Deja Vu Again: Have To Blog Myself To Stop Unjust Eviction-to-Homeless Pressure

Why does this keep happening to me?
Twice in two years in South Carolina? Coincidence? I think NOT.

Minding my own business and trying to leverage my newfound senior citizen status by writing letters, asking for interstate relocation assistance since the begging of this year, I am suddenly blindsided by the heretofore friendly apartment Manager/Landlord, three weeks ago, who apparently wants to kick me out! No reason given and apparently, they can DO this here in South Carolina?? My rent is up-to-date and never late; I’ve been a concerned citizen tenant and the guy spoke to liking me to give him a “heads-up” on anything that needed to be addressed (and boy, there were many in the past 22 months, including a deranged young man who tried to Bogart himself into my crib one Sunday night back in July of 2017!). It is a dysfunctional “community”, to my worldly, educated eyes and I will not miss it. However, to be given the bum’s rush before I have a security deposit in hand and a place to land?…

Hmmm, to me, a black American man, it seems like a remnant from the Jim Crow era is afoot; one that needs to be updated by eradication in South Carolina!
Some slow state; resistant to eradicate,
while latent lost labor legacy percolates
To this very day.
Therefore, I can’t delay

Any longer, when the current landlord is unreasonable and done a “180” on me.
I did nothing wrong to invite this. Time is of the essence with kick-out deadline looming on April 1, 2019. Too old, seasoned and good of a man to have to go out like this. Too bad I always seem to never have received the compensation my talents deserved, because if I had, nobody would be able to try and “handle” me like this now. No amount is too small.
Thank you.

**PickHit: Thanks to the South Carolina Human Affairs Commission, two local Councilmen and their Admin Assistants and The Urban League of Charleston I was able to buy additional time to move more comfortably. The new state I am in new is very strange and substandard in many ways, so South Carolina may see me again – permanently – if my First Time Home Buyer campaign at www.HomeFundIt.com is successful. [October, 2019]

Secure Me From Living In A Car – Never Thought I’d Blog Myself…

SINCE November of 2009, when I began this literary exercise at the behest of a college buddy, I have been able to opine in relative obscurity, save when one would search the “About” page and as “obscure” as one can be on the worldwide web. That is about to change with this post. Life is a race against time and “time” always wins in the end.

Six months ago, in the late summer of 2016, as I was being “downsized” or forced out of the latest copier sales “telemarketing” gig by one small partner at NY Digital Products, I accepted an offer to work for what I thought was the company who helped me self publish my three books since 2010, CreateSpace in Charleston, South Carolina. By the time I arrived in Charleston, they switched me to the Kindle “ebook” training platform – that was the first bad omen.Fast-forward to Thanksgiving, 2016 when I was still living “Airbnb-style”, from host-to host, unable to find suitable and affordable housing in a nice, diverse neighborhood as I had in Nashville, Tennessee in the 2000s, I ended-up in a trailer park in Goose Creek, South Carolina and almost had a “Deliverance” (classic movie starring Burt Reynolds) experience until Airbnb saved the day and suggested several potential hosts, one of whom became the lady who felt my frustration and pain at having to move from place-to-place for many months and took me in. I paid her $600/month through the winter since November 25, 2016 for the room (shown on this profile). In February, 2017, her estranged husband returned to the house and the vibe changed gradually until he made it clear recently that the lady was not the owner of the house, HE is and he wanted to throw me out as I had finally been offered two jobs to get away from the Amazon Kindle gig which, unfortunately for me, did not work out, but left me behind on the money I was paying to his wife by five hundred, which he wanted immediately or I had to leave by force. The lady worked with me and I was giving her partial payments to catch up. He wanted “all or nothing” and it came to a head on Sunday, April 3, 2017 when he threatened to “remove [me]” and upon the advice of my Attorney, I called the police, who came and told him that “it doesn’t work like that”, he’d have to begin eviction proceedings. I do not want that outcome nor this drama and yet, nobody seems to be able to help me with a stable and consistent salaried job nor loan yet!! This is why I turn to my tried and true crowdfinding. I want to get out by April 30 so I can establish a base from which I can grow income from my creative callings and eventually apply for Social Security retirement. However, I cannot be forced into the streets and I want to give the lady who had stood by my side despite her husband, some money on my way to better days.
“Just last night she said about her husband, “Soon he’s going to put his foot down and you have to go…” I have no place to “GO”… [I remember that moment with hidden horror – 11.22.2017]
I need your donation today and no amount is too small. I can reward you with complimentary copies of my three books or an autographed DJ picture from my radio days. Maybe you can conjure a “perk” from me that would inspire you to donate massively? Just let me know. THIS…is an emergency. These are VERY nervous times for me. Please help.
Donate here Please Help Secure Me From Having to Try To Live In My Car

May all of your trails be smooth and full of the music you love,
“Cheetah” Naphtali Jimi B

PickkHiTT: I never thought that I would have to blog myself to stay solvent and off of the streets. Life’s a Bitch…

check out my musik-only blog at https://achilliadsmyvinylrecordshoppe.wordpress.com/

Ten Steps To Your (“maybe”) Home Business – w/o “Friends”

                                                   So, you think you are mired in an endless cycle of under-funded support systems? Oh, No! We have done research upon this subject , and now want to impart suggestions to you so that you can move forward and not repeat the mistakes of past poor planners. First and foremost, know who your few “friends” are!  As my late Grand-Aunt said, “You’ll be lucky to have as many real friends as you have fingers on one hand in life.”  True that, Auntie!

1. Buy a Personal Computer (not a “MAC” if-possible) because “it” will become your best “friend”.

2. Don’t call yourself “computer illiterate” nor “incompetent” at it because you will begin to believe it.  There is plenty of common-sense free teaching/coaching out here.

3. Identify as many of your best skills as possible on-paper (yes write with a pen or pencil!) and review it weekly if not daily.

4. When you get an email that touts how easy it is to “work from  home” and earn $$$$, immediately scroll to the bottom of it.  When/if you see credit card logos, read no further and hit “delete”.

5. Never think you can become this home entrepreneur and get rich “overnight” or even soon.  For most mortals this is a seven-to-ten year process unless your luck suddenly spikes and you hit a lotto game (and don’t “blow” the money).

6. If you do not have a home computer, go to your local library and sign-up for regular time in their “Computer Center”.  Get over not “liking” people from other countries while there because they are there getting coached-up to compete for the job you think you want; or may become your customers!

7. Learn to read and write better without the computer (re-visit #3) so you can make notes.  What if the electricity goes off suddenly and you cannot use your “I-thing”?  

8. Learn to write in “cursive” if you are that young not to have  it taught in your school. (It is a “cool” code to disguise your ideas from other people stealing them! and oh, yeah there is that “signature” thing that you might want to consider being unique to only you.)

9. Take your time and learn what your new computer can do on and off-line.  It ain’t all about e-mail, Skype or surfing; the name of the game is research.  The computer is a great absorber of time, so the faster you become at  finding websites and places that can help you, the more tasks you can master – and then turn the damn thing off to sleep!

10. Have your own timetable for succe$$ and stick to it!  Do not wait for other people to join you, nor let them pressure you to stray off-course.  Act now when prudent; wait when necessary for your personal/family goals.

11. “Oops, did I say ten steps?” Well, I just want to remind you that there is a big difference between “friends” and “acquaintances”, and often both will disappoint you in your quest, while complete strangers will help you to the max! Learn to identify the fakers from the pretenders; the always there from the “fair weather” ones and you will be better able to concentrate on business-building.

12.  “Oh, there I go again!” Or I should say, there I go letting my mind keep on thinking. What’s that?  Oh, you want me to remind them to “just have some fun with their quest to begin life as a successful entrepreneur using the computer”?  Well I think we just did!  However I would say it another way(see #14).

13. Whether you are a male or female, find a mate of the opposite sex who is your team-mate mirror, who will pull with you and your dreams and not cause drama by pulling against you intermittently.

14.  “Oh, shucks, I forgot to count…” Remember to sometimes, whatever the style or genre you love, please just get “lost in music“.  Peace.

P.S. I am no “authority” on this topic, and indeed my steps towards the above-stated goal are by no means complete.  Indeed, this list could probably go on to about thirty steps !   One thing I know is that I am closer to my goal than I was ten or fifteen years ago when I really first knew I wanted to work several ideas, myself, into  future financial comfort. Part of the motivation back then was the contraction of the career I chose out of the University; my current motivation is incorporating my soul-mate (“mirror”) into being my wife.  Wherever your inspiration comes from, always remember to say, “Thank You!” to those who help you – and mean it.

https://gust.com/companies/the_january_projex

   Please share your experiences, comments and or suggestions on the above, and “Bonne Chance”!

Not your PBS TV Electric Company!

 This is one I have saved, while I thought whether to share it or not.  But since I am feeling particularly lonely this night, I say, “What the heck!” 

A couple of months ago, in the middle of my work-from-home day, I saw a scruffy, unshaven, grey-bearded white man through my kitchen window, who was in my driveway just after the noon hour, as I made a snack for brunch. What ensued is best described now by some notes I scribbled during  the next fifty-two hours that I spent in the dark,   “A B C D E F G, H” I will cut your electricity off if the payment is not to my liking.  So is the feel of another monopolistic entity which could be in your town or down-town big-city.  They can say your money isn’t timely and justify pulling the plug with a vicious “throat-slash” sign of a crusty power-hungry employee  in a cherry-picker truck.  I wouldn’t blame you if you cursed-them-out unmercifully, like I did, while on the phone and internet to all of my “friends in high places” (who couldn’t do “JACK” to help the situation), telling them that ‘NObody should even take [their] fuckin’ job!’ 

 When I went to the Electric “service” headquarters the next day, I had to wait in a waiting-room for even more mistreatment by a robotic-like Customer dis-service “negro” who kept repeating,“I’m sorry that you feel that way, Sir…” as I tried to appeal to his sense of humanity and flexibility [not] to take what cash I had in-hand to relight my wire- fire.  When I asked him if I could use his telephone to call for long-distance help, the bastard told me to “Go around the corner to the pay phone.”  WHAT “pay phone”? There aren’t any of those anymore, and that just tore it, adding insult to injury by the monopoly!  You know I suggested that they needed a competitor in-town so that they might be “friendlier” to the public;  Oh, yes I DID!  I received no “two-day warning” note slip at my door or anything!  

No electric slows things down; you notice the stains in the sink or bathtub in a different sun-only light.  The dust balls move from the rug in the bathroom to the parlor as you sit dejectedly upon the floor thinking about how your freezer is full of food you cannot cook (my range is electric), and will now likely spoil.  I wrote a dejected deliverance note on that refrigerator the first night, fueled by a bottle of red wine I didn’t know I had under the sink, to my fiancee overseas, should I die and they find me, that I loved her so, and was so sorry I had failed, in grease marker. It is still there these many weeks later – maybe a kind-of reminder/shrine.  Not wanting to open the refrigerator and let what cool air in there out, I lived on Ruffles potatoe chips, water, wine and tuna fish for a day-and-a-half, until a neighbor, having got wind of my plight brought me a whole chicken dinner, with squash and everything!

You Live for the sun, and die with the dusk-into-darkness formerly known as romantic “twilight”.  The one, or however-many candle you own becomes your best friend at night if you live alone – it’s flicker is the only movement to keep you company. No telephone even!  Coincidentally my celly had no minutes either.  I thought your land line would work without electricity – didn’t they used to back during the Blackout in 1965?  With much time to think; earlier to bed – in total darkness – while vulnerable to intruders, since your security alarm system now doesn’t work . In the end they didn’t admit their error and ripped us off for a “fee” to re-connect the power to my house!  My-bad for not communicating more with them and thinking that Big Brothers would step-up in-full instead of acting like an Orwellian tease tool with just a “yard”.  Have you ever had a similar surprise encounter with a utility who you pay monthly?  When they came back to turn me back on (those chaps were much nicer, by-the-way0, I was apprensive about senset for several days – as in “scared of sundown” – thanks to the cold-hearted-even-in-today’s poor economy, local Electric Company.

“No Workers HERE in the U.S.A! Let’s Outsource,Marthaa!”.

Let’s say that you sign-up with a new company for your internet service, and it is great because when you have a minor problem with billing or need to reset your account for some personal reason, you always get a Customer Service Representative who you can easily, verbally understand and who understands you from the first note of conversation because you speak the same language within the U.S.A.  Then…suddenly,  maybe a year later, you have another minute issue and you call the same company only to hear the respondent say something like, “Thank you for calling Clear, my name is ‘bladabelomedabludbomadebuk’  and how can I help you?” Does this sound familiar?  I had this experience recently when I only wanted to notify my IP that my payment would not be in my bank account on the previously scheduled day, and make a “‘payment arrangement”.  First I got a nice-sounding and friendly female who told me she was in Barbados.  Fair enough, I could understand her name and we tried to proceed until she told me that my bank “account [was] not valid”; meanwhile, I am looking at my “valid” account info in real-time on this machine!  That was my first red flag – but it got worse. 

When I let the Barbados chick off of the hook and called Clear back, naively thinking that I might get someone here in the”States”” who would be able to read my banking 411 accurately, much to my chagrin, this time my call flung even further afar.  I never heard of whatever name the person who answered this time, and when I, now getting savvy/angry about it, asked up-front “So where are you located today?” They told me, “Manila”.  My first impulse was to hang-up, but I didn’t want to be rude, so I related the previous call experience and asked that I be connected to a  representative here in the continental U.S.A.  The guy said, “Oh, the chances of that are very slim, but I will try…”  Say what??  Suddenly as I told myself, ‘this is MY country’, I felt the sinking feeling of knowing that no matter how many times I called them back, and I did call at least seven more times, I was not about to get a person stateside who I could relate to, understand me and address my concerns quickly and succinctly. Whether you know it or not, this is another outgrowth of the September 11, 2001 attacks where we who were born here between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans had our rights to work in this country taken away due to “The Patriot Act” and ‘our” government’s pananoid, unjust internal scrutinization which has begat increasing “outsourcing”.

"Voila!" it is no secret that I know Corporations are responsible of our economic woes

Do you know how many companies in the “United States” are giving jobs to places like the Philippines while we here at “home” have Unemployment Benefits running-out?  The numbers are staggering! www.RTTS.com says, “”More than 1.3 million additional Western jobs will vanish by 2014 due to “the accelerated movement of work to India and other offshore locations,” says the study released Nov. 15. Hackett doesn’t talk of this as good or bad, but as something that will be a reality ? and a challenge ? for more Western businesses. Hackett says the pace of job erosion has nearly doubled this decade.”

  WHY is our “homeland” un-securitying us as if their aren’t enough people who would do “call center”, “Customer Service” gigs – even from our homes – that they have to look to India, Manila and places whose countries are laughing at us all the way to their protected banks?  Where is the “yes we can” Obama on this?  I swear, after him I will never vote again.  On the next Election Day for President, I will burn my voter registration card like we burned DRAFT cards back in 1970! 

I don't mind Russia as much as I wonder "why?" southeast asia where the mentality is less friendly.

What experiences have you encountered that relate to outsourcing?  Why isn’t there a  Middle East-style revolution in the steets of the “United” States of America against sending needed job opportunities  to other countries?   Do you know that most of the nations that American coprorations outsource our  jobs to couldn’t give a “rat’s ass” if the U.S.A.  lives or dies?  It is true.  Why are we not a country that doesn’t take to the streets to protest against policies like I speak of here anymore like we did in the 1960s – early 1980s? ? WTF?  Has the computer dulled the sensitivities of Generation Y or whatever is the name of those coming out of universities now so much, that they do not care nor understand that the whole populace, including the Baby Boomers who are aging, need to be included and that “outsourcing” is marginalizing/separating us to our collective doom?

I am VERY disappointed in Clearwire and all of the “American” companies that are sending jobs to other countries here in 2011, while millions of people cannot  get hourly wage employment because of outsourcing and the draconian, time-consuming and impersonal “apply on-line-only” culture prevelant here in “the future” that is now.  Many benign behaviors are outlawed or taxed/criminalized, how about fining U.S. companies who outsource a couple million dollars if they do it?

EEE ARE – All this for a prescription refill

E.R.

First I am surprised that there is security,

Going through a woman’s bag ahead of me;

As if we are getting on a plane!

Just a few steps from that humiliation,

A desk clerk inputs into a computer,

Much more than your name;

Then asks me to sign it not on paper,

But with some electronic writing implement.

“What are you here for? She asks.

“A prescription refill for my inhaler”, I reply.

The first false promise is,

“A nurse will be right with you.”

I am directed to wait where the chairs are.

Just a few more steps to the uncomfortable area,

Strewn with bodies with faces etched in pain.

Wheelchairs, crutches, groans and moans.

I don’t want to touch anything,

I can almost hear the germs crying out at me.

Finding a chair away from most,

I try not to make eye contact as I take out my reading book.

Gently I place my water bottle on the table next to me;

Guarding it closely so none will touch it.

Hanging from the ceiling,

A television picture with poor quality.

Suddenly a loud thump and bump.

Some dude fell-out of his wheelchair!

The bump was his reddened bald head on the floor.

He is quickly surrounded.

“Don’t move. Stay still.” the large cop standing over him says.

One hour passes and then two going on three;

I’m getting restless and don’t know what to do.

Having been back to see the triage nurse,

Experienced the questions of intake too.

More false promises of not having to wait for long,

I decide to take action and flag-down the first nice nurse I saw.

The man who fell-out is now very chatty,

“You can waste a whole day here”, he says to me.

I am thinking he staged his episode for the attention,

It still hasn’t gotten him in the seeing the doctor direction.

I am thinking when I am again working i must get a regular doctor,

When suddenly the nice nurse reappears to bring me in;

“We’re gonna get you outta here, ‘Man!” says the Doc,

Moments later I am with prescription and again free!

Excuses for us to Accept “the way things are”

Too many people give me this , “well that’s the way things are these days” excuse!  Especially when denying my request of them for work, a deal for mutual financial gain,  another job, or maybe even a blow-job! Just kidding on the last “for instance” – ‘wanted to see if you are paying attention – I’m not into the last one, but might as well be, in order to get some tabloid-style “notoriety’!!  (rhymes)lol  Copping to the presence of “the status-quo”  is a lameo convenient cop-out for inaction.  If that is the way we thought thirty or forty years ago, the Vietnam war might STILL be going on, Black Americans might still be called “colored”, “Negroes” (or worse) and have to ride in the back of the public bus, women would still be waaay under the glass ceiling in employment and there would be no handicapped-access ramps or parking spaces.  The analogies could go on; all voice-mails from government agencies would have no “press two for Spanish” option, Obama would not be the President nor allowed to run; might still be a “draft” of young men into the U.S. military, there would be no “gays in the military” nor gay marriage debate, etc.

Another excuse is, “Well it is a different time now…” Sure there are more tech gadgets and toys, but the basic human being isn’t different!  We all still bleed red blood – look at any video of the aftermath of a suicide bombing anywhere on the planet – we still have the same brain (although this tech wave is softening many of them up in the richer countries due to not having to use all of it anymore); we still have the same basic survival demands like the need of life’s elixir, water.  You see, we as a society or a government, choose which things we want to change.   So now is the time to work towards changing the way “things are”, don’t continue the injustices in employment and economics or technology by turning the other cheek in chosen apathy.   Will “they” still tell me this excuse when our clean H2O supplies dry-up within the next forty years?  Sticking the collective pundit head in the sand, Ostrich-style?  Will the masses in the U.S.A. and other traditional developed nations not take to the streets like the recent days in Tunisia?  Since when is an insufficient status-quo acceptable?  And don’t tell me, “Well, that just the way it IS now, ‘man…” Those who say this are comfortable watching the rest of us suffer and hope that we die so that there is more for them.  Prove me wrong! Please.  Say there should be fewer GUNS available for nut-jobs running loose in response the attempted assassination of a member of the U.S. Congress, and you’ll get another excuse for not amending gun ownership laws.  What has not changed since the 1960s in America regarding this?

The only person who got away with saying, “And that’s the way it is” and making it sound positive so we would come back to learn more the next time is the late CBS News anchorman, Walter Cronkite. (And those same leaders of excuses and inaction will say, “Yeah, well HE was from another time…”)

Make this the Year of Forward, Positive-thinking Decision; the year we realize that the next big wars will be not over oil, but over H2O, and let us take actions, even in the face of opposition from those we once trusted with our emotions and even our future, to ensure that those wars do not happen.   There is no rule that says we cannot go back to the extent that we grasp our best moments that achieved beneficial changes, and we easily can – if we put down our new hand-held devices and gadgets long-enough on a regular basis.

“They” Don’t WANT Us to Work Anymore

Have you tried walking your resume into a place you would like to work lately?  Did you have success or did you get the modern-day equivalent of the bum’s rush?  That is, did you hear, “Sorry we can’t take paper resumes, please go to our website and apply.” from some flunky? 

A few weeks ago I went to SnagAJob.com and saw where a bowling alley near me was looking for a bartender! Since I have a couple of “degrees” in bar mixology and have tended at upscale pubs from New York City to Washington, D.C., I figured that since this place was only three miles away from my house, I’d get my business attire on and ride on over there to impress them and maybe even get to mix a quickie off the top of my head if challenged to.  After-all this is a bowling alley, right?  I left there asking how the little pee-on who brushed me off even got her  job?

Well I schlepped back to my home workstation and found the AMF site.  The first things they asked was for the most personal information, like social security numbers, and made it plain that if you didn’t provide one, you would not be able to complete the application.  My red flag for scams began to wave briskly in the breeze; I never give out that kind of 411 on the internet, but then my progressive, “you have to change with the times” conscience said, well AMF is a long-standing company, so they couldn’t possibly get away with scamming people.  First waste of time mistake. So I fill-out the personal information and then got to go to step two, a bunch of psychological style questions that took me at least another forty-five minutes on-line to complete with the disclaimer that if you took too long the page might “time-out” and you would have to start all over again.  So they are like, rushing me, ok?  The questions were mutiple-guess (choice)  of the tone of, “If you saw one of your co-workers stealing something, would you a. do nothing, b. alert the authorities, c. think it was okay for you to do so, or d. none of the above?”  Then a few questions down the pages, they would re-word the same question as if you wouldn’t notice the red herring. 

After all of this, at the end of the questionnaire, it told me that I was NOT qualified for the position applied for, that my information would be “kept on-file” for, like sixty days or something, and thanked me for my time. Done. Booted. Finito.  With about an hour-and-a-half of my afternoon wasted, not including the original trip down the street and the gasoline used. I had the same experience a month later when, again humbling myself further, I applied to be a “detailer” with the local CarMax in the same area.  They even sent me a paper letter, however, which included, “Thank you for taking the time to submit your employment application for the Detailer position at CarMax. We’ve had a chance to carefully compare it with the requirements of the position./We appreciate you sharing your background with us, but we have decided to continue our search.”   In other words, with a Bachelor’s degree, I am not qualified to wash CARS???  I wash mine all the time in my driveway, and people comment on how clean it is  ( it is white, by the way)!! WTF??  Again the stupid pseudo-pyschological questions you only encounter with these popular on-line applications.  I can go on and even site temp agencies I applied to prior to the present “high unemployment”  that do this, like Randstadt, but I will not digress.

My conclusion is that this “new world” with all of the impersonal digital aloofness in the marketplace is a corporate creation in which the conspirators have gotten together and figured-out ways to discourage people from applying for work. How are you going to show-off your engaging smile, speaking skills, conversational aptitude or personality when you cannot apply in-person? Maybe this is further exacerbated by the fact that I am in my mid-fifties, but it seems to me now that whatever your age, unless you can invent some kind of new “job” or “career” for yourself, the scrap heap of life or worse is your destiny.  What do you think about it?

What is “radio”?

That is the question kids will be asking their elders soon if they aren’t already.  Terrestrial commercial radio as we once knew it IS dead. The mean-spirited “no fun bunch” has taken over. Corporations are to blame, and the Congress that deregulated radio about twenty years ago a la what Reagan did to the Air Traffic Controllers union in 1980 is also. I used to dream of being a successful music radio Program Director in a big city when I landed my first on-air gig back in 1978.  Now I know that dream will never be realized after almost forty years in the business – now mostly relegated to “part-time” status, I’m sad to say.

Recently, one of my favorite FCC Commissioners Michael Copps commented, “a tsunami of media consolidation fueled by the same hyper-speculation that was fueling so many bubbles in so many other industries [where] Stations were gobbled up en masse and totally unrealistic expectations were visited upon both them and even upon the ones who managed to stay unconsolidated.” And furthermore he said at the workshop, “the FCC had fallen “fell under the spell of an ideological deregulatory mind-set that fueled the evisceration or outright elimination of just about every public interest obligation or public interest guideline we had.” Not to mention planned careers like mine.  
I had a job interview with a Program Director a few weeks ago.  I guess he is close to my age but younger because we both reminisced about the days of editing audio using celluloid tape and a razor blade on those big ten-inch reel-to-reel tape recorders.  When I left I wondered how he got his job? Not that he isn’t qualified or anything like that, but I’ve almost forty years in “da bizness”, and can’t even get a sniff to fulfill my career dream?  I must have missed something along the way.  All of this began to change around seventeen years ago – about the time the computer became commonplace.  The bean counters came  in over we who had gone to school for/trained in broadcasting. Suddenly we had too many desk jockeys and not enough true disc jockeys.  I remember when I always had an eye to the “trades” Help Wanted sections for that next desired location, air shift or a music director gig.  I could send a tape, CD  and resume and get hired – seeing America the raido way; stations would even help you move !  Not no more – I’m stuck at the scene of my last relocation eight years ago.  No more “Radio Ga Ga” ( a song long before Lady Ga Ga burst onto the scene, by the way).

The result is the current vast, cold and cookie-cutter non-creative radio wasteland that discourages a disc jockey’s individualism, and where every genre’s playlist is a replica of the “competing” station over at the next corporation.

Of course another big competitor for radio ears are the I-Pods, Podcasts and other virtual media which I can only wish were never invented pertaining to the number of traditional radio employment opportunities; a no-win situation. 

Upon my recent prevailing against another unjust firing (when will I ever learn to get out of “radio”) a mentor wrote to me, “”Congrats!  I’m glad you won and yours is a victory for everyone who has been made a victim by companies such as Citadel.  I hope you get a generous settlement and I’m glad you didn’t let them get away with it.”

“The radio jobs that [we] yearned for thirty years ago aren’t coming back,” a Program Director friend of mine commented to me last week.  He has been one of the fortunate few to have been in his chair for about twenty years!  My suggestion has long been to bring back the requirement that broadcasters (yes,even DJs) have to pass the minimum Third Class FCC license test.  There are three classes of FCC licenses.  You would have a better quality of true communicators, and it would weed-out much of the “junk” we currently have over the terrestrial airwaves.  I bet people like Rush Limbaugh couldn’t pass the test for one on the first try! LOL

Two of  of these major “evil empires” of radio are Clear Channel (the former AM/FM radio and the greediest) and  Citadel Broadcasting.  Every time I read a headline like this week’s “Clear Channel Revenue Slips 6% In Q4 ’09” I am happy. I hope one day they disintegrate.  Citadel has recently filed bankruptcy, so logically they should not be appealing any worker’s mysterious, curious and cost-cutting dismissals these days – except that they too live in the illogical world of the bottom financial line which dictates that they shouldn’t pay a worker who is partially unemployed and pay into his/her unemployment benefits; yet they would rather dismiss that type of employee rather than create a position where he or she could earn more and get out from under the Unemployment safety net. I was a victim of such a bean counter lady recently.  There is no respect for longevity anymore and no willingness to “work with” employees for mutual benefits.  My uncle, who just passed away at ninety-two years old was a Jazz fan – he loved WBGO and NPR’s programs – always said, “The larger the company, the more stupid rules.”  ‘Nuff said.

We used to lightheartedly say about our being in radio that we were “bitten by the bug” because we had the fever to play music, cut-up, entertain, inform and communicate truths about our times.  That bug led to a fever that is hard to cure, and if you can break it, the residue tastes like that of losing a long-time lover or breaking a drug habit.