Here’s a theory for you to completely disregard: Facebook is today’s National Enquirer. It has the same checkout-aisle trap and the same psychic nonsense, Debbie is the source now, and the aliens came back made of shrimp.
We pulled Appetite for Destruction off the shelf for one song and never put it back. Three hours of Guns N’ Roses, from Welcome to the Jungle to Yesterdays, and we still ran out of time.
The crew got the transmitter off Nottingham Ridge, but they had to leave the battery bank behind in the fire. Without it, the station has no power after dark. Bill and Brett gear up in the Vault and head to Waters Edge, a marina outside Stoddard, to scavenge deep-cycle batteries off abandoned boats. The marina isn’t abandoned. Desperate holdouts are living there, and DHS has been watching the place from above. Bill and Brett get out with two batteries and one conclusion neither of them likes: the only place left with enough batteries is La Crosse.
Part three of our Dolly Parton deep dive covers 1974 to 1978, from Love Is Like a Butterfly through Here You Come Again to Heartbreaker. That’s the stretch where she went from Porter Wagoner’s duet partner to crossover star. It’s also pledge drive time at WORT 89.9 FM, so pledge at wortfm.org/donate and help keep community radio on the air.
Why the hell has it taken you this long to just put a cell phone in the thing” — my actual reaction the day cellular finally arrived. Plus the MTM watch Jack Bauer wore on 24 that I was too scared to buy, and why Apple Watch Cellular is the single best product Apple has ever made.
Agent K spent this week losing an increasingly unfair series of contests to an alien drilling robot named Steve — don’t ask, just listen. Three hours of blues, rock, and everything adjacent follows, from Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan through Stevie Ray Vaughan, Bruce Springsteen, and a hard turn into Talking Heads, The Cure, and Depeche Mode.
With Cronauer gone and DHS working the streets of Viroqua block by block, Dave, Bill, and Brett have hours, maybe minutes, to strip Station Zero bare before it’s found. A stolen trailer, a bluff at a checkpoint, and one of Bill’s trademark mistakes decide how the night ends — and what’s lost for good.
Before Hot Carrier goes live, a quick heads-up on why Signal Drift’s chapter numbers are shifting as Book Two begins — the story hasn’t changed, just the count.
Rolling past a guy sitting next to what looked like a loaded 45 will rearrange your priorities fast, especially when concealed carry training is part of how your brain processes it — turns out it was “just” a BB gun, and he’s lucky nobody found that out the hard way.
Round two of the Dolly Parton deep dive: her early RCA Victor albums, from the gospel of Golden Streets of Glory to My Tennessee Mountain Home.