Author / DrMabuse

by DrMabuse

Star & Buc Wild Suspended

It’s a small achivement that doesn’t mean as much in light of the move to New York. But it’s an achievement nonetheless. The outcry has resulted in Star & Buc Wild being suspended for a day. Thanks in part to your efforts, Power 99 FM received more email and phone calls in the entire station’s history.

But this is only the beginning of the fight. Since the two DJs have been repeatedly hateful and since the one day suspension amounts to a consolation prize (Star & Buc Wild were moving out of Philly anyway), the DJs will quite possibly settle into the new routine at 105.1 FM in New York. If there are any able listeners in New York willing to keep track of advertisers, now would be the time to mobilize for a future campaign. Because in light of their history of abusive radio, these two will try again.

[UPDATE: Again, because the racism and the hatred in the comments are too prevalent, and I have neither the time nor the inclination to moderate, I have closed the thread. I have tried to remove some of the more racist messages and have banned the IP addresses of those who would use this site to preach hatred. Some of you folks should be ashamed of yourselves.]

by DrMabuse

Shuffle is Apple Lingo for “Flash Drive”

Using stunning new technology available on nearly every MP3 freeware program and flash drive, Steve Jobs has announced a very silly product called the iPod Shuffle, which (get this) actually plays your songs at random. And I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn that you will never cross the same way because your feet will always hit different parts of the surface.

That shuffling you hear is the sound of Steve Jobs cashing in the chips of Mac zealots. I guess Mac users have never heard of MuVos and Zen Micros on the PC side, which, for a few dollars more, offer as much as 60 Gigs of music within the MP3 format.

Wake me up when there’s a real revolution.

by DrMabuse

No Reading Statistic Left Behind

South Florida Sun-Sentinel: “Gov. Jeb Bush wants to increase spending on reading by $43 million this year and make reading money a permanent part of Florida’s public school budget.”

Hey, Jeb, give $43 million to me and I’ll give you all the reading you need. And then some.

I don’t know what bothers me more: the notion that $43 million given to “reading” without a specific spending plan sounds more like the cocaine tab hidden within blockbuster movie budgets under the heading “accessories” or the idea that money would somehow translate into a new generation of enthused readers through a osmosis involving dinero.

But then these are the kind of silly impressions one forms when an article fails to point at the specifics, which can be found here. And if you read the fine print, it isn’t about the reading at all, but the scores. No wonder some kids aren’t so crazy about books.

by DrMabuse

I Hear Voices Too

Sarah’s put up a thoughtful post regarding hearing voices when she reads. I can relate to this because, although my own inner ear parses text differently, I sympathize with the notion of those voices inside the book that tell me to do things.

Whole chapters of Ian McEwan, Alex Garland and David Peace have encouraged me to wash my hands more. Because when I’m reading a farrago of brisk one-to-two word sentences (“Fuck,” “Noon,” “My arse.”), I feel as if I’m channeling the spirit of Howard Hughes. If I’m, say, reading part of the Red Riding Quartet, chances are you’ll find me in the restroom, washing all of those evil smelly life-destroying molecules that CLUTTER one’s existence and otherwise INTERFERE with the precious bodily fluids have you ever seen a Russian drink anything other than vodka? that do me end and PREVENT me from living greatness, must keep the people happy and prevent the germs from spreading UP UP & AWAY flowing through my veins and arteries like some infernal beast, parasites that can only be seen under a microscope…

But I digress.

Conversely, when I am reading a paragraph-long sentence (a la badly translated Dostoevsky or W.G. Sebald), I suddenly find myself talking too much during a conversation. These austere paragraph-slingers wish me to expatiate and I must honor their wishes, for I too have something dreadfully important to say, so important that it must be framed within the context of a sentence with endless verbs, commas and wends that convey the Sense of Importance. Never mind that the people who listen are trapped there, wishing to be polite, hoping that the blathering fool who is recycling some heavy-handed Marxian metaphor will stop.

So, yeah, the short answer is that I hear voices too. And while I come from a family that is very musical, it takes me about an hour or two to sight-read a sheet of music. Largely because I have been too indolent to learn how to do it in real time (to use the technological parlance of our time) and because all I know how to play on my guitar are pentatonic scales and chords. O such a wasted existence! If only I had shown more initiative! If only I had known that more practice with an instrument would result in vaguely edible fruit!

But at least there’s karaoke to offer such a dubious surrogate. And at least there are the voices which assure me that reading is good and keep the deviant at bay so I can function in America’s troubling capitalistic system.