INFROMANT - essay by Freon

The Year We Lose Contact
Have to rant for a moment - sorry to go all futurist on you.

Sure signs that Radio Concentration has already claimed your broadcast area as a victim:

1) Common street names like Bunert and Schoenherr are pronounced BUNNERT and SHOW-NAR.
2) Ads that you hear when you're out of state that sound identical but have local terms and places dubbed in
4) Morning shows that read the newspaper and cnn.com at you instead of writing items themselves
5) Songs coming in several remixes to fit the demographics of differing stations under the corporate umbrella
6) Money. Prizes. Ticket giveaways to sold-out concerts.
7) Memorable Beer Commercials.

Y'know, friends, we're doomed. Sorry. That's in the past - and look now at the telly of the future:

-=2010=1984=-

The big 'news' being that communities are protesting the second-rate status that cable is giving them by making public access television viewers use rf-converters to be able to view content on HDTVs which don't support analog cable/broadcast anymore.

Viewers Pissed about Taking it Up the Spectrum(sic)

Of course, Comcast HAS to comply (oh dear) by taking CATV into their pipeline (for a fee), and leaving the community with NO NEED FOR BROADCAST TVs and therefore NO BALANCED MEDIUM, beginning the moment the last television hits the curb. Duh. Sorry - that's what you get for buying what your government tells you to buy. Or what Sony tells your government to tell you to buy. Get the picture? It's not news. It's fallout. Community access has swallowed. We're on our own.

Why complain? Analog cell phones are finished as of this year. XMRadio is somehow still here against all reason, and as I've mentioned, Broadcast Radio is already rotted at the roots. I'm on a pulpit built by AT&T Broadband, and I can already see the death of dialup from here.

Smart people will always have public access, minimum requirement tools and freedom of information. Too bad we're running out of all four.

And you can quote me on that.

In 2010, everyone else just HAS to be satisfied with Coors, Fox 'News' and their next president - all chosen for them by that trusted one percent of the voting population, incorporated. What's scary? They ARE.

On Friday night, I bring NBC's broadcast of Orwell's classic, prophetic fiction '1984' with David Niven - 12am on RFF. Crack open a Blue and enjoy. ;-)

freon, doing his part by keeping the rabbit ears
LONG LIVE THE FIGHTERS-RADIO FREE ANYTHING

Freon is Canadian. If he's too loud we can deport him.

The One-Shoed Rascals Eat Pastry - fiction by Michael Marcus

The foil-covered sky on this trancelike morning sparkles brightly over the molten fundament that defines the bottom of Lake West. Children of various ages and limbs hobble around the lake, waiting for the shoe fish to hop to the surface--without the food and leather, they will quickly die. Today, they are all doomed, for the One-Shoed Rascals are here. One-Shoed Rascals are lake-drainers, cow swallowers, and rampant nictophobes, capable of the most heinous butchery in the knifeless waters of Lake West and its major tributaries, the Wonk and Toto Rivers. Only the most fearless fishermen and carpetbaggers have tried to stop them; none have returned.

Even as this pointless exposition continues, the Rascals sight the children and propel forward with mighty swishes of their desperate tongues. One of the children yells out a cry of surprise as he finds a scuttle of shoe fish, hopping and crawling nearer and nearer a spot where they might leap momentarily out of the water and free themselves for a few seconds of their burden of their awkward, non-hydrodynamic shape. The other children gather around. This is the moment the Rascals attack.

Several swift spines surge from below the surface, sharply stinging the dead bejesus out of the unsuspecting kids, injecting them with virulent backward poison as they squirm in paroxysms of pain, dying even as their parents watch on. The Rascals drag them under with fiberglass harpoons hidden in their voluminous tusks. The elders observe the frenzy with detached clarity, shaking their heads. None of this batch survived the Rascal attack, time to breed more. One of the younger couples cries a little bit, throwing a birthday cake into the water after their dead five-year-old son.

The One-Shoed Rascals eat pastry.

Michael Marcus edits IF-X, the full-size comic anthology series published by Hamtramck Idea Men. 'The One-Shoed Rascals' appears in print in IF-X Issue 1 Vol. 1

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