as we may blog

The ITS No Help Desk fantasy baseball draft was yesterday. League executives are feverishly working on backroom (and in some cases, backdoor) negotiations and trades to stock their team with the right players by opening day. Witness the following exchange that illustrates just how hard it is to hammer out an agreement. Especially when one side is being absurd.

[08:56:18 AM] Ocu-Master: you workin’ on any trades?
[09:02:31 AM] Mattbot: haven’t had time yet
[09:02:38 AM] Mattbot: but i covet soriano
[09:02:50 AM] Ocu-Master: who’s got ‘em?
[09:03:04 AM] Ocu-Master: he strikes out too much
[09:03:06 AM] Ocu-Master: for my taste
[09:03:18 AM] Ocu-Master: :D
[09:03:19 AM] Mattbot: i think ben f.
[09:03:24 AM] Ocu-Master: ben has him?
[09:03:25 AM] Ocu-Master: holy crap
[09:03:32 AM] Mattbot: he’s projected so well in arlington though
[09:03:35 AM] Ocu-Master: he’s got all the big names
[09:03:35 AM] Mattbot: why am i telling you this
[09:03:47 AM] Ocu-Master: well I’m trading for pitching so don’t worry
[09:03:53 AM] Mattbot: *WORRIES*
[09:03:56 AM] Ocu-Master: lol
[09:04:31 AM] Ocu-Master: if anything, I might be able to make a trade happen as a third party
[09:04:54 AM] Mattbot: oh?
[09:05:21 AM] Ocu-Master: well if the consideration inthe trade can’t be worked out, maybe a third party can help each team get what they want
[09:05:42 AM] Mattbot: an arbitatOr?
[09:05:49 AM] Ocu-Master: not really, because I’m involved in the trading
[09:05:51 AM] Mattbot: uh, arbitratOr
[09:05:56 AM] Mattbot: oh
[09:06:02 AM] Mattbot: well see what you can come up with
[09:06:09 AM] Mattbot: i put you in charge of getting me soriano
[09:06:11 AM] Ocu-Master: ben doesn’t have him
[09:06:18 AM] Mattbot: who does?
[09:06:25 AM] Ocu-Master: I dunno
[09:06:29 AM] Mattbot: sigh
[09:06:46 AM] Ocu-Master: or hey, maybe I’ll go find some pitching on my own
[09:07:07 AM] Mattbot: maybe you will
[09:08:14 AM] Ocu-Master: who is Max Power?
[09:08:54 AM] Mattbot: jake maybe?
[09:09:06 AM] Mattbot: Max Power - Jake N.
[09:09:18 AM] Ocu-Master: ah
[09:09:24 AM] Ocu-Master: Jake is not going to give up soriano
[09:09:26 AM] Ocu-Master: I’m sorry
[09:10:14 AM] Ocu-Master: and if I had a decent second base option I might be open to trading marcus giles ;)
[09:10:25 AM] Ocu-Master: for some of your fine pitching staff
[09:11:46 AM] Mattbot: giles for hee
[09:11:48 AM] Mattbot: hee for giles
[09:11:54 AM] Ocu-Master: lol
[09:11:56 AM] Ocu-Master: I don’t think so
[09:11:59 AM] Mattbot: i do :(
[09:12:09 AM] Ocu-Master: giles for maybe vazquez
[09:12:13 AM] Ocu-Master: or beckett
[09:12:18 AM] Ocu-Master: but I can’t do it anyway
[09:12:26 AM] Ocu-Master: because my offense goes way into the dumper because I don’t have anyone to play 2b
[09:12:50 AM] Mattbot: *nixes both absurd propositions*
[09:12:54 AM] Mattbot: giles for garland
[09:12:57 AM] Mattbot: garland for giles
[09:13:01 AM] Ocu-Master: hmm
[09:13:02 AM] Ocu-Master: no
[09:13:13 AM] Ocu-Master: I dumped a 4.51 start last night
[09:13:23 AM] Mattbot: ok, i’ll throw in the rights to priest holmes in the 2004 fantasy football draft
[09:13:28 AM] Ocu-Master: hmm
[09:13:33 AM] Ocu-Master: no
[09:15:08 AM] Ocu-Master: I do have Corey Patterson — do you covet him?
[09:18:55 AM] Ocu-Master: he can play second base
[09:25:41 AM] Mattbot: *breaks off negotiations*

[07:58:35 AM] Scott the Bolivian: so i was walking to work and heard this awful noise
[07:58:44 AM] Scott the Bolivian: sure enough, there was a pig in a cage

The folks over at .Frank published the first of what could be several fruitful exchanges with the disc jockeys at Mix100 FM. The Asstastic Buerau des Communications embarked on a similar quest for content at the same time last week, with similarly mixed (ha!) results. See "Pruning the Grapevine" for relevant background content.

The initial target of my inquiry was weekday overnights and Saturdays disc jockey Nicole Scott. Her proximity to the hometown of a friend of mine piqued my interest:

From: mattbot
To: nicolescott@clearchannel.com
Subject: Question about bio

Dear Nicole,
I’ve never e-mailed an on-air personality before, so I apologize if this sounds awkward. (By the way, I was going to use a lame line like “Long time listener, first time caller…” but I bet you get that all the time.) Anyway, I was perusing the bios on the Mix100 website and noticed that you’re from West Des Moines. I have a friend from West Des Moines who worked at the high school radio station and I was wondering if you might know him. Robert L. Thompson? He’s kind of a nerd. Anyway, keep up the good mix!

All the best,
Matt

P.S. In an age when radio behemoths like Clear Channel are often perceived negatively by consumers and competing media outlets, do you ever wish you had an e-mail address that didn’t end in clearchannel.com? Like, nicolescott@mix100.net? That has a nice ring to it if you ask me!

P.S.S. I don’t think it’s cool that Drew likes Vanilla Ice.

Postmaster had a different idea:

From: postmaster@clearchannel.com
To: mattbot
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

nicolescott@clearchannel.com

Concerned and alarmed, I took the rare step of instant messaging Frank at work. He told me that Dee Brown’s bio indicated she maintained the Mix100 website. I could already feel myself bouncing from postmaster to postmaster, but I took a stab at it anyway and sent Dee a message.

From: mattbot
To: deejames@clearchannel.com
Subject: Trying to reach Nicole Scott!!

Dear Dee,
I tried to send a message to Nicole Scott but I got a message back saying “delivery to the following recipients failed.” I read on your bio that you work on the Mix100 website, so I thought you might have some clues as to what happened to Nicole’s e-mail. Anyway, I would be SO GRATEFUL if you could pass on the message below to Nicole (do people call her Nikki at all? So much more conversational.) or maybe circulate it amongst the office staff in case any of them could give me more information about Nikki. Thanks so much for all your help, and keep up the great mix!

Dee sent back a burrito of a reply, with a genuine willingness to help as the beef wrapped in a tortilla of scolding maternal tone:

I will pass the message on to Nicole, but none of us are allowed to discuss her personal business. So please do not ask us for her personal info, it’s a matter of safety and personal privacy. Hopefully you don’t take this the wrong way, but we have to be careful of what we tell to whom…

I am printing off this email and will give it to her the very next time I see her…and I’ll work on finding out why her email isn’t working.

Dee James

Having not asked for any "personal information" about Nicole Scott, I immediately went to Google and typed in "nicole scott" iowa and memorized the address that appeared at the top of the screen. Feeling satisified that I never would have sought Ms. Scott’s personal information without the pre-emptive warning not to, I closed up my e-mail program and went about my day.