Business as usual

Okay, let's palaver, or Rod Laver, or do whatever the hell it is we do round these parts. I suppose I have some splainin to do, might as well do that now.

First, thanks to all of the poeple who were worried about me losing my job. I didn't, not that I would have minded given how things have turned out, but for the time being I still have a job in radio. Allow me to explain the events as they transpired. The Friday before Lynn was to take 6 days off (5 vacation, one for surgery on her hand) management broke the news to her that in two weeks the radio show would be no more, the station was changing format, from an all talk station to a business talk station. This meant that we had 4 days after Lynn came back to sign off to all of the loyal listeners, so while we could have been talking about the Democratic Convention and the upcoming Republican Convention, instead we were doing lots of calls from listeners that dealt more with our goodbyes than the issues of the day. I was kept on only because I don't cost the station all that much money, and there would be plenty of bullshit work for me to do to clean up the mess that management was making. I know some callers thought it was gracious that we were given 4 days to sign off, it wasn't really, it was just their attempt to get a couple more shekels out of Lynn's advertisers before they cast her out. At this point I would like to thank Michael, the owner of A Pleasant Present, who pulled his dollars from not just our station, but all stations owned by our parent company. Considering that they replaced Lynn with syndicated radio fare that costs the company nothing to air, I would rather the advertisers that are loyal to Lynn stay loyal to her and not us.

What replaced Lynn wasn't so much a business news show as it is a infomercial. The network even runs a disclaimer twice an hour saying that the views of the host do not reflect the views of the network and some guests have been compensated to appear or have holdings in the companies that they are asking you to invest in. I am sorry kids, that's a fucking commercial, not news.

Still, while the station ended Lynn's show, they also ended all of the talk shows that ran during the week as well, most of which were syndicated programming. The thing is, when you end a syndicated progam's contract, you have to give them a 90 day out, during which time you have to clear every national commercial that would have aired on your station had you kept the show. Because we ended so many contracts, I was handed a stack of spots that is the eqivalent of over 5 hours of commercials that I have to record every week. Normally I would do those on Sundays, but to better pierce my asshole with a giant cock, two of the local shows that aired on Saturday, Garden Talk with Jane Nugent and Birds and Nature with Scott Shalloway were moved to Sunday, where I get stuck producing them. So not only does my commercial production increase dramatically, the time I used to do it gets fucked with as well. If you can guess that I am not pleased, you are vastly underestimating just how pissed off I am. I have already sent my resume out to two different radio stations, because make no mistake, I want out as fast as humanly possible while still being able to pay my bills. Finances are the only reason I am there at all and didn't walk the same day Lynn did.

What made matters even worse was that we were to debut our new programming on Labor Day, a Monday. I finally saw my first show clock on how the new programming would be formatted Sunday night at 11pm, 8 hours before this bullshit was to be on the air. And as happens when running news stuff and trying to get the computer to function properly in automation and do the background recording it is supposed to do, Monday was bug riddled. Lots of tweaking and rebooting of the system to get it to recognize the new configuration, meanwhile the general manager is sitting at home listening to the station and what does he have to say of the work that is being done by Ron (program dircetor), Jason (engineer) and myself? That I could have played a liner to tighten up some of the breaks. I do believe my exact quote was "Fuck him!". We are just trying to get the thing to work properly and he is worried about a fucking liner.

Today was the first Sunday that I had to do the Sunday shows, I was less than pleased. A day that for me would normally end about 3pm saw me finally leave work at 6pm, and I still have a boatload of shit to do when I get in Monday. Scott asked me how I was before his show started, I looked him deda in the eye and said "Well, when I finish this show, I only expect to be three hours behind schedule." Yes, I brought my attitude to work with me. I am actually happier at WalMart these days, where I know what is expected of me and all I have to do is do it, at the radio station, doing little more than recording network commercials, I am literally doing the very same thing I did as an intern some 12 years ago, but minus the fun stuff like conducting interviews and covering sporting events. It is just cutting commercials and working on bullshit weekend programming.

A side note, I plan on posting the last radio show at some point in the near future, but I have to edit the audio on my home computer. We lost the audio at work when the power in the building went out (we stayed on the air) because it rebooted the computer that records the audio feed. My computer at home was recording the web stream, I haven't listened to all of it yet but I do know that what I did listen to, while not as good of quality, should be workable enough.

Okasy, enough of my bitching, I have other things to get to here. 63 cents go to the change meter, the new total is $37.77, though I did find my second bank card while doing this little project of mine. Unlike last time, when I tried to track down the owner of the card, only to eventually drop it off at a branch of the bank that the owner while freezing downtown, this time I just gave it to the bus driver of the bus I found it on. If he wants to turn it in fine, if he wants to rip off the owner of the card, that's fine too. Not my problem. I just didn't wnat to get busted trying to use it. No great moral principle involved save foir keeping my ass out of jail, my life sucks enough without some 6'4" 300lb guy using his penis to play darts with my asshole.

My fantasy baseball team remains in third place still, and still leads in 4 of the ten statistical categories, Of course as luck would have it, two of my best players, Carlos Quentin and Evan Longoria are both hurt. Longoria has been out for about three weeks now, but is due back this week, Quentin hurt himself this past wek and is most likely done for the year. Technically he could be available for the post season, but the fantasy season will be over by then, so it does me no good whatsoever.

I did draft a fantasy football team this year. While we had to cancel the bar league because a number of the teams couldn't make it (and as it turns out, our draft Sunday I was stuck at the radio station for the format change mess), a few of us did hop into a free yahoo league. Most of the people drafted online at the time, I wasn't available (more work getting in the way, WalMart on that occasion) so Yahoo leaves you the option to have the computer draft for you, you can either accept their rankings of players, or you can instead opt to rerank them how you would like them drafted. I moved a few around, but not many and the auto draft feature was not a good thing for me, it drafted me 4 running backs, three were rookies and the fourth got cut before the preseason ended. I am not looking at good things so far, unless a bunch of guys get hurt I will be happy to escape with a .500 record.

I haven't tinkered with Joe Random in awhile. Last I checked I was still doing okay, I lead the league in batting average and RBIs but trail by about 4 in homeruns because of getting dropped to the minor leagues for about three weeks, but I haven't played all that much with my work schedule and the fact that I watched as much of the Olymics as I could. Lucky for me, they were putting some of the cool sports on late night live, so I would get home from work, make something to eat, climb into bed and put the sleep timer on the TV and just watch until I eventually crashed.

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Sorry, took a little time off there, though I can now tell you that the fantasy football team started 1-0 and the fantasy baseball team remains in third place, so some things are going well, just not the work related ones.

I have sent out 4 resumes so far, to a local station (KDKA) as well as one in Boston, one in Dallas and to Bristol,CT to work as a audio editor for ESPN radio, though I doubt much will come of them. Eventually I will have to take a day and just carpet bomb stations with my resume, because I am really not enjoying what I am doing right now. I think that is why I am not blogging as much, life just sucks enough that I really don't want to relive it by writing it down. I managed to get most of the email list done for Lynn, there are still some trickling in, about ten a day that I add to her contact list, but so far the list I have compiled is over 850, so one would think that if she ever lands another gig there will be a built in audience from day one, which is a good thing. As for us, I have taken to just not answering the phone at work because I know it is just people bitching about the format change, and to be honest, I don't want to deal with it. It wasn't my decision, I don't need to be bitched at because it was made. So to all you people calling to yell at me for something I didn't do, go fuck yourselves.

See what I mean? And my bitterness is creeping into everything. Even today, as 9/11 tributes were taking place on TV I was thinking to myself, "Jesus fucking Christ, get over it" It's been 7 years already, and what do we have to show for it besides not much. Okay, so once a year we get out our tissues and go about the job of being professional mourners, but where the towers stood in Manhattan is still nothing but a hole in the ground, in Shanksville the bickering consist of whether a curved treeline should be part of the memorial site, because a curved treeline could look like a crescent and that is a Muslim symbol and all that jazz. So basically in 7 years, we haven't done a fucking thing but cry a lot. Hell, we haven't even caught the mastermind behind Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. News flash for you kids, the world didn't change on 9/11/01, we just finally became more aware of it.

Well, my bitterness isn't subsiding all that much, so I am going to pick up my ball and go home now.