Showing posts with label bathroom. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bathroom. Show all posts

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Dear Diary: The blowup. No, really. . . .

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.



THURSDAY, OCT. 24, 2002


Just a quick note before I collapse from exhaustion. But if the anthrax comes again, I'm covered . . . I'm on two weeks' worth of Levaquin, of the Cipro family.

Meanwhile, the "Pledge-a-Thon" proceeds apace. And my general manager seems to have had an epiphany after the new control room damn near self-destructed because of a defective wiring punch block. Our contract engineer went to punch in one set of wires for the air monitor, and . . . kerflooey. We were putting out nothing but the sounds of silence.

It was the first time I ever saw true panic in his eyes.

After he got the room back on line (precariously, warning us not to bump into the wall), I took the hour's break I got when we went to "Catholic Queries Live" (which originated the past two days from our unfinished new studios) to wire up the men's room . . . uh, old control room . . . the way I originally had it. I told the GM that was the only "Plan B" we had, and that no one had better touch it.

Today, he complimented me on the wisdom of my approach, said that Manic Don hadn't had a clue how much was involved in putting on the Pledge-a-Thon, that he was impressed with how I put all the pieces of the operation together and that he'd gotten several compliments on the music we were playing.

And some other board members complimented the show -- one saying his 13-year-old daughter told him Pope FM was sounding "like a real radio station."

Sometimes, the Lord sends His small consolations and vindications. He's a good guy.

Tuesday, June 09, 2009

Dear Diary: Rope. End. Near.


EDITOR'S NOTE: Here's another in the occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago from the front lines of Catholic radio -- Pope FM.


MONDAY, OCT. 21, 2002



Dear Diary,

I'm nearing the end of my rope, but I just can't quit without another job. I think divine intervention of some sort is needed . . . if only for my endurance.

I'm short on time, and I have to go to bed soon, being that I have to be at Pope FM by 6:15 or so in the morning for a 13-hour shift (every day for the rest of the week) during the "Pledge-a-Thon." To boot, a nasty chronic ailment has returned with a vengeance after several years' absence (after a several-year off-an-on run).

I JUST SENT the following note to a longtime volunteer -- the 25-year-old intern who was weeping in my office last week:

Susie,

Be prepared. I have absolutely no idea what to expect tomorrow. I came to work today to find everything I had prepared in the present control room/men's room ripped apart with no good explanation, other than the engineers now thought they could get the new control room functioning "enough." Everyone seemed to think I should be happy about this.

They were still frantically working on it when the Missus came to get me after 7 to take me to the doctor. Manic Don still was revising and explaining the "run sheet" for the first day of the Pledge-a-Thon. The other days have yet to be scripted . . . and he is scripting everything to within an inch of its life.

I spent the entire day trying to decide whether to just quit . . . that and praying for enlightenment. But I decided I wouldn't give the Don the satisfaction.

So far, he's been working the other two interns like dogs.

Welcome to the new
Pope FM. Don't be sad, and don't be afraid. But do be prepared, and do be resolved. In all the wrong ways, Pope FM
is becoming incredibly close to "the real thing" in radio.

Hang in there. . . .
GOD HELP US at Levy Pants, Midwest Division.


-- Me

Dear Diary: Live . . . from the crapper

EDITOR'S NOTE: Revolution 21's Blog for the People continues an occasional series of dispatches recorded some years ago in the trenches of Catholic radio. The names aren't real, nor are the places, but the stories are -- and it's a snapshot picture of what happens when "Their zeal consumes them" meets "Sinners sacrifice for the institution, not vice versa."

In other words, there has to be a better way.


SATURDAY, OCT. 19, 2002


Dear Diary,

Well, the insanity continues apace at Levy Pants, Midwest Division. Pope FM, remember, equals Levy Pants in A Confederacy of Dunces.

Thursday, "The Triumvirate" (Ken, Fred the Development Guy and Manic Don) grudgingly admitted the reality of what I'd been telling them for a month -- our new studios wouldn't be ready for the "Pledge-a-Thon" this coming week. I'll be engineering it from the men's room.

No, really. The crapper. The head. The loo.

The Facilities.

See, right now, we have a cobbled together, temporary control room in what will be the men's room. The commode drain is there, but not the stool itself, or the sink, or the urinal. That would take up too much room, leaving none for the equipment. But the plumbing and the floor drain are all there -- complete with that certain je ne sais quoi . . . the intermittent fragrant hint of sewer gas.

CONTRARY TO THE OPINION of Fred the Development Guy, God did not "expand time."

I plugged a Behringer studio mixer into the borrowed control board we have, just to make it functional enough for me to engineer the Pledge-a-Thon with minimum hassles and give me enough inputs for a line feed from the makeshift interview studio and to run microphone cables to the phone room, which conveniently is just outside the men's room -- uh, CONTROL ROOM -- door.

But to make room for the volunteers and telephones, Manic Man, our fearless program director, had to move out of his temporary digs.

Where would he go? Where would he go?

Well, let's just say I ended up literally begging him and the GM not to move our temporary, jury-rigged and very precarious production room into a still under-construction space so Manic Man could take over the present room for his office . . . right now.

Did I mention all this was less than a week out from the Pledge-a-Thon?

ME, I THINK the Lord is a fan of A Confederacy of Dunces. And, as an added benefit, He is teaching me radical compassion for an intern I used to have little patience with but who was, fairly literally, crying on my shoulder Friday over her mistreatment by the Manic Mad Man of the Midwest. She referred to him as "a male chauvinist pig."

When you hear meek, charismatic-Catholic 25-year-old women use the term "male chauvinist pig," you absolutely KNOW he's probably worse than that, even.

Really, this guy is making a crapload of enemies real fast. And he's starting to make the wrong enemies. Or at least make them for the station.

I don't know what the Lord has in mind for all this, but I know in my heart it involves my stepping up to the plate to try to rally the troops and hold them together to weather the raging storm.


Taking to the factory floor
with a banner made of a . . .
a . . . an (ahem) bedsheet
,

Me

Thursday, August 21, 2008

Satan is a Brillo pad


Jesus has gone into the bathroom-fixtures bidness in Livingston Parish, La.

And Satan looks like a Brillo pad and some WD-40.


BATON ROUGE'S CBS affiliate, WAFB, explains . . . I guess:
Robb Keppler says he asked for a sign and he got it, in the form of Jesus in his bathroom sink.

Keppler lives in the Livingston Parish town of Albany with his daughter-in-law and her child. She also has another one on the way. His 21-year-old son, Private E2 Brandon Keppler, is serving overseas. Before Brandon joined the Army, his father says the soldier had some hard times with a relationship that went bad and he subsequently suffered with depression. The soldier went into a hospital and his family says he talked of taking his own life.

His father struggled hard to keep the family intact. A praying man, he asked for a sign. "Let me know something," Rob Keppler recalls saying. "I was having a hard time dealing with it myself and stepped out the shower one night and saw it plain as day right there," he said as he pointed to a rusty spot in his sink. Was this simply a rust spot caused by the slow drip of water, or was this a sign, an image of Jesus? Robb Keppler has no doubt. "It is an image of Jesus, a clear sign," he says.

"After we saw the image, everything just started coming together," Keppler said. He says his son is now doing fine, serving in Afghanistan, and his life has straightened out.
WELL, BLESS THEIR HEARTS, I guess that if a rust spot in the bathroom sink helps bring these folks closer to the Lord, I reckon He'll go with the flow. You know?

But if you ask me, if that rust spot in the lavatory is an image of Our Lord and Savior, the Man Upstairs has done gone and contracted out miraculous apparitions to Pablo Picasso.

He could do worse, I guess.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Holy crap!

MEMO TO MY WIFE: You will not complain when I go into the bathroom with the newspaper.

You will not complain when I go into the bathroom with a trade paper, a magazine and a catalog.

You will not complain so long as I emerge from the bathroom on the same day I entered it.

Capiche?

NOW, from that very odd state of Kansas,
here's a real loo loo from The Associated Press -- one that probably will leave you flush with horror and disbelief:

Deputies say a woman in western Kansas became stuck on her boyfriend's toilet after sitting on it for two years.

Ness County Sheriff Bryan Whipple said it appeared the 35-year-old Ness City woman's skin had grown around the seat. She initially refused emergency medical services but was finally convinced by responders and her boyfriend that she needed to be checked out at a hospital.

"We pried the toilet seat off with a pry bar and the seat went with her to the hospital," Whipple said. "The hospital removed it."

Whipple said investigators planned to present their report Wednesday to the county attorney, who will determine whether any charges should be filed against the woman's 36-year-old boyfriend.

"She was not glued. She was not tied. She was just physically stuck by her body," Whipple said. "It is hard to imagine. ... I still have a hard time imagining it myself."

He told investigators he brought his girlfriend food and water, and asked her every day to come out of the bathroom.

"And her reply would be, 'Maybe tomorrow,'" Whipple said. "According to him, she did not want to leave the bathroom."

The boyfriend called police on Feb. 27 to report that "there was something wrong with his girlfriend," Whipple said, adding that he never explained why it took him two years to call.