On Demand Lazy

(I had this radio, in mint green - LOVED it.)

It's true... On-demand programming is making us even more lazy than we've already become, and I know lazy - it was my major in college.

The other day I tweeted that I was waiting for Click & Clack to start on NPR when someone responded that I should just download the podcast. I have, when I used to commute into the city. I loved listening to Ricky Gervais's podcasts on Bart - made it fun, and Bart is never fun.

But now I rarely have 30 minutes of uninterrupted time I can devote to hovering near my computer and I don't use my iPod anymore. I suppose I could while vacuuming or something, but see above re. lazy. I vacuum about as often as I churn butter.

When I'm driving all over the Bay Area for work, I'm always tuned in to (or tuning back to) KCBS for traffic updates. With an older car that uses an older iPod adapter, I couldn't negotiate between that and the radio without driving off the road. Just too much trouble.

I grew up listening to the radio. It was always on when I was wee - Mom listened to KCBS at home and in the car she listened to a classical station. (KKHI?)

I got a transistor radio for my sixth birthday and ran down the battery every night listening to KFRC. Before too long I upgraded to an AC model I could leave on 24/7, which I did. My brothers and I made cassette tapes from radio broadcasts, some of which I still have.

Through high school and college I was always tuned in to KFOG, KQAK, KITS and sometimes KFJC and KSCU. Not a lot of variety in the Bay Area, but I grew to love DJs on every station - friendly voices connected to the big wide world beyond my little neighborhood.

What I loved most was finally hearing my favorite song come on after listening to a bunch of stuff I didn't like. Enduring 45 minutes of mediocre stuff just to get to the best 3 minutes of the hour teaches one patience, and you can do other things during that time.

Listening to a podcast means devoting a solid half hour to active listening, without any convenient commercial breaks. Forget pausing - where's the sport in pausing any time you want? In MY day, we had to learn how to pee, make a sandwich and get a drink all within 3 minutes' time.

Not only that, but you can learn lots of fun info from a good DJ. Trivia about bands, upcoming tour dates, who's in rehab, etc. Stuff I'm sure is all over the internet today, but who has time to go look up all that random crap?

Plus, if you knew a certain show was going to be on, you made a date to listen. If you missed it, you missed it. No downloading the program later like a lazy ass. You had to care about showing up to tune in.

You kids can keep your on-demand podcasts. As Elvis Costello said, Radio! Radio!

Suffering from ED?

(cartoon from thismodernworld.org)

Sean Hannity and his male listeners must be, cause they can't advertise ED drugs enough on his little show.

I had a long drive home on Monday after an offsite in St. Helena, so while surfing the radio for entertainment I found Hammity's show.

Shows like his are a laugh-a-minute as he makes one overly-generalized comment after another without any rationale or credible information to back his claims/rants.

And his listeners are even worse, calling him up to tell him he's a "great American" and a "patriot" before they launch into their own half-baked (or unbaked) comments.

At one point, Hammity mentioned the partial birth abortion ban and what a great thing it was, blah, blah, blah, no uterus, unfounded comment, blah, blah, yak, yak, yak, and a woman called in to ask why people who actually wanted babies are punished.

She rambled about how she was being punished for wanting a baby, that she and her husband had undergone fertility treatments and because they admitted as such when applying for health insurance, they were denied coverage.

She thinks an insurance company is trying to punish her for wanting a child. Does she not understand how insurance works? They don't *want* to pay for your $30K IVF treatments, because they're *expensive.* It has nothing to do with what sort of turkey baster you're using or what's in it - if it costs that much and it's non-essential, you're on your own.

It was funny and sad, but mostly sad, and Hammity never tried to help her understand anything, but let her prattle on about how unfair it all is and how badly they want a baby, blah, blah, blah, and I'm thinking, You stupid cow, have you heard about adoption?

How bout you adopt one of the many unwanted kids who need homes? You're against any form of abortion, yet you're not willing to adopt an unwanted child who's already out of the womb, living, breathing, and needing new shoes? No, let's just make more children, try to get insurance to pay for it, and further overpopulate the world.

Check out Think Progress for a different slant.