Friday, October 13, 2006

Go Big I!

Heighdy-heighdy-heighdy-ho!
Heighdy-heighdy-heighdy-ho!

Wiggledy-waggledy-wiggledy-wo!
Wiggledy-waggledy-wiggledy-wo!

Lift your heads up to the sky!
Lift your heads up to the sky!

Patriots are passing by!
Patriots are passing by!

We are here to let you know!
We are here to let you know!

East Meck Eagles got to go!
East Meck Eagles got to go!

Go! Go! Go! Go!

The mighty Patriots of Independence High School go for consecutive win number 100 tonight against arch-rivals East Mecklenburg (at least they were our arch-rivals when I was there 28 years ago).

By the way, lest you think that our cheerleaders were lame (well, lamer than cheerleaders in general), the above was the band (most often the inebriated band) cheer, the lead part passed down from class to class until me and my buddy Chuck F shared that responsibility in our senior year.

When we went 2-8.

My how times have changed...

Wednesday, October 11, 2006

It's October. Surprise!

I know there has been a lot of talk the last few days about the North Korea explosion (we assume it was nuclear) being the "October Surprise" but frankly I don't see any way in hell the Repuglicans can turn this to their advantage with the exception of the most serious kool-aid drinkers. After six years of Bush tough-talk, no-action policies towards NK there's nowhere else to lay the blame. Tough talk with nothing to back it up is hardly a winning strategy, particularly when you're dealing with someone that is, well, bat-shit insane. With China sitting on NK's border, the sort of unrestrained John Wayne cavalry charge that Bush used in Iraq to such positive /* hack */ effect /*cough, cough */ was never in the cards and when you've got bat-shit crazy Dear Leader on one side of the ocean and bat-shit crazy Darth Cheney and Rummy teamed up on the other, brinksmanship is really not a viable foreign relations policy.

Cold War policies were based on the assumption that the leaders of both sides of the conflict were sane, rational people with the preservation of their own folks as their primary objective - I'm not willing to make that assumption on the part of Dear Leader and I'm convinced that the idiots running the show in Washington are too self-deluded to understand the difference. Mutually-assured Destruction doesn't work when both parties really are MAD.

Too Good to Last

I suppose I knew that having a decent commercial station in RTP was something that wouldn't last very long. Sure enough, 100.7 (The River) quietly switched from an adult-alternative format that I really liked a couple of weeks ago to classic rock. That made no sense to me until I flipped past Clear Channel's WRDU (106.1) over the weekend and realized that they've gone country. That brought back memories, since they only came into existence back in the mid-80s after the previous AOR station, WQDR, went country (as they still are).

The Triangle area airwaves are dominated by Clear Channel and locally-owned Curtis Media Group and Capitol Broadcasting. With the format changes in the Clear Channel group, the only stations really playing non-oldie non-country music are G-105 (Top-40 crapola) and Curtis Media Group's 96-Rock, which skews way too heavy for my tastes (not a big Creed fan). There are, of course, a large number of university-aligned stations, but State's WKNC (We Know Numerous Cows) was still even heavier that 96-Rock last time I checked, Duke's WXDU can't really be pulled in beyond 15-501 and UNC's WXYC, once my station of choice, rarely plays anything that has, like, a tune or a recognizable song structure and I don't always want to have to work so hard to listen to music. WNCU at NC Central is a nice jazz station but jazz is not what I'm looking for.

So, crap, does this mean I have to bite the bullet and go XM? This wouldn't have been a big deal the last few years but now that I'm a daily commuter it's become a little more of an issue. Suggestions?