Prismism

What follows is actually the "copy" I wrote for myself prior to recording a YouTube video in response to this video that John of VlogBrothers made for his brother Hank. What he said got me thinkin' and I also wanted to make a video that would bury my stupid Michael Jackson enough is enough video. I wrote my copy and posted it here because I wanted to make the video without my glasses on. So I increased the font in my web browser so I could read the copy without glasses. Admittedly, in hindsight it really didn't matter cuz both John and Hank wear their glasses but somehow they're able to avoid glare. My glasses seem to reflect the computer screen when I make a video wearing them. Anyway. I digress. I'm uploading the video response I made as I type this otherwise I'd leave a direct link. I don't know what it is yet but will add it seruptitiously after I'm done typing this probably. If I forget to do that, you can go to www.youtube.com/zachsmind and look for the video I left on this date.

Don't forget to be awesome. Without further adoo-doo, here's what I wrote.

Hi John Hi Hank and hi Nerdfighters it's Monday July 13th 2009 and it's very late. Or early. Depending on how you look at it. Why am I still up watching YouTube videos? I dunno. I dunno if I'm a nerdfighter. I guess I'm at least a nerdfighter watcher. We all have to start somewhere.

In response to John's video On Iran, Islam, and Amazingly Stupid Comments, I was like ..Wow. That was cool, man. I don't agree with every syllable but I hear ya when you say you feel more akin to some liberal muslims than you do conservative Christians. I look at American Christians today and I don't recognize the religion of my childhood. Everything from Chuck Norris to Sarah Palin's got me seriously reconsidering my theological choices.

Until very recently I used to consider myself a Christian. I think I still am. Asked Jesus Christ into my heart at the age of eight. Sounded like a good idea at the time. The Sunday school teacher's pitch was hard to deny. Eternal salvation and a piece of candy. I was sold.

I've had a few decades of studying history and observing current events. Watching history unfold before me, and I've come to the conclusion that whenever there's violence between men, someone's religion often seems to be a factor. Maybe it's not THE direct factor, but like rooting for sports teams, both sides always think their one and only true god is on their side. And if a god takes sides, how does anyone know?

Christianity. Judaism. Islam. Hinduism. Buddism. Zorastrian Whatchamacallit. Paganism. Deism. Atheism. I got a new ism. Prismism. Every human being's a prism. We think we're seeing the light for what it is, but we all got filters and the light of reality goes in us and through us and out it comes and you get spaghetti. or a Picaso painting. Or a man who thinks god wants him to kill. That it's okay to kill cuz god says so.

I'm reminded of the words of Groucho Marx who once said he didn't want to join any club that would accept the likes of him as a member. I think any god that would accept mankind at face value, considering what we do to one another in God's name? I gotta question that.

But that's me. That's not you. If anything's consistent among Mankind it's that each person has their own religion. They each think they share religion but when one finds oneself on the outside looking in, after being part of the illusion that there's one true god? Wow. Mankind to the concept of Diety is like three blind men holding different parts of an elephant and none of them guessing right as to what it really is.

Religion is like a gun. It doesn't do bad or good by itself, but men have done bad or good things with it. I personally don't like having a gun in my presence, cuz a gun in my presence increases the chances I might get shot, as opposed to the odds of getting shot by a gun if a gun is not within gunshot of my face. I'm beginning to have a similar opinion about religion, but that's just me. Others can carry around guns and religions all they like. Just don't point them my way.

Oh, and in the argument regarding pirates and ninjas?

Arrrrr matey!

INTERVISION! with Kevin Pollak

"This is your show. It just has my name on it."

Boy this is embarrassing, huh? Let's just start with this bit of dirty laundry hanging on the clothesline, shall we? Full disclosure. That's not my motto, but it is when it serves my needs, or makes me laugh. Here we go. This is my stupidity off Twitter. Imagine between "ten hours" and "three minutes" a night of sleeping in after a workweek of very little sleep and too much not sleeping.

• ZachsMind @kevinpollack: "INTERVISION Give it a test drive See how you feel" 1st I laughed then I'm like omigod hes serious Now I just don't know about 11 hours ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollack seen Felicia Day interview. Enjoyable. Unsolicited constructive critique avail. upon req. Will sleep on "InterVision." about 10 hours ago
• ZachsMind Dammit! I misspelled @kevinpollak last night. Twice. I blame a week of self-induced sleep deprivation. I'm awake now. Let's try this again. 3 minutes ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollak: "INTERVISION Give it a test drive See how you feel" 1st I laughed, then I'm like omigod hes serious. Now I just don't know. 2 minutes ago
• ZachsMind @kevinpollak saw Felicia Day interview. Enjoyable. Unsolicited constructive critique avail. upon req. Will sleep on "InterVision." less than a minute ago

Okay, so the point of that is this. I'm about to launch into some unsolicited constructive criticism about Kevin Pollak's Chat Show which he will of course never see but I'm okay with that. Talk on Twitter is sometimes a two way street and sometimes one-sided. Some people can't tell the difference but I like to think I can. If you're talking to someone who is as much an unknown as you, you got a good chance to get a response. If you are telling @KirstieAlley to turn off her capslock? You'll be lucky if she responds by not sending you a tweet personally, but actually typing like the rest of us for a couple tweets BEFORE SHE STARTS YELLING AGAIN AT WHOEVER MIGHT BE READING HER FOR NO REASON AT ALL! I'd be okay if Pollak DID see it, but deep down I know he won't. So I ain't writing this for him, I'm writing it for me. I'm the Harry Knowles of Web Content. Well, not really, but if Justine Ezarik can call herself The Internet, I can call myself the Harry Knowles of Web Content. Dammit.

• ZachsMind @levarburton said, "There is no love like fan love.." http://bit.ly/rMl8H Uh. 4chan love maybe. Don't think you were meant to see that Sir.

On second thought, maybe it's best if Kevin Pollak never sees this.

So why am I doing this if I do not anticipate my input ever being considered on Kevin Pollak's Chat Show, even though he says repeatedly that he wants input from his viewers in order to improve his show? Well I just don't believe in shit like that. I used to. Back when I still voted in elections, which wasn't too long ago. I don't do that anymore. I need something now and then to talk about on my "blog." This topic interests me. So there you go. This is the difference between making web content that might actually be successful and making web content that keeps one from going crazy and wearing tinfoil hats with potato salad inside them. Idle hands may not be the devil's workshop but they're what caused Britney Spears to go bald awhile back, if you catch my drift.

Why am I doing this? I need something to put on my Blog, which you are reading now. And let me be clear I have NEVER been satisfied with the word "blog." I come from The Old Days back in 1997 when we used to call them Online Diaries. I was a diarist. I still am a diarist. No one calls me that. Well, actually I'm not a diarist anymore because I don't really write about my personal life. That was a phase I went through over a decade ago now, when I was getting a divorce and my Dad passed away and a psychiatrist told me I was going through a midlife crisis twenty or thirty years before most people do. I went to him because I suffered from depression. His answer? "Dude, if you weren't depressed with your life, THEN I'd think there was something wrong with you!" So I got all better. My life's incredibly boring now and I don't talk about it online if I can help it - or unless it's funny.

I fancied myself a journaller for a time, not to be confused with journalist, which is actually a word... I digress. I'm not a blogger, or a bloggist. This is not a blog, but that's what the kids call it nowadays and so I'm stuck with that. Lewis Black won't ever look at what I do here solely because he thinks the word blog sounds like a medical issue that requires minor surgery. I had an umbilical hernia back in March and let me tell you - THAT was a blog! It hurt too! ...I digressed again, didn't I? Where were we? Oh! Kevin Pollak! And RIGHT THERE! I almost added a C again, and that's after several hours of sleep. Why do I keep wanting to put a C before the K there? I don't know what's wrong with my fingers today. Which reminds me. Felicia Day? Sweetheart? Apple of my eye? Queen of my Internets? When someone asks you "two fingers or touch type?" they are not talking about sexual excapades. Let's try "chicken pecking at the keyboard or do you actually know how to type?" I actually know how to type. Last time I checked it was 77wpm so when I add a C to a Pollak, it happens faster than I can think.

Kevin Pollak has a problem similar to my problem with the word "blog." He wants everyone to use the word "Intervision" instead of the phrase "Web TV." I understand. Everyone would like to be the one to coin a phrase. However, one cannot explode onto the scene as a celebrity years after the scene has already been and change the name. ...Well. You CAN. I don't recommend it. Kevin Pollak asked everyone watching his show to consider Intervision..

"INTERVISION! Give it a test drive. See how you feel."

I slept on it. I don't like it. I'm driving it around. Trying to use it in every day online talk. I feel like a douche saying it and I'll tell you why. Television's abbreviation is TV. So that means InterVision's abbreviation must be IV. IV is short for intravenous. It's also the roman numeral four. It's also a girls name (Ivy). IV is already busy enough. It doesn't need InterVision to come along and make its life harder. InterVision also reminds me of IntelliVision, which was a short-lived gaming platform that got beat out by the Atari 2600 which, in hindsight I can't understand how that happened. Did I just show off my geek chops cuz I know all that? Anyway, InterVision hurts my head. I'm still trying to slosh it around in my mouth though. Maybe the aftertaste won't make me gag. Like expensive white wine - the kind that doesn't come out of a box. I like the kind that comes out of a box. Ironically that kind doesn't make me gag.

Kevin Pollak doesn't like the phrase Web Content. Why I'm not sure. As of this writing I've only so far experienced his interview with Felicia Day, and his introduction to his first episode, which may or may not still be online when you read this. I want to see the LeVar Burton interview but I also want to type this, so I'm torn. I'll finish the Burton interview after I'm done here. Pollak is bravely venturing into what is to him uncharted territory. The fact many of us have been wallowing in it for some time is not important to him, because he's not here with us. He's over there with him. He's like someone who can't swim wading into a public swimming pool for the first time, and we are trying not to look directly at him while we snicker - only the problem is he WANTS us to look directly at him. He has a CHAT show, for crying out loud! So his discomfort and embarrassment at venturing into this new medium is part of the charm of his show, only sometimes not quite in the way he intends it to be. His show is what he wants it to be, but what we see is not what he wants it to be. That's the beauty of *ahem* ...InterVision.

For example when he talks to his "people" off camera, it's amusing but not how he thinks. He's comparing it to Regis Philbin having a "Gelman" to boss around. I compare it more to Marie Antoinette asking for a cleaner guilotine. I mean when I make my little "show" and post it to YouTube, my "people" off camera consist of a puppet and another puppet. And the occasional cockroach. Point of fact I've written the puppets out of my on camera fiascos because the general public sees a puppet and expects the show to be cute and kid-friendly which is precisely what I was trying to avoid. So I dropped the puppets from my act. I don't HAVE any people. Point of fact I don't have an act, but that's not why I'm doing it.

So right there, when Kevin Pollak is self-conscious because he's "not ready" for a live show and the people who work for him are not getting him ready fast enough to satisfy him? ...That's so cute.

"And for the fifth time, We're Not Ready."

All this means he's not ready, or perhaps he's too ready. Perhaps while simultaneously criticizing mainstream media and Hollywood marketing with his rapier sharp tongue, he's also too spoiled in the baggage and trappings of that world to realize that when you're making Professional Web Content for The InterVision, YOU DON'T NEED ALL THAT SHIT. Hell, The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show was made in a residential backyard on a budget of duct tape and thrift store visits. By the way, when Felicia Day mentioned The Gorgeous Tiny Chicken Machine Show to Kevin Pollak and he looked back at her like he was doing a William Shatner doubletake? That was telling. Not only does Kevin Pollak need to set his ass down in a chair and watch every seizure-inducing episode of Kim Evey's (okay AND Greg Benson's) awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping little series, he needs to beg her to be on an episode. He needs to EXPERIENCE what it's like to be a part of that, as Ron Jeremy and Wil Wheaton and Adam Arkin have experienced it. THEN he will know. THEN he will have been baptised in the sanctity of all this silliness. Failing that, he has a long way to go.

Another problem I'm having with his show is the shizophrenic nature of it. They're learning as they go. We're all learning as we go. That's not the problem. I'm trying to figure out if Kevin Pollak is trying to be Kevin Pollak, or if his impersonation skills are bleeding into his efforts to be a talk show host.

First off, the black backdrop and the table. You're on the Internet. Why not put a greenscreen behind you and then use all that technology off camera to put the interview wherever the hell you want? Even if you want the interview to be a black backdrop with a table, using greenscreen allows you to start there and then go elsewhere when the mood strikes. The decision to go with a black backdrop and a table is not thinking "INTERVISION." It's boob toob thinking, and last I checked we were in the 21st century.

This screams Charlie Rose to me. Whether on purpose or accidentally, Kevin Pollak is channeling a little Charlie Rose and I don't even know if he knows how to impersonate Charlie Rose. I think perhaps this is financially motivated. Of all the talk show backdrops that have worked in the history of video, Charlie Rose's set is the most ideal. It doesn't draw attention to itself. It's cheap. It brings eye focus to the interviewer and the interviewee ...and the table. That's all you want! However, it screams to me that Pollak doesn't have his own look and his own vision here. He's going with what works for others. I can also see a little Tom Snyder in the setup and in Pollak's delivery. Snyder was always ingratiating himself to his audience and it was lovable. He was also trying to prove he was on the cutting edge of technology and then he would describe the airwaves and broadcast signal as if he were a beatnik poet. I can see a little Bill Maher slipping into Pollak's presentation, especially in the format of the opening bits where he introduces himself. There's also some Larry King in the friendly yet immediate nature of the interview. The five tweets thing reminds me too much of Craig Kilborn's Five Questions, and I see a lot of Kilborn's greatest tragic mistake in his interview skills which Pollak needs to watch: narcisism. Kilborn always made his interviews about him. Compare that to Jon Stewart, who makes the interviews he does about both himself and his interviewee of the moment. That's a very subtle but very powerful difference. Why? Because Kilborn is now "Craig who?" And Stewart is not. That's why.

"Hit me with it. I'll throw in a little Shatner."

Some things he's doing right? Well I don't know if this is right but I think I like it. Pollak's on the wrong side of the screen. He's on the left. Left to right. Not ALL, but many interview shows put the interviewer on the right side of the screen, looking right to left at the subject. Why? I don't know why. There's probably marketing gurus who could go into detail, but if the subject of the interview is on the right side of the screen, this means the interview subject is looking right to left at the interviewer. From the perspective of a viewer, this means the interviewer is comfortable and the interviewee is not. Unless the viewer has spent a lifetime reading farsi, which as I understand it is written right to left on the printed page.

In the western hemisphere at least, left to right is comfortable for the viewer, and therefore when they see that its ..comforting. Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Charlie Rose, Ellen DeGeneres, Jay Leno, Jon Stewart, Craig Kilborn, Jimmy Kimmel across the board you'll see the interviewer on the right. However, Bill Moyers? Not always on the right. Oprah Winfrey? Not always on the right. And if you wanna break new ground and stand out and be something different? Kevin Pollak's on the right track here. I think. Or he may just unnecessarily be making it appear to the audience that his interviews are tougher than they should be, because it feels like the interviewee has to struggle with the interview when really s/he is just sitting there not struggling. It's all a mind thing. Very unconscious.

Also, if you put Kevin Pollak's name on something, you want Kevin Pollak. So he can't NOT be who he is. I wanna see his impressions, but I understand this is a CHAT show. His impressions are not why we're here, but they are. It's great when he slips a little in here and there. That's fun. It's spice tho. Too much of that distracts from the interviewee. However, too little and the audience is disappointed. He's managed thus far (to my satisfaction but it's early yet) to match that delicate balance. That's commendable.

The actual interview with Felicia Day kind of spun my mind around a bit, which could be the intent. I know her story already. Picking Felicia Day's interview to watch first wasn't random. Of those Pollak has interviewed thus far, she was my first choice (LeVar Burton a close second). In hindsight, I should be picking the interview subjects I DON'T know, and perhaps there's a wealth of questions and answers to mine in the fact I am looking at Pollak's list of interviews and going for the familar (Day. Burton. Perry.) when I should be seeking unfamiliar territory (Mallick. Gallo. Brewster.) with which to expand my knowledge and horizons.

"It's not your daddy's show! That's right! I can look right down the barrel, baby!"

I'm a geek. I adore Felicia Day. She's MY Queen of the Internet for the moment and has been since The Guild (ijustine eat your heart out). However, Pollak had her entire life story in front of him and seemed a little, dare I say, intimidated? She has already been where he's now venturing to go. So to go back to the pool metaphor, he's standing there on the steps in the kiddie section wearing boxer shorts and armband floaties, and Day pops her head out from the deep end with a mermaid fish tail flapping playfully behind her telling him the water's fine! Dive in!

His questions attempted to stay on topic, with the playful left turn at Alberquerque's Cat Sanctuary. That was fun. However when he got into the meat of her message, he seemed a little distracted by all the goody - like a kid in a candy store. What to talk about first? This girl has generated twenty million hits over a few years. He's still in the thousands and he's thirsty for more but fears drowning - which is entirely possible. Producing a show like his, or hers, takes thousand of little decisions that have to be made and you have to make those decisions and stick to 'em and you fret and fume and worry. There's one little decision that can't be made inhouse because I think the answer for the people making it might be no, cuz they're not gonna want this, and Pollak's not gonna want this, but Pollak shouldn't be the only member of The Pollak Chat Show who is miked.

What makes Pollak's show intriguing to me isn't his guests or him, but in the process for which he's placed himself. Pollak's self-consciousness when he realizes LeVar Burton's been sitting off camera for ten minutes and no one has thought to mike him yet. THAT is for me, priceless entertainment that money can't buy and you're never gonna see on David Frikkin Letterman.

Granted, a real interview show SHOULD be about the interview. However, let's face it. Pollak has an ego bigger than Cleveland. This is NOT going to be about a great interviewer. It's going to be a meeting of minds. Pollak's a great magnificent subject in his own right. Are you kidding me? The man's got an idbm page as long as my arm! Get out! I've half a mind to say this web series should be about people like Day and Wil Wheaton and myself going on his show so we can sit there for an hour and ASK HIM QUESTIONS. No. This ain't Charlie Rose. Nor should it be.

"I'll do this into my camera... Literally, MY camera."

Pollak's distractions with the nuts and bolts of making the show as the show is happening - I'm finding that just as - if not more - interesting. Pollak wants the show to be professional. He wants it to be able to compete with mainstream, so he wants it like mainstream and yet better. However the truth of the matter is what makes a show off the mainstream better than mainstream is that it is decidedly not mainstream and you have to embrace that.

His people shouldn't be his people. They should be our people: a part of the show. When he cuts to them, they should be able to turn their mike on and respond. If this is really more than just Kevin Pollak's chat show, then we should hear the "little people" making him look big. So he stops looking like Marie Antoinette asking for a cleaner guilotine.

No man is an island. Pollak, a man who has made a living being other people for laughs, should know that better than anybody.

. . .

Oh. And one more thing? I'm adding this at the bottom after having seen Kevin Pollak interview Mr. LeVar Burton. He AGREES with me! In the very first interview of this series, when Pollak was forced to admit several times "we're not ready" Mr. Burton in the amazing and prolific and poetic way that only he can illuminate so uniquely, underlined the importance of the people behind the scenes scrambling to put together Mr. Pollak's show not just because he's their boss but because they're his friends and they love the stuffings out of him - even though he probably pisses them off on a daily basis.

What really makes this show fun, is the stuff we ain't seeing! The stuff they are trying to hide from the camera is precisely what separates InterVision from the unevolved apes that have run TeleVision into the ground. We don't want Reality TV. We want Real TV. That's what InterVision has the potential to become.

Deaf Radio

I dedicate this blog post to a guy named Mike Shannon for no other reason than because people like him and George Gimarc and people who update Wikipedia about radio stuff and guys who actually love radio more than I do have taken the time to capture the history of it for posterity, so when someone like me wants to write about radio, I got places I can go to check my own memory and pretend to remember more than I do. Recently in my car I've found myself listening to the radio again. I guess I'm too lazy to change out the CD in the car. Isn't that pathetic? So when I have the radio on in the car it usually starts on the NPR station even though I haven't donated to them in over a decade. I haven't had a decent job in over a decade. I'm barely paying my bills. I can't afford to pay theirs, too.

Having a short attention span (I know the politically correct term nowadays is Attention Deficit Disorder but screw that), I found myself crawling up the radio dial. I say "dial" as if it still is a dial. It's not. Radio has become digital. I push buttons now. I understand how old the phrase "radio dial" makes me look and I don't care beyond my surreptitious amusement to type about it for about thirty seconds okay I'm done let's move on where was I? Many years ago there was a radio station here in Dallas called "93.3 The Zone." No one remembers it cuz no one listened to it. The Zone briefly turned into "The Merge" and that's when I first started listening to it. I liked it, so naturally the Media Gods deemed it Too Cool To Live and destroyed it just as I was getting into the habit of listening to it. One reason why I enjoyed The Merge was that at the time, it was one of the few radio stations in the air that was attempting, however feebly, to play and support local Texas music by local north Texas bands. Predominantly this support was relegated to Sunday nights when most people weren't listening, but I figured it was a start and back then this idea of supporting local music actually mattered to me. I believed in supporting local music and independent film. I now don't believe in supporting much of anything, since everything I support tends to not make it big. I'm a curse. I decided years ago the best thing I could do if I loved something was to stay as far away from it as possible and enjoy it from a safe distance. I cite Kristy Kruger for example. She seems to be doing very well for herself. At one time I fancied myself someone who could figure out a way to help her jump start her career, but being completely incompetent and unable to network and totally devoid of ideas was not the best place to start in that arena. When I stopped trying to ingratiate myself to her, coincidentally her career went from local to regional to national to international. I adore her from a very safe distance now - like how safe Mars is from Chernobyl. This seems to be working for her. I'm very proud.

So I started listening to The Merge and it tanked. Everything I touch dies. The Merge died and was replaced by "93.3 The Bone" because someone in their infinite wisdom thought since people weren't listening to a vague radio name like Merge, they'll surely listen to something more concrete like a dog chewtoy. Needless to say I stopped listening to The Bone as soon as it stopped being The Merge. I take it as a personal insult when a radio station decides to change its identity while I'm enjoying it. Maybe I shouldn't be so sensitive. However, true to form, the second I stopped listening to the station, it became popular. The Bone enjoyed its existence on 93.3 from 2002 to 2009. It never got fantastic numbers but it seemed to manage to hold its own. One of the things 93.3 was doing right was that it had local talent. One of the things it wasn't doing right was that it wasn't playing local talent a lot of local people wanted to listen to, which eventually led to its demise.

Recently I happened upon 93.3. It was still one of the preset buttons on my dashboard. This indicates how rarely I change the preset buttons on my car. It also may indicate how long it's been since I listened to the radio. I mean, I have a CD player. I listen to my CDs mostly. Imagine my surprise to learn that what was once The Bone is now "FM 93.3 Quality Rock" and the morning show consists of a group of guys based out of Atlanta Georgia who call themselves "The Regular Guys." I shit you not. Quality Rock. Regular Guys. I suppose they also have Generic traffic reports and Store Brand sports & weather.

This is what conventional radio has been reduced to: a radio format that is designed to be as politically correct and unobtrusive as possible, to the point where the soul has been completely wrung out of it. At one time there were radio personalities that people remembered because they stood for something. Maybe they stood for shit, but it was something. I'm not talking about shock jock Howard Stern, although in his own way he was continuing the tradition. Since radio first became a place where music could be presented to an audience, there have been people in the business who were willing to take risks and present new sounds to the world that tuned in. Whether it was the big band sound of Glenn Miller, or that daring brash young man named Elvis Costello, there were men and women on the cutting edge of sound. They'd go out there and listen to what artists had to offer, and they'd bring back stuff that was original and hungry and thought provoking and challenging and fun.

Then top 40 came along and though no one knew it yet, we were witnessing the beginning of the end, and it's been a long time coming. Also recently here in Texas someone with money and influence has taken the radio station 97.1 frequency and tried to bring back a ghost.

"97.1 The Eagle" was a staple of north Texas radio for decades. As a teenager I remember it being one of those stations that everyone listened to, even if you didn't really like the music played. Personally I liked it cuz it's where I could hear Doctor Demento, but local church pressure caused the station to drop his show, and I don't recall being a big fan of The Eagle much after that, but I had a silent respect for it. In the late 90s and early 00s, between Howard Stern's morning show and Kramer & Twitch at night, let's just say Clear Channel's lawyers had their hands full.

Clear Channel had purchased The Eagle years before as it had aquired pretty much all its stations, without giving a damn about the people listening. CC realized around this time that The Eagle & The Edge were sort of vying for the same audience. However, both stations were owned by CC so why was it competing with itself? In some suit and tie's remarkable knuckle dragging move, a decision was made to pull the plug on the controversial Eagle and replace it with an adult contemporary format called "Sunny 97.1" that played "the best of the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, and today." This was later replaced by a spanish format station.

Earlier this year, the ghost was resurrected. The Eagle soars once more over the airwaves of north Texas. However, what was once a teeming cauldron of over-active disc jockeys each with a chip on their shoulder and an annoying attitude? Now we got robot jocks. They think we can't tell the difference, and consciously maybe we can't.

Not long ago Texas was subjected to Jack FM which I understand is popular here and in many radio markets across the world. Jack is all voice tracking, and its slogan is "we play what we want." So basically the format is telling the audience, to its face, that it doesn't know what it wants to listen to and even if it did Jack doesn't care. No requests. Jack's gonna play what he's programmed to play and if you don't like it, change the channel. Jack has a playlist of roughly a thousand songs, easily twice as many as its competition in most cases. However, it's still a glamorized automated playlist that's not determined by a deejay. It's determined by committee. It's soulless, and after the novelty wears off, it can't compete with my CD collection.

People owning radio stations still prefer a robot deejay to the alternative. This is safer: they surely wouldn't want actual human beings on the air that might accidently make a joke about domestic terrorism, or demean women as sex objects, or say the word "booger" during drive time. It's a ghost with no soul. The soul in conventional radio has been removed - exorcised by lawyers and politicians and special interest groups.

You think that's bad? Look at Radio Sass. This is the new direction of radio. "Through time compression, you get the memorable heart of each song, with an average length of aproximately two minutes with NO self indulgent guitar solos, NO long intros, NO repetition of choruses again and again. Radio returns to the snappy song length of the 1960s." Then they wonder why we listen to our CDs? Are they so dense?

Maybe we can't consciously tell, but unconsciously we can sense that there's nothing under the sheet. With "Quality Rock" they are actually trying to create a radio station that is as bland as our CD collection - no personality. Just sound. What they don't understand is that we each turn to our CDs not because we are easily offended, but that we each are offended in different ways, and we want our entertainment to appeal to our sensibilities, whatever they may be. Making radio more generic isn't going to bring us back. It only reminds us why we listen to our own music collection instead. When I listen to my music, I am my own deejay, program director, and everything. How did radio ever compete with that?

People who own radio think they're listening to their audiences. Millions of dollars are poured into focus groups and surveys and research and all kinds of stuff. The end result makes McDonalds' Fillet O Fish almost palatable by comparison. For all its attempts to listen to what its listeners want to hear, radio has been tone deaf for decades, and it never listens to anything about itself that it doesn't want to hear, which nowadays is pretty much everything.

Maybe a request line that actually answers requests and doesn't just thank you for calling, would be a start. However, why would I bother calling a request line, when my favorite CD is ..oh yeah right. I'm too lazy to change the CD out in my car. Guess I'll have to start exercising and reach across to swap them out, because almost a decade later, the radio dial is as much a lobotomized wasteland as it was when I stopped listening to The Bone, and The Real Eagle was put to pasture.

Marketing the Geek

Okay this is kinda cringeworthy.

[Of course, the fact both Mr. Wheaton and myself are having difficulty conveying our respectively similar but deceptively different messages, while marketing dweebs usurp the word 'geek' for their own twisted ends, their relative ease at conveying that usurpation upon an unsuspecting public lends credence to their inevitable success and our inevitable failure at preserving the true nature of geekiness. Why? Cuz Wheaton and myself are not marketing dweebs. We're geeks! We don't know how to properly convey our message, but marketing dweebs do. Irony, thou art a cruel mistress.]

I'm not saying Wil Wheaton is cringeworthy, or his words. I mean what he's talking about. I mean they are creeping me out, because they are claiming to be geeks and they wear a geek banner like wolves in sheep's clothing, but they're partying in the henhouse and we true geeks are powerless to stop them.

I guess I've kinda noticed this happening over the years and since I don't believe in active activism personally (I'm sure it works for you whoever you are it's just not my thing) I never wanted to do anything about it, but I take umbrage at the blatant misuse of words when done with malice or greed in mind. Even and especially if people 'mean well' they almost always mean well for themselves and their 'kind' and I don't take kindly to that at all. However, again I'm not into actively trying to stop people from being stupid so I usually try to let this kinda crap slide.

It's like Bill Maher when he called his old ABC tv series "Politically Incorrect." He did that on purpose, cuz he noticed a lot of jackoffs, assholes, and scumbags using the phrase "Politically Correct" as if it gave them the right to be jackoffs, assholes, and scumbags to anyone with whom they disagreed. And it didn't. And they did it anyway. And Bill Maher didn't respond by egging their houses or setting their carports on fire. He responded by making a tv series he called "Politically Incorrect" and then voicing off about issues that mattered to him and pissed off the "Politically Correct" people. Of course, they responded by getting him fired for saying that maybe flying planes into buildings isn't an act of cowardice. Still, I digress.

People take words and try to change their meaning to suit their own needs, and then they accuse people who use those words in other ways (like the way they were originally intended) of being wrong, because they're "taking it back" which is impossible by the way cuz it was never theirs in the first place so they can't take back anything but there ya go.

In this case I'm speaking of the word "geek" or to be more specific, the current trendy intention of furthering and perpetuating Geek Advancement as if it were saving baby seals or protecting the environment from soda cans and Styrofoam cups.

It didn't use to be a badge of honor. It was a word that meant you were a social outcast. It meant you were different. Special. Touched. It usually meant you were smarter than the person calling you a geek, but rarely in a way that indicated you felt that automatically gave you power over said stupid person calling you a geek. If the word "geek" were prefaced with the phrase "pencil neck" chances are the one name calling was about to stick the one being called a pencil neck geek into a nearby gym locker. One-sided violence would ensue. Being a geek was not a good thing.

Nonetheless, as I grew up I took a personal pride in being called a geek. I didn't belong among those who called me a geek, nor did I want to be among them. They were jackoffs and assholes and scumbags. Call me what you want, just leave me alone. Or beat the crap out of me and THEN leave me alone. I wanna get back to reading Encyclopedia Brown.

And believe me, I EARNED THAT. I deserve to be called a geek. It's my personal badge of honor. You don't go through elementary school with a six foot sissy bar on the back of your bicycle, a backpack with a "kick me" sign taped to it, and regularly bruised and beaten face and chest, and NOT get to walk into adulthood with the right to consider yourself a motherfucking geek.

That was then. This is now.

There was a time when the word "geek" meant a person regarded as foolish, inept, or clumsy. That was it! All the rest of what it means to be a geek was gravy. Essentially you had a red A on your blouse. You were a social outcast. You didn't belong. The details were unimportant. Geeks were not all alike. That's the point. They were different from anybody else. That didn't ever make them like each other. Some geeks were considered so smart as to be able to calculate and ponder theoretical physics equations in their head. Some geeks were known for biting the heads off live chickens or swallowing flaming swords. There's a varied wide spectrum of geeks and none of them belong under some commercially manufactured banner! There's pish posh marketing types out there who are trying to "take back the geek" and use the phrase to represent something that they think will unite others to their cause. They use the word geek like it's a rallying cry. Like it's a way to band like-minded souls together towards a common goal. They want to put "geek" on T-Shirts and lunchboxes and baseball caps and convince people that not only should they strive to be a geek, if they don't buy into the manufactured pop culture surrounding said geekdom, they won't be geekworthy. Screw that!

Wil Wheaton said:

It's like a slap in the face to be associated with these people who claim to be like me, and want to be part of our culture, but couldn't tell you the difference between Slackware and Debian, a d8 and a d10, or how to use vi or emacs. In other words, they haven't earned it, but they're wrapping themselves in our flag because their PR people told them to.

In some ways I agree with Mr. Wheaton, and in some ways I don't. Even here, Wheaton is defining the word geek for himself. I don't know the difference between Slackware and Debian. I know what Slackware is. I don't know what Debian is. Automatically, in Wheaton's eyes, that means I'm not a geek. I know when he says d8 and d10 he's talking about dice - and not the d6'ers used for Yahtzee. My D8 and D4 often gathered dust because I prefer gaming systems that focus on percentile dice (2d10) because you can make one table that can work for anything, thus freeing up the rules for actual roleplay (as opposed to ruleplay which I believe D&D 2nd ed devolved into w/later revisions). I don't know how to use a vi or an emac. So as far as Wheaton is concerned, I don't qualify. I'm not a geek in his eyes, when in reality I'm just not his kind of geek. I'm my kind of geek. I'm sure I could put together my own list of geeky things that I can do that he can't.

That's silly. That's absurd. That's my point.

There's no one kind of geek - nor should there be. There's no qualifying quantifier. The day there is, the word "geek" will cease to serve its purpose, and will start to have concrete and specific meaning that delineates its kind, thus defeating the purpose of its existence as a word for those who don't fit a mold - because it will have one. Not only do I disagree with Wheaton, I'm forced to take it a step further. Nothing personal Mr. Wheaton, but we geeks have no culture. Even after the commercial marketing jackoffs and assholes and scumbags brainwash us all into thinking we do, we don't. We never did. We never will. I wasn't aware being a geek meant I had to function under your flag, or that I exist under anyone's banner beyond my own lack of one. I live as a geek of one. I have no banner. Being a geek doesn't mean I get to go to geek meetings with other geeks and we have geek hoedowns and geek pot luck dinners. I don't have a geek membership card. I don't pay dues. I paid my dues already. I got the scars to prove it.

Those people trying to usurp the word for their own selfish and greedy ends; no they haven't earned it. Neither have I earned sitting with Mr. Wheaton and breaking bread with him over being a geek. That's not what being a geek is about. Being a geek has never been about banding together and joining forces against the established 'cool people.' That only happens in movies like Revenge of the Nerds. The people they got to play the geeks in those movies? They were Hollywood celebrities. Present company accepted, Mr. Wheaton: they weren't geeks.

Being a geek is a private thing. We don't (usually) compare notes. I'm not more of a geek than you because I know more about certain scifi movies. You're not more of a geek than me cuz you can program in C++ and I cannot. Being a geek is not relative and it's not absolute, and there's not any place somewhere where you can go to find your Geek Quotient. ...Okay there's not a REAL place to go find your Geek Quotient. BUT THAT'S JUST WHAT THESE BOZOS WANT TO DO TO THE WORD! They want to quanitize it and package it and pigeon-hole it and turn it into something trendy and cool and socially acceptable.

The whole idea behind being a geek is that one is NOT socially acceptable, and that's the way I like it! No I haven't read Lord of the Rings from cover to cover. There are some who believe one cannot call oneself a geek unless they have. I happen to find Tolkien pedantic, cumbersome, flagrantly captivated by trivial minutiae when he should be focusing on storytelling, and less interesting to read than the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Now, when I was a kid, I DID read entire volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. I doubt many geeks today could boast that! That's entirely the point though; being a geek is not something that can be absolutely defined. Nor should it be, and anyone going around trying to do so should be shoved into a gym locker.

I don't want to hear Jeff Foxworthy going around saying, "if your license plate on your car says 13375p34 you might be a pencil-neck geek" cuz it's not like being a redneck or a greenback or a bluejay or a cheesehead or anything else. Being a member of The Geek Brigade means by definition you are among the non-joiners. IF you're trying to join something, that's being social, and essentially in that instant you stop being a geek. Instead, you become one of them. And you're welcome to it.

Throughout the history of mankind, nongeeks have been trying to prove to geeks that it's better to snicker amongst one another and point fingers at the ones not like them and laugh and say how much better they are then the nonjoiners. Guess what? You've always been wrong, and you will continue to be wrong. You may rob us of the word geek and put it on your blazers and cheerleading outfits. That won't change the fact that you're still cool, and we still suck.

You heard me!

Go on back to your carpools and your soccer practice and your three martini lunches! Some of us will play MMORPGs (and know what that means), some of us will code a program that takes data from Excel spreadsheets for conversion into Powerpoint presentations, some of us will dissect the sentence structure of Stephen Wright jokes in an endless and futile search to understand modern humor, some of us will blog, some of us will tweet, some of us will write in our online diary, some of us will surf the Web, some of us will tweet blog blip and surf all at the same time, some of us will determine the effectiveness of different store bought sweeteners and determine which is least likely to cause cancer in rats, some of us will make a scale replica of the Lincoln Memorial using popsicle sticks and crazy glue, some of us will read Ayn Rand again after having finished off some Zelazny, some of us will run off with the carnival barkers and the circus freaks, some of us will dream in binary, some of us will invent a new filing system for the last ten years of saved emails, some of us will torrent executables in violation of alleged copyright infringement because data is impervious to delineated restrictions placed upon it by lesser-evolved ape-descended lifeforms, and some of us will translate Shakespeare into its original Klingon. None of us will be like one another and none of us will be you.

To Retweet or Not To Retweet That Is The Question

Recently Dave Winer talked about Retweet which features a petition for Tweeters to sign if they want twitter.com to incorporate a "retweet feature" into the website design. I'm torn regarding this concept. The website in question doesn't go into detail about how this retweet function would work. Winer says, "Digg does it right, Twitter --> wrong."

I don't mean to pick on Dave Winer. The name may or may not ring a bell for you. He's a big wig on the Internet but not in a way that makes him a household name, unless the household is filled with web geeks. A lot of people look up to him and respect his views and I think other people whine and complain about whatever it is he's saying. Probably cuz he's usually right and they don't wanna admit it. I don't understand the politics of it but the bottom line is he's smarter than me. Chances are he's smarter than you. Let's leave it at that.

I've been on Digg. I've been on Reddit. Yes, their systems are very good at showing how many other people liked whatever it was a person said. Retweeting isn't exactly the same concept. When I "RT" something, it's not just because I agree with the sentiment. It's because for some reason I believe people who are following my tweets (or more specifically my blips cuz I have a few more blippers than I do tweeple) might be interested in seeing a tweet I've happened upon. Rather than just pretend the idea was mine, I want to acknowledge who said it. Personally, I prefer rewording the sentiment, or shortening it and adding my own two cents, but you only get 140 characters to do all this and oftentimes something gets lost in the translation.

What I'd prefer to see on Twitter, is a way to display the tweet I want to retweet, while leaving some or all of the 140 characters of MY Tweet open for me to add my two cents to what's already been said by someone else. I don't want just a retweet button that automates all this. I want to cheat, essentially. I wanna be able to display all of the previous tweet while still maximizing room for my opinion. Be it a rebuttal, a punchline, a ditto, or a crude ascii picture of boobs using parentheses in a way unsuitable to general audiences.

Currently the way it works now is tolerable for me cuz I can manually sculpt the previous RT to suit what I'm trying to say and add my thought, but I have to do all this in 140 characters. I'm a longwinded son of a bitch. Tweeting is already trying my patience as it is.

There's probably a way to just manually link to the other person's tweet, and I could make one of those tinyurls to minimize space, but then someone has to click to that other screen to see what I'm talking about. Since I'm usually going for the funny, that rather ruins the set up; not that what I want to say is going to be funny to the person reading it but it might help if I could better present the intended joke.

So if someone can better explain to me what the petition over at retweet.com is going to look like, if it matches what I'd like to see, then maybe I can hop on board this particular parade.

Smishing = Masochistic Sadism

Three quarters of all cellphone users send text messages via the Short Message Service provided in their cellphones. That's over two billion users every day. That's a lot of texting. That's where the minds of roughly one third of the population of the planet are currently. You guys love your cellphones. I say you guys, cuz I don't own one. Nor would I want to. Follow:

I learn something new every day. I already knew about spam, beyond the edible meatish stuff in a can, or the Monty Python reference. I already knew about phishing, where annoying and desperate people use computers to trick people into giving away sensitive personal information that can lead to getting robbed in a cold heartless digital way. Now there's Smishing. Will wonders ever cease? Smishing is so new of a phrase, that the spellchecker which Blogger.com lets me use thinks it's misspelled.

Rather than using email, as in phishing, the process of Smishing utilizes SMS text messages sent to people's cellphones. The message pretends to be some legitimate sounding company like a bank or a dating service, informs the Mark that they will be charged fees for NOT responding to the message, and gives a fake website or phone number. The Mark then responds and learns they must give up their bank account or credit card info in order to have the charges canceled. Of course, there were no charges in the first place because the original message is phony. However, once the Mark gives up their confidential bank info, the Smisher robs them blind. I think that's called a "Sting" in the biz of being an asshole for money.

Currently the standard response to this behavior is to ignore it. Really, there's nothing more you can do. If you respond, you risk the bad guys gleaning some kind of info from you. It's possible if you click on the phony site link, the second you do that server will be able to determine who you are, what ISP you use, your IP address, and other info you probably wouldn't want them to know. Some hackers are able to set it up so the second you click on a website, malicious software or "malware" might infect your computer through the website. You might have that on your computer now and are unaware of it. Most of the time keeping anti-virus software running in the background can help deter that, but there's no such thing as an unhackable program. And since the info provided by the smisher is purposefully fake, it's impossible to use that info to trace back to the source. You can't learn the identity of the person trying to get your identity, so you can't respond by driving to their house and TPing their front lawn.

The sad truth is that simply ignoring them is not the answer either, and I'll tell you why. The reason spam and phishing and now smishing continues to proliferate is because spammers and hacks can continue repeating this behavior with little to no fear of retaliation. Arguably there are laws on the books against this sort of thing, but it's difficult to police and the penalties even if convicted are not a big deal compared to the possible profit one can get if one succeeds. Same reason why thieves rob banks. Sure you'll go to jail, IF you get caught, and thieves always think on the outset that they're smart enough to get away with it. Sometimes they are.

It takes little to no effort or resources on the part of a spammer or Smisher, and because there's hardly any investment on their part, it only takes one fool responding for them to eke out a profit. A spammer or Smisher can spam tens of thousands in minutes or seconds, and if only one person falls for it, they profit. Ignoring them may save you in the short term, but it does not improve the situation for the long term, and there's a sucker born every minute.

As for being charged per text message, I don't own a cellphone so can't speak to that. However, I'm shocked that anyone would sign up with a cellphone company that would charge them per message sent to them. That's absurd. I wouldn't even want a plan where I'm charged per msg I send out. That's crazy too. I'd want a monthly fee and that'd be the end of it. Can't get that, so I live without a cellphone just fine. One of the many reasons why I don't have a cellphone is because I've yet to hear a plan that doesn't sound like I'd get nickeled and dimed to death by the phone company. If they started charging me by the webpage, I'd drop my ISP in a heartbeat! Why do you put up with that on your cell?

If those of you with cellphones would demand more respectable plans from the phone companies, maybe then I could get one, once phone companies are forced to use common sense instead of scamming tactics to rob people of their money. Use your brains, cellphone users! Furthermore this entire issue should not be your problem. The phone companies should be stopping spam and malicious messages BEFORE they get to your phones. What ARE you paying them for, anyway? If you wanna pay someone to randomly annoy you every day, there's homeless people out there who would do that for half the cost of a cellphone. Come to think of it, I'm unemployed currently. I'd love to get into a business where I can annoy people for money. I'd charge twelve dollars an hour - minimum of two hours a day. That'd be like $120 per person per week - I just struck the mother lode!