Posts of the Week
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Classic Rock Fan Disgusted with Classic Rock Stations chris o'leary - 09:09am Aug 11, 1997 PST (#3 of 20)
as I spent my formative teenage years in eastern Connecticut, I have a natural revulsion for classic rock stations, since that is basically all that was available to listen to. My friends and I would conduct a mild guerrilla war against these stations. We used to call up the deejays late at night and request Mission of Burma, Husker Du or something in that vein, always getting the same response: "Huh? That isn't a band. You're putting me on, man.." We tried to be more realistic, asking for a real rarity like Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army", which the deejay swore was not on E.C.'s greatest hits album... At last we even tried classic rock that hadn't made the canon: the Beatles' "Dr. Robert" or the Kinks' "This is Where I Belong," but, nope, they wouldn't hear of it. A favorite moment: a call-up concert update show on WHCN, the most vile of these stations, to which my friend actually got through. The two jocks had been discussing the upcoming Grateful Dead tour, murmuring their admiration about it, and my friend announced, loudly, that not only had the Dead been horrible from day one, but they somehow, amazingly, managed to devolve further into awfulness each year (this was in '87, the "Touch of Grey" era). Well, there was stunned silence afterward, at least a minute of dead air, and then one DJ whimpered, "Well, that was out of line, man, Out of line.." The UPS Strike - the end of fifteen years of economic
prosperity? J Hebert - 09:32pm Aug 14, 1997 PST (#31 of 38)
how long before UPS says: "It is more efficient for us to have two part-time driver shifts. After all, we do deliveries in the morning and pick up in the evening. Part-timers allow us to do deliveries earlier and pick-ups later, improving service to our customers and our own cost structure. This flexibility allows us to stay competitive in a growing marketplace." Wake up and smell the java, people. The trend is towards part-timers, temps, and independent contractors. Hooray for the Teamsters for trying to put a stop to this trend. It is better for them to act now while they still have power than later when they have none. This country was built with Union labor. Unions made sure that worker prospered with his company. The prosperity of workers, in turn, fuels the consumer engine this country is so dependent upon. If we are all reduced to $9/hr. part timers and temps, who will buy houses, cars, refrigerators, etc? It is the prosperous, middle-class worker that is society's golden goose, and we are slowly wringing its neck. "Our Guys" -- rape and the "perfect suburb" Lance Brown - 12:13am Aug 13, 1997 PST (#1 of 35)
Can I just say that the Jocks in this story were in my town too- they called themselves the Dix, if you can believe that. Everybody called them the Dix. As in dicks. Mostly they were in the class above me. One time there was a rumor that the Dix wre going to have a "cat-burning party," where they have a fire, and burn random cats from the neighborhood. I pulled the "snitch" on that one, after a discussion with my parents and sisters. I called the Vice-Principal, I think it was, and as far as I know, the "party" never went down. AC/DC was their favorite band, and "You Shook Me All Night Long," their anthem. I'm happy to say that I was actively involved in subverting their efforts on multiple occasions. I never went to the parties held by the barbarians at my school, but, reading the excerpt from "Our Boys," I felt like I was attending one. I see the "society of school" in America as one of our big root problems leading to the dissolving of our country's sense and morality. From what I've heard there are actually people who felt that their middle and high school "community" was a positive environment, but I saw it through different eyes. There's some twisted interrelating going on in school. It's a real bad scene. I agree very strongly with the idea that teaching morality at "Our Guys" -- rape and the "perfect suburb" (p4 of 10) 20 or 30 is a fool's game. The rules of conducting oneself are heavily established in middle and high school, and changes after that time are very, very difficult. Most kids don't have the fortitude to maintain their own independent presence in school, and those who do are in for a rough twelve years, after which they'll have their own "new tricks" to learn- the social skills they were unable to develop while being expatriated from their peer group. Take it from one who knows. |
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