Dowbrigade

GARDNERVILLE, Nev. — A stalking foray atop a power
pole left a lucky feline jolted, frizzled and dazed but otherwise OK
after he fell off the 40-foot pole and sparked a fire outside a fire
house.

The frazzled cat was discovered when paramedic-firefighters Andrew Chrzanowski
and Jeremy Hall responded to the fire Wednesday morning after the lights
went out at the Topaz Ranch Estates fire house.

"When we got the fire knocked down we saw this burned cat close to
the base of the pole," Hall said.

They assumed it was dead until Chrzanowski noticed it was breathing. He
put it on a blanket and gave it oxygen.

"We both thought that with the amount of burns he had he wasn’t going
to make it, but then we started to look more closely and we saw it was
all
superficial," Hall said.

The firefighters believe the cat was on the pole, because a bird’s nest
was found on top and there was a large black spot where something had touched
a relay switch on the 25,000-volt line.

story from Newsday

OK, maybe hate is too strong a word, but we definitely
don’t have time for this latest cyberfad, which. we are convinced. is a
technological and sociological dead end, except perhaps in certain highly
specific situations or among an eccentric niche audience.

Ever since our first podcast, which may have been THE
first podcast, we have been skeptical about the whole idea of micro-broadcasts
of talk radio. However, the idea refuses to die, like a persistent virus
percolating under the radar of the media matrix’s immune system.

We really tried to get into podcasts.  Lots of
our friends and cyber-idols are ‘casters, people we know and respect,
and the movement is almost terminally hip. But we’ve yet to get all the
way through an entire podcast, and we think we’ve figured out why.

Words are the Dowbrigade’s stock and trade. Every day
we wield those words for 10, 12, 14 hours, spoken and written, to teach
and test logic, analysis, description, conversation. And then in our
"spare" time, we sling still more words up on our blog. The last thing
we need during those few precious moments when we can slip
on our
earbuds
without offending an acquaintance or causing an accident is more words.  Basically,
one of the unfortunate consequences of the life we have chosen to live,
at least for now, is that it contains too many words and not enough music.

So you can have your clever, cloying, candid or kooky
‘casts – we’ll stick with our Vivaldi, Velvets and Van.We will not deny
that podcasts can do useful things like introduce us to new music and
weird,
funny
personalities. We can see the utility of narrowly focused podcasts when
one is preparing for a trip, or researching a new field, or looking for
an interview with a particular figure or on a specific topic. And we
are very interested in stored, downloadable ‘casts featuring enlightened
and entertaining audio guides to famous museums or architecturally or
historically significant neighborhoods in major cities, for example.
But as far as
surrendering a portion of our precious "quiet time" to amateur wordsmiths’
lexical doodling and linguistically-challenged DJ wannabes, count us out.