no real time to think.

listening to: “cherry” by ratatat, “reh. vuh. lee” by the helio sequence, “come a little closer” by brandy. keke.

i don’t really like cupcakes but cupcake royale cupcakes are yummy.
but they fucked up my order. i asked for four of kate.
they gave me four of mr. formal! BITCHES. he lacks personality.
grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
to make it worse they give you a DOZEN. not a baker’s dozen. WTF!
at least i made a homeless dude selling real change kinda stoked.
he said he always sees people with cupcake royale cupcakes
and that he feels bad asking for one because they’re expensive.
as i was walking back to my parked car, he said hello to me…
for some reason, i instinctively said, “i don’t have money,” which was a lie.
i didn’t have a dollar (the price of real change) but i did have a twenty.
i offered him a cupcake to make up for lying to him (not like he knew).
he chose to take one of plain ol’ mr. formal, and then said of cupcake royale:
“they’ve come a long way. i’ve enjoyed watching them grow.”

—

in a nutshell, this past week:
- sold $1k of advertisements in the next issue of redefine… by myself. *self-pat-on-back. profitable? no. not yet.
- worked ass off because trendi hath launched our beta!!! final-freaking-ly. sign up if you like clothes. or if you like to be critical of other people’s clothes?
- celebrated gildas’ birthday. went to dinner at a korean restaurant and had much too much food.
- celebrated alex’s birthday. bought him a lavender cupcake from cupcake royale (aka the best cupcakes ever). had a “birthday topper”, which was a plastic ax. (on saturday, i will give gildas a cupcake… his topper will be a pink ballerina. i know, i’m twisted.)
- watched “live free or die hard”… yeah, ridiculous. and kind of awesome.
- finally played a bout of diablo 2. my character was going to expire in 56 days, oh no!!!!
- went to an eisley show with ryan — openers were vedera and the myriad (who we tried to interview a million years ago, but they were poor at following up with us). eisley pretty much sucked the first half. it was disappointing. the second half was better. but sheri is picking up some really terrible singing habits, that’s for sure.
- the projector, aka my former best friend, has been taken away by chris. to where? I DON’T KNOW. maybe it’s back now, actually… i should check.
- went to dean zulich’s art institute of seattle hall of fame induction. i freaking didn’t stick around for the food, though, and instantly regretted it upon leaving. lul.
- got my *first* letter back from a prison inmate!!!!!!!!! christopher davis, of oklahoma. i will scan in soon.

what i think next week will be like:
- trying to harass more people into buying redefine ads.
- working ass off more for trendi’s beta launch.
- celebrating no birthdays.
- lots of movies, courtesy of netflix and screeners from the seattle international film festival.
- “party in the park” at the olympic sculpture park. free ticket. heck yes.
- cirque du soleil CORTEO!!! YEAHHHHHHHHH. it’s been a while. like a year and a half since i’ve seen a cirque. mmmm. and this one was special expensivo tickets.
- camping at the olympic peninsula for memorial day weekend. hiking, biking, kayaking? YEY-YER.
- continuing to wonder what happened to GOOD DAMN R&B, MATE.

kbcs 91.3 – a world of music and ideas.

yesterday i did something that is quite unlike my cheap ass, and that was… i donated $52 to a local community radio station, kbcs, 91.3 fm.

it took me a long time to decide this as, you know, $52 isn’t a little bit of money, but i feel that kbcs impacts me in a way no other radio station or tv station really has… ever! for those who are unfamiliar with kbcs — of which there are many — it is an independent, community-run, volunteer radio station based out of bellevue community college. it is the “unhip” version of kexp, 90.3 fm. but in many ways, it is much more a community radio station than kexp will ever be. kexp — as far as i’ve seen — is nothing but music, and often a bit pretentious about that. kbcs, on the other hand, has extremely community-oriented programming that really makes you think. their music selection, when they play music, is targeted towards an older crowd, generally, but it’s sometimes great as well. it’s a bit more global, and like i mentioned, it’s definitely less “cool”.

i first stumbled upon kbcs during one of my “find-a-radio-station-for-tomorrow’s-alarm-clock-wakeup” sessions. i’m not much a fan of too many morning shows in the area, but i always liked to pick a random station to wake up to because it keeps the mind alert and fresh, since it is a new sound. so before sleeping every night, i would just flip the dial a little and see what the next day offered (making sure, of course, that the station wasn’t just static). kbcs had me wake up to some crazy, spastic jazz with huge amounts of sax and trumpet, blaring all over the place. i mean, it’s not really my type of music, but it was interesting as fuck. and that’s where i became a fan.

one of the things i actually strive hard to listen to on kbcs is “democracy now”… one of the few news stations i actually listen to. now, to be fair, “democracy now” is pretty leftist at times so the things they choose to cover might be a bit biased, but they do choose to cover things that are clear injustices within the u.s. government. i’d encourage everyone to head on over to democracynow.org and listen to at least one of their daily reports. the news they cover is global, and it is interesting. i like it so much i generally try to leave work at 5 so i can catch “democracy now” in the way home from work.

but kbcs is not limited to politics, really. they also have community affairs programming right after “democracy now,” and there are a few variations. the one i like the most — “voices of diversity” — is one where they pick a topic and then speak to various community members about it. i’ve only been listening to kbcs for… let’s see… i’d say a little more than half a year… but there have been a handful of topics which have significantly made an impact on me or have made me think. there are probably more but here is a short list::

HIV/AIDS:
the first time i listened to this particular community program, they had an on-air discussion about hiv/aids, and one of the interviewers of the program felt obligated to continuously ask the (local) individuals affected with hiv/aids what kind of stigmas they faced. over and over and over again. i wrote them an email mentioning how inappropriate i felt this was. and i got a response. you would never get this at another kind of radio station… possibly not even at kexp. here is the original letter to them:

Hi,

I like that you had an hour-long talk on HIV/Aids in the Seattle community today for “voices of diversity”, but I feel as though the questions asked were actually unproductive and seemed judgmental, as opposed to being constructive.

About 5 or 6 questions were targeted towards stigma (question after question basically rephrasing the same idea, “what kind of stigma does those with hiv/aids face?” in the first half hour I listened to. Only ONE of these questions asked what we can DO about erasing that stigma.

I feel that the heavy concentration on the stigma of HIV/Aids is intimidating to individuals WITH HIV and would contribute to their fear of disclosure. The concentration on the stigma was not useful to those WITHOUT hiv/aids either. The focus should have been focused on how to ERASE stigma, cause everyone knows the kind of stigma people would face. That’s like asking, “why are people racist?” – everyone knows the reasons to a degree… fear, misunderstanding, lack of education, etc. Not everyone knows how to erase that stigma, which is the important part. That part, however, took a backseat on the show and was not the focus at all.

It wasn’t until Anya from Lifelong came on that there was actually a change in the questioning that actually focused on how to erase the stigma. I feel like by the 6th question+ (more than a half hour into the show), the fact that people with HIV/aids face a ton of stigma had already been bashed into people’s heads… and introducing ways to erase that stigma by now is just kind of… late.

This was my first time listening to the show and I found the line of questioning extremely disappointing and not at all sympathetic, but more antagonistic. The beginning of the second half definitely seemed better and more constructive, but I hope this is not the way questioning is with every episode.

I’m still a fan of kcbs though!

and the original response:

Dear Vivian,
Thank you so much for your feedback about the recent episode of Voices of Diversity. My name is Callie Shanafelt, I’m the executive producer of the show. It’s great to hear your perspective. I definitely see what you are saying. We do a lot of shows that are focused on the solution to a problem, but I can see how this one we kind of missed the mark. KBCS is a volunteer run station. Most of our producers are learning how to make great radio, so this feedback is great to help us learn how to do better next time. I will pass this onto the producer of the show. I hope that you will continue to listen to the show. I also would like to encourage you to call in if you are listening and feel this way in the future. Would have been great to get a call from a listener who said “yeah ok, there’s stigma, but what do we do about it?”.

Take care,
Callie

MEDIA CONSOLIDATION:
as a member of the indie press media consolidation is a pretty big deal to me. what is media consolidation? it is allowing the major media outlets to own up more and more of the airwaves and newspapers. they are limited to a certain percentage, and the higher the percentage they are limited to, the more difficult a time stations like kbcs would have existing. it’s a big deal to anyone who cares about getting diverse media and anyone who doesn’t just like hearing news from “the man.” but had it not been for kbcs, i would have never really heard about the issue, period. i never heard about it in the states outside of kbcs, and the only time i heard about it otherwise was on bbc news in taiwan. i mean, why WOULD the big news media outlets in the u.s. want you to know that the community is fighting against media consolidation and the FCC is for it? they wouldn’t. and they don’t. but yeah, this particular issue bothered me so much that i actually called into kbcs, which was a nerve-wracking first. this was for their show, “voices of diversity.” CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT IT.

ISRAEL/PALESTINE CONFLICT:
CLICK HERE TO READ ABOUT IT.

about the previous post…

lo lordy. so i wrote the previous post not quite thinking anyone related to the post would ever read it but evidently people have google alerts, and judging by the fact that nearly a record high of people read that post / the blog in general yesterday, i can only conclude that actually, a LOT of people i wrote about in the post probably read the post.

google alerts have betrayed my confidence. sons of bitches. oh well..?!!!! it’s just a little embarrassing is all. world wide internet is a dangerous place :0

shifts and changes in the music industry.

the music industry has been incredibly frustrating as of late. it’s interesting, since redefine just had an article talking about how the music industry needs to shift its practices to match up with the current technological state.

why it is so frustrating to me, though, is because of the PR contacts. i’ve been building up contacts through the years, but it is like… every time someone leaves and is replaced with someone new, it’s a bridge burned, and i need to start all over again. sometimes it’s not from scratch but it is never the same.

we’ll start with equal vision, with whom we previously had a very good relationship with. now the relationship is just mainly OK. the previous guy i worked with is still in the company, but not dealing with the same types of issues.

other people who have changed: my previous former favorite guy at vagrant left many years ago to go work for warner, so he was my favorite connection at warner. but he just left warner to get back into the indie music industry (strange, as everyone else seems to be doing the opposite).

one person from warmfuzzy publicity.
two people from vagrant left and/or are leaving.
one person from the militia group (it’s okay, i like the new guy better in this rare upgrade).

it just seems like everywhere i turn people are pulling out of the indie music industry to go into bigger and better things, and unqualified or uninterested people are replacing them. that makes things quite very difficult. :[ le sigh!!!

kbcs 91.3 voices of diversity & independent media

oh so i was listening to kbcs 91.3 on their “voices of diversity” program, and i figured i should call in because they were talking about independent media and media consolidation. so i was listening and thinking of things to say when i called in (while i was driving) and then i started writing things down. then i called in and some screener guy picked up and asked what my comment was and i was mostly terrified and shaking. but then when they picked up the phone and said my name i was calm and stuff. i shall post the link to the mp3 when it is posted on the website. but yay! first time on the radio, and a scary one it twas!