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In Recognition of the Relevance - Edwin's School For Technicians

from 1983​-​2002 by Larry Wendt

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Edwin's School For Technicians 13' 37" 1989

Back when I used to get off of work after a long day of being a technician, I would walk home, and often fall asleep in front of an old TV set. Then often enough I would also then wake up in the middle of the night, with the playing of some long and strange commercial for technical, mail-order correspondence courses promising to teach one to be a technician with a variety of skills: which would lead one to a better career and a much more financially rewarding life as they claimed. I would then fall asleep again and later I would wake up during another version of the same training school infomercial or at some other point in the repeated commercial. I would do this a few times before I would finally go to bed so that I could get up in the morning to go back to work being a technician. The experience was often confusing since I was generally "half asleep" and only partially conscious during the commercial presentation and it made little sense to me. I was already a technician and it made me wonder why I would want to be another kind of technician. But it also made me wonder the next day, when I was more awake, about how many people who hated their jobs would actually buy into these "fly-by-night" kinds of training programs in the so-called "high-tech" fields, and would actually believe that in a few short months they would be able to radically change their lives and go out and get a "real" job." A "job of their dreams!" — this was what these commercials were peddling. Certainly, I reasoned, there must be enough underpaid, overworked, and unhappy people in the area, who could not sleep at night because they could barely make ends meet, who would then see these ads and be attracted to try such a service. Such a need by a sizable segment of the population must be enough then to support such companies I further reasoned. These companies would also be able to afford to hire a significant staff to write, design, realize, direct, and act in these long infomercials as well as pay the local TV station for the use of their video production studio, gear, and technical assistance along with the late-night broadcast fees which were probably a significant charge to present such commercials. What a "sweet deal" I concluded and which also therefore, inspired this text sound piece which includes various signal processing, "shop" sounds, shortwave radio broadcasts, and our shop telephone answering machine message, as it was declaimed by my fellow technician, Eric Gatzert, plus my additional sales-pitches for my fantastic set, of home-study, mail-order courses that can turn anyone into a highly paid, and skilled technician.

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from 1983​-​2002, released May 2, 2023

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WHY KEITH DROPPED THE S

In the liner notes of many 60s and 70s Rolling Stones releases, Keith Richards is named Keith Richard. Why did he drop the s?

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