Housekeeping and Peanut Rage

I meant to update my template or something- I forget exactly what I intended to do- and then I got distracted and kinda forgot that I had a blog and that I'd left it languishing in virtual limbo for weeks.

So what's happened lately with me?


- WRIR 97.3 FM, the radio station that I've been engineering/DJing at since 2005, completed our bi-annual Fund Drive last week and we broke our all-time record, despite lousy economic conditions and the direct competition from our local NPR station's own fund-drive. (We are wholly independent of NPR).

My passion for live music engineering was re-ignited by five excellent sessions- in the course of the fund drive, I engineered a local Gamelan orchestra, a jazz quartet, salsa greats Bio Ritmo, a twangy rock band called Mag Bats and a fast-rising Belgian duo called The Black Box Revelation, two guys who really tore things up- in a good way:



I had my own two shows as well, but I'm not podcasting them as they are full of fund-raising chatter and I'm not into editing audio files at the moment. The show returns to normal tomorrow, never fear. As if...

Hmmm...what else?

Oh yeah...I had been using a couple of internet dating services and going on a lot of nowhere-nothing  dates this summer, but I finally gave up on the dating services altogether . I kinda had to give up, because I met a warm, beautiful, intelligent woman who has been very kind and very good to me and I'm more than just a little bit sweet on her. We've gotten to the point where we are planning a vacation together, so I imagine she'd be pretty pissed off if I went on dates with women who aren't her, not that I would do that.

I'm feeling a sense of real-life happiness that is entirely new and wonderful to me and I don't plan on fucking it up. The future looks good with her in it.

 I've also  been a repeat guest on a internet radio talk show streamed on New Dissident Radio called Breaking Taboo. The show is archived on their site, you can download and  listen to all the recordings, not just the ones with me on them. The show's host, the multi-talented Lakota Phillips, also has a new show called Rebel Goddess.

Oh, and the Peanut Butter Conspiracy is pissing me off. There's been considerable media hoopla about the soaring price of peanut butter- the day I first heard this news, I went to my local store and found the store brand of all-natural (ingredients: peanuts, salt) PB was on sale for $2.00 per 16 oz jar.  A 5-lb bag of potatoes, on the other hand, cost nine bucks! Both items were more expensive than the low-end ground beef ($1.69/lb in bulk), which says a lot more about ground beef than it does about the Peanut Famine.

Before I forget: Never buy peanut butter that contains any added oil. A peanut is 50% oil by weight and there is no reason to add oil to PB- what food processors do is remove the healthy peanut oil ( which is sold separately as a commodity) and replace it with much cheaper industrial-strength hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. The kind of oils that shorten your lifespan.

Read the label of your average Name Brand PB and ask yourself this: what part of the peanut does hydrogenated cottonseed oil come from?

Furthermore, if you have some extra time and really want to save money, make your own damn peanut butter. Here's how you do it:

-Throw peanuts into a blender or food processor. Add some salt or a touch of honey if you wish.

- Turn the device on.

-Turn it off and stir up the nuts.

-Turn it on again.

Repeat until you have peanut butter, which isn't really 'butter' at all. (It's really peanut paste, for Godzilla's sake!)

- Make someone else clean the blender.

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See ya on the radio!