WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Update: Banda Banditos

After our post on Banda Music, Thunk Tank received an email from Listener Reeshard, directing us to a news story about the growing problem of California tuba raids. Banda relies on the tuba, and tubas cost, like, $2,000–$7,000 each. So thieves are breaking into high schools and stealing all the tubas and sousaphones from the band rooms, but leaving all the other brass instruments, the computers, electronics—they only want the tubas, because playing the tuba is cool. If, you know, you’re into banda.

Thunk Tank supports the music, but not the thievery. Look! You can make a perfectly serviceable tuba out of an empty plastic jug and some pvc piping and some other stuff I don’t really understand the Spanish words for:

 

 

All Your Holiday Belong to Us

As ThunkTank continues to inject itself into all pop culture like a prion from outer space, it was inevitable that we would begin to take over holidays. This Tuesday happens to be a holiday, a holiday in which you puny humans express your affections with heart-shaped pieces of flavored chalk imprinted with slogans—everything from PITCH WOO to FAX ME* And so we have created Thunk Tank Conversation Hearts; but, being Thunk Tank, ours are enormous: Eating one is like putting your entire fist into your mouth.

 

*actual examples

Thunk Tank's Monopoly Zodiac

As part of Thunk Tank’s bid to expand our global media empire, this week we’re moving into the lucrative world of daily horoscope readings. Every newspaper prints these things, people go online to read them, the Zodiac Killer is beloved by millions, it seems only natural that Thunk Tank should provide horoscope readings in order to attract more listeners. Thunk Tank being Thunk Tank, however, we have decided to forgo the traditional horoscopes provided by either Western or Eastern traditions, and instead provide our own system based on a person’s date of birth and a corresponding Monopoly game piece. And so, without further ado, we present:

The Thunk Tank Monopoly Zodiac 

The Music We Would Be Playing, if We Were Playing Music

Besides being WFMU’s first callerless call-in show, Thunk Tank rarely features music. Every week we go through the new CDs that have come into the station, and find a few we like, and bring them into the studio, and then don’t play them. If we were playing music, though, right now we would be playing a lot of banda, a style of brass-heavy oompah music from the Mexican state of Sinaloa—also home of the pointy boots!

 

But that's tribal music, not banda. Banda instrumentation includes accordions, tubas, sousaphones, slide trombones, clarinets, and a drum with no kick pedal and a manual hi-hat. Diligent viewing of Mun2 TV has convinced Bronwyn that banda songs are mostly about fat pizza delivery guys who get beautiful girls, and young busboys who get beautiful girls, and school janitors with beautiful janitress girlfriends who can’t stop looking at the high school girls.

more videos beneath the fold...

Pickle backs and saddle sores part 2: bucking strap glory

I had no idea how to ride a bull. None. I’m just a simple sandwich suit-wearing radio DJ from the small town of Brooklyn, and the big country ways of rodeo folk confuse me. But the bull rope was being adjusted around Viagra Thunder’s ribs and I had a job to do. I looked over at Applebuck, standing outside the bucking chute nervously chewing her hoof. She knew that her brazen behavior had gotten us into this mess, and the only way for us to get out of it was for me to…

Suddenly, I was up in the air, floating gently for an instant before falling towards the earth and crashing with only the foam padding of my chicken and Brie sandwich suit to cushion the violent impact. Viagra Thunder, that rotten bovine, had bucked me off to put a scare into me before we left the chute. Out of the corner of my eye I saw him laughing and then my head cracked against the hard arena floor, and everything went black.

When I opened my eyes, I found myself standing in a rodeo arena, but instead of bleachers surrounding the fence, rolling towards the horizon was an infinite prairie of billowing white clouds. “Bet you’re feeling a might confused, eh there buckaroo?” I turned towards the source of that gravy-smooth voice, and there, standing before me was rodeo legend Smokey Snyder dressed in the finest cowboy splendor and glowing faintly.

Entr’acte: The Rodeo Clown

 

So: Bullriding. You get on the bull in a chute, and the gate opens, and the bull comes out and bucks, and you stay on as long as you can, and then you fall off. Or, if you manage to stay on for eight (8!) seconds, then they blow a horn and you can jump off. And then what happens? You’re on the ground, in an enclosed area, with a pissed-off 2200-pound animal with big testicles, big horns, and also possibly ’roid rage. (There was a bull-doping steroids scandal in 2007.)  For your protection, they bring in the clowns.

Pickle backs and saddle sores

Applejack was drunk. Not hammered, but enough to be getting surly. We were sitting in some forgettable Irish pub near Penn Station and she was going on about how hard life in Equestria could be. In town for BroNYCon, the tough girl of the My Little Pony world had grown tired of signing autographs and had snuck away from her adoring fans to enjoy a drink. I had been sitting at the bar when she walked in, sat down next to me, and started chewing my ear off.

Empty shot glasses littered the bar in front of us, and Applejack’s breath reeked of brine from the dozen pickle backs she’d put away. “You ever seen Applebuck Season?” she asked me, her mane making a faint swishing noise as her head bobbed back and forth. “You think Stutterfly helped with that harvest? Always playing with her forest friends. You think that bitch Rarity is doing anything but combing her tail all day?”

She gulped down another shot of house whiskey and pointed her hoof at me for emphasis. “You think climbers are tough?” She gestured over to Madison Square Garden where the Professional Bull Riders event was going on. “You think those stupid cowboys over there are tough? Horseshit. Ponies are tough. Ponies are tougher than anyone,” and then she burped, vomiting a little bit in her mouth, and swallowing it back down.

Cyrillic Tiny-Voice Death Metal Techno

Sluggo sent me these, and that's all I know about 'em, except that they're amazing.

 

The City Formerly Known as Munising

We knew from the beginning that the marketing campaign was really going to make or break the whole project, so we had to choose our language very carefully. That meant “serf” and “indentured servant” were out immediately—too much historical baggage—and "licensee" and "lessee" were too legalistic, not enough implied fun. So we performed the Thunk Tank mind meld, and came up with the answer almost immediately: “Contestant!”

The word implied a sense of promise and great potential, but with no guarantees. Winners would succeed in a great meritocracy, while losers had no one to blame but themselves. “Citizen,” I mean, what a burden, what a dull stink of responsibility that has, but “contestant”… well, hot damn, a contestant gets a moment in the spotlight, the opportunity to vie for greatness. “Contestant” rhymes with “celebrity” and celebrities are sexy. “Congratulations! You’ve been selected to be a contestant on the town formerly known as Munising!” It was brilliant.

Rick Snyder has the name of a game show host and the face of a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman. He’s a businessman, a venture capitalist, and a self-described nerd. I actually don’t think he pushed through the Local Government and School District Fiscal Accountability Act as a salvo against Working Class America, or as a nefarious power grab for the oligarchy. I think he truly believes the gospel of corporate efficiency and—as nerds often do—confused a “rational” choice for a “good” choice, without really comprehending the inevitable consequences of his plan. Like many nerds, he’s also a sucker for flashy PowerPoint presentations, and like many corporate executives he’s a sucker for jargon-riddled, buzzword-referencing executive summaries, and this is where we saw our opening.

Michigan had budget problems, and thanks to the LGaSDFA Act, if the governor thought a town was almost broke, and local officials weren’t cooperating with the state to resolve the problems, good ol’ Rick could appoint a Financial Manager to step in and play Sim City with real people. Managers could default on bonds, ignore union demands, rearrange schools … hell, they could disincorporate and merge whole towns if they wanted! For obvious reasons, becoming Financial Managers seemed like a highly desirable position for us, and so we used some of Bronwyn’s connections to certain Olds to get an audience with the Rickster and explain how he was looking at a real crisitunity here.

Because Physical Wounds Heal

I felt like Ernie Anastos after he told the weatherman to "Keep fucking that chicken" during a live broadcast. Externally I had to just keep smiling through, while inside my mind was screaming that whatever madness had just passed my lips had the potential to devastate all that I held dear. And all I had said was, “Yes, sir.”

Rather than further contemplate this horror, however, I snapped a salute to Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, spun on my heels, and exited his tent into the smothering Afghani heat. Until now, I had barely seen the general, let alone spoken with him. All orders passed from Caldwell to Lt. Colonel Michael Holmes, my CO, and then down to me. But it seemed that the general and the colonel weren’t seeing eye to eye lately, so Caldwell had sought me out as a potential ally in his private campaign.

"Operation Four Star," Holmes had derisively nicknamed it. Caldwell wanted to use our psyops team against visiting Congress members to prop up flagging support for the war. There was no threat Congress would move to actually end the occupation, but attention would shift back to Iraq, the boys in Baghdad would start getting all the headlines and funding increases, and the next thing you know our $20 billion-a-year air-conditioning budget would be slashed.

It'd take three or four years before Iraq would start feeling hopeless again, the press would start screaming about the great Taliban threat, and we would get our AC back. Nope, that wouldn't do at all; the generals, with their promotions depending on AfPak s continued prominence, were not going to lose this pissing contest, even if it meant some Senators needed a little light brainwashing. And I'd just agreed to help with the scrubbing.  

Of Benjamins and Biebs

Many Listener Blog Readers are familiar with Bronwyn C.’s longstanding fascination with numismaticism, especially the Ron Paul Dollar—the second most popular currency in the United States! But many don’t realize that the number one most popular currency, Federal Reserve notes, aren’t the only option. 

Briefly, the U.S. government does not issue money, the Federal Reserve Bank issues money, and the money is a “fiat currency,” which means it’s not backed by silver or gold, it’s backed by your delusional belief that it’s worth something. Section 411 of Title 12 of the United States Code provides that Federal Reserve notes “shall be redeemed in lawful money on demand at the Treasury Department of the United States, in the city of Washington, District of Columbia, or at any Federal Reserve bank”—but what is “lawful money”? Well, in this case, it’s debt. 

But you don’t have to use Federal Reserve notes if you don’t want to! You can use any of a number of alternative currencies, all of which are perfectly legal. If you’re in the Berkshires in Massachusetts, you can use the widely accepted local currency called BerkShares. Just look up “alternative currency” and you’ll find a lot of them, all perfectly legal—except, ha ha, the Ron Paul dollar, which was backed with actual precious metals and so the FBI raided the issuers’ office and everyone got indicted and now there has to be trial. 

NEVERTHELESS, in our quest to boldly violate the false dichotomy between jokes and serious shit, Thunk Tank is issuing Thunk Tank Notes just in time for the WFMU Marathon! Listeners will be able to exchange Federal Reserve notes for Thunk Tank notes 1:1. We intend to make the Bieb the second-most popular currency among WFMU Listeners, and we figure as long as we don’t issue coinage or claim to be legal tender, we probably won’t get indicted.  

 

Enter Putin's Ass (A Putin Pals Adventure)

“We knew this day would come,” said Paul I, as he floated in his glass tank, methodically prying apart the halves of an oyster shell.

Putin smiled a bit as he looked over at his psychic cephalopod companion. “Perhaps you did, old friend, but I fear I’ve been distracted by business matters. I barely paid any mind to this growing menace until you brought it to my attention.”

The menace of which Mr. Putin was speaking, of course, was the enormous wolf pack, 400 beasts strong, that was terrorizing Siberia. Never before had such a terrifyingly large band of carnivores been seen. For months this massive pack had been roaming the countryside, devouring entire villages, leaving carnage in its wake on the scale of Kahn and his Mongol hoards. Russia had not known such destruction since the Tunguska event, that mysterious explosion that devastated almost a thousand square miles of Russian forest back in 1908.

Putin pinched his eyes shut, remembering that awful day. “Never again,” he whispered to himself, before looking back at Paul, who was deftly scooping the meat from another oyster and slipping it into his beak. “Scientists and experts say the pack’s massive size has been caused by this brutal winter. With less game available, the wolves have banded together in order to take down larger prey. But we know differently, don’t we, gadalka?”

The Foreskin Chronicles, vol. 1

Dear Listeners,

 I regret that I will be unable to co-host the show again this week, neglecting my duties and leaving Bronwyn and the ever-capable Tim to shoulder my responsibilities. The call of the foreskin is strong, however, and I know that if I can find this missing piece of Putin’s member, it will be not for my own glorification, but for the benefit of all WFMU-kind. In my stead, I leave these three humble tales, accounts of my recent adventures that will perchance entertain you until I return next week. —Cohost Jay

I was in a filthy, back-alley pirate saloon in Mogadishu, laying low after a smuggling run gone bad. To earn some extra cash to pay for my search for Putin’s foreskin, I'd cut a deal to sneak 1000 counterfeit Snuggies into Somalia. Unfortunately, a hundred miles off the coast, a Belgian naval patrol boat had sneaked up on my ship while the night watchman was engrossed in a game of Angry Birds. I was able to distract the officials long enough for my first mate to get below deck and dump the Snuggies before the inspectors got wise, but avoiding trouble with the law meant making trouble with the lawless.

Thunk Tank's Top 10 List for 2010

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The TSA Question

On the last Thunk Tank show, we talked about Thanksgiving travel and the TSA. Listener Steve emailed us the following:

“You guys are having fun at the expense of new travel security measures.  And they are a pain in the butt, no doubt.  But there is a problem and you're not offering alternatives to a real problem. Why aren't you in any way critical of the reasons for the necessity of these things? Just wondering.”

Since we’re having a special guest (Rudy Delson!) on our next show, we thought we’d answer Listener Steve here on the Blog.

1: The TSA scanners are a virtual strip search. The Fourth Amendment says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated ...” How is it reasonable to require every single traveler to submit to a strip search?

2. The TSA scanners are not safe. Jason Bell, a molecular biologist and biophysicist, has reviewed the TSA’s own safety reports, and has concluded that people should opt for the pat-down search rather than go through the scanners. Here are some (long) quotes:

“Essentially, it appears that an X-ray beam is rastered across the body, which highlights the importance of one of the specific concerns raised by the UCSF scientists... what happens if the machine fails, or gets stuck, during a raster. How much radiation would a person's eye, hand, testicle, stomach, etc be exposed to during such a failure. What is the failure rate of these machines? What is the failure rate in an operational environment? Who services the machine? What is the decay rate of the filter? What is the decay rate of the shielding material? …These questions have not been answered to any satisfaction …”
And also:
“… the statement that one scan is equivalent to 2-3 minutes of your flight is VERY misleading. …relating non-absorbing cosmic radiation to tissue absorbing man-made radiation is simply misleading and wrong. ... a total body dose is misleading, because there is differential absorption in some tissues. … Even more alarming is that because the radiation energy is the same for all adults, children, or infants, the relative absorbed dose is twice as high for small children and infants because they have a smaller body mass (both total and tissue specific) to distribute the dose. Alarmingly, the radiation dose to an infant's testes and skeleton is 60-fold higher than the absorbed dose to an adult brain!”

There is much more, including Bell’s call for the TSA agents to be equipped with radiation badges to monitor their own exposure. You can read Bell’s full post here.
(Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.)

3. BUT! You don’t have to go through the scanners, you can opt for the “pat down.” Still an unreasonable search, and guess what? The TSA agents don’t change their gloves for each one! That hand going down your pants carries the cooties of 1,000 junk-touchings. The  TSA’s own blog has a lot of posts about the problem they’ve had with spreading scabies at Boston’s Logan Airport. Scabies today, flesh-eating bacteria tomorrow, n’est-ce pas?

Finally, to address Listener Steve’s question about the “necessity” of strip searching all travelers: What is the reason for it, really? Does it really make traveling safer? Really?

Ask yourself: Are you safer today than you were on September 10, 2001?

 

Thunk Tank Reenactors

Jay's out of town this weekend and is expecting me to post something about Putin, but I thought I'd feature the Thunk Tank Reenactors doing the opening of the 10/12/10 show instead.