Long Live College Radio!

Friends/DJs, past and present:

• WTBU, Boston University. Julian M.
• KDVS, UC Davis. Ramon S.
• KALX, UC Berkeley. Anna V.

Other:

• KUSF, University of San Francisco.

Personally, I've listened the most to KUSF, either at home or in the car. Driving through San Francisco, the strength of their signal seems to undulate with the City's hills. I'm pretty sure the transmitter is on-campus. It always comes in clearer around Turk and Masonic.

At a certain point, eclectic becomes its own genre, but KUSF still finds ways to surprise me from time to time. For a while I enjoyed opera on Sunday nights, and occasionally, I'd bump into the news being read in Chinese.

But one time KUSF really threw me a curveball. It was about a week after Thanksgiving and I was lying on my bed, listening to my clock radio. I noodled around. Static. Mexican cowboys singing. More static. And then I heard it.

It was the familiar sound of college-age voices, but with an unusual extra stiffness. You see, KUSF's DJs tend to make a self-conscious trade-off between clearer diction and a slower speaking cadence. But the voices weren't there to alert me of the next spontaneous drum circle in Dolores Park or inform me that I had just listened to a half hour of Ravi Shankar. Instead, interspersed with their over-enunciated words were the half-pauses that come from reading a script for the first time.

From what I could piece together from having read Dickens in the fourth grade, I was listening to nothing less than a radio broadcast of A Christmas Carol, as adapted and performed by the staff of KUSF.

It was painfully delicious. The fake British accents. The dialogue as exposition ("Hello good sir, what brings you to this snowy alley in London towne at Christmas-time?"). If I just closed my eyes, and imagined hard enough, I could see the cast of players, clad in their hoodies, standing among the street urchins and ragamuffins of industrial England.

Thank you, college radio.

Clear, sunny day. Ran with Yang in the morning to the Claremont Hotel. Went food shopping. Bulk oats at $0.99/lb; whole chicken at $0.77/lb; string beans at $2.49/lb; tofu for $1.50 per package. Also purchased 3 oz. of cinnamon sticks for $14. I plan on spicing up my apple cider.

Roommates

Then (Fall '08 -- Spring'09)


Now (Summer '09 -- present)


I think these are pretty self-explanatory.

Koyaanisqatsi

I just watched Koyaanisqatsi, and I must say that I couldn't stop once I started. Not only because the pause button wasn't working, but also because I was transfixed to the screen at times. I've seen clips/parodies of this film before, but it was something else entirely to watch the entire thing.

I've never noticed this before, but the movie lulled me into what I could describe as a drugged state. My consciousness was very much altered as I stared/listened in rapture at a screen of pure audiovisual stimulus to the point of almost feeling overwhelmed.

Watch Koyaanisqatsi on google video (no ads, low resolution).

Watch Koyaanisqatsi on youtube (annoying ads completely contrary to meaning of film, high resolution).

You might not want to watch this if it's a weekday night and you have work. But, if like me, you are procrastinating on a weekend and feel a little bit off color (under the weather), you should have the 86 minutes needed to be transported into a world where everything is timelapse, and the only sounds are Philip Glass's orchestration.

Sleep

He could not sleep. He was trying to lie still in his bed. But his foot was at the wrong angle, so he adjusted it. The foot adjustment had wrinkled the sheets and now he felt like the sheets were twisted about his knee so he squirmed with his whole torso to even things out. There. That was better. Now all he had to do was be still enough and then it would be light outside again and he would feel better and everything would be better again. It's as simple as that. All I have to do is close my eyes and stay still. Before I know it, it'll be tomorrow. He had heard somewhere, probably some big scientific study, that thinking about falling asleep while trying to fall asleep is a surefire way to not fall asleep. Damn.

Self-conscious of his mistake, he tried to visualize the desert. He saw the endless plain of cracked, dried ground extend to a hazy smear of a horizon in the distance. The pure pale blue of the sky above, pierced by the blinding eye of God.

He sweated in the flannel sheets. He felt the humid cloth against his back. He twisted again and the sheets sucked in a breath of cool, fresh air. He was on his side now. He wished he had something to hold onto. No, he wished he had someone to hold onto. It wasn't something he wanted to admit. But the comfort of it was undeniable. The ebb and flow of someone else's breathing as comforting and hypnotic as watching the tide come in.

When he was a child, when he was safely tucked into his bed, there was always the lingering sense of anxiety in the darkness until sleep would finally come. Some nights sleep came quickly. Other nights, he would listen for passing cars, and then watch the distant beams of light struggle through the blinds, into his room, and across the ceiling. He wondered what people would say about him if his funeral were tomorrow. He would think about the ridiculousness of monsters living under his bed, only to shudder in fear. Eventually, he would wrap himself into a tight cocoon, wedging himself against the wall. He would be safe there.

But now he was big and he didn't have to wrap himself in a cocoon of sheets and wedge himself against the wall anymore. He didn't have to listen to passing cars, and he didn't think about what they'd say of him if his funeral were tomorrow. But even though he was comfortable and safe, alone in his bed, he still felt the lingering sense of anxiety until sleep finally came.

Well, so

"Ah," he said.
"What?" she said.
"Nah," he said.
"What?" she said.
"Eh," he said.
"Ugh," she said.
"Mmm..." he said.
"Well?" she said.
He paused.
"Pfft," she said.

Humbling Moment of the Day

Scrubbing off caked-on menstrual blood from the toilets at work.

Ground Control to Doctor Pon

The molecules of air had reconfigured, and he could feel them, sloshing and slogging together. He was poured in cement, was far away from his body, giving it directions on a time delay. The lag made it awkward to move through the sloppy air. He blinked and saw a flash of the inside of his eyelids. Honey-combed planes of undulating geometry soared past. He opened his eyes.

He walked along the curb, balancing tentatively, concentrating hard to place one foot in front of the other. Not to place his foot on the crack, not to loose his balance.

He walked along the edge of memory and consciousness, concentrating hard to take in the words coming from their mouths. Not to get distracted by the honey-combs, not to drown in the cement.

The words came and went, faded away. Each distinct and meaningful, but together a misshapen rabble of sounds.

Aircraft Carriers

He liked to sit on the carpeted stairs and read. Each step was just wide enough for him to stretch his legs out, back against the wall, head beneath the wooden banister. He liked to look in the books with cut-aways of tanks and airplanes, cathedrals and castles, the heart and the spleen. Nuts and bolts and bricks and mortar and blood and guts spilled out of the pages. He couldn't get enough. The best times to read were during the golden hours of the afternoon that stretched on endlessly, when the light soaked in through the windows and stained everything with a luminous glow. The sun traced the shape of the window across the carpet, but he did not notice. He had more important things to attend to; the castle was under seige and the invaders with the battering ram were having boiling oil poured on their heads.

Many years later.

He sat in the library of the university, staring into one of the beige boxes bolted down to the table. The keyboard clacked satisfyingly. He was reading about nuclear-powered aircraft carriers on en.wikipedia.org. Nimitz-class supercarriers can stay at sea without refuelling for up to 20 years. They displace 100,000 tons of water. They carry over 3,000 aviators and seamen and a compliment of over 50 aircraft. And for a little while, he sat on carpeted stairs on a golden afternoon.