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All day, all night
Sep. 18th, 2011 09:01 pmI worked all weekend on a database project for a new client. Unfortunately, it's taken vastly more of my time than I had estimated and left me in a grumpy mood. And tomorrow I get up before 5 to spend another ten hours at my principal Boston client's studios.
Unfortunately, I'm getting crunched for time this month. I need to go visit my father and would have done it this weekend had not work interfered. I have to fit in at least two more trips to Rhode Island this month, one of them to Block Island, which means during a day when there is convenient ferry service.
There are several things I need to get done around the house which I've been putting off, in part because I never remember them except when I'm either at work or in the middle of the night. But the year is getting old, and they really need to get done before the cold weather comes back.
I've decided I need to write more. I'm out of practice, and more and more often I can barely put two words together without agonizing over them and rewriting them half a dozen times. This is not good.
My house is a mess. My bedroom is full of things I can't find places for, and half a dozen bags of papers I can't throw out because I'm not entirely sure I won't need one or more of them.
A former client has fallen on very hard times. His creditors are suing to force him to liquidate; he owes Goldman Sachs alone $68 million. There was a time when he could have sold just one station for that amount of money, but that was before the crash of 2008.
The truth is that no station in this part of the world was worth more than a fraction of what people paid for them five or six years ago. Qantum Communications paid thirty million dollars for three Cape Cod stations; they won't make that money back in less than a century.
A few years later, when Charles River sold its two FM's on the Cape, I believe the deal was for seven or eight million over several years, but the purchaser declared bankruptcy a couple years later, and I've a feeling most of that money never materialized.
Goldman Sachs and its ilk have ruined radio. The industry is wallowing in so much debt that it can hardly afford to attract new listeners.
But it's not Goldman Sachs's fault; it's Bill Clinton's fault. Goldman Sachs is a bunch of greedy parasites who don't care if the whole world goes up in flames as long as Goldman Sachs can profit by it. That's no more or less than anyone expects of them; but the President of the United States is supposed to look after the public interest. He's supposed to stop blood-sucking parasites when they threaten to bankrupt an industry, or, for that matter, the world economy, as they have gone on to do. When the chief cop starts inviting crime bosses to the negotiating table, it's a sign the world is no longer spinning on its proper axis.
Clinton was warned that if he signed the 1996 Telecommunications "Reform" Act into law, radio would be ruined, and he signed it anyway. He wrote to one concerned individual that what mattered was reducing long-distance phone bills, and all else be damned. I know this because it was I was that individual.
I was surfing the Web the other day and stumbled on a site run by someone calling themselves the Russian Imperial Movement (Русское Имперское Движение). Prominently displayed at the top of their home page were the words "Hell is a democracy; heaven, a kingdom", words attributed to St. John of Kronstadt. These people want nothing less than the restoration of imperial autocracy; they are the Russian Orthodox answer to the Islamist Khilafa movement. They are far to the right of Rick Perry and his Dominionist friends, who look longingly at the likes of 17th century Massachusetts; these people are positively Byzantine in their outlook, which calls for the reunification of Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia under an Emperor to be chosen, since there is no longer a universally recognized heir to the throne, by an Assembly of the Land (земский собор) like the one that elected Michael Romanov in 1613. They also appear to favor the suppression of Judaism, Islam, and homosexuality.
I notice just now that their site is 404. Perhaps Mr. Putin was not amused.
Unfortunately, I'm getting crunched for time this month. I need to go visit my father and would have done it this weekend had not work interfered. I have to fit in at least two more trips to Rhode Island this month, one of them to Block Island, which means during a day when there is convenient ferry service.
There are several things I need to get done around the house which I've been putting off, in part because I never remember them except when I'm either at work or in the middle of the night. But the year is getting old, and they really need to get done before the cold weather comes back.
I've decided I need to write more. I'm out of practice, and more and more often I can barely put two words together without agonizing over them and rewriting them half a dozen times. This is not good.
My house is a mess. My bedroom is full of things I can't find places for, and half a dozen bags of papers I can't throw out because I'm not entirely sure I won't need one or more of them.
A former client has fallen on very hard times. His creditors are suing to force him to liquidate; he owes Goldman Sachs alone $68 million. There was a time when he could have sold just one station for that amount of money, but that was before the crash of 2008.
The truth is that no station in this part of the world was worth more than a fraction of what people paid for them five or six years ago. Qantum Communications paid thirty million dollars for three Cape Cod stations; they won't make that money back in less than a century.
A few years later, when Charles River sold its two FM's on the Cape, I believe the deal was for seven or eight million over several years, but the purchaser declared bankruptcy a couple years later, and I've a feeling most of that money never materialized.
Goldman Sachs and its ilk have ruined radio. The industry is wallowing in so much debt that it can hardly afford to attract new listeners.
But it's not Goldman Sachs's fault; it's Bill Clinton's fault. Goldman Sachs is a bunch of greedy parasites who don't care if the whole world goes up in flames as long as Goldman Sachs can profit by it. That's no more or less than anyone expects of them; but the President of the United States is supposed to look after the public interest. He's supposed to stop blood-sucking parasites when they threaten to bankrupt an industry, or, for that matter, the world economy, as they have gone on to do. When the chief cop starts inviting crime bosses to the negotiating table, it's a sign the world is no longer spinning on its proper axis.
Clinton was warned that if he signed the 1996 Telecommunications "Reform" Act into law, radio would be ruined, and he signed it anyway. He wrote to one concerned individual that what mattered was reducing long-distance phone bills, and all else be damned. I know this because it was I was that individual.
I was surfing the Web the other day and stumbled on a site run by someone calling themselves the Russian Imperial Movement (Русское Имперское Движение). Prominently displayed at the top of their home page were the words "Hell is a democracy; heaven, a kingdom", words attributed to St. John of Kronstadt. These people want nothing less than the restoration of imperial autocracy; they are the Russian Orthodox answer to the Islamist Khilafa movement. They are far to the right of Rick Perry and his Dominionist friends, who look longingly at the likes of 17th century Massachusetts; these people are positively Byzantine in their outlook, which calls for the reunification of Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia under an Emperor to be chosen, since there is no longer a universally recognized heir to the throne, by an Assembly of the Land (земский собор) like the one that elected Michael Romanov in 1613. They also appear to favor the suppression of Judaism, Islam, and homosexuality.
I notice just now that their site is 404. Perhaps Mr. Putin was not amused.
