Well, it was the last day at work today, which was nice. I find that people always try to jolly me along into being ecstatic when they recognise that I have something to be thankful for - sort of emoting by proxy. Before I went to work, I think both Mum and Dad separately said "last day!" in an enthusiastic tone of voice. Nigel at work kept on saying that I didn't seem too happy about it being my last day. The reason I dind't burst out into song and dance was because I was still going in to work/still working. Seems perfectly logical to me. Besides which, it being my last day, I knew it was going to seem like a long haul regardless of how hard I actually needed to work. I am glad that it is concluded now that it is out of the way, but needless to say, I'm not getting too excited about it. It's nice.
Now that I am finished, I shall complain about local radio a bit [Update: should read "at length"]. There's a commercial station round here called The Eagle. It's practically all I've heard for the last three weeks. Fortunately it was on relatively quietly, so I didn't have to listen to the crappy commercials. Now, these are two things that I am given to understand: Firstly that more people hear adverts on the radio than they do on television, what with channel-surfing, so businesses are advised to advertise on the radio. Secondly that sometime during the eighties, the rise of marketing became inexorable, and advertising agencies suddenly realised they could sell pretty much anything to anyone, despite whether or not they needed it, if they had good enough adverts. This was when advertising became the kind of thing you talked about at the pub for example - c.f. the Lynx Pulse advert, which everyone at work was loving, and also has a spin-off no. 1 on the hit parade, as you may have noticed if you have your finger on the pulse of contemporary popular music. Why then, are local radio adverts all still crap? I do not think I will go into why I think they are crap, but I suspect most people would agree with me. Perhaps not.
Another thing is this phrase "[Insert region]'s better music mix!" - I don't understand; everyone radio station and their kid brother seems to say it. Do the announcers never think to themselves, "Golly, I've just realised that by saying that we are better than everyone else using this cliche, we are, somewhat ironically, carving a niche (if you can call it that) for ourselves as the most conformist radio station going!"? Considering that everyone says it, it is also a bizarre thing to say - better than what? The other stations? But they say they're quite good too... If everyone is claiming to be better than everyone else, the only logical outcome to belief in their claims is that commercial radio has achieved transcendence over all earthly concerns, and that we should bow down and worship at the altar of absolutely good music. Ahem. I don't think that was very well put, but nyeh.
The other thing is those things, idents, I believe they're called, when the radio station has a self-referential jingle. Particularly I mean the ones that say "Because we love you, we play more music per hour than other radio stations!". This idea has never taken my fancy. One reason is purely cynical - are we to believe that these station don't only play more music because it means they don't have to employ so many 'personality' DJs, who might want paying? I know some people don't like DJs in general, and I can appreciate their point, but I rather like the fact that humans occasionally interrupt the pre-recorded flow. Xfm, round London (we can just about get it here) has a fair amount of music you don't get to hear on radio 1, and they cut out a lot of the populist filler, but I hardly ever listen to it because the personality DJs seem to have been told to leave their personalities at the door. For this reason I much prefer to listen to Mark and Lard as well as Chris Moyles over on Radio 1. Again, I know many people who would disagree with me regarding the entertaining nature of these particular people, but that's not the main issue. Radio would probably not have taken off so rapidly had it not been for personalities - I'm no historian of radio, but I seem to recall an immensely popular chap calling himself Wolfman Jack* who really popularised radio.
Not really a problem that I think is radio's fault per se, but the playlists of contemporary stations tend towards the glacial. This is excusable owing to the nature of the industry, but I have, for three weeks been listening to Aguilera at least four times every day. What I want to know is, what kind of people, and I know that they are legion, are so loyal to one such station that they will never, on pain of death, allow you to change over? Don't they ever get bored of hearing the same thing, day in, day out? These are my thought on the subject. They certainly add up, do they not?
When I got back from work, it was very nice to be greeted by Adrian, in person, who is back for a long weekend from Manchester where he is doing post-grad work in topology. We talked about various things, including the idiosyncratic nature of his department until we thought that we should probabbly go to bed. We, by the way, included Nicholas. It was very odd having the three of us just chatting in a room. Can't have happened for a while. One of the things we talked about was what we were going to do, as Myself, Adrian and Nick are all on time off of sorts, which is very nice, and again, unusual. We think we shall go with Ruth to The Squirrel pub quiz again. There's also Mark and Miles to see. Somewhat more recently than James' entry that day, James said that he thought that Mark (Dungay) was a friend of Andy's. I guess this was because Andy is far more likely than I to invite someone round who encourages one to flick burning matches all over the place. Mark and Miles are Adrian's friends, from school I think, and I have hung out with the three of them a fair number of times now. He was over in Exeter at the time to see Fugazi with me. He keeps on recommending that I see bands playing in the Exeter area. I haven't been to any sort of gig for aaaaaaaaaaaages. Last I heard, Miles was working as a postman, so it is possible some mail I have sorted has gone through his very hands. I'm sure he will be edified and interested if I inform him of this. I have an inclination not to. I have Mark's e-mail address, but have not told him about the blog. I wonder why? Possibly it's because he only has internet access at work (I'm not sure of this) and he probably has other things to look at to while away the time.
