Got a blog? Listen to PLANET ZEB? Let me know! :)

Just a quick thought to help send waves of appreciation to everyone whose blogs I've recently come across that mention Planet Zeb! in them. Wowsa... I was doing a blog meta-search to make sure an old list I created had indeed been deleted, and before I knew it, I discovered that blog entries about the station-- fortunately, mostly good (laugh)-- were ALL OVER the place, including among a few friends here at blogger.com! :)

As such, and because my gratitude for your tuning in and enjoying the station is so great, I thought it'd be nice to cross-post links to your blog here on the official PLANET ZEB! Internet Radio blog and/or on my webpage at planetzeb.net / planetzeb.com. I'd also love to hear how you found the station and what you like (or don't like) about it the most!!! Since April, 2000 when the station was founded, I've been relying on my "old school radio programming" skills to make it an entertaining 80s/90s internet station-- and part of going "old school" means eschewing all of the stupid-assed "consultant statistical printout" crap (by the way: iron-clad rule of radio-- most consultants throw stats at you, particularly Arb quarter-hours, yet have no idea how to analyze them or do their own market research. Ask 'em what an adjusted R-square is next time they hand them to you, oh program directors of Earth!) in favor of simply LISTENING TO LISTENERS about how to make the station better.

Lo and behold, I think this strategy has worked in the last 6-plus years. Not only has the station become a perennial top-5 station at Live365.com and iTunes, but it's also fostered "spinoff" formats like "Jack FM" that were waaaay too afraid to revert to the "loose radio" format that made FM great in the 70s and early 80s before stations like PLANET ZEB! came along and showed 'em how to do it. :)

So drop me an email today at zeb@planetzeb.net and tell me about your blog and your (hopefully) kind comments about the station! Or reply to this message, if you'd like. It did my li'l heart good lately to see that so many of you out there in blog-land apparently think we've got a pretty nifty station going here. With your help and input and continued support, I hope we'll keep it that way for some time to come. :)

Cheers!

Zebby

back to normal!

All is well (well, not really, but you know what I mean proverbially...chuckle) in Apex once again... and therefore the "special reports" I've been posting from time to time will now come to an end! Fire suppression crews managed to get three remaining small fires at the EQ Plant under control as of this morning, and the US Environmental Protection Agency apparently agreed with them that it was OK to let people back into about 90 percent of the evacuation zone as of 9 am this morning. Actually, the lifting of evac zone restrictions was phased in starting at 8 am (some started coming back into the peripheral areas last night when police just lifted roadblocks and left) this morning, followed by another wave let in at 9 am. The "ground zero" area is still blocked, however, and is likely to be for at least a couple more days according to the latest reports. I got out for the first time since the explosion onto US 64 and drove past the command center for the crisis, which is actually at Laura Village Shopping Center at the corner of Hwy 64 and Laura Duncan Rd. Still lots of fire/police and other agency activity there-- which affords lots of space because the "anchor" store of the shopping center is a Winn-Dixie that's been closed since the company pulled out of North Carolina about 8 months ago.

But no WONDER city officials thought it was a good command center for the distance it is from the actual plant site-- the remaining active businesses, which are mysteriously on the "unclosed/unevacuated" side of Hwy 64, include a BBQ restaurant of some local renown, a Bojangles Chicken, a Taco Bell and a Mobil station that sells lottery tickets! Damn-- all they needed now was a Krispy Kreme shop and they would have been COMPLETELY set. :)

Still a gentle afternoon in some of the residential areas-- I suspect many folks just decided to make a long weekend of it over on the coast or something-- but the major surface streets leading into Cary (and particularly around the shopping areas of Cary) are VERY busy today. Life gets back to normal in Western Wake County as the people return and do the only thing that highly educated upper middle class predominantly white suburban populations know how to do for entertainment or culture in an otherwise inspiration-and-indigenous-cultureless neo-exurb these days.... they go SHOPPING amidst their restrictive-covenent-laden Hardiplank-covered homogenized overdeveloped neighborhoods that-- for the better part of 48 hours at least-- had a little risk, excitement and danger to them! OK, OK, so admittedly it would have been nicer if the excitement had come in the form of something quite substantially less ominous than chlorine, benzine, mercury and lead-laden clouds of death. Such is modern life in Mayberry, North Carolina, USA, and it's funny that it took something of this horrific magnitude to put us, albeit briefly, on the national and international newsmap. Better, I think, if we could kick the developers out of town for good and save a few trees so that children here could grow up understanding what "nature" actually is (it's far too late for our neighboring community of Cary, but I'd hoped-- in vain, apparently-- Apex would avoid Cary's strip-mall-on-every-corner fate). No CNN cameras to track the excitement in a place like that, but at least you don't have industrial sites blowing up and sending people fleeing for the hills and/or the Holiday Inns. And besides, sometimes the best excitement occurs every night when Otis simply stumbles into the jail and incarcerates himself for a nice sleep-off of his nightly libations. :)

Enough of my community musings until and unless I become mayor (chuckle). PLANET ZEB is back to normal operations, so listen on and enjoy. And thanks again to those who emailed with words of support during our little event here. :)

Cheers!

Zeb

update from the "red zone" :)

Awright, y'all, here's a (hopefully) brief update and timeline of how we're doing here in the evac zone of the Apex Hazmat situation.... as of 4:30 EST Friday:

It's still kinda eerily quiet outside, as you might expect. Little traffic on the roads, maybe a couple of cars per hour. Most of THOSE, it appears, are individuals going somewhere on their own-- like this morning, for example, it looked like a few stalwarts were actually heading to WORK! Problem: police are letting people out, obviously, but not as of this hour necessarily back IN. Many folks here as a result appear to be camping out at home, windows shut and A/C off (like here at PLANET ZEB!). Around 11 this morning, I took a pic out of the window leading back toward the plant that had exploded; it showed the distinct combination of dark rainclouds and the odd bit of smoke from the general direction of the plant, since the official Hazmat responder type people didn't try going in 'til dawn's early light this morning. The air right now clearly has "something funny" about it, though it mostly just feels damp. Last night you could tell distinctly from the "burning plasticene" smell all around that the fumes were much more noxious. Thank goodness for a little rain and a decent light wind blowing smoke AWAY from us.

Last night was something, let me tell you. We were celebrating NC State's amazing comeback win over Florida State here at the ranch when we heard what (at the time) sounded like some very funky thunder-- but thunder doesn't usually sound quite that close or shake the house quite like these things did. Shortly thereafter, we got the word from local news that an "event" had happened in Apex... and the first bits of information started trickling in. The occasional pop and bang occurred even well after that, and although they'd started TALKING about evacuations around 11:00-11:30 pm, we figured it would only be the residences adjacent to-- or maybe no more than a mile or so out-- from the plant. We went to bed, though not before I made sure all of the windows were tightly closed on an otherwise pleasant evening.

This morning, up around 4:30-5 am, and local news (which has done a great job, by the way, right along with the amazingly dedicated Apex Police and Fire Departments) was reporting wider scale evacuations and talk of "mandatory" evacs to Red Cross shelters in the declared evacuation zone started surfacing. I got in the ole Zebmobile and drove the quarter-mile it took me to get to the outer edge of the zone; sure enough, police were there letting people OUT, but keeping outsiders away and not letting anyone IN. Just my luck, maybe, that after such a big win for NC State, I wind up being about three miles from a major explosion... and only several hundred yards straight-line distance from a non-house-arrest line in which I could come and go as I pleased (laugh). Anyway, it was very clearly a worse situation at dawn this morning, where I could still see junk in the air and it was VERY hazy outside-- much moreso than the usual morning dew/fog at this time of year.

About 9ish, the situation improved-- winds seemed to kill off some of the smell in the air, and the rain may have brought up issues of ground contamination at the fire site, but i was sure as hell happy that it was washing away "floaters" in the air (or seeming to, in any case). Still virtually NO traffic on the roads except for the odd single-person car (probably trying to get to work) and one or two vans that appeared to have multiple folks in them (I suspect finally going to shelters). In our area, I'd estimate that about 30 percent have bugged out for shelters, though most folks appear to have simply boarded up and locked their kids in with them.

I turned the A/C on for a little while earlier to keep the radio station computer room cool, though admittedly after about an hour it seemed to feel funny inside, so i cut it off again. Actually found an open grocery store inside the "zone" that I could get to without having to pass through a police roadblock, however, so around 11 I went to get milk and bread! Outside at that time, I gotta admit, it seemed more or less OK.

So now here we are, closing in on 5 pm, and all's more or less well for the moment. Can't say that I feel 100 percent normal, mind you, but I suspect the very minor headache is the remnant of a cold and staying up late last night rather than from some bizarre form of poisoning. PLANET ZEB!'s airstaff (all cats) and I have been doing well, and are very appreciative of all the folks who knew we were in Apex and emailed their concerns. Many thanks to family and friends who've called to check on us too. Amazing how world news travels these days-- relatives and station fans from OVERSEAS were among the first to call or email!

Biggest problems now are (1) hoping the cops'll let residents of the area back into it this evening after a hard day at the office but keep gawkers OUT and (2) for those of us here who have pets, we're running afoul of the Red Cross prohibition of companion animals at shelters. Personally, having run the odd Red Cross shelter in the past, I'd rather choke a little along with my cats than have to live on pretzels with no privacy at a shelter that's only about a mile and a half up the bloody road ANYWAY. Station operations are rolling along as per normal, with a new playlist just posted and entertainment value high. As with Hurricane Floyd when we were back in Charleston a few years ago, it'll take more than a disaster to knock PZ off the air (chuckle).

If anyone wants my views on living in a suburban nouveau-riche hellhole where politicians let business, industry and land developers run rampant and rape the landscape and allow junk like this to happen in the FIRST place, I'll be happy to give you more than a few reasons NOT to live in Apex at some time in the future. For now, I suppose, emergent situations call for us to be unified as one big glob of patriotic, neighborly and public assistance-oriented communitarians.

Assuming, that is, that we don't have billowing clouds of benzene and burning biowaste permeate the brick superstructure of our refuge later tonight (laugh). :)

More later-- cheers for now!

Zeb

Yes, things are a little crazy right now... :)

Hi y'all.... I'll make this first post (in quite a while) brief but as informative as I can; as many of you know, Apex NC is the home of PLANET ZEB! Internet Radio. It's also the home, unfortunately, of a large Hazmat evacuation zone at the moment! The station is physically located within that zone, about 2.5 to 3 miles from the plant that exploded around 10 pm last night. We're all OK at the moment, though, and despite the fact that we received our own automated "get the hell out now or face possible death" scare message from the State of North Carolina this morning, we're staying put for a number of reasons (not the least of which is that, as some of you ALSO know, our airstaff at the station is comprised largely of very greedy felines who wouldn't understand why I wasn't around to feed them upon demand). Mobility right now is literally a one-way street-- they'll let you out, but NOT (as of yet) back IN. Fortunately, we're stocked up on supplies and still have power and cable and all that good junk, so it's just a matter of keeping the windows closed and locked and the air conditioning MOSTLY off. As of about 11 this morning, though, it got stuffy in here and I had to turn the damned thing on, chlorine or not, to cool the main broadcast computers down!!!

A lot of folks have been sending me their concerns, condolences and just general "hang in there" messages, and I appreciate it more than I can adequately express with mere words. The power of radio as a global community-builder has been driven home to me more during this last 12 hour period, with all of the kind emails I've received, than at any time over a 20-year broadcast radio career. So thanks, hang tight with me, and I promise I'll post additional news and information this afternoon, evening and for however long this thing lasts from "inside the red zone." As noted above, I have nothing better to do since the entire PLANET ZEB! crew is under a figurative form of house arrest at the moment (chuckle).

Come back often for the latest news and photos... and, knowing as you do that I have to end on a promotional note, keep rockin' along with me by listening to PLANET ZEB! to make a bad situation seem better (Van Halen and Robert Palmer at earsplitting levels is a wonderful cure to drown out the sound of sirens and lethal chemical explosions in our little overgrown, developer-driven suburban hell-hole enclave, you know!!!) :)

Cheers,

Zebby