Category Archives: Media & Culture

Radio station streaming live video from Palin event

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Hit99fmvideoSarah Palin is holding a rally in Springfield, Missouri, and radio station Hit 99 FM is streaming video live from the event. They could have made it easier to find but deserve props for the effort. I’m having trouble getting audio but perhaps that will change when the event gets underway.

Interesting that this is a music formatted station, not a news/talk’er. David Brazeal is there and might interview someone from the station. We’ll post it here if he does.

PS: This is what we lovingly refer to as “a face for radio.”

Dwight Schrute on how to “deal” with the elderly

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“Unfortunately, humanity seems to lack the backbone to demand that the elderly continue to contribute until they terminate. Instead we both indulge their laziness and demean them, locking them away in retirement homes while they slowly rot in a medicated stupor. The thought seems to be, the elderly, like most minority groups, enjoy being grouped together in a designated living area. But what if we stripped them of their pills and deprived them of their Rascal scooters, perhaps the elderly would stand up and face death like a man: head on, in a battle royal. Win or lose, they’d be more alive than they are now, even if the exertion caused them to cease living.”

Only pussies complain about the word pussy

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Some of you regulars might be aware that I am a big fan of a local (Jefferson City) coffee shop called the Coffee Zone. I’m there every morning and I love the owner/proprietor, Taisir Yanis. There’s not a sweeter guy on the planet.

Last spring I set up a blog for the Coffee Zone and maintain it on my own time and money. Taisir tries to give me a free cup of coffee from time to time but it’s a labor of love.

I recently posted something silly about the Wawa coffee website. They “analyze” your personality based on how you like your coffee. I said something like, “…somebody give these pussies a cup of Rocket Fuel.”

Today I got a text message from Taisir that said: “Pussies.” T speaks English as well as I do but his written English can be a little mysterious at times. So I texted back: “What about ’em?”

To which he replied: “Blog”

Seems he had been getting complaints from customers about my (single) use of the word “pussies” on the Coffee Zone website. I apologized and immediately removed the offending word. T wasn’t offended but he didn’t want to lose a customer so that I might have a full arsenal of comedic words and expressions. And I don’t blame him. Then I started wondering how you lodge such a complaint.

Customer: “I’d like a double-espresso and a latte, please. Light on the foam.”
Taisir: “Here you go, four dollars.”
Customer: “By the way, I was very offended by something I saw on the Coffee Zone blog.”
Taisir: “I’m sorry to hear that. What offended you?”
Customer: (sotto voice) “Pussies.”
Taisir: “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”
Customer: (louder) “Pussies!”
Taisir: “Where did you find “pussies” on my website?”
Customer: “Not so loud!”

You get the idea. As this scene played out in my head I was reminded of the scene in Silver Streak where Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor art trying to decide what kind of car to steal to catch up with the train that… never mind. That’s not important. Wilder wants to steal a Chevy and Pryor wants to steal a red jag. Roll the tape, please.

WILDER: “What are you doing? I thought we were gonna take the Chevy out back!
GROVER: (indicates a red Jag) Chevy!? That’s a jerk-off, man! This here’s pure pussy!

At some point later in the movie (I don’t remember the scen), Wilder is screaming at Pryor, “Pussy?! Pussy?!”

There really isn’t much connection between the scene in the movie and the post on the blog, but in the unlikely event the complaining customer also reads smays.com… I want them to get plenty of PUSSY! PUSSY! PUSSY!

Death by manure spreader

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I came across a story submitted to one of our networks yesterday, about an 81-year-old man was killed when he became caught in the manure spreader he was operating. This just struck me as a bad way to go.

Which started me thinking about “good” ways and “bad” ways. When was the last time you heard or read a story about someone dying in their sleep? Okay, that probably isn’t much of story.

Or about some old guy dying in flagrante delicto, which I think means “in the saddle.” I assume those stories are hard to report. And the deceased is usually found alone in a hotel room with his shoes on the wrong feet.

While there are few “good” ways to go, some are just a damn site worse than others. So I’ve set up a little blog where we can post these stores and be glad they weren’t about us.

If you spot one of these, please send them my way (Steve Mays at Gmail.com) with “Bad Way” in the subject line. Let me know if I can use your name.

I’ve registered BadWaytoGo.com but it isn’t hot yet.

Credit card debt

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According to George Will (on ABC’s This Week), Americans have 105 billion credit cards (9 per card holder); $12,000 in average credit card debt per household; household debt is 139% of household income and no concept of deferred gratification.

9/29/20: Birth of commercial radio

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Thanks to the folks at Wired for reminding us today is the anniversary of the birth of commercial radio.

“In 1922, 30 radio stations were in operation in the United States, and 100,000 consumer radios were sold. Just a year later, 556 stations were on the air and half-a-million receivers were sold. Radio was on its way, and the commercial broadcast model would reign essentially unchallenged for eight decades until the advent of satellite radio and podcasts.”

My dad was a radio guy and so was I for a number of years. I am really glad I didn’t miss it.

Kevin O’Keefe on Twitter

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“Just anecdotal evidence, but I find Twitter users a fairly affluent and upwardly mobile group. They tend toward being business people, as opposed to kids. I’ve not only met people I am now following, but I’ve been turned onto upcoming events of interest that I would have never known of but for Twitter. In one case I ‘direct tweeted’ a person who just moved to Seattle to head up a new group at Microsoft. On another occasion I connected with a leader in the Search Engine Optimization industry. And this doesn’t include the local Seattle lawyers I am making connections with via Twitter.”

It’s probably just frustration with trying to get some “hot new thing,” but I frequently encounter an almost angry tone on the subject of Twitter:“I don’t get it! This is bullshit! What a waste of time!”

I try to remember it took me more than a year for the Twitter to click [Twitterclick:  noun. Small, sub-audible sound in the frontal lobe associated with Twittercognizance]

MacBook product placement in top TV shows

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Ichattv_2In the season premier of The Office, Pam heads off to art school with what appears to be a new MacBook. Back in Scranton, Jim has a MacBook Pro so the two love birds can chat. Of course, Michael has to get in on the fun (“Put me down, Michael. Take me back to Jim.”)

Pretty good product placement. But no better than what we saw in the season premier of HBO’s Entourage (I would have sworn I posted on this but can’t find it), when Johnny Drama carried on an LA/Paris relationship via his MacBook Pro.

I’m sure PC users assume this is just Hollywood horse shit but it really is that easy to video chat on the Mac.

We’re not talking about a bottle of Budweiser on the kitchen table. In both instances, the Mac’s were written prominently into the story line. Would love to know how much Apple paid for these two placements? [via Cult of Mac]

Webcasting high school football games

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“Beginning this Friday, Gannett will have 12 live high school football games showing on widgets posted to USAToday.com and many of our local broadcast and newspaper sites. The games are being produced by our broadcast and newspaper sites as well as a high school AV department. Most of the games are single cam, laptop, aircard + Mogulus productions.” — Liz Foreman, Lost Remote:

“Virtual Immortality Made Easy”

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Grannyfinal228x300Regular readers know  smays.com is all about getting those photos and home movies out of the closet and up on flickr and YouTube. I’ve even posted a time or two about digital immortality.

Scott Maentz and his wife are actually doing something about it. From their website: “Our mission at RememberGranny.com is to help technology challenged Baby Boomers create a legacy for future generations using today’s rich digital media and the latest Internet applications.”

RG.com has packages starting at just $99 but my favorite is the Complete Virtual Immortality Package ($499). Need some f2f help? Then you’ll want to consider the Virtual Immortality Mini-Vacation.

PS: I just went looking for some of my earlier posts where I talk about putting your life on line; paying flickr to keep your pix up forever and a day… and I can’t find them. Poor tagging. If anyone remembers some of these posts and happened to bookmark or link, drop me a line.

I’m closing in on 4,000 posts and it’s getting damned hard to find stuff.