Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Division and Rationale of D.J. Duties

The same regimentation that existed during TLC Catering's reign of terror is still displayed every day in the disc jockey duties:
  1. Supreme Generalissimo Allen commands the rights of primogeniture*, reserving to herself the sexual rush of noisily broadcasting her spoor into the morning air;
  2. Leftenant Brassey, the good soldier she is, fills in on the days, like Tuesday, April 6th, when Supreme Generalissimo is physically absent (every day mentally absent) or stove up;
  3. Grunt Greene falls into the tertiary position - and laggardly performs the sickening act of turning OFF the radio in the evening (wrong endocrine secretions in that job.)
I posted the below here:
"As punctual as an alarm clock going off at 7:00 a.m. every morning, Lynda pops out her door in robe and slippers and shuffles quickly over to the outbuilding to turn on the yard radio. Loud, but not too loud. On her way back, a glance over her right shoulder to ensure the speaker is pointed my direction. When it's not, she's barely tall enough to reach up high with both hands and reposition it according to her purpose. Then she retreats back indoors, leaving the Mega 100.1 FM (KQOD, Stockton) morning show blaring for my enjoyment."
Things go on exactly the same morning after morning (except Lynda was two minutes early, 6:58 a.m., the other day) - same robe, same slippers, shuffle, volume, over the shoulder glance at the speaker, same hasty retreat back indoors.

 
I work all day in an office with Muzak (c) service and expect residential quietness before and after work. (When I want music at home, I'll put on something I like.) My neighbors, however are delivering to me a disservice - Muzak (c) at home - except I didn't order it, don't want it, will not pay for it, but cannot turn it off, let alone change the channel or control the volume.
  • T, L & C thought (with their limited brain cells) to use musical noise to mask the "squeaks and squeals of loud, frightening contraptions" - the icemaker, vendor delivery trucks, catering trucks, and the hour-long ice bucket brigade - except the radio just added to the din.
"Muzak was created in the 1930s by General George Squier, who developed the use of military messaging technology to carry music. This new technology was particularly useful for piping music into elevators, which at the time [1930's] were loud, frightening contraptions. The soothing music helped calm elevator riders' nerves and masked the squeaks and squeals of early elevators." 
Muzak's approach:
"It was during this time [1970's] that background music known as "Muzak songs" - rerecorded versions of classical, pop, country, and rock songs, minus the vocals - were adopted as a strategy to provide unobtrusive subliminal cues to shoppers. As the demand for original music grew throughout the 1980s, Muzak shifted its focus to Audio Architecture, and a new way of reaching the hearts and minds of customers was born."
T, L & C's approach:
"The use of 'acoustic bombardment' has 'become standard practice on the battlefields of Iraq, and… has joined sensory deprivation and sexual humiliation as among the non-lethal means by which prisoners from Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo may be coerced to yield their secrets without violating US law' ” (“Music as Torture” by Suzanne G. Cusick, Transcultural Music Review Vol. 10, 2006).
  • T, L & C were for twenty-three years self-defined by their illegal and now defunct business operation. They have nothing lawful to do on their property, except reside there, and nothing gainful or useful (or legal?) to do away from their property. They are now poster children for the sayings: 
    • “In works of labour, or of skill,
    • I would be busy too;
    • For Satan finds some mischief still
    • For idle hands to do.” (Issac Watts)
and
. “The only thing worse than idle hands is an idle mind.” (Anton Lavey)
and
.  "An idle brain is the devil's workshop." (Henry George Bohn)
  • T, L & C have spurned every overture to join the adult human race, desiring only to throw verbal and musical tantrums, continue litigation, decline to make or accept offers of settlement, and refuse to remediate their outdoor radio nuisance. I again refer the reader to the best article I have ever read about noise, in the .pdf newsletter The Quiet Zone:
 
   See if you can find Lynda, Theresa, and Corky in there...

 
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* primogeniture - Latin word meaning " first born". It refers to the common tradition of the first born child of the parents who, by this law, inherits the entire estate of the parents because he/she is the eldest of all the children. This law is no more in existence in most of the world's countries now, except in the Third World village of Manteca, California, and the estate at 810 Fishback Street.

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