Ladies and Gentlemen, Fans and Haters alike, 

Supernova #3 is up along with a few commercials.

 This was our best show to date.  We discussed plans to overhaul the way we do things to accommodate for the transition from being a multi-person show to the joys and challenges of being a one person gang.  This of course entails shortening the show, covering fewer topics, but covering the ones we do talk about deeper, with a bit more time on the commentary, which has been lacking in the previous shows.

We followed that up with our new production, and introduced the new element of in-program production which is pretty staple in commercial radio, but was never used in either the Creepy Sleepy Show, the Creepy Sleepy Podcast, or the first two Supernovas.  The utility of this tactic, for all those DIY’ers out there is that in the time it takes to make one piece of production, you can write twenty fake plugs for "local" area "businesses", that aren’t real.  They sound great when you read them "live" at the beginning of your talksets, provide a great transition from your opening of your mic and the actual talkset and eat up about 40-45 seconds of your talkset.  The tactic I will be using in the future is 2 or 3 of these little plugs per "interior" talksets (that is, the talksets that are not coming right off the intro or going right into the Outro…).  I’ll compose a catalog of these and also put the beginnings of the "Copy Center" up on my page for trading these with people who are interested in using this tactic in podcasting.

 I then did some more commercials and then came back and talked about Iran for a little while more, then PSA’s and then we talked about a prank sponsored by Ecko clothing company to make it look like Air Force One got tagged by graffiti artists.  While I frown on corporate sponsored mindless acts of vandalism, I thought the story was interesting and demonstrates that you know things are starting to get bad for the current regime when corporate America sponsors what they called an act of "free speech" in fake internet commercials directed at the Chief Executive of the United States.

 Somewhere in here I played Casey Jones, written by Joe Hill and performed by the Folk singer Phill Ochs, and I finished with a diatribe against the stupidity of the Iraq War and the importance of counter-recruitment.  Of course littered throughout the show was shameless self promotions for which the veterans of the battle of Spearfish are well known. 

Send all comments on the show to my Guestbook on this site.

One more thing, I wanted to mention my philosophy on Internet Broadcasting:  I don’t want to call it podcasting, because I don’t support the use of IPod’s.  If anyone reading this does, that’s on y’all.  Also I want to say that podcasting is a newspeak corruption, and those who "coined" the phrase within the past year or two promote a certain sort of understanding about what the medium is.  It, however, limits one’s conception, both about what the medium is, and what it can be.  

I am an old skooler.  I do what I can to resist normalization and homogenization of my thoughts by technology.  Technological advance is the ultimate weapon of liberalism.  If you can get the whole world speaking one language, utilizing the same technology, voting the same way, within the same basic type of government, the road will be paved for the advance of the market and the offering of the system of millions of non-interesting choices, and because the whole world thinks the same way, we won’t know what else could be possible other than free-market capitalism, liberal representative democracy, and tech-savvy newspeak.  

I agree with what Dan said about Flock, that it may be the technology, and it may also be in how we use it.  But I think anyone with a metaconcept of the homogenization that technology has on them and everyone should do whatever they can to undermine its influences.  This starts with preserving the traditional forms of broadcasting (including putting fake plugs into the openings of your talksets; even if they are the ultimate in post-modern expression, in that they do not refer to anything real, they still tie us back to something that is real, that is real broadcasters, in real studios, saying real words.)  In other words, when you hear a podcast, it is your computer talking to you, one of the benefits of podcasting is one of its most dangerous aspects:  in being timeless and ever available, it separates us from the person that is providing us.  It separates our consciousness from the information that is being presented.  But providing it a time-space context (like I try to present news that is time specific and I make reference to where I am) I get to run the risk that my shows will be out of date, and I will talk about things most people in the country do not spatially relate to.  However, I also try to provide a real connection, to the people who bother to listen to me, and those who will possibly download this stuff in the future. 

In a sense, I am creating artifacts, a practice modern technology seeks to end.  I am adding to the human record, I am making a recording of my own voice, I am saying to whatever people listening to me, that I am a real historical individual, not just a computer, not just a stream of data.  By making it sound more like the disappearing medium of radio, I refer back to the day before this stuff was common.  In this sense, I make technology the object I use to broadcast my voice to people.  It is not just my opinions that subscribers get, but also a part of my humanity.  It does its little part to undermine the legitimacy of the homogeneous fascism that is modern technology.  And every little bit helps, as people separate more and more from each other every day.

As humans we create artifacts.  We are supposed to create things that out last us, not things that can be consumed and disposed of in a day.  Otherwise all the hard work I put into creating a show will be for naught.  We don’t all have IPod’s, we don’t all buy in.  Some of us resist.  Technology should be the tool of humans to control the contingency of life.  It should not be allowed to shape our thoughts, or corrupt our relationships with other, real humans. 

 Serenely,

Doc

Host of the Supernova Earth Show