The Blogg

My wife grew up with a cat and has wanted to have one herself ever since moving out of her parents’ home. This was not possible while she was still in medical school, but now that she has some downtime before she starts residency she has finally decided that it was time. On Saturday she picked up a 9-week old tiger-striped tabby from an adoption day at a pet store in Reading. I’ve not been looking forward to this day in particular, but I find cats to be tolerable and, if no work is required of me, perhaps even pleasant to have around.

Fortunately, the one she purchased is litter trained and quite sociable. In fact, getting her to go away from you for a few minutes can be difficult. Yesterday we had some friends over to watch the Eagles game, and she was not at all shy about all of the people, and in particular wanted to play with the toddler. She does have a bit of a problem with biting, and the experience of the last two days makes it likely that we will have accidental scratch marks for most of the next 5 months while she still has her front claws.

Unfortunately, she is exceptionally curious and has not yet learned to understand the phrase “No!”. She *loves* laptop keyboards, which makes it rather difficult to work when she is nearby. She managed to type and send an email for me, the body of which was “ZZZZZZZZZZZZZXVGGGGGGGGGB9″. There are a number of surfaces where she is not allowed: the kitchen counter and table, the desk, the digital piano, and the open part of our TV stand. Of course, these are the most tantalizing places, and at one point last night she was moving from one to the next as soon as my wife would see her on one, scold her, and put her on the floor. This probably happened 20 times in as many minutes. Most disturbingly for me, she decided to climb on the uninterruptible (hah!) power supply and hit a switch, cutting electricity to all of my “essential” computers.

Other than a tiny bathroom, our apartment consists of only two separate rooms, and the cat is not allowed in the bedroom. (In addition to loving cats, my wife is also mildly allergic to them.) This means that there is nowhere we can put her to keep her away from us for a short time. Eating breakfast on the couch this morning was a challenge, to say the least.

We have decided to name her Zoe, the Greek for “life”. However, my wife insists that the word “Zoe” is pronounced similarly to “Joe”, and that we should thus spell her name “Zoie”. I have not yet managed to convince her otherwise, so please comment to add your voice of reason to mine.

(Perhaps part of a continuing series with this.)

Today I filled my gas tank at the Wawa at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Schoenersville Road in Bethlehem, as I usually do when it gets low. Sitting on top of the pump was a placard that read “Save money with Wawa no-fee ATMs.” Below that was a picture of a woman with the quote “I saved $24.50 in one month!”, then in fine print “Based on average fee of $1.75.”

If you are using an ATM machine 14 times in a month, you probably need to cut back on spending or make larger withdrawals at a time. More importantly, it you are using an ATM that requires a convenience fee 14 times in a month, you are an idiot. In addition to places like Wawa, you could just go to a branch of your bank to avoid a fee. In my entire life, I think I have paid about 6 ATM fees because I found myself unexpectedly in a situation where I wanted cash quickly.

I just heard a radio advertisement that included this:

The prices of gold and other precious metals are at an all-time high! In fact, these are the highest prices since the 1980s!

I suppose this is not technically a contradiction, but “highest since the 1980s” strongly implies that they were higher in the 1980s or before.

I’ve written before about the radio stations available in my listening area, 95.1 WZZO, 99.9 WODE, and 102.9 WMGK. Now there is a new entrant in the field, 107.1 WWYY “The Bone”, which I am aware of only because of a short blurb in the morning paper a few weeks ago. I had high hopes for WWYY being more attuned to my listening preferences, but it seems to be coming up short. They are trying very hard to differentiate themselves from WZZO, but I can’t say I see much difference. Of the things I dislike about WZZO: Wasting inordinate amounts of airtime on self-promotion? Check. Creepy announcer voice? Check. Playing Top-40ish modern rock dreck? Check (and in spades!). At least they don’t (I think) spend their Sunday afternoon airtime on NASCAR coverage.

The funniest part of their ad campaign is a series of announcements where they play a snippet of a song that “ZZO thinks rocks” — I’ve heard Tom Petty’s Free Fallin’, Styx’s Come Sail Away, and Steve Miller Band’s Swingtown. At first glance, this looks like a reasonable marketing strategy. The songs they are denigrating WZZO for playing are all great, but to say that they “rock”, in the sense of loud, aggressive guitars would be disingenuous. The problem is, WWYY plays other songs that I would describe precisely the same way. Most humorously, I heard one of these ads directly after they played 1979 by The Smashing Pumpkins. Now don’t get me wrong, the Pumpkins are listenable once you get past Corgan’s voice, but I can’t imagine anyone saying that 1979 “rocks” in the sense described above.

You know what I would really like out of a radio station? About 45% of their material should be in the genre I would call “classic hard rock”, as exemplified by the music of AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Thin Lizzy, Blue Oyster Cult, Van Halen, and the like. Another 25% should be what I call “classic heavy metal”, such as the work of Iron Maiden, Metallica, and Ozzy Osbourne. Modern Electric Blues, such as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kenny Wayne Shepherd should get about 5% of airtime. The remaining 25% should be the harder side of music commonly called “classic rock”, from Aqualung to Whole Lotta Love. I don’t mean to say that nothing written after 1985 should be played, just that the music should be similar to the style that was popular then. I know of at least two “new” bands, Velvet Revolver and Wolfmother who are writing new material in 2007 that fits nicely in this framework. I am sure there are many others of whom I am unaware. Additionally, many of the bands that defined the loose genre descriptions above are still recording, but radio stations seem only to play the music of their prime. What is new-ish but not in an appropriate style? Grunge, nu-metal, and alt-modern rock like Hinder and Breaking Benjamin.

Beyond this genre shift, I have one more important requirement for a good radio station: they must reach deep into the back catalogs of great music, and not just play the “hits”. In all the time I’ve listened to radio, I don’t think I’ve ever heard a Blue Oyster Cult song other than (Don’t Fear) The Reaper and Burnin’ For You. Maybe Cities On Flame, but I don’t think so. They’ve released 14 albums of original material, most of which would be suitable. Thin Lizzy has a similarly large and excellent body of work, but you won’t hear much other than The Boys Are Back In Town and, if you are lucky, Jailbreak. There is really no reason I should hear the same song on the radio more than once in a week.

Of course that isn’t the only kind of radio station I would like; just the most likely to happen. I’d also love to have a classic rock station that doesn’t just play singles. Whatever happened to Album-Oriented Rock anyway? And a good jazz station. ( That’s spelled J-A-Z-Z, not “smooth jazz” or “easy listening” or “new age” or any other nonsense destined for “Charlie Parker’s personal hell”. ) And a ska/punk station. And a funk and soul station. Etc.

I suppose the perfect radio station is a pipe dream; I shall have to continue to do most of my listening from my own library, even if it does not provide an opportunity to hear new talent, and from customizable Internet radio streams. At least for when I am driving, I now have a significantly better chance of finding at least one station not in commercial break at any given moment.

Unless acted upon by an external force, a body in motion tends to stay in motion and a body at rest tends to stay at rest.

Truer and more annoying words have never been written. One might wonder why I am writing a post at 5:00 AM. The answer is simple: my body is in motion. I know I would benefit physically and academically by having a regular sleep schedule, but it is just too hard. I do not become tired when I should, nor do I stop being tired when I should.

I say we free ourselves from this antiquated notion that our lives should be scheduled around the rotation of the Earth. Rather, let us schedule everything 2 hours later each day than the last. We would get some kind of weird week in which the cycle completes every 12 days as we currently know them. Every night I could stay awake 2 hours later than the night before, and every morning I could stay asleep 2 hours later than the morning before. I cannot even comprehend how amazing that would be.

But I suppose you people with “normal” sleep schedules would object to that. Fine, continue to torture me. Since I am still not remotely tired but must be at school by noon tomorrow, I shall attempt to bore myself to sleep with an academic paper.

After the temporary death of my server, I have finally gotten around to restoring these unimportant services.  If you are lucky, I will actually write more than the three posts per year like before.  Heh, who am I kidding.  If I am lucky, someone will read this!