Deaths or tetradic shifts in Media

Expiry of digital rights administration certificate causes havoc in enterprises as Office 2003 users lose access to their documents.

Two of my favourite radio programs have been axed, one with certainty to a lagging economy: "Let the Twenties Roar" on KSER 90.7 FM, and "Vintage Jazz" on KBCS 91.3 FM (my fingers want me to type 90.3, KEXP). I did become a member of KBCS because I cared about keeping the programming on the air. My money wasn't enough, so the program is gone, and KBCS is asking me to subscribe again. I'm selfish enough and limited enough in funds to pay only for the services I use.

So I might subscribe to Live365.com, once I have listened to all the mp3s I have downloaded (7 days worth) and podcasts (6 hours) to catch 1920s and 1930s vintage swing. I don't think I'm being so much oppositional as I am disappointed by current popular culture programming. I feel enough of my family's dollars are sucked away in the pursuit of nutritious food and keeping up with rising energy costs. If there are six - seven billion people on the planet, then certainly there should be a large enough listening audience to keep some programming on the air. I am inundated with fad celebrities, names of whom I do not recognize, and I wonder what makes them interesting, if they have messages for me on how to improve my life and become better and more deeply engaged in my community, and wonder what the celebrities do for other people. How do celebrity fans switch loyalties, or do they? Are there Eddie Pare or Mark Paul Gosselaar fans waiting for the "Saturn return" for their heartthrobs to receive their second vogue?

I'm not anti-mainstream: the 1920s and 1930s tracks which survive are top hits of their days, Tin Pan Alley standards. I liked the Police when they were hot, even like Beatles songs, still. Somehow my dependence on popular culture faded as I aged, or the popular culture began to appear more banal or insipid. My dialectic with much of the commercialized world goes like this:

Commercialized world == Spend money on our product or service!
Me == can we establish that this is an improvement to my life first, rather than an upgrade for upgrade's sake? Will hours of unreclaimable time be spent patching tech errors?

If people shell out sheqels only for upgrades or improvements, how then does one explain the ubiquity of high fructose corn syrup and Bisphenol A on the shelves of American supermarkets? Or the three-second sound-bite political culture: "You're either for us or against us?" Or even, incomprehensibly, the partisanship of food: "eww you eat dark leafy greens. guess we know what that says about you." "Like what, I have a keen interest in not dying of cancer in a country where I couldn't afford the treatment?"