Regular Life

I dumped commercial radio several years ago, and this week I was reminded why. It’s the ads, the copycat “artists,” and the wacky morning deejays.

I like news for the drive into work and music on the way home. The former informs me, while the latter helps me unwind. The past couple weeks my usual morning radio station has been holding its fall fundraiser, which interrupts regular programming. Thursday morning, for the morning commute I switched back to commercial radio.

I have concluded that I would rather keep my mp3 player loaded with plenty of music and NPR podcasts than listen to one more minute of morning commercial radio broadcasts.

The station with the music format I like the most, 102.1 KDGE (The Edge), plays the occasional tune by an independent artist. For the most part, however, they play bands that the recording companies try to make sound like Nickelback or some other wildly successful act. When they aren’t playing that new “music,” they’re typically playing decent songs I already have memorized. That isn’t bad as a rule, but when I finally tune back to commercial radio for a while, I hope to hear something new.

I suspect the dissatisfaction with the music is largely a factor of my age. Sadly, I think I’m to the point that nothing sounds new anymore, and I thrive on fresh content.

Then there are the antics of the morning deejay. On Thursday morning, host Billy Madison called and antagonized a man after a listener called in to give her side of a story. Disguising his voice, Madison yelled at the man, peppered his speech with expletives, and demanded to know why he was not doing what he should. The man got agitated and threatened to call the police. Unlike when I listen to NPR, I was glad I had arrived at work so that I was forced to stop listening to the train wreck of a morning program.

Are there people who really enjoy starting their day with this drivel? An occasional cookie-cutter song accompanied by mindless banter and tasteless, baseless gags? Is it my age or my mind that makes it worthless to me? Both?

For my 23-minute commute home, the lame attempts at entertainment are gone, but I’m lucky if I hear two or three songs among all the ads.

Do you still listen to traditional commercial radio? If not, then what has taken its place?

I always believed I would look hideous with a shaved head. Only some sort of financial incentive would spur me to sport a cue ball. It would be more of a cue block, really, so to protect myself and others I’ve never entertained the notion.

It’s a good thing I don’t live in New Zealand.

Apparently Air New Zealand will pay me if I shave my head and stand in a line at one of three airports (or all three, I suppose, if I make the rounds).

The catch (besides the whole smooth pate thing) is that they would first decorate my head with a temporary tattoo promoting a new check-in system. If I lived in New Zealand, this might be an easy second job, and one I could work around my unpredictable day job hours.

One application of the tattoo lasts up to two weeks, you say? Hmmm… that could have implications at the office. Better re-think this. Plus, a move to New Zealand probably wouldn’t work out for me right now.

I have at least two baldy friends reading this. Maybe you guys should do this in your area. In essence, you’d get paid for your good head.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/odd_new_zealand_bald_billboards

I have heard it said that one should avoid relying on a single source for news.

You mean, like, even if that source is Jon Stewart? No. Way.

As a matter of fact, way.

In 2004 The Associated Press reported that, “21 percent of people aged 18 to 29 cited ‘The Daily Show’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’ as a place where they regularly learned presidential campaign news,” according to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Late one night in 2004 I just happened to be watching Stewart’s show when he mentioned this Pew study. After informing his viewing audience of their tendency to rely on his show for all their news, he stared wide-eyed for a close-up and said, “Don’t do that!”

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I’m off work all week and we’re finally painting a few rooms in our house after living here almost three years. That’s a record for living in one home, by the way, in our nearly 16-year marriage.

Do not read the rest of this unless you like boring update posts that don’t have any real content.

I changed the banner on June 1 and changed my stylesheet slightly. Force a refresh in your browser so it isn’t still pulling the old code from your cache. (That’s Shift-F5 for most of you, by the way, or hold Shift while clicking the Reload button. For Apple users, it’s something to do with the Apple key, I think.)

I also added a feature in the right sidebar called “Bytes of Life.” It’s the last few entries from my Twitter account. If you haven’t heard of Twitter, then you’ll probably be just fine. It’s a way to jot down a quick thought without making an entire blog post out of it, but some “tweets,” as they’re called, could lead to a longer piece.

The Twitter tweets also are a way to see what’s going on in our lives even on days when I don’t post a new entry. Perhaps only family and/or friends will find them interesting, or maybe nobody will. Whatever the case, they’ll be there barring some technical glitch from Twitter.

I don’t like relying on a third-party service for blog features — especially those blocked by many employers’ Internet filters, but for at least this week I’ll keep it out there and see how it goes.

I’ll join Anna’s Project Blue as soon as I can.

I once read that a blog was a place for one to share interesting and timely links with others, perhaps within a comment or two on the topics covered. Considering that almost zero of the blogs I read actually fit that description, I laughed and ignored this.

But here I am fitting in the mold cast by that particular columnist (*cough* *cough* PC Magazine’s John C. Dvorak *cough*). And, because it’s timely, I made a rare lunchtime post (which needed to be short for obvious reasons).

Mainly, I wanted to be the first one (as far as I know) to make this joke. I just found a new meaning for the song, “When Irish Eyes are Smiling.” On a more serious note, you’ll be amazed by such a medical breakthrough. My title suggestion for the movie based on this man’s story? My Left Tooth

Another eye-catcher (oh, sorry), is the new mnemonic phrase created by a 10-year-old. She won a National Geographic contest to help people remember the names of the 11 planets of our solar system, in order of distance from the sun. Gee, when I went to school there were only nine. Her winning phrase?

My Very Exciting Magic Carpet Just Sailed Under Nine Palace Elephants.

My only problem with it is the word “very,” because it is forgettable, but I can’t come up with anything better. It makes sense and should serve well, especially after Lisa Loeb releases her song based on it. That last part is no joke, apparently.

If you don’t believe me, or you just want to know the names of those two extra planets, and see a cool artist’s rendering of all 11, then read it yourself.

UPDATE: Link in last paragraph changed to different site, same story.

What if someone you knew stacked huge hay bale walls and built a castle inside, unbeknownst to everyone but you? Would you tell? Would you use the word “unbeknownst” when telling about it?

How about this… could you keep it a secret for more than four years?

Well, unless Robert Fidler, 59, of England had absolutely no friends, or friends who never visited his home, somebody managed it. Now that the wall of bales is gone, authorities want to tear down Fidler’s castle.

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“Hey, could you grab a Wal-Mart bag for me? I need something to put our shoes in for the trip.”

“Look at that Wal-Mart bag caught in that tree over there.”

These or similar phrases are not uncommon in our area. Whether or not you frequent Wal-Mart, I’m sure a clear image of that type of bag formed in your head, and you no doubt have seen them clinging to fences like a litterbug’s windsock. Similar to the way “Coke” has become synonymous for “soda,” or “pop,” the phrase “Wal-Mart bag” means any plastic grocery bag with handles.

It does in the American south, anyway.

Like me, perhaps you have tried to get everything in one trip by grabbing upwards of six bags with each hand, the bread bearing the brunt of your misguided machismo (or feminismo, as the case may be). Once you’ve managed your feat and emptied the bags, what do you do with them? Craft fair vendors have created tubular fabric bags, with an elastic-lined top, for storing the wispy, wad-able wonders. We have one that we have stuffed to bulging with “Wal-Mart bags” from a variety of stores including Super Target, Tom Thumb, and Albertson’s. A valuable tool for bagging poopy diapers earlier in our parental era, they still play a role in our home.

Perhaps those of you shaking your heads answer “paper,” on the rare occasion that a cashier asks your bagging preference. I’ve never seen studies on which is worse, cutting down trees for paper bags, or producing more trash with plastic bags. I know most brown paper bags are made at least partially from recycled paper, but ultimately a tree was involved. Because plastic manufacture includes petroleum products, plastic bags carry their own drawbacks besides just the litter and landfill factors. (A fascinating book I just finished, set several centuries in the future, sees mankind no longer burning petroleum for fuel, but still using it to make plastic.)

Wal-Mart, retail leader of the free world, announced recently that it will begin selling a “a recycled, reusable, washable shopping sack” for $1. It will hold at least twice the amount of today’s common plastic bag, and customers may return it to the store for recycling once it has worn too thin for use.*

If the store you frequent offered these bags, would you purchase and use them? Is this another Wal-Mart ploy to earn brownie points with those who would love to see the company shrivel and fade away?

* Source: An October 10 story in the Morning News of Northwest Arkansas.

Click to enlarge and sharpen.

A former co-worker of mine sent an e-mail that described the morning activities of three or four people who had jobs in one of the World Trade Center towers in New York City. These people, for one reason or another, were delayed September 11, 2001 and could not make it to work on time. As a result, they were not in the buildings brought down by terrorists.

I saw exactly where it was going, and I didn’t like it.

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Give it just a moment to start playing after you click the “play” button.

This is just the beginning of adventure for these guys.

If the above player either isn’t there or doesn’t work for you, then you may download the video here (I suggest saving it and then playing it):

• Windows Media Format
• Quicktime format (still trying to get a decent output for this one)

For those already up-to-date on their story…

The local street department forwarded my e-mails to a Texas Department of Transportation official, who summarily ignored my calls and e-mails regarding the persistent trash.

Everyone else…

For the full story, with more pictures, video, and reader commentary, see:
http://blog.markwill.com/blue-straw/

Music
“Sophisticated Maybe”
by beatbox flutist Tim Barsky. Other free downloads are available at his site.

Equipment
Sony DCR-HC30 miniDV Camcorder
Olympus D-20 Digital Voice Recorder
Core Sound Low Cost Binaural Microphones
Homebrewed Computer

To see the whole story up to this point, click here.

I first saw this late one night, and my brain refused to accept it. I was just driving into work for a planned hardware upgrade, not expecting earth-shattering kabooms. The next morning I captured the image above, where a truck had barely beat me to the first spot at the red light.

It just couldn’t be. The light turned green and I followed the truck toward the intersection.

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