[Kzyxtalk] The pastel beauty, elegance and utility of virtually unbreakable melmac dinnerware.

[Marco McClean]

The pastel beauty, elegance and utility of virtually unbreakable melmac 
dinnerware.


"Nothing else quite so combines Mom, the warmth of home, and hygienic 
safety, durability and value. Say it with Melmac (polymerized melamine 
formaldehyde), the future of dining, now!"


The recording of last night's (2017-06-16) KNYO and KMEC Memo of the 
Air: Good Night Radio show is available to download and enjoy via 
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com


It's time. We need to either get a real phone box to put people on the 
air properly or experiment a little with making the one we have at KNYO 
work better. (It's the one I made out of a thrift-store phone.) It puts 
a harsh edge on callers' voices that can't be corrected with the tone 
controls. Probably fixing the impedance match between the phone thing 
and the board with a transformer would do it. The problem is, I'm mostly 
only in Fort Bragg when I go to do my show there, and then I'm busy 
doing the show, and then it's four or five and I just wanta go home and 
fall asleep in my clothes. Jerry will probably get to it this week. If 
that doesn't solve it, we'll have another fundraiser, a bingo night, or 
sell off all the heirloom melmac in the equipment closet, or something.


The reason I bring it up is, Zeke called from San Francisco at one a.m. 
(four hours into the show) to read his story and I felt bad that I 
couldn't make the sound quality better. Then I forgot and left my mic 
off, so after his story, when we were talking for a little while, you 
only hear my voice faintly through the phone's handset. So embarrassing. 
But really, so what? It's a good story and a good show. I think you'll 
like it. Ah, right, I almost forgot: Thomas came to the station early in 
the show, very excited, practically /fizzing/ about his new 
cryptocurrency monetary app project. I'm not sure I understand it 
completely; maybe you'll grasp something that I didn't. He was bruised 
and scraped up all over from just a normal bicycle accident. Wear your 
bike helmet. It doesn't look stupid. Astronauts wear helmets; do 
astronauts look stupid? No, they don't. Imagine an astronaut saying to 
his mom before he blasts off, "I don't want to wear this helmet. The 
other astronauts will laugh at me." An astronaut would never say that, 
because an astronaut is smart, and he wears his darn helmet that we paid 
a lot of money for, and he doesn't just put it on until he’s out of 
sight around the corner. Hold still. There. Be careful.


Anyway, also at http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com you'll find directions 
to many not necessarily radio-useful though worthwhile goods that I 
found while putting radio shows together. Items such as:


Pinched.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmPvjZKBNYY


100 walks 100.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEoUhlesN9E


A map of the ships buried beneath San Francisco, and a full explanation 
of how they got under there.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/map-ships-buried-san-francisco/


Often I'm kidding when I make an analogy, but I'm being totally honest 
here: This video shows very clearly what the people who run KZYX look 
like to me. How you feel and all the things you think, watching this 
person fail and fail and fail to park a car, is how I feel whenever I 
tune to KZYX and just let it play for a few minutes and listen to it. 
(Usually it's some recorded crap from 1,000 miles away.) Then I have a 
quick little exercise daydream about explaining to them how to do it 
right, to improve, to let in people they're terrified of and get out of 
the way, and both in the daydream and in real life they never listen, 
because of the Dunning-Kruger effect. The skills they need in order to 
judge properly how bad they are at running a radio station to prioritize 
learning and taking chances and embracing danger and just being alive 
are the very skills they don’t have regarding actually doing any of 
those things, even if they wanted to. They compare their product with 
other run-of-the-mill NPR drone stations, and it's indistinguishable, so 
they think they're good at it. They think they're the good guys and that 
anyone poking at that bubble is the bad guy.
http://boingboing.net/2017/06/10/driver-attempts-to-parallel-pa.html


Speaking of which, here's a poster I'd like to put up where the (unpaid) 
airpeople can see it when they're at the mic begging for /hundreds of 
thousands of dollars/ for KZYX so management can eat steak and drive 
nice cars and have health and dental insurance and save for retirement 
and pay off their vacation houses and so on, while the poor airperson is 
happy just for the opportunity to work in glamorous radio and be patted 
on the head at a board meeting once a year for his valuable service.
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/index.php?date=061617


And just take a gander at Miss Bomarc Interceptor Missile, 1958. 
(Missile, 1/8 scale.)
http://www.weirduniverse.net/blog/comments/miss_bomarc_interceptor_missile


--
Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com