I finally feel like I have something to say from time to time. I often feel like my thoughts are wasted on the dash of my worn Civic - not that my sentiments are necessarily noteworthy but neither are Howard Stern’s and look at the audience that guy has. Am I going to say completely original things? No. No one does that. If nothing else, I’ll sharpen up my writing skills and have a chance to reflect on some of the unintentionally humorous things coming from the stuff between my ears.

Here’s some stuff that has been on my mind lately:

I’m from North Texas and believe it or not we have an NPR-affiliate here. How that is possible deep in the red is beyond me, but the member station has apparently been around since the 70s or 80s. The station I am speaking of is of course 90.1 KERA (kera.org) and even more bizarre to me is it happens to have the 5th largest listener base in the country among NPR stations. KERA claims that on average 360,000 people tune in on a weekly basis.

Now for my point. Last Monday KERA launched their spring fund raising drive. They’ve been spamming up the airwaves, interrupting NPR programming, and forcing some of their best broadcasters to think of new ways to say the same thing - that’s “pony up, cheapskate!” - over and over. Their goal is to reach $350k, but after a week of endless appeals they’ve barely reached half that. If the user base can’t muster less than a dollar each, maybe this area doesn’t deserve public radio. Most people pay well over $500 dollars annually on cable TV alone. As much as I hate to say it I think public radio should go away if the public isn’t behind it. People of North Texas, prove me wrong and bring an end to this incessant panhandling.

And now let me pause because the Red Sox just smashed four home runs in a row. The worst thing is that I feel so sorry for the rookie pitcher that I can’t fully enjoy the moment. What an anomaly..

Don Imus. Can you say witch hunt? I think what he said was more immature and stupid than anything else. Of course what he said was mean-spirited and wrong but you can’t say it was inappropriate. Imus was doing what he always has done. Shame on NBC and CBS for caving to the would-be censors and sensationalists. NBC fired Imus mostly because of media hype and public outcry, but also partially because their staffers called for the broadcaster’s termination. I wonder what NBC employees think about the disgusting profit-driven airing of the Virginia Tech killer’s manifesto? Another reason to pay KERA!