The news is a commercial-free comedy channel is on local radio: Is the joke on us?

It isn’t the OJ trial. It isn’t even the local case of Calvin Walker, the electrician who allegedly bilked the Beaumont school district out of several million dollars. But one would think that when the programming of one area radio station for the past month consists of nothing but comedy — not even commercials — isn’t that worth a story?

This little blurb on a site called radio-info.com explains all that I have heard about “Comedy 103.3” in Beaumont, Texas. Radio mega-owner Clear Channel Radio apparently owns the FM translator in question. Just what a translator does is explained here, which makes it for the tech challenged such as me, clear as mud. In its most basic sense, a TV or FM translator allows broadcast signals into places that cannot receive the primary signal of a radio or TV station.

In older days, I might just walk next door to the building that houses five or maybe six Clear Channel stations, walk in the door and just ask those who work there what in the hell is up? Maybe I’ll go ask tomorrow. But judging the multi-stations these days — which probably has one person announcing — you are likely to get a pat on the head and a kick in the ass out of the facility.

What drips in irony is that one of only a few TV stations in the area that does local news sits next door to the building housing all of the Clear Channel stations. Of course, the Clear Channel group also has a “news-talk” station in its facility. KLVI 560 AM also does local news, though not a hell of a lot. Going local for news where I live isn’t as sure a bet as it once was.

In the meantime, I am pretty happy with the comedy I’ve heard lately on this newly configured frequency. Some of it gets played over and over, of course. But there are some pretty hilarious bits — some even raunchy and very un-PC these days — for one to hear. The bits played might range from Jerry Clower’s deep-country tales to Cheech and Chong’s hilarious “song” “Earache My Eye.”

I have no idea how far geograhically this comedy channel, 103.3 on the FM dial, reaches. I listed to it for a good 30 miles or more when I was driving on Texas 105 last week coming back from Dallas. Since they never talk on the station — too good to be true, I know — my crystal ball sees a short lifespan for this funny bidness.

Lucky me: One in a million (and a half)

The phrase “astronomical odds” is often used for occurrences such as winning the lottery, or being struck by lightning. Perhaps, in the very strict sense of the phrase, such odds are those applied for a direct hit to earth by a sizable meteorite. I tried searching a short while ago for a definition of just what were astronomical odds and couldn’t find an expounding which made any sense. So is 1 in 1.5 million astronomical? I don’t know but if you are talking about winning the lottery, I would take it if I happened to be the “1.”

As usual though, I am 1 in a million, actually 1 in 1.5 million, for something that sucks.

Bank of America sent me an “alert” e-mail this morning which warned “irregular debit card activity” had been detected in my account.  Oh no, that can’t be good. When dealing by phone with Bank of America — which the e-mail told me to do — it never is good. True to form, it wasn’t good.

The customer service person I finally got was somewhat vague in explaining this irregular activity on my card. She asked about three or four transactions I made and, sure enough, there was one charge for $125 at Kroger that was technically not mine. It had something to do with a $10 gasoline purchase which I had made. I don’t fully understand it, but I do know that such charges temporarily appear with gas charges sometime. I wish I could understand it better but as long as the charged disappears, well, out of sight, out off mind. In the end, no one was using my debit card. Not yet, at least.

But best I can tell, my card number was used. Where and when and how it did so without a charge showing up is now the question. Maybe the charge would have shown up had I not eventually gone down to the bank today to cancel my present card and obtain a temporary one until my new debit card arrives in the mail in about a week. Taking such action will presumably help prevent an unauthorized charge from happening.

Waiting on hold for Bank of America this morning put me past time to start work so I called my supervisor and told him I needed a couple of hours of leave after I explained what was going on. It turns out that he too had the same happen last week with his charge card. Alas, two in a million (and a half)!

While waiting for the bank to open I read a store about how hackers had recently stolen 1.5 million account numbers for Visa and Master Cards from a processor called Global Payments. Visa removed the company over the weekend from its list of hundreds of companies it uses as go-betweens for banks and merchants. It is the largest such single heist in the past two years, a time during which about 8 million account numbers had been stolen.

Whether the action taken by Bank of America is a solution or just a heads-up, I will have to wait and see. Knowing my luck, some punk using my account information and name is probably tooling around somewhere smoking blunts in a new, black Navigator and having a high ol’ time. But I hope not.

Perhaps my odds-breaking will have been stopped cold in its tracks. Then again, maybe not. After all, I am the “lucky” one, being one in 1.5 million.

 

 

Thinking positive: Don’t cross me and my designer dump truck after I win the Mega Million jackpot

The big news, apparently, is the Mega Millions lottery. I am going to win it too.

People say they aren’t going to win. I usually say that. I usually lose. So, I am going to win. I’m going to win. I’m going …

There are more lottery “experts” than I ever knew existed coming out of the woodwork today since this is the largest lottery jackpot in the world, maybe even in the universe. I wouldn’t be surprised, though, if way out there in the far away galaxy unknown to all but me and on the planet E1-L4 is an expert in inter-galaxy lottery behavior. If so, that spaceman is free to interview me after I win as long as he/she/it promises not to eat my eyeballs upon departure.

The “experts” say if you win a big jackpot you will likely lose it all and have to live in a box. Take it from me, live in in your truck but make sure it is one on which a camper is mounted. I slept many a time in the cab and it is not a bit comfortable. I may soon be back in that cab if I don’t find a place soon. But, why worry about it? I’m going to win the Mega Millions jackpot.

The estimated lump sum amount if one person wins (me) will be around $347 million after taxes. And other than the financial team I will assemble, no one will know jack about it until I think the coast is clear. Money makes people funny. Who said that? Why, I did.

Folks, including the local media, always write about what people fantasize about getting if they win the lottery. I won’t daydream though because I’m going to win. I know one of the first things I will buy, something I have long longed for, is a dump truck. It won’t be just any dump truck. It will be a Mercedes dump truck with custom-made Gucci mud flaps. A dump truck will be handy for those days someone really pisses me off and I track that person down utilizing my state-of-the-art GPS/Doppler radar/intelligence gathering and weapons system, or a GDOPDARTELWEPSYS. It will allow me to quickly fill up the bed with, say, a full load of roofing nails. Fully loaded, I can then speed down the highway in my trusty Mercedes, pull in front of my foe and let loose a stream of nails a mile long. The electronic weapons part of my GDOPDARTELWEPSYS will also block the target’s cell system so he cannot call someone to fix his four flat tires. And if that car happens to have one of those irritatingly, loud stereo systems that go THUMP-a-THUMP-a-THUMP, my electronic weaponry will cause my foe’s stereo to fry like a Fry Daddy at a K of C fried fish fundraiser.

Overkill you say? Yeah. And your point is?

Some say there is a fine level between good and evil. So I will do good with the money I win too. Just don’t cross me, especially on a bad day.

But never mind all that because the important fact here is I that WILL win that $347 million, all by my lonesome. And maybe just then I can see how that power of positive thinking thing works out.

They beat me to it

This has been the week from hell at work, computer-wise. My usually slow computer and its ancient dial-up modem grew even slower this week, plus it seemed that failure of some program lurked at every corner. Fooey, with an e-y.

Already in a magnificently pissy mood, my being seemed as if it would ignite through some kind of emotional spontaneous combustion when I heard the news that Verizon Wireless planned a new $2 monthly fee for paying your bill with plastic. Looking deeper into the news, I saw it didn’t affect the old-fashioned bank checks, an automatic payment online or an electronic check. Verizon did something awhile back, perhaps maybe a year or more, that made it more difficult to use your credit or debit card. I can’t remember what it was, but it pissed me off mightily and I started using the electronic check option.

Verizon, of course, and other companies want you to use an automatic deduction from your account. I am not sure why, I know it isn’t because they want to make the consumer’s lives easier. I have been okay with the electronic check option. However, it irritated me to no end when the company announced the $2 fee this week. The simple truth is that the customer shouldn’t be forced into the car trunk and made to pay the way the company wants you to considering you have already had these options for no cost.

I had planned to write or call Verizon to complain about their new fee once this week was finally over. Now that I am officially into my New Year’s weekend, I’ve found out that Verizon has had its “Bank of America” moment. The wireless carrier announced today that because of “customer input” — make that of the loud, obscene variety — the $2 fee will not be implemented. It seems like a lot of other people mad as hell have already beat me to Verizon’s whipping post. Thanks ya’ll. You saved me some heartburn.

These large companies might just be getting the message that we, the public, are fed up with being nickle and dimed to death. The corporate giants have discovered, or at least are starting to discover, that “Gee, the customers might just decide to take their business elsewhere. That wouldn’t be so good.”

It’s something like that. Have a happy, healthy, prosperous 2012!

When big brands attack

Just because some suits makes an exorbitant six-figure salary does not mean he or she is blessed with genius. That is a lesson that can be taken to heart by looking at some of the real failures in branding during 2011.

It was not the best of years for companies such as Bank of America, Abercrombie & Fitch or that good old American symbol of prosperity itself, Wall Street. These are among the “Top 10 Brand Disasters of 2011” which were compiled by top sales blogger James Geoffrey in his daily column for Inc.com. Geoffrey has previously included “brands” as diverse as “Islam” and “Obama.” For 2011, he’s focused on big corporate brands because “there were so many hilarious debacles to choose from,” he explains.

Geoffrey recounts some of the strange ways corporate American puffs their chests only to have a deflation quicker than an air mattress at a porcupine convention. With biting humor, Geoffrey looks back at Bank of America’s great “$5 failure” in which the already overexposed company faced a nationwide customer exile due to their badly-proposed $5 debit card fee.

“After all, to banking execs, a fiver is just small change. Who would complain?” Geoffrey muses.

Other branding nightmares includes Abercrombie & Fitch’s not-so-bright idea to market a padded bra for pre-teen girls, something parents surely wouldn’t object to, would they? Or take for instance, Family Radio. The evangelical broadcasting giant’s CEO Harold Camping predicted that the world would end on May 21, 2011. It didn’t, obviously. Too bad some listeners took his word and sold all their worldly goods. Not the best way to plan for the future.

Even Wall Street itself needs a lesson in branding.

“Profits were high, bonuses were higher, regulations were weak and likely to get weaker. Having successfully managed to privatize its gains and socialize its losses, Wall Street was beginning to reposition itself as the engine of American prosperity (as opposed to small business,)” writes Geoffrey.

Then there was that small “Occupy” thing.

Geoffrey, whose recently-published book “How to Say It: Business to Business Selling,” (Prentice Hall, 2011), “features the best techniques from a dozen top sales gurus, packaged into a one-day read for novice sales reps” takes a very humorous look his Inc.com piece on what happens when big brands attack.