Radio and Magazines

I have multiple topics for today.

The first topic of discussion for today is morning radio.

Morning talk radio is worse than muzak as far as I am concerned. Just shut up and play music you moron is generally what I shout as I put in a cd to save myself from them. These people are living parodies. I will never understand how they go to work everyday and be such morons. Every radio station seems to have a morning team though. I do not want to listen to them for twenty minutes as I drive to work. I am not the only one either. There is a new station in town whose slogan is that they stop the music only twice an hour and that's it.

Once in a while I can tolerate the talking, but for the most part I want music in the morning not talk. I know that it isn't hard to become a morning idiot either. When I was in college, my roommate was a dj and got the morning slot one semester. Sure enough he became a moron complete with canned laughter and sound effects. Everyone seems to think that they are Robin Williams from Good Morning Vietnam. Just shut up and play some music monkey boy.

The second topic for the day is reading magazines. I subscribe to too many different magazines. The last count was seven or eight. I tell myself that I am going to cut back, but I never do. I let one expire and start a new one for a different magazine.

The magazines that I get cover a variety of topics. Two magazines are devoted to computers. Another two are entertainment related. I have one just for music. Then of course there is National Geographic. The one that I love the most is The New Yorker.

In the latest issue of The New Yorker they have an article about Anne Frank and her diary. I have never read the book, nor have I seen the play. I have some real mixed feelings about reading the book. This has to do with the nature of the book itself. I feel as though I have been set up to like it or feel bad if I don't like it. How can you not feel sympathetic with someone who was in the Holocaust. I felt the same way about Schindler's List. It was months before I finally saw the film. In addition to the nature of the book, I have very little in common with the author. I am not Jewish so I can not relate to the personal persecution that Anne talks about in her diary. Nor was I ever a teenage girl. At least I don't remember ever being one.

The main focus of the article is how the perception of Anne and her diary has been changed over the years. She is an icon now. She is a symbol of optimism. The article traces how this process came about over the years. The diary has been edited more than once and made more generic in terms of race. The article points out that the mental image that we the public have is not what Anne wrote in her diary at all.

The reason for the article is the recent staging of the play with Natalie Portman in the lead role. I happened to like Natalie in Beautiful Girls. She had some great dialogue in that film. I would even go so far as to say that I like her more as an actor than Winona Ryder. Winona seems to be losing her touch with the critics. The Crucible wasn't very successful as far as I can remember. I have yet to see the film myself.

I have one more thing to say about Schindler's List. The best part for me was Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth. I am not identifying with the character I just think that he was an interesting character. People like villains. Look at the popularity of Silence of the Lambs. I see that there is yet another entry in this genre of serial killer, stalker, kidnapper who meets a strong woman that fights back. The film is called Kiss the Girls with Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd. Oh well, I must have missed the book on the best seller list. It seems as though every movie has to be a best selling book first then it can be a movie.

Another slow day at work today. Essentially I am still in the sidekick mode in my department. I have a vague understanding of what is going on, but still send all of the tough questions to the other guy who was the department until me and another person joined. One person used to do what three people now do. Yes, we are expanding that much. It seems that we hire one person a week.

On the homefront, I have discovered that my new neighbors like to close the door really hard when they leave for work or whatever. Now the question is do I learn to live with it or kindly ask them to be a little more gentle.

I have to amend my comments on the warm weather the other day. I don't mind the heat if I am awake, but I can not sleep when it is hot. All of the heat rises and seems to collect in my bedroom when I want to go to sleep. I guess that is what I get for putting the fans away last month. Silly me. What was I thinking. I live in Wisconsin where the weather changes without rhyme or reason.

This is the geek part of the entry for today.

I want to thank the two people who politely told me that my text was overlaying my leaves on the left hand side of the page. So much for universal resolutiom. I want my words to be legible not buried by some image. Ugh. I moved the leaves into a nice and tidy table. I just love retro fixing my page. Since I am somewhat lazy I just made the leaves image one size and will deal with the fact that the text and leaves are not the same length any more.

This leads me to the next question. Can every one see the image on the index page of this site. It will be a little grainy, because it is an aquatint that I did a few years ago in college. I did not bother to see if it was html color compatible. I just hoped for the best.

I could always put the moon image back in its place. I know that the moon image is fine because I cropped it from an image on the web. Shhh, don't tell anyone.

I am approaching my favorite part of the day, midnight. I have the Girlfriend cd by Matthew Sweet playing in the background. If you have never heard Matthew Sweet this would be the one to buy first. He is a master pop song writer with some great guitar hooks and a strange sense of humor. What more could you ask for in a musician. Any number of things I guess would be the answer.