Radio Tales, Part 1: Radio and the work place

American terrestrial radio, as opposed to satellite or internet radio, sucks. Louisville-area radio is especially lame. The main choices around here are Country, Christian, Top 40, and Dinosaur Rock. The only time I listen to the radio is on relatively short trips, usually to Shepherdsville and back. I especially hate having to listen to the radio while at work. Being forced to listen to music I don't like seems to taint my memories of working at places that were otherwise somewhat pleasant to work at. I think I was one of the only people who cheered when Main ex-Employer decided to no longer let us have radios in the warehouse.

The only station that I really wanted to hear all day at Main ex-Employer was 91.9 WFPK, a public station, but we couldn't pick it up.

Top 40 stations were the worst because they play the same songs EVERY HOUR! KISS 98.9 had a much heavier emphasis on Urban hits than 99.7 DJX did. For some parts of 2005, 98.9 felt almost like "All 50 Cent, All the time", since you could hear as many as five songs featuring 50 Cent every hour, namely three of his own singles and two of The Game's singles that he guested on. One day in particular that was really annoying was when we listened to 98.9 for a couple of hours, then I turned it over to something different for the sake of hearing something different, then this girl from the weekend shift who was there for overtime turned it back over to KISS. After a while, I changed the channel again, then after a short period of time the same girl turned it back over to KISS.

Being forced to listen to one of the Country stations was even worse because I don't like new mainstream Country at all. For some perspective, I still consider any Country going back to 1990 "new Country". I don't like '80s Country either, but I'll save a Country rant for some other day. One of the last times I was forced to listen to a Country station at work was in October 2009. I ended up hearing Carrie Underwood's then-new song, "Cowboy Casanova", twice, and found it so irritating that I (figuratively, almost) wanted to kill myself.

Classic Rock is also pretty horrible because I've been so burned out on it for so long. Hearing the openings to some songs, especially "Turn The Page" by Bob Seger, makes me want to go postal. Louisville has two Classic Rock stations. The worst of the two is 107.7 SFR because they seem to play the same five songs from any particular artist/band, and is mostly '70s-centric. It's like their playlist consists of a 20-CD changer filled with those Millenium Collection CDs, and a CD-R of one-hit wonders (ex. "Never Been Any Reason" by Head East or "Jackie Blue" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils) and single tracks from major artists, like maybe one song each from AC/DC and George Harrison ("You Shook Me All Night Long" and "My Sweet Lord" respectively). 95.7 WQMF is the better of the two because they have more of a variety from across the decades, and deeper cuts than SFR. The sad thing is that what QMF now refers to as "Deep Cuts" is stuff that they used to play regularly 20 years ago when they were an AOR station.

Now on to the stations that played newer Rock in 2004/05. The station that I preferred was 105.1 WLRS. The LRS letters had a long history, but from 1997 through 2008 it was a half assed Modern Rock station, mostly playing harder '90s stuff, Pop-Punk and Emo type crap, a lot of Post-Grunge, and occasionally some Alternative Rock. The Rock station that most people preferred was The Fox (first at 100.5, then 93.1), which was more of an Active/Mainstream Rock channel, mostly a lot of post-Grunge/Nu-Metal with some '90s Megadeth, Pantera, or C.O.C. thrown in, and of course the harder overplayed '90s stuff. While I said that I preferred LRS, asking me which channel was better was like asking me which pile of shit smelled better. I remember one time, "Jane Says" by Jane's Addiction came on, one of only two Jane's Addiction songs that get played regularly on the radio. Some kid asked me, Who's this?", and I told him Jane's Addiction. I can't remember exactly, but I think he asked me what else they sang, and I told him they were the same band that did "Been Caught Stealing". The kid said, "Man, they're horrible!" You wouldn't believe how fucking pissed I was, and I explained to him that those songs are neither their best songs, nor representative of them. Later on, the kid asked me about some Crossfade song, and I was like, "Man, fuck Crossfade!" Crossfade ultimately had one hit and faded into obscurity, while Jane's Addiction live on as legends. I thought they also had one of the absolute best singles of the 2000s, "Just Because", which like many of the great Modern Rock singles got played for a while, then disappeared.

The only station we could pick up at Main ex-Employer that I could tolerate listening to all day was the oldies station, WASE 103.5 from Elizabethtown, mostly because you were guaranteed not to hear a song more than once throughout the day, and they played only a little of the '70s Rock that was the main focus of the Classic Rock stations. There was another oldies station around at that time, 103.1 WRKA, but I didn't like it as much for some reason. The two stations just seemed to have different vibes, and 103.5 had the better vibe.

The last job where I had to listen to the radio was last Summer at a warehouse in Cecilia, on the very west side of Elizabethtown. I didn't have to listen to the radio all the time, just occasionally, and the main channel they listened to was 98.3 WQXE, I think the best way to describe it would be MOR (Middle Of the Road). I remember walking by this one woman's work area and hearing the chorus to "All The Right Moves" by One Republic. I kind of thought to myself, "Oh shit, this moment is going to haunt me for the rest of my life." What made it even odder was that I thought the line went "They've got all the right friends in all the right places, who cares, we're going down!", and thinking it made no sense, especially since I didn't know how the rest of the song went. BTW, it turns out he's not saying "Who cares, we're going down," but "So yeah, we're going down." And while I can't say I "like" one Republic, I don't dislike them, and I think they have an interesting sound, especially that ridiculously huge John Bonham-esque drum sound. Another story from that same job: The radio wasn't on, but I was trying to explain to these two girls about how I like music, but hate radio, and I also said that I liked Rock, but I didn't feel like explaining that I only liked certain types of Rock. The radio was eventually turned on. I got back to the work area after a break or lunch sooner than most of the people. The radio was on WQXE, and at one point they played "A Little Respect" by Erasure, a song that I actually like. The girls get back from the break, one of the girls hears "A Little Respect", turns the radio off, and says "It's got to be to EVERYBODY's taste. That makes me want to go to church." To which I responded, "There's really no such thing." I don't know if she mistook it for a Rock song and thought I had turned it over to a Rock station or what, but I thought that was ignorant. That pissed me off almost as the time I mentioned earlier about the boy saying that Jane's Addiction was horrible. But seriously, WQXE was about the closest thing to "everybody's taste" as you're going to get. I think the radio ended up getting turned on later anyway.

LOVE STINKS! Yeah Yeah...

One of the consequences of having been laid off has been the lack of a social life. Not like I ever really had much of one except during the prime years of Louisville Mojo, but when I was gainfully employed I could at least afford to go out when I wanted to, work schedule or weather permitting. I hardly even worried about gas when I had a steady income and a "home away from home" in Louisville, but these days the simple act of driving makes me feel like I'm spending money. I do try to get out of the house once or twice a week, but that's not nearly enough. Being broke also means I can forget about dating.

I can think of too many reasons why I've been single my entire life, so I'm just going to go into the main reason I'm single now. Being unemployed hurts men on the dating front in two ways: one, you're too broke to take somebody out. And two, women don't like unemployed guys, especially ones who live with their parents, no matter the circumstances. I haven't tried contacting anybody on OKCupid since last Summer. The last girl that I talked to on there ultimately rejected me for that very reason, despite the fact that she was also unemployed and in the process of moving in with her parents. See, it's a fucking double standard! So, while I am available, I've essentially taken myself off the market. It really sucks feeling like I can do nothing but stand by while I watch too many of my female friends get paired off, some of them even getting married.

I actually would like to start dating again, but until I find a job that's guaranteed to last more than one or two months, or go to school (whichever comes first), I don't see it happening. There are far worse things than being single, but it would be nice to have a female to go out and do fun stuff with.

I guess I could go over another reason why I've been single. I've never been able to make good use of the window whenever it's been open. (Stuff like that is why I love "How I Met Your Mother.") When someone of interest who had been unavailable becomes available, you don't want to pounce right away, but at the same time you don't wait too long and take a chance on someone else moving in on her. Man, this hurts my brain...ANEURYSM! The last time the window opened for someone that I was crazy for, an ex-coworker, I really did try to get myself in there, but she was always too busy hanging out with other people. The window wasn't open very long. She ended up hooking up with one of her ex-coworkers, a big ogre of a dude who I never would have imagined her being with. They've been together ever since.

There's a part in the Slayer song Divine Intervention that for some odd reason makes me think of two people having sex, it comes in at about the 1:23 mark. I got to thinking recently that one of my ideas of Hell would be being forced to watch "the ones that got away" having sex with their significant others. Actually, if the s.o. happens to be a woman, then that could possibly be Heaven. :)

The Saga Of The Past 3+ Years, Part 1

Ever since I got laid off in November 2008, my life has been going on a downward spiral. But in order to tell the story of the past two years or so since then, I really have to start a year earlier in November 2007. On the 29th of that month, my sister had a massive seizure. She had Multiple Sclerosis, and the seizure was a complication from it. They eventually got the seizing to stop entirely. By Christmas, she was pretty well alert. They thought she would probably make a recovery of some sort, but in January she had another massive seizure. Eventually, she had another one. And another one. They kept getting more frequent. In late February, it was decided that she would be moved to a skilled nursing home. She was back in the hospital not long after that. After a couple of weeks, they put her back in the nursing home. By the end of June/beginning of July, she was considered terminal. In October, her body finally started showing signs of shutting down. She died on January 1st, 2009.

During that time, I had a cool job that paid pretty decently. In March '08, I decided to move into my sister and brother-in-law's place, mostly to help out with things, and to keep the kitties company, but also because I really wanted to move out of the parents' place in B.F.E.. My sister and brother-in-law lived in  Louisville, and their place was kind of like my home away from home anyway. I'd spend entire weekends there so I wouldn't have to drive all the way home and back the next day if I wanted to do something in Louisville. Living there full time was pretty nice.

As I mentioned in the beginning, I got laid off in November 2008. I really needed a long break from work considering that my sister was dying, seasonal depression was starting to kick in, and a combination of other things was starting to drive me nuts, but that's not exactly how I wanted to go about it. After my sister died, I found out that my brother-in-law was hoping to get a smaller place, which pretty much meant I'd have to move out, at least for a while. While I transitioned out of the place, I still stayed over fairly often. On Valentine's Day, my bro-in-law revealed that he was dating somebody, a nurse who worked at the nursing home. Instead of moving out, the gf and her kids moved in at the end of March since her lease was up. Around late May, they got rid of the cats, which gave me less reason to stop by. I tried spending a night there a couple of times, but it just didn't work out, so I essentially lost my "home away from home". They ended up getting married in October. They finally moved into a new place at the end of 2010.

After my severance money ran out in February 2009, I went on unemployment. It was a pretty big hassle, the biggest of which was when I found out in 2010 that I owed Kentucky almost $400 in taxes all because I didn't have the option of having state taxes withheld from my unemployment checks. That was something that I didn't have to worry about when I was unemployed in Texas, since they don't have state taxes. As much as people bitch and moan about Federal taxes, they've been pretty sweet to me, it's Kentucky that tends to rape me.

I've went back to work at the place that laid me off (who'll be known from here on out as Main ex-Employer) a couple of times. Why? Because most of the other places I've worked at sucked out loud. Hell, one place (a company that has been featured on Big Brother Undercover Boss) fired me after a month over something really stupid. There was one place I worked that I liked as much as, if not more than, Main ex-Employer, but they don't keep many people around beyond the peak seasons. I had the opportunity to return for their current peak season, but I was already working Main ex-Employer's peak season. BTW, Main ex-Employer let me go again just before the end of 2010, but I'm eligible for re-hire. :-/ Getting to see the pics from their holiday party was marginally depressing.

To be continued...