Last night it happened again. I showed up at the new college radio station right as my shift was to begin. I had no time to prepare my music. No playlist was provided for me. The board wasn't labeled well at all, the CD/component rack was in disarray with buttons in odd places. The CD rack behind me was in no particular order at all - not only were the CDs just placed willy-nilly, but CDs were all over the place in and outside of their jewelcases. When I found CDs that were at least vaguely familiar, the track listings were either missing or somehow unreadable by me. When I did manage to get some song started, it always ran out or had some technical issue that interrupted my attempt to find the next song.

Such is the template for my most common recurring dream over the past few years. It is very much a bittersweet dream because my shifts at V-91 at Bama (and for the summer I stayed with my parents at Carlisle, PA in which I talked my way into a shift at Dickinson College's student station) are some of my fondest memories and are a cornerstone of personal nostalgia. While aspects of many stations I've visited come and go from my dreams, the basic layout of the board area of the studio is almost always essentially set up like at the V-91 studios in the first half of the 90s (after the station moved out of the closet atop Reese Phifer Hall and into the new studios in the basement).

For some reason last night, instead of riding out the scenario until I got really frustrated and then taking control of the dream to alter it enough for me to escape that treadmill of torture, I focused a lot of attention on trying to problem-solve the scene. I focused on trying to find ways that I could circumvent the traps the dream had set before me. Of course, all of these failed either immediately or as soon as the dream would figure out a follow-up problem to make my solution moot. There were also the times I would get lost in the dream (thinking it was real) where I made oaths to myself to stick around after my shift and organize the CDs. I made plans to work at the station more frequently to do what I could to minimize or avoid these problems at my next shift.

I was talking to JD a little while ago about the dream. While the obvious interpretation is that I'm feeling stressed right now, I've gotta say I hardly see any stress in my life at this moment. Things are going rather swimmingly for me the past few weeks - other than my being a little overzealous with my credit card payment this month causing us to have to live a little lean this week before my next paycheck.

Whether we're talking national politics or inter-personal relationships, I do worry quite a bit about how fractured we can be on various scales of "society" when it comes to voicing and supporting our choices/opinions and the effort we place on understanding others' choices/opinions. That is a big enough concern, let alone going the next step of actually taking the time and effort to compromise and come to some sort of agreement on things. It is so easy (and lazy) to isolate ourselves in our own world where we surround ourselves only by like-minded people. Is it within our collective ability to think outside of our own opinions and put forth the brainpower and communication necessary to find common points and overcome the differences so we can get along together?

I just keep noticing so many instances lately where those that disagree or dislike something instantly choose the isolating or aggressive (reporting to police, personal attacking, PR/political ploys) option in a situation rather than working with the person of a differing stance to come to a mutual agreement or understanding. I'm tired of seeing people paint those that disagree with them as evil or stupid. I can tolerate people of opposing positions a lot better than I can people that are intolerable.

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Now competing with kids for attention.

I have kept my old card-style rolodex of all the numbers I collected while in talk radio. Undoubtedly, at least half of the cards are hopelessly outdated. Just before leaving radio, I copied all of my rolodex into a Word file; so I have all the data. I just have a certain nostalgia for this now outdated method for storing and retrieving contact information to couple with my own personal experience with this particular rolodex.

But I'm trying to shed some of my pack rat mentality and getting rid of silly knick-knacks I attempt to keep because of nostalgia is where the process is now. This rolodex isn't something I will likely ever find useful again. Is it worth my stashing it away again on some shelf for me to look at in several years for 5 minutes? I certainly have lots of other radio memorabilia (much of which takes up far less space), so why hang onto this item?

I need to get famous so I have someone or some institution interested in keeping my mementos I don't want to store myself.

when you make an assumption on the race/ethnicity of the person on the other side of the phone?

I visualize the people I talk to on the phone. Is it "bad" when I use a person's speech (typically accent and word choice) to determine race/ethnicity when picturing the person in my mind?

There was usually a slightly awkward moment while screening phone calls for the show when we were discussing race on the air. I am a firm believer in not repeating callers with the same point. I liked to always have one line still open if I could so that there was an opening for someone with a unique take on a subject. Invariably, there would come a call from someone who wanted to address the race issue and I KNEW from the voice it was a black person. If I had a black person on the phone, I wanted to let Darrell know. We hear enough from white folks, let's get a different take. Unfortunately, there were times where the person never identified themselves as black, but I knew that letting Darrell know he had a black person on the phone would get that call on the air faster. That moment of going, "So, um, are you black?" always made my skin crawl.

This section is about Gemini males. Of all the astrology stuff I've seen/heard, this is the closest to my personality. I've bolded the stuff that I think is particularly on target to me.

( What is typed below is from a book titled Sexual Astrology. )

Some of these are silly. Some of these I have a reason for and others I don't understand myself. Merely in order of how they came to mind...

1. New England: My best guess is that this is the Southerner in me speaking. I can't stand any sports teams from that area. I do have a liking of the whole This Old House crew and New Hampshire's independent streak, but otherwise my knee-jerk reaction is to not like it.

2. Florida: Also ties into my Southern heritage. I don't care that it borders AL and GA, FL IS NOT part of the South. You will only see me cheering for Florida when they are playing a team outside of the SEC.

3. Manly men: I've always been tall with a big frame...yet always was a little effeminate and much more interested in being friends with girls than boys. Teasing and picking fights with me is my primary exposure to "manly" males.

4. "Home cookin'"/Meat & Three: I was raised with a varied international diet. When my mom did prepare meat and veggies, I never cared for it at all. I've suffered through many lunches and dinners at meat&3 and it takes a lot of arm twisting to get me to agree to eating at those places (Cracker Barrel and Blue Plate are purely for breakfast).

5. Email forwards: The first thing I do when I see a fwd'ed email is to either go to Snopes to verify (okay, most of the time it is to document why the fwd is bogus) or roll my eyes and delete.

6. Contemporary country music: I love bluegrass, roots country/americana, and pre-Garth pop country (Kenny, Dolly, Randy Travis). But I don't care for Garth, Tim, Faith, or any of the "hats." I'm not even going to go into Shania.

7. Lowe's Home Improvement: Although I tended to go to Home Depot more often, I gladly went to the Lowe's on S. Parkway after moving into my house. But every single visit involved some sort of customer service complaint, so I stopped going and will now only visit a Lowe's after I've been to Home Depot. I maintained this stance even while my mil worked at the Lowe's in Hampton Cove for a while.

8. The Big 3 in Detroit: The only "American made" car that I've enjoyed driving was my '92 Saturn. It was pure joy for the first 8 years. During that time Saturn was normalized into the GM fold and I could tell the difference at the dealer. Meanwhile, I've loved the imports that JD's had (mucho love for Honda).

9. suburbia/city sprawl: Drive 45 minutes or more to work? Live in a n'hood where the only way you can tell if someone is home is if there's a car in the driveway or garage? Impossible to walk or ride a bike to stores? No. Not for me. That life upsets my stomach. This also feeds into...

10. Los Angeles: This has next to nothing to do with Hollywood and everything to do with the LA attitude, life w/o seasons, earthquakes, city sprawl, and how people who "escaped" to LA see the rest of the country.

11. KMart and WalMart: Dirty stores filled with rude people clamoring for cheap merchandise on sale.

12. Hendrick Motorsports (Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson): While I may still have lukewarm feelings for Little E as he settles into the team this year, fellow NASCAR fans will not see me cheer for Jeff and Jimmy.

13. Microsoft: Whenever I can find a way to do something via another vendor/open source, I do it.





* My definition for "prejudiced" for this post is that these are things that I automatically will side against or avoid without wanting to (externally or internally) debate my feelings/reasons.

Although my years of watching What Not to Wear (both the original BBC and TLC's version) have tweaked my wardrobe and what I wear, one episode of Chuck had a big impact on me. I wish I could find this scene on YouTube. But it is such a minor scene that doesn't involve any sexual tension between the main characters, so that sort of thing doesn't tend to show up on YT.

Morgan (the best friend/comic relief) has a conversation with another character about looking good. Morgan is told that he needs to become a Tucker. If he just tucked in his shirt, he would look mature, stylish, and manly.

I am slowly becoming a Tucker. Now don't get me wrong, I've always been told that I "clean up nicely." However, my casual wear hasn't changed that much since my freshman year at college when I met Larry. He expanded my flannel style to opening my shirt, wearing a msg t-shirt underneath, and completing with an odd accessory (I prefer hats). This style demands that, at least, the outer shirt is untucked.

I'm 34 and the msg t-shirts are getting a little silly on me. My FIL completely devolved after retiring from the military. Away went the uniforms and in came in silly geek t-shirts. The little bit of fashion critic in my brain has jumped at the times he's chosen to show up at an event wearing a t-shirt that says "There's not place like 127.0.0.1" or similar. Wearing them around the house or casually with family is fine. Dinner out at a sit-down restaurant - not fine.

So, now, when I find myself getting ready to leave the house, the new required step is to tuck in my shirt. It still feels a bit...stuffy doing this, but I find myself appearing in the mirror how I would like to be seen. Onward I tread, further into my new Tucker Era.

Yet again, A&J hit me right in the gut with my personal reality...

Are there dynamic, charismatic sign language "speakers?" Forget the words...is there a way that someone performing sign language adds character and emotion on the same level that pacing, inflection, and tone alter a listener's perception of a speaker?

Is there a Tony Robbins/MLK Jr./Hitler out there gesturing like crazy and exciting audiences?