And welcome back, dear listeners. Marcus here, coming at you from the greatest city in the w-o-r-l-d, we are broadcasting a ferocious, vivacious, pugnacious, vainglorious, effervescent, phosphorescent, signal—where we do the rough work to bring you smooth jams; where we bend over backwards to push you forward, under a sky of the blues and clouds of sweet melodies. We’re going to get back to the music in just a few seconds but first we have a very modest, humble, ask of you all. Yes, folks. It is that time. It’s fundraising time. And believe you me, we would not, never, never, ever ask you for your monetary support unless we absolutely-lutely had to. Alas, this is one of those times. Now, this is an abnormal pledge drive time, I know; this is unfortunately one of those dreadful exceptions we’re making because, hey, I’m just going to come out and say it: we’re broke. So, pick up your phone, dial our station number and please make a donation. It’s a testament to all you listeners out there that we’re still on the airwaves, bringing you the most righteous tunes and news at the top of the hour, every hour. And we do that all without the assistance of paid advertisements, we are ad free, strictly no-pro, not for a profit, five-oh-one-see-ya-later, but what that means is we rely on donations, we’re strictly reliant on the support and goodwill and -cheer of our faithful listeners like you. So, please. Please, we ask you for any size of donation. Small, medium, large, extra large. Double XL. Petite. Grande, menudo, mediano, trifling, middling. We’re here and we want to be here, in the future, for you. We want to keep bringing you informative voices and soul-rattling Soul music, all without the interruption of corporate shilling. The only shilling that happens is twice a year, and, I guess, times like these, right now—we have to shill at this point, but that’s just so we don’t have to bring in the evil shills to shill, to play their greedy moneymaking schemes on our airwaves. And...now, I keep using the word ‘we.’ I’m not alone here in the studio. I’m actually in the studio here with Randy and Arianna—our audio technician and intern, respectively—two of the hardest working cats in radio, the engineer and the intern, and they are indeed hard at work as we speak. The engineer, Randy, is making sure the equipment is running smoothly, that it’s up to snuff—no, not just up to snuff but that it exceeds snuff, that the quality’s as close to perfection as we can get; while Arianna, dear Ari, is penning, by hand the thank you letters, that you, dear listeners, will be receiving. If, that is, you donate to our fair radio station. So, please. We are, as they say, a hard case. We’re hard up. We are hat-in-hand, just short of begging you for any sized donation. It turns out, running a radio station is expensive. We have to pay for new equipment. We have to pay ourselves, for crying out loud. We have a paid intern. That’s right, folks, Arianna is a paid intern. Randy over there is a miracle worker, what with the sad state the gear we do possess is in. He might as well be dealing with etched wax cylinders. He might as well be dealing with steam powered equipment. He might as well be dealing with hydroelectric power via Archimede’s Screw. He’s tirelessly working over there, and I can tell you, any of you can make old Randy’s life easier by donating. Our equipment is outdated. Our equipment is broken. Our facility is in general disrepair. Randy might as well be using a hand crank, or, I don’t know, a wind turbine, keeping the lights on by riding a stationary bicycle powered generator—what’s that? Randy can’t hear me, or see me. Hold up your old timey monocle, Randy. Hold your lorgnettes to your eyes. Clip on your pince nez spectacles. Lift up your ear horn. Yes, we’re doing a donation drive. Look it’s really easy: as I say, you’re likely to reach either Ari or myself on the donation line, Randy is too busy trying to fix a problem with the amplifiers. Ari has finished a healthy stack of thank you notes and has moved on to organizing the tote bags, ready to send out to you as a thank you gift. You just have to pick up the phone and make a pledge of any amount. Any amount. It could be a dollar. It could be a hundred dollars. It could be a million dollars. That’s the donation sweet spot that helps us keep bringing you sweet tunes: between a dollar and a hundred million, it’s that easy. Again: our station, dear listeners, is in mucho disrepair; it’s not just the equipment, not only the amps and the signal boosters, the microphones, the windscreens and pop filters, the turntables (yes folks, we use turntables that are old fashioned; we also have cassette players and CD players, and even a reel-to-reel, because we love all technologies and those decades that brought us them. Our reel-to-reel has been broken for longer than anyone can remember, broken in a comical fashion, where the left reel spins one way and the right spins the opposite, never in agreement, they’re like the current political situation that we discuss at the top of the hour, every hour). But that’s not all: the physical space is falling apart. There are pieces of ceiling dropping down on us, with a distressingly increasing frequency. Not sure how old this building is but I shudder to think about the amount of lead in the paint on those dropping pieces of ceiling. We’re potentially dealing with lead paint folks. That’s how old this building is. This building is pre-war architecture, and when I say war, I’m talking, like, Spanish-American. The sky is falling—it’s like we’re Chicken Little in here, but we’re not Chicken Little, although we don’t mind Little Richard—a large chunk of ceiling came down only moments ago, just missing my shoulder. So, folks, I implore you, I beseech you, if you like quality radio, if you like radio that inspires, enthralls, disrupts, hearkens back, clues you in, and informs you of the whys the wherefores and the what-have-yous of the day-to-day in the U-S of A, please consider. Now Arianna is actually sitting at her workspace and knitting the wool and canvas—the material that will eventually be the thank you tote bags. So, you see, we play hard, we rock hard, we work really hard, and speaking of playing—we’re going to get back to those tunes, we just have a bit more to discuss before getting back to them. Again, operators are standing by, at the ready, waiting to take your pledge. The operators, or rather the operator will be one of the three of us. That’s a small staff. We’re dedicated to the arts. We are devotees. Devout rockers. We all have our MAAs. We’re masters of the audial arts—evidenced right now, as Randy is tending to a smoking amplifier. Folks, our amplifiers are on fire. “Let me stand next to your fire,” for sure, but don’t let’s catch our beleaguered equipment aflame, am I right? That’s the state we’re in. I’ll have that thrumming, beautiful Hendrix track queued up for you in a second. I just want to finish my pitch to you and—oh dear—it seems as though a piece of ceiling has fallen and hit Ari. She’s out like a light...a light that has been turned off I guess. We don’t like using platitudes here, we strive to bring you precise language. Out like a light doesn’t cut the mustard. She’s been bopped on the crown, thumped in the dome. Eyes closed, forehead resting on the edge of the tote-knitting table, arms hanging down, hands very gently swinging. And Randy is going to make an attempt at reviving her. Really looking for those pledges, folks. We’re in real legit-o trouble here. And, if I could be honest with you—I always strive to be honest with you—this would be a great time to kick it over to a commercial, as Randy goes to have a look at Arianna, but... we’re commercial free radio. And that’s just the thing. We don’t try to sell you anything. We don’t lay down for corporate behemoths, these two-faced media conglomerates whose only aim is to bilk and bamboozle you. We just want to bring you the best possible programming, the best auditory delights and insights. And now it looks like Ari has successfully been roused from her little slumber, thank heavens, and...Oh dear. This is not great. She seems to be erratic, and confrontational, and...Okay. Arianna is behaving violently. She is attacking Randy with the knitting needles. Oh, folks. This is bad. Randy seems to be doing an okay job evading her forays. She’s lunging at him with a knitting needle in each hand. He’s doing a pretty adequate, Mohammed Ali-style, rope-a-dope thing, and really the studio’s just so darn small, and hard to get around what with all our beleaguered equipment. Randy’s yelling for help. And...you know what? That’s a great call, Randy. We’re going to bring you that 1965 classic from the Fab Four in just a few quick minutes. But the point we’re trying to make with this pitch, this plea, is: think about what this station means to you. Think about when you listen to us, and how often. Maybe it’s on your commutes to and from work. Maybe it’s when you’re at home, cooking dinner. Maybe it’s while you’re at work. Maybe it’s right before you go to sleep. The point is: that is time you’re spending with us. That time has value, we would argue. And if you can decide on a value—in a monetary form—that the amount of time you spend with us is worth, then we pray you’ll give accordingly. Again, you don’t have to. We’ll hopefully be here, for you, for free, but please consider giving. And really not sure what is going on with the tussle over there. It’s turned into more of a wrestling match. Not sure where the knitting needles have wound up, but. Now they’re on the floor and it’s a real grapple-fest, folks, they’re somersaulting and there’s headlocking, and there’s underhooking and overhooking, and now their clothes and skin are becoming all jumbled up and difficult to…Okay, now…it appears as though Randy and Arianna have...fused? Am I seeing this correctly? They’ve conjoined themselves, their skin and whatever bones and blood and organs contained within have merged into one lopsided human form. Not really sure how this could happen but look...we’ve been on the air for a long time. I’ve seen my fair share of crazy things; still, this might have just taken the old cake-o-la in that department, the crazy things department. Things are getting weirder too. Not only has our paid intern fused bodies with our engineer...the ceiling, additionally is not just falling down, but it is flying apart. The reel-to-reel player is going absolutely apeshit, and Randy—or, I guess, Randy-slash-Arianna—can’t get over there to stop it at present due to their clumsy lopsided human form. A small donation, and we can probably fix the broken reel-to-reel, folks. It’s an expanding pile of tape, spilling onto the floor, which, by the way, is looking weirder and weirder by the second, or the millisecond. Things are shifting. Things are moving. Essential, solid, material pieces are breaking apart, reconfiguring. Gravitational pull is getting, shall we say, a tad wonky. What’s this? So much is going on that it feels as though it’s already happened in the past, eons ago, and yet also has not happened. Is that what’s called a paradox? The real paradox, as far as this DJ can see, is that we have to keep talking to you about your monetary support while we have an uncountable amount of sweet tunes to bring you. We’re here to take your pledges. And by we, I guess it’s just, well, me, as our audio engineer and paid intern have fused…had fused, that is. As now, all this stuff, this physical solid mass, is shifting, breaking apart, they’re not really one anymore, they’re not so much fused as they are sort of breaking apart at the molecular, the neutrinic, the quarkian level. This is some subatomic shit we’re dealing with right now. This is crazy. And those sub-A particles are splitting, splitting again and reconfiguring. The molecules are like, so long, suckahs, have a nice day, peace, I’m out, goodnight Irene, see you on the dark side of the moon, am I right? The neutrinos are like, sayonara, au revoir, hello I must be going, let’s blow this popsicle stand, and, look, it’s not even the fused engineer and paid intern, or rather the disenfused engineer and paid intern; It is stuff flying apart at the seams—the seams being basic proteins, nuclei and rhizomes—at both the slowest speed and the speed of light, or whatever—the relativity is really messing with us at the moment. Really messing with us at this elongated moment. Really giving us the treatment. It’s hard to ask you for US currency when we can’t even express the molecular break up or break down, or the ever-expanding space between any identifiable particles. This is some super extreme shit. It hasn’t been this trippy here since we did that Jefferson Airplane marathon a while back. The stuff of life is flying apart with such velocity that it’s impossible to describe. Not the paid intern and the audio technician. They’ve reverted to being pure and simple wave forms. I have no idea which one is which, who is who—or if that even matters, for that matter—they’ve become sound and light. We have no way of discerning. We can see the firmament. The firmament has been breached. It’s not great, folks. The firmament is unraveling like it’s an unfinished tote bag. I don’t even know if my voice is reaching you. Maybe you’re hearing a long low belch, a subfrequency hum, or maybe you’re hearing a maniacally high blip, or maybe you’re hearing just plain old me. Just me, old Marcus, coming at you on the ninety-one one frequency, hopefully always with you bringing you sweet tunes—or just, you know, some kind of audio. Some kind of auditory-esque-ish something or other. We try to do that here, despite the fact that ions are cavorting with muons—up is down, down is up, the whole bit. We’re rushing toward something both scintillating and horrifying. Pretty sure I can see the obelisk from Kubrick’s 2001. Our universe is, it turns out, one undetectably small singularity; the Higgs fucking boson just played a guitar solo on Jimmy Page’s Les Paul. That’s what we do here. Firmament-piercing, Higgs boson-shredding, you know it, you love it…Ya’ know, Christian Rock has been one of the only genres we’ve avoided up to this point, but, holy shit, maybe we oughta consider playing some—opera too. Because this is getting really Wagnerian, friends. This is some Rings Cycle, Die Meistersinger-style end of days, apocalypse-stuff right here. We’ll even go so far as to play New Age. That’s right: we’ll play Yanni Live at the goddamn Acropolis if you so wish. And that brings up an important issue. While New Age, opera, and Christian rock music isn’t necessarily our style, here at the station, we’re willing to adapt to listeners’ preferences. Why? Because we’re listener-supported radio, that’s why. What you say goes, folks. You’re in charge! Even though the deceleration of essential leptons and the reorganization of muons and antiprotons are making it harder and harder to figure just what is anything. And that’s just the thing: it’s because we strive to be here for you, that you’re ultimately the boss. Which reminds me...maybe we should queue up some Springsteen for this pledge drive. We absolutely will, even though this is not looking great folks. This is looking like, well, it’s looking like anti-matter is wild, really wild, friends. It’s like we’re here and simultaneously not here, and that simultaneity would be a fun paradox, if it weren’t wrapped up and enmeshed with anti gravity and if the whole cosmological realm weren’t turning itself inside out like it’s my old t-shirt from Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy a Thrill tour...not just falling down, not just flying apart, but plainly and simply, dematerializing...Anyway, the point is....If you can hear me. If you can hear my voice, then please consider donating. If it’s not a blip in your ear. If it’s not a long drudgy, low frequency thing, or if it’s not even on an audible spectrum that human ears can perceive, and if your own molecular organization is intact, if the radio is something you actually fucking love and it’s not something you’re clinging to for the sake of space time telescoping into oblivion and, the seconds are becoming like hours, like centuries, and it’s all apparently happening and all apparently not happening. If nothing…If you can hear us. If you can find it in your heart to donate, then please do. Please do. Please do. For now, though, let’s get back to the tunes.

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