I’ve always wondered about this myself, so it was interesting to read this come into my e-mail today, courtesy of the Grammar Girl:
Retailers have long been accused of secularizing Christmas by using “Xmas” in signs and advertisements; therefore, I suspect many of you will be surprised to learn that “Xmas” has a religious origin.
In Greek, the letter “chi” is written as an X, and chi is the first letter of the Greek word for “Christ.” Greeks sometimes abbreviated “Christ” as “X.” For example, they abbreviated “Christ savior” as “XP.” (”P” is the symbol for the Greek letter “rho,” which is the first letter of the word “savior” in Greek.) The Oxford English Dictionary shows the first known English use of “Xmas” in 1551.
As for appropriateness, “Xmas” may have a religious origin and fit better on signs, but many people — both those who use “Xmas” and those who complain about its use — are unaware of the religious origin. If you choose to use “Xmas,” you should know that some people will be infuriated.
A recent thread on the TIRC email list about smoking at bars made me reflect on my life as a smoker. It’s something I haven’t really thought about in several years. But looking back, it’s easy to see how quitting has really been beneficial to my health and well being (duh!). I’ll try not to make this post too preachy as I don’t really want to alienate any of my smokin’ readers, because I honestly don’t have anything against smokers, just their smoke.
I gave up smoking at the age of 34 on December 31, 1999. Prior to quitting, I was smoking an average of two to three packs per week and normally I wouldn’t even have my first cigarette until right after lunch. I could never understand people that would light one up immediately after they woke up… blech! That definitely wasn’t for me. So, yeah, I guess one could argue that I wasn’t much of a smoker. So I was smoking roughly six to eight smokes a day. Occasionally I might go through as much as one pack in one day if the day ended at a show or party, but that was rare. If I smoked half a pack in one day, it was a lot. And in ‘99, cigarettes cost right around $3 a pack, maybe a little less. So let’s say I went through two and a half packs per week. Over the course of a year, that’s $390. If I don’t even figure increases in cigarette taxes and inflation, that’s roughly $3,500 I have saved since then (and counting).
That’s a lot of money. That basically covers the price I paid for my ‘65 Barracuda, in fact.
Now, aside from the MONEY, obviously, is the increase in my overall health since then. I no longer cough up “lung cookies” in the shower every morning. My house, clothes, and car don’t stink of cigarettes. And, even though I’m still not getting the exercise I should, I still feel better overall. Plus, I have Mitral Valve Prolapse. Lots of things aren’t good when you have this condition, such as a lot of caffeine, excess alcohol, lack of sleep/excercise and, naturally, smoking.
How did I go about quitting? It was actually easier than I thought it’d be… although I had tried to quit once before, unsuccessfully. Or, rather, I had quit for almost a year, right after the 4th of July, 1995. We were celebrating Independence Day at a friend’s place out in the country and I suddenly decided right then and there that I was done. I quit. And I went completely without cigarettes until June of ‘96, when, out on a camping trip with friends, I made the mistake of lighting up a Cuban cigar a friend’s brother had brought along to share with our group. After I smoked that cigar, I was right back to craving the nicotine (it’s crazy just how easily something as innocent as that can trigger that old craving again), so I followed it up with first “just one” cigarette, which led to two, and so on. That’s how quickly and easily I fell off the wagon. And it took me another three and a half years to get up the courage to try to quit again.
But by the fall of ‘99, I was seriously ready to quit. I was tired of it. Tired of the smell, the ill feelings, the hacking, and the cost. I had always promised myself that I would quit before I turned 35, and that was right around the corner. Then there was the promise of the new millennium. The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first (never mind the fact that that technically didn’t happen until 2001… YOU know what I mean). So I made up my mind that I would quit by the end of the year, before “two thousand zero zero party over oops out of time.” But to prepare myself for it, I didn’t smoke more, or even keep smoking the same amount. Sometime in October, I started cutting back, slowly but surely so that by the time mid-December rolled around, I was down to just three cigarettes a day.
Another thing that was a huge help was I started eating sunflower seeds… the kind in the shell that you always see ballplayers eating and spitting out on TV (it’s important to get the shelled kind because the time and effort it takes for your teeth to crack the seed open and then extract the nugget with your tongue is what keeps your mouth busy and your mind off of reaching for that pack of cigarettes, which you should keep in another room, way out of sight). I’d buy bags of the David Jalapeño Hot Salsa seeds and eat them whenever I’d get that craving for a smoke, or just when I was hanging out at home watching TV or going on the Internet. This was very important as it gave my mouth something to do instead of suckin’ on a cancer stick. I highly recommend getting into the sunflower seed habit in order to alleviate your nicotine habit. Just make sure you have a little cup handy to spit the shells into. Now, this is what worked for me. You may find that gum (maybe even nicotine gum) or something else can serve the same purpose. I never gave anything like that a shot, I just found that I really liked those spicy seeds and they served the purpose well. I still eat them, in fact.
So if you’re thinking about quitting, here’s how to do it: Plan early. Tell everyone you know you’re going to quit, and when. Tell them your plan—how you plan on doing it. Then convince YOURSELF that you’re going to do it. This may be the hardest part, but if you can convince yourself, then it’s basically a done deal. All you need to do is follow through with the plan. But allow yourself at least three months to start cutting back. Then do it slowly. Cut out smoking on Mondays entirely. Then cut down on the number of cigarettes per day gradually over time so that by the end of the third month, you’re down to next-to-nothing. And make that deadline an important date. New Year’s Eve, your birthday, an anniversary… some date that’s meaningful. And so that later you can look back and be able to recall how long it’s been since you quit. I seriously believe the hardest part of quitting is the psychology involved with it. If you don’t accept the fact that you’re going to quit (and when), then it won’t happen. All the sunflower seeds, nicotine gum and patches in the world won’t make up for that.
This is what worked for me. Obviously, it may not work for everyone, and you may or may not have the same success I did, but it’s worth a try. But if you’re thinking about quitting, you’ve already made a big step towards this objective, so it’s just a matter of sticking to your guns and not giving in. Good luck!
I first remember people giving me shit for “getting old” back when I turned 30. Ya know, the big three-oh. Thirty-odd-even. Um, twenty-ten. Yeah. But I didn’t buy it. I still felt young. Shit, this was 1995. I hadn’t even started doing The Wayback Machine yet. Gina and I had only been married for a little over four years. No kids yet. Still working retail. Not many responsibilities. I didn’t even have a website yet. Lots of fun years ahead! “Fuck it,” I said, “it’s just a number. Doesn’t mean anything.” And so it was. I went though my thirties like Grant taking Richmond. No holds barred, baby. Fun, fun, fun. OK, so I admit that I matured a bit midway through when I decided to quit smoking, but aside from that, I was the same guy, still enjoying life’s simple pleasures like booze and live rock’n'roll, still able to go out and see sometimes multiple shows in the same week, even, all the way up until shortly after my 38th birthday when my son was born. THAT was the first major life-altering change. Not bad, I guess, considering I was able to hold that off ’til my late thirties, right? Right. So then, not long after that, I turned 40 and yeah, I was starting to feel older… not quite as energetic and youthful as in the past. More aches, pains, and longer recovery times from drinking too much. But I was still able to hack it. That is, up until November 19, 2008, when I got an email from my high school’s alumni association with news about my class’ upcoming TWENTY-FIFTH reunion, scheduled for next June. What’s that? 25 years?! You’re shittin’ me. It’s been THAT long? A quarter of a century since I fucking GRADUATED from HIGH SCHOOL? Holy fucking shit. OK, that’s it. I’m officially old.
So now I have this dilemma staring at me in the face: to go or not to go? That is the question. I have to admit that I really didn’t like a lot of people in my high school class (Parkway West class of ‘84, in case you’re curious… and if you’re from St. Louis, you probably are), but honestly, who does? And then, too, it was a pretty big class. Hell, I didn’t even KNOW most of them. But looking back at my senior yearbook, there were probably dozens of kids that I got along with pretty well (even more if you count juniors, sophomores and freshmen), and a few fellow seniors that I’d even consider pretty close friends back then. I’ve even gotten back in touch with a few via Myspace, Facebook and plain ol’ email. One of them, Bruce Clayton, was even my college roommate for my first semester at CMSU. So now I’m thinkin’, ya know, if enough of these people that I actually wouldn’t mind hanging out with say they’re going, that I’ll go ahead and make plans. Or at least set the date aside… for now, anyway.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Doubleday Publishing had a broadcasting division. They owned stations in several cities: Denver had KHOW, Minneapolis had KDWB, Detroit had WLLZ, Washington D.C. had WAVA, New York had WAPP, and St. Louis had KWK (which, by the way, had been a prominent St. Louis R&B station in the 1960s).
Doubleday had purchased KWK in 1976. At the time, their frequency was dark. A flood had damaged the transmitter three years earlier. When they did sign on in November 1978, they began as Top 40. One year later, they (as well as other Doubleday stations) shifted their format to AOR, and added an FM. KWK’s tightly focused format proved very popular for several years, until CHR regained popularity in 1983.
What was unusual about this station was that both KWK AM and FM had separate AOR formats (not to mention the fact that AOR was a rare AM format anyway). They did a morning/afternoon drive simulcast, but they had different jocks at other times of the day.
KWK-AM featured a two-hour program called “Freeform,” which aired six nights a week. The show included a mix of new wave and progressive rock cuts.
I had been a fan of KWK in the late ’70s/early ’80s and listened to it probably more than I listened to KSHE-95. I was aware they were also broadcasting on the AM dial but I didn’t mess with that much since the signal was pretty weak and it sounded so good in FM, anyway. Why bother with AM, right?
John Hutchinson
Well, sometime in early 1983 my world was turned upside-down by the discovery of a nightly radio show on KWK’s AM side called “Freeform” that was hosted by a British DJ named John Hutchinson (”Hutch” would later go on to be the board op for David Lee Roth’s shortlived syndicated morning show in 2006). I stumbled upon this show one night while I was bored and flipping through the AM dial, just goofing around, basically. The funny thing is, I had the tape running while I was doing this…
But before getting more into that, a little background: Prior to hearing that show, I was your typical teenager listening to typical teenage rock and pop of the era, mostly the stuff that I’d hear played on the FM side of KWK… my favorite band throughout junior high (ya know, “middle school” as they call it now) was ELO and I also had records (and 8-tracks!) by bands like Foreigner, Queen, Blue Oyster Cult, AC/DC, REO Speedwagon, Rush, Judas Priest, Bowie, ZZ Top… you name it. I also loved ’50s and ’60s rock’n'roll and would often listen to (and tape record) songs off of the oldies station. The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Creedence, Kinks, Paul Revere & the Raiders, Doors, Monkees, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc. I’d listen to Casey Kasum on the local Top 40 station and would make my own lists of songs that I liked, and run out to Peaches and buy the 45s… mostly early ’80s new wave pop hits by bands like Bow Wow Wow, Felony, J. Giels Band, The Vapors, The Waitresses, Wall of Voodoo, Missing Persons, The Tubes, The Fixx, Thomas Dolby, The Stray Cats, The Romantics, Romeo Void, Berlin, Blondie, The Cars… you name it. Looking back, I’m not sure why but I just never seemed to be exposed to any of the really early punk or new wave music that was making such waves internationally from around ‘77 through ‘82. It’s probably because I had other interests (baseball, girls, my silly coin collection, etc.) and I’d be one of those late bloomers when it came to going headlong into music.
Once I did get clued into the fact that there was something else out there aside from the bland and predictable AOR that I’d been listening to for so many years, I could usually find some of this stuff at Peaches, and would take chances on full-length LPs that had that new wave look about them (Devo, Adam & The Ants, Sex Pistols, Robert Gordon, X, B-52s, Joe Jackson, Fabulous Poodles, Gary Numan, XTC, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Ramones, Elvis Costello, The Polecats, The Knack, Split Enz, The English Beat, etc.). This was before the days of challenging college or independent, public radio (for the most part), there was obviously no Internet and it was also before we had MTV. Jet Lag Magazine and a few other local punk & new wave fanzines had been in print for a couple of years, but it would be a while before I would know of their existence. Luckily, I didn’t live very far from KYMC, and I discovered that station (at the time with a power output of just 10 watts - barely covering a ten-mile radius around the West County YMCA) around the same time and that, combined with the aforementioned discovery of “Freeform,” greatly increased my interest in this exciting new music and also my desire in wanting to host a radio show of my own, and it wouldn’t take me long before I was on the air myself at KYMC, spinning, of all things, ska and reggae! (It wouldn’t be until my senior year of high school that I would hear hardcore punk for the first time, thanks to friends introducing me to bands like the Circle Jerks, Fear, Minor Threat and the Germs.)
Anyway, so here I was, a very musically curious 17-year-old kid hungry for something, ANYTHING different or unusual. I was already sick to death of the typical ’70s arena rock that I’d grown up listening to, so I would turn on the radio on my Zenith boom box and go up and down the radio dial, first FM, then AM, in search of whatever interesting stuff I could find. That’s how I discovered this show on KWK AM 13.8 with a host that was playing this great mix of new music without regard to your typical radio format boundaries. Punk, pop, new wave, rock… all on the same show, and a commercial station at that. Talk about a breath of fresh air! I was hooked. I made many tapes of this stuff that I’d hear on the radio, but unfortunately only kept a couple of them. I still have several tapes of my shows on KYMC and may put together a couple podcasts of that stuff in the near future… we’ll see.
Below I have a link to an MP3 that was ripped from a cassette tape I recently unearthed in my basement. I had obviously stuck the tape in the deck, hit record, then started scanning the dial for something worth taping. That is when I happened upon “Freeform”… you can hear it right there on the tape, flipping through some stations, then settling in on KWK, fuzzy static and all (the station had a pretty weak signal). The first song I heard was Sting’s version of “Tutti Frutti” from the newly released Party Party soundtrack. It sounded decent, so I kept the dial on the station and continued to record much of that show. After that I listened religiously. John Hutchinson was responsible for introducing me to a lot of artists I’d never heard before, and played others that I’d only heard on KYMC, heard about from friends at school, or had seen the records in the shelves at Peaches. Within a few months I had been transformed from being your typical ’80s teenager into a full-on punk/new waver.
So with that, I present for you, KWK Freeform, circa January or February 1983. As I mentioned before, KWK’s signal was a little rough when I recorded it, but I think you’ll enjoy this one:
I did some further digging online recently and found a couple of other recordings of the same program from a few months earlier that someone else had put online. I downloaded them, re-ripped the files in mono (for a much faster download) and added them to my Blip account, too. These are from October 22, 1982:
OK, I have to admit that this wasn’t the original idea I had when I decided that I would keep my Barracuda and seek out a more fuel-efficient daily driver, but I really wasn’t expecting to find a decent diesel-powered car for less than $10 grand, that is, until I started browsing eBay very thoroughly this past Sunday morning (when I should’ve been out working in the yard). Ever since first learning about biodiesel back in December 2005 (thanks to Adam Curry’s Daily Source Code podcast), I’d wanted a late ’80s/early ’90s Mercedes-Benz 300D. These cars are amazing, and indestructible. Originally selling for upwards of $40 grand, they’re very nice mid-size luxury cars with lots of bells and whistles you just won’t get in a VW Jetta or New Beetle TDI. Plus, those engines last forever… it’s not uncommon to find people driving them in excess of 500,000, 700,000 and even a million miles… seriously! So that’s what I had always been looking for… it’s just that none were to be found anywhere near St. Louis. So, I decided to expand my search radius from 200 miles around St. Louis to “any distance” and suddenly there were several of them to check out, and I’ll be damned if the first one I clicked on wasn’t a real beauty:
My new baby
The $8,999 Buy-It-Now price seemed reasonable enough, I thought, especially if I could get it cheaper in the normal bidding process. I read the information presented thoroughly, looked closely at the included photos, and emailed the seller a couple of times with questions. I also took advantage of eBay’s AutoCheck option, which came back with perfect scores, jiving with the information the seller had provided.
The auction only had a little over 5 hours left, so I knew I would have to make a decision on it that day. The car (sorry, “auto” as MB owners insist on using) was located just outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, so buying it would also mean I would have to fly to Philly and drive it 860 miles back home, easily a two-day adventure. But I had never seen a 300D with under 100,000 miles on eBay, especially one that I had any chance of fitting into our budget. So after thinking on it long and hard, investigating airline ticket prices, etc., I took the plunge and placed my bid via eSnipe (highly recommended!) and set it at just over $7 grand, figuring that would be as high as we would want to go on a car of that age. The bidding rose a bit during the day, getting as high as $5,100 about an hour before the end of the auction, so my bid was good enough, eSnipe successfully placed my bid 7 seconds before the close of the auction, and I got the car for the seller’s reserve at $6,799. YES!!
So I’m pretty jazzed right now. I’ve already made the deposit, spoken to seller on the phone, booked my flight to Philly (just $79 plus tax on American Airlines… not bad!) for Tuesday July 29 and also booked a cheap motel room for my return trip in Zanesville, OH that night. I’m all set. I’ve also been getting more information on biodiesel from the St. Louis Biofuels Club and have located several recommended local auto shops that specialize in Mercedes. Hopefully the 14-hour journey back home will go smoothly (loudly, but smoothly), and I’ll be able to get this new baby fueled up with biodiesel in the near future. I will keep you posted!
The guys on the Early Valiant & Barracuda Club’s email list convinced me to keep it. Admittedly, that didn’t take much convincing. So, time for a Plan B. Will keep y’all posted.
Well, it looks like I’m probably going to have to sell my ‘65 Barracuda. I just don’t have nearly enough time to dedicate to fixing it up like I would like to, nor can I really justify the money it would take to do that. And with the rising gas prices and the poor gas mileage it gets, it just isn’t practical to drive anymore. As it is, I’m putting $30+ of gas in it every couple of weeks, and I’m basically only using it to drive to work and back every day (a 10-mile roundtrip). So I’ve decided that I will need to get a more fuel-efficient daily driver, and I’m seriously looking for a diesel-powered car that I can run on biodiesel (used vegetable oil). Probably an early 2000s VW Jetta TDI (preferably a wagon) or a late ’80s/early ’90s Mercedes-Benz 300D Series. Depends on what I can find and how quickly I can find it. I also need a car that is easier to take my son places. The Cuda has no seat belts in the back, so my son has never been able to even go for a ride in it. I originally had plans on yanking out the back seat and installing belts back there, but like most everything else with that car, other things (house projects, repairs, vacations, bills, etc.) have taken priority. Anyway, this is just a post to let everyone know that I’m seriously considering selling it at this point and will entertain any serious offers. I bought the car for $3,300 in 2002 and have invested a good amount of money in engine work, brakes, wheels, tires, maintenance, etc. that I would like to make at least a little money on it, but I’m not sure what I would ask… it badly needs a paint job as the paint on it now (it was repainted at some point, probably the mid-’80s) is faded and peeling near the gas cap. Some very minor body work, too… very minor dings here and there, but nothing serious. It has virtually no rust, but there is some creeping in here and there if you look closely enough. So if anyone is thinking about buying a very nice, original ‘65 Barracuda (it has a Slant 6, by the way… very strong and runs great) that has never had the sideview mirrors installed (the only one like it that I have ever seen without sideview mirrors as it originally rolled off the dealer’s lot), by all means let me know. I’m also interested in hearing what anyone out there thinks I should set as my asking price… $3,500? $4,000? I wouldn’t go more than that, I don’t think. Thanks.
I’ve uploaded some photos of our abbreviated trip to Seattle last month. Overall, we had a good time despite the news that my father’s health was deteriorating over the weekend and would pass away on Monday (Memorial Day), forcing us to return to St. Louis a week early.
We stayed with friends in Ballard (a northern neighborhood of Seattle that overlooks Puget Sound) and got to visit some interesting places like the Ballard Locks, Golden Gardens Beach (in Ballard), the Seattle Farmers Market, the Seattle Aquarium (by far Milo’s favorite attraction of the trip!) and, of course, the Space Needle (see pic above). We also had some of the BEST hamburgers we’ve ever eaten at a place called the Lunchbox Laboratory (unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of that… was too enthralled in just how delicious the burger was!). We had some really tasty (and cheap) fish & chips at a couple of different places, too, although we did not get a chance to have a really good seafood dinner like we had hoped we would.
The weather was a bit cooler (and wetter) than we were hoping for… the first two days especially, which were very cool, damp, and cloudy. The weekend was really nice, though, and the sun was out for both Saturday and Sunday as well as part of Monday (Memorial Day). We had to fight huge, Fair St. Louis-style crowds when we went to the Space Needle, though, as the Northwest Folklife Festival was going on.
Seattle wasn’t all that much bigger than St. Louis, although it’s definitely different. Different food, culture, climate, and scenery. I’d like to go back again soon, especially to finish out our original vacation plans by going to Port Townsend on the Olympic Peninsula and making it down to Oregon… Seaside and Portland as well as Mt. Hood and the Columbia River Gorge. Unfortunately that will have to wait until we can reschedule. Maybe in the Fall…
My dad passed away on Monday May 26, six years to the day that my mom died. He had been living in a nursing home and was under hospice care due to an infection he’d received from having an abscessed tooth that had gone untreated until it was too late. The infection would eventually spread throughout his body and would be his demise.
He was a World War II veteran and had spent most of his time in the service stationed in Greenland, “an awful place” as he put it, where he served as Chief Clerk at the Quatermaster Depot because of his typing, accounting and office skills learned while attending business school in St. Louis. He also had a very keen eye and was an Expert Marksman, able to hit a bullseye with multiple rounds fired from 500 yards away. While he was stationed in Greenland he took to boxing. He really enjoyed this and quickly earned a reputation of a tough fighter. He became so skilled with his fists that soon many GIs coming through his port on their way to Europe wanted to fight him. They’d see him in the mess hall and make comments like, “He doesn’t look so tough.” This usually meant a challenge was being issued and he would have to fight. He never lost a bout.
We will never forget the stories he would share with us about his days in the Army during World War II, or the stories of growing up in and around Manchester, Missouri, back when it was just a small farming town on a dirt road miles from “the big city” of St. Louis. My dad came from a large family that was always there with him, living in and around the Manchester area, but he lost his father (Emil Julius) to pneumonia during the Great Depression, when he was only 10 years old.
His passions for his family, taking us on extended vacations in the family car, history, music (loving everything from country to reggae), reading, camping, baseball, hunting, fishing, nature, planting trees, wildlife and the environment will never be forgotten. He would plant so many trees and shrubs in our yard that it became difficult to play in, and later even more difficult to mow. He read the Bible to me (cover to cover) when I was probably too young to understand what most of it meant, and he would take me for long walks around our Bridgeton neighborhood almost every evening, rain or shine. We would stop and rest on a bench and talk about the Moon and stars in the night sky. These things I will never forget.
He was a recycler (of EVERYTHING… glass, aluminum, tin, cardboard, paper… right down to separating the cellophane envelope windows from the paper and removing staples from pamphlets and magazines) and a backyard composter (not allowing my mother to put any sorts of biodegradable waste in the garbage, but instead using it to fill drainage ruts in our backyard) decades before it was politically correct to do so. And he was extremely meticulous in everything he did, whether it be planting trees at one of our many houses when I was growing up, repairing something, changing a tire or building a birdhouse. If it wasn’t absolutely perfect, he’d start all over.
He was also bullheaded, short-tempered and fiercely independent. He was extremely stubborn, defiantly opinionated and stood up for what he believed in and never backed down to anyone, be them friend or foe. But at the very same time he could be extremely caring, warm, loving and sensitive. I see many of these same character traits in myself. Life is funny like that.
