Meet Prince, and then I make fun of novice DJs.

We have a new foster dog! His name is Prince and he's some kind of a little Terrier mix - chihuahua and Boston terrier, maybe? He is 15 lbs of energy. He's three years old, and was given up by his owner because she was having a baby. We're taking care of him because he was not cool with being in the shelter. He hid in the back of his run the entire time, you couldn't even tell there was a dog in there.

Staring at bees... those sneaky bees.

Prince was shy with me for five minutes, and then he became permanently attached to my leg. He still growls at Leland. Leland has decided that he's really a cat person.

In addition to his shyness, Prince also has separation anxiety. At first, he would whine pitifully if I was in a different room of the house than he was, and he cried for an hour in his crate on the first night until we moved the crate into our bedroom. He's slowly getting better with this, but really, I might have some separation anxiety too if I was left at the shelter.

Look how cute I am with my enormous bat-like ears!

You can watch Prince chase bees on our back porch here (he's a bit obsessed), and see his dinner time dance here. Dinner is his favorite time of the day. I'm beginning to think we aren't feeding him enough, or something. Trust and Nova have both lost weight since coming to our house (though to be frank, I don't think it's hurting Nova any). Hmmm. Perhaps it's time to up everyone's meal allotment?

And now for something completely different.

Living in a college town always has the advantage of the college radio station. In Columbus I listened to OHIO.FM, and nothing can surpass the incredible Radio K out of Minneapolis, run by students from OSU and the U of M, respectively. Campus stations provide a wider array of music than the standard stations, and keep you updated on what's going on in town. And WZMB Greenville is no different.

Well, it's a little different.

I usually listen to NPR, but when I'm bored of learning things, I switch over to WZMB for my daily dose of awkward novice DJ. You see, at larger schools the radio stations have a big pool of talent to choose from, especially if the school has a strong media department. And at a larger school, new DJs would be relegated to the shifts that no one listens to, like 6-8am on Saturday mornings. That's how you get experience.

Apparently WZMB is hurting for experienced DJs. But I don't mind, because I love to listen to the ridiculous things that the DJs at WZMB say on air. All examples below are really things I've heard on air. The ridiculosity comes in several varieties:

1. Mistakes

Ah, mistakes. Mispronunciations, attributing something to the wrong person, long seconds of dead air, all of these things happen to even the most experienced on-air personalities. My favorite mistakes, however, spring from clear ignorance.

Example: "The blood drive is sponsored by the Pa... Pal..." (by this time I'm shouting, "sound it out honey, you can do it!") "Pam-il-i-co County Chamber of Commerce."

Oooh. So close. I'm gonna ignore the fact that the word Pamlico is about as straightforward as you can get, no tricky pronunciations or silent letters. The Pamlico river is a major river that begins a half hour's drive from Greenville. Also a neighboring county. Lesson for new DJs - learn the local geography.

2. Bizarre Shout-Outs

I can imagine what's going through the young DJ's mind. I have to say something! Anything! I've already stretched a 15 second anecdote out for five minutes! Oh God, what can I say? What can I say? And then it comes to them... shout-outs. Everyone likes a shout-out, right? Everyone likes to feel included. But what if you don't have anyone to shout-out to?

Examples:

"I wanna give a shout-out to everyone who's in a relationship. And everyone who isn't in a relationship. ...So that's everyone, I guess."

(after reading the weather report) "Shout-out to everyone who dressed appropriately for the weather today!"

Um - thanks? That's sweet, but really, you can just go back to playing music.

3. Wet Behind the Ears

I suppose at some point I'll stop feeling smug about making fun of kids these days and start feeling old, instead, but from the lofty perspective of 26, college students seem so adorably young. This sometimes comes out in a DJ's innocent patter.

Example: "this next group I didn't really know about until I came to college two years ago. I think they're bigger in the south than they are in the north. They're called Coldplay."

4. Stoned Out of Mind

This one's fairly obvious. The best example comes from the gentleman who runs the "World Music" show. (Apropos of nothing, WZMB also has a reggae show that runs for two hours every day. Only on a college station, dude.)

Example: "what is world music, anyway? I mean, we're all on the world. So, like, any music could be world music. Did I just blow your mind?"

The DJ then proceeded to play a French rap song, a choral piece from the Red Army Choir, and a 13 minute long piano piece with lots of bells ringing in the background.

Dude, you just blew my mind.