Things that might be decidedly odd…

My Real Alter

According to Focus, I am officially 28.55 years old. I guess I am turning into an old man. Maybe I should only be eating meat or sausage (is Wurst not Fleisch?) less than twice a week and driving sport more than never.

But seriously, I was just wandering around on the internet to gear down after doing work and I came across this site that sells German peridocals in the US. The prices are not low, but they’re not really outrageous I guess either. Spiegel is like $150 for 6 months, which works out to something less than $6 per week (1 issue). I need to do something to keep my German up and attempting to read those books now that I was supposed to read in German literature 3.5 years ago just isn’t working.

Maniacs

Just now while driving home from my radio show, I almost got in a head on collision with some maniac right by my house! The star shows where it all almost happened:

I was just driving normal speed, going north on Davie about to break for the stop sign at the intersection with W Poplar. Out of nowhere, some maniac going east on W Poplar turns the corner onto Davie going WAY too fast. For some reason, he’s driving on the wrong of the street (which is very narrow) and coming straight at me. All I could really do is break and blow my horn, hoping that either he would swerve onto his side of the road or at least hit me while I was stopped (thereby reducing the effective imact speed). Fortunately, he swerved, but WTF!

Man, I wish I could have gotten the license plate number. I would have fucking called the cops on that shit. The car sped off very fast even after swerving around me.

In other news, I have heartburn right now for reasons I don’t exactly understand. I just got that taste in my mouth about half way through my show. Maybe it was Tynia’s individual cheese cake combined with a cup of Shiner Bock. Ick. Time to drink some more baking soda + water, since I don’t have regular antacid.

More Oddities from the Police Log

The Chapel Hill/Carrboro police log never ceases to produce gems such as this one:

According to reports, James Lafayette Watkins, 33, of 100 W. Rosemary St., was stopped at 12:33 a.m. while driving south on Airport Road in a Tar Heel Taxi, following a report of larceny from the Harris Teeter on Airport Road.

Reports state that officers frisked Watkins and found five, 1-pound bags of Harris Teeter-brand frozen shrimp, valued at $64.95.

Watkins was charged with one misdemeanor count of larceny and was taken before the magistrate.

He was released on a written promise to appear March 21 in Orange County District Criminal Court in Hillsborough.

Questions:
1) Who shoplifts and then flees in a taxi? Especially in a city like this where you have to call a taxi!
2) Who hides 5 pounds of frozen shrimp on their person?!?

Superbowl

Unlike Kendra K who watched the Puppy Bowl, I actually watched the regular Superbowl at my friends’ place. I liked the commercial where those kids threw MC Hammer over the fence. I also had some Cincinatti Chili that Henry prepared. It has no beans, but lots of cinnamon and hot pepper and is served over spaghetti noodles. Interesting.

The Radio Show, Part II

So tonight I did another show. Once again, it’s nice to be back on the radio, although I really didn’t appreciate having a cold and being on air. I took a decongestant around 10:30pm and while it worked my eyes are all dryed out now. Anyhow, I had to record this show so that it can be critiqued by my mentor.

Of course, I managed to press stop not once but TWICE on a playing CD. Doh. I don’t think I ever did that at KALX even. However, the controls for the CD players at WXYC are kinda odd. They have these ancient CD players that are connected to this special control panel. There are buttons on the control panel which let you switch which player you’re controling. So, me being the dumbass that I am pressed the stop button while the selector was on the CD currently playing. I should have switched to the other drive first. CD3 is actually a Sony like the ones we had at KALX with that nifty “Program” button and the joggle track changer.

Another DJ in the station at the time commented on my playing of the Monkees’. Something about not having heard that on the station before. Yet the music library has the multidisc CD set somewhat recently (as opposed to back in the 60s) released by Rhino of all their albums, not to mention *duplicate copies* of various greatest hits records on vinyl. Clearly, an underutilized station resource. Also, a different DJ pointed out that it was clear that I moved from the Bay Area. Ya, I played the Hi-Fives, the Dead Kennedys, Matmos and certainly many others.

I just haven’t been able to get into the whole Chapel Hill-Carrboro indie rock thing, at least not yet. This is frequently compounded by the fact that the Cat’s Cradle seems to charge what I consider outrageous prices for shows I might casually want to see. I should probably just start going to random $10 shows, although $10 for random is still a bit steep in my book.

Granted as I look at the schedule, the Brave Combo is going to play a cistic fibrosis benefit for $10 in March. I should check that shit out.

Also, an EAS test that came in somehow relayed itself or something, right in the middle of Moon over Marin. I stopped the record and did a whir start coming back out of it. Doh, again.

I didn’t get as many calls this week as compared to last week, but then again the music I played tonight was more random. I didn’t really plan things out (read, pick out all my favorite stuff that I was only able to play the first time, since now I have to dig again), but instead wandered through the library picking up random stuff that I knew or that looked good.

Also, I overpulled, despite the fact that I was certain I had underpulled. I guess I’m just used to getting together about 45 pieces of music for 3 hours, which just doesn’t work when the cuts that are in rotation are in the control room and not browseable beforehand. The new music requirements are basically 5-6 an hour, which means I probably need to be pulling about 50% less music (~30 for 3 hours).

I managed to rig up StreamRipper to copy the station’s MP3 stream to disk on my laptop. It seems to have worked well, but I computed the number of seconds to record for wrong (10810 instead of 11400) and lost about the last 5 minutes of the show. No more tapes for me (I hope), especially because my walkman-style tape player (the only one I have these days) appears to no longer play tapes ): I guess the radio still works, which doesn’t render it totally useless.

Bizarro World

Berkeley can be so odd sometimes.

Sick

I have a cold and am subsequently annoyed. I can’t remember the last time I was sick, but it must have been sometime while I was in Germany. I didn’t end up going to karaoke at Bub’s tonight because I figured I should convalesce instead. Anyhow, I’ll hopefully be better soon.

Earlier today I sat down to listen to the tape of my radio show I made last week, but it seems nothing actually got recorded. This is particularly annoying since I had to futz with the tape deck at the time for a while just to get it to go. Plus, the deck doesn’t auto-flip so I missed some time switching out tapes and flipping them anyways. Tomorrow I have my computer rigged up to record my show off the MP3 stream the station provides though. With any luck that should work nicely and I won’t even need to worry about coordinating the whole tape ordeal.