...with apologies beforehand to Aldous Huxley

Here I am sitting in front of my newest acquisition in the shack. The radio has a grand total of two buttons, a rotary knob, and a couple of controls I can't even identify. Boy, I can't wait till the skip starts rolling today and I can actually get out more than a couple of blocks! There was some option called "CW" available from Midland, but I didn't get it since I could only afford the base package of 5 or so channels in a SHORTWAVE band (Imagine that!!!) PLUS something called the 11-meter band. Now I can talk skip whenever I want to! High power on this rig is a whopping 4 watts. This thing really puts out, let me tell you! Wow, I'm one of those guys that have call signs and can talk all around town on a radio without wires!!!

My Party Elmer taught me most of what I needed to know to get on the air after taking my 5 question oral exam down at the police station. Would you believe I got my license on the 3rd try!!! The friendly troopers took my picture and scanned my retinas too. That licensing equipment is really sophisticated. My call letters are KTLBC-234538. My Elmer also taught me that the proper way to get on the air for the first time on a channel is to just tune up, whistle or say the words "AUDIO, AUDIO" for at least a solid minute just to let everyone know I'm around and then get ready to do the DX Land Boogie. YEEEHAWWW!!!!

Some local folks I heard about awhile back threw their old complicated gear away right before the FCC's (Federal Communications Collective) final crackdown, or simply sold it off as scrap metal. Remember those exciting purges on the HDTV news? It left most of that mean elitist revolutionary ham community either dead or in hiding. I saw one of those raids, and boy, let me tell you, getting a 10 KV high voltage line thrown on your antenna will sure get your attention! I can still remember that horrible smell as the electricity really cooked those guys who didn't have sense enough to get off the air when ordered to. Shucks, there was a bunch of 'em holed up in Newington, Connecticut in some old brick building who refused to turn their illegal transmitters over to the government. That was quite a firefight!!! It took about a dozen canisters of riot gas to flush them out just like nasty potato bugs. I think most of those criminals are still in the reeducation camps to this day. We're better off now I think. The FCC needed all that valuable radio spectrum so it could be auctioned off in order to feed the poor and provide free Internet access to the masses.

I just now found out the hard way that I can operate only late at night. Most of my friends are doing their porn downloads during the day or early evening, and the noise only abates a little after midnight. Plus, there was another unexpected massive power outage today. The news reporter said something about roving gangs of RF terrorists beaming power lines with intense interference!!! I had to be real careful about how I ran my indoor antenna, since if I didn't put it up just right and get it too close to the power wiring in my house, my radio will interfere with the Internet traffic and then I'll be sucking down lime flavored tear gas for sure. -- That ain't fun. Mom hates getting that smell out of the drapes and then I will have to save up my money to buy another radio to replace the confiscated one. Lets not even mention the money to get my teeth fixed AGAIN!!

But it's worth it. I'll be applying for my WAZ (Worked All Zipcode) award for my county. See you on the air!

Moral: A house divided cannot stand. We must stick together and not bicker about trivial things amongst ourselves; my ham brothers and sisters.