Prince, "Kiss", and "Help Me" - 104.9 The Fly, Anchorage, Alaska?

I was driving home last night and the radio scan picked up 104.9 (Anchorage, Alaska), which I don't remember happening before.

At first, the station appeared to simply be playing Prince's version of "Kiss" ... but suddenly, the "All I want is your extra time and your ...", the kissing sound is jammed by the wrenching sound of a needle being dragged across a record, followed immediately by someone saying "Help me" in a falsetto reminiscent of Michael Winslow's amazing sound-effects rendition of Purple Haze that he occasionally punctuated with a reference to The Fly ("'Scuse me while I kiss this fly"). Winslow would mime dragging the fly towards his mouth to kiss it, saying "Help me! Help me!" as it grew closer to his mouth.

This sequence has been repeating for the last hour. It's started to grow on me.

It may be an attempt to draw attention to a new radio station. Some years ago, 102.1 did something similar. There was an automated voice that was counting down ("T minus 747 hours, 38 minutes, 20 seconds and counting") interleaved with an occasional non sequitur like "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to" in a clearly automatic text-to-speech voice.

According to the FCC's FM Query interface, new applications for 104.9 are either ORGANIZATION FOR NORTHERN DEVELOPMENT D/B/A OUT NORTH or ANCHORAGE CHRISTIAN LIFE.

Er ... either way, I look forward to what they'll do next ... I think.

Update: Credits to Bryan for thinking up "104.9 The Fly". :-)

Update 2: Further analysis reveals that the Anchorage Christian Life application was dismissed, while the Out North application was recently granted.

Update 3: Bryan found this reference on the Out North site:

In February 2008 VSA arts of Alaska @ Out North received word that we were approved by the FCC for a license to operate a Low Power FM station. We will now be able to produce and broadcast local arts programming, as well as offer progressive culture and audio art from around the world. Along with our own programming Out North will be opening up the airtime to other Westside organizations and for community services needs.

Update 4 (2008-03-23): They've been live for a week or so now; they are KMVV - "Movin' 104.9" - operating under the MOViN brand name.

Don't change your password while running freebsd-update

I found out the hard way today that freebsd-update doesn't like it when you change certain files while it's running. In retrospect, this makes sense; initially, I was a bit startled.

$ sudo sh freebsd-update.sh -f freebsd-update.conf -r 6.3-RELEASE upgrade
Looking up update.FreeBSD.org mirrors... 1 mirrors found.
Fetching metadata signature for 5.5-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 2 metadata patches.. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Inspecting system... done.

The following components of FreeBSD seem to be installed:
src/base src/bin src/contrib src/crypto src/etc src/games src/gnu
src/include src/krb5 src/lib src/libexec src/release src/rescue src/sbin
src/secure src/share src/sys src/tools src/ubin src/usbin world/base
world/compat20 world/compat21 world/dict world/doc world/manpages

The following components of FreeBSD do not seem to be installed:
world/catpages world/compat1x world/compat22 world/compat3x
world/compat4x world/games world/info world/proflibs

Does this look reasonable (y/n)? y

Fetching metadata signature for 6.3-RELEASE from update1.FreeBSD.org... done.
Fetching metadata index... done.
Fetching 1 metadata patches. done.
Applying metadata patches... done.
Fetching 1 metadata files... done.
Inspecting system... done.
Fetching files from 5.5-RELEASE for merging... done.
Preparing to download files...
File changed while FreeBSD Update running: /etc/master.passwd$

Whoops. Had to start all over again.