six blind guys and the elephant? In that analogy, each blind guy mistook the elephant as something else, but they at least acknowledged that it existed.
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I hate job applications. The federal government centralized their application system. If you fill out their application, theoretically it can be referenced for any federal job. In practice, I filled out an extensive application for one job a month or two ago, and now I’m going for another job. But the second job does not accept electronic applications in any form. They insist that you fill out Form OF 612, which is pretty much the same stuff as the electronic version on the centralized web site. The form is, of course, offered on line, but you can’t just copy and paste to it. So I get to see the dismal record of my life’s non-accomplishments. Not only am I forced to confront it, but I’m getting a hand cramp trying to elaborate my experience as a boring accounting drone. God, I hate filling out applications.
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