Shannon says "Blog about the Cicadas!"

I'm sitting outside the Mess Hall at Camp A Low Hum, where Shannon is attempting to set up some kind of fangled gizz-a-mee. Things are going wrong and he is attempting to keep me occupied by pointing the computer at the internet and saying "Blog about the Cicadas!" The cicadas are noisy. It's a beautiful evening here. There are lots of wee hipster types massing about from one point to another, and there is a very noisy sound check/rig set up going on to my left and down a bit. I think that the Sound Guy is making "pink noise" to check his set up. I can smell the lemon on the fish and chips of the guy on the picnic table over from me who has a very nice accent, and a feather in his straw hat. He's with a guy wearing Wayfarers (quelle surprise). I'm rather jealous of their beer. Last night I also tagged along with the Boy when he went to see a man about a radio. The man was a Ham Radio Man and wanted to show the Boy all his radio bits. There was a lot of discussion about antennas and aerials and wavelengths and such like. Most of it was "blah blah technical bullshit blah"; I vagued out and examined the spines of all the books (succulents and gardening and radio/electronic manuals). After the technical rant, we were tuned into the 2 metre network and audibly introduced to George, Will and Ted, who are also Ham Radio Men. Ted and George were in their seventies and learnt Morse code at age ten and nine respectably. They were desperate to convert Shannon to their Way. And thus it is with ham radio apparently - once you pop you can't stop. I had never realised that the ham radio Underground Movement was so strong in New Zealand. And the strength and obsessiveness of the Hardcore Conservative AM Preservation Movement freaked me out and totally fascinated me - that is, that in a small group of fanatics there are an either smaller group of hard core AM radio fanatics. I rather fancibly started endowing them with a Luddite kind of fanaticism, imagining them tearing down FM radio receivers and bludgeoning equipment that only displayed an FM band. They have their own network on a specific frequency where I imagine that they mutter mutinously about the dire state of the AM frequency and plot to restore it to its rightful place in the great canon of radio greatness. Extreme loudness has begun on the sound set up downstairs and its making me feel... urgh. The sound guy is the same one that blasted my ear drums at the Dodos; he's waging some kind of angry war against hearing... can't write, ears trembling.