Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

We have gotten my late mother-in-law’s mail forwarded to our house so we could take care of bills and such. She got a lot of catalogs. Today I discuss the items for people who are much older than me in the firstSTREET: for Boomers and Beyond® catalog. Apparently, according to this company, many older people are extremely obsessed with making or buying stuff for their children and grandchildren and they are stereotypically full of technological ineptitude, requiring dumbed-down cellphones and computers in which all the storage exists online, managed by service personnel. But that catalog wasn’t meant for me, yet.

Music: “Becky the Office Party Drunk Girl” by Jeff MacDougall from Masters of Song Fu: Volume 1

“Atomic War” by Tripping Hazard from Wron: Suicide Goat

“River (Joni Mitchell cover)” by Michelle Hotaling from Christmas

All music came from MusicAlley by Mevio.

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Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

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I recently went to see again John Carpenter’s nifty 1988 alien conspiracy flick “They Live” at the Plaza Theater in Atlanta, one of my favorite indie movie theaters. Besides the movie, the theater had a small art show consisting of conspiracy art. I was reading parts of the art show off into the microphone while I was waiting for some of the artists to come be interviewed, and I played around with the sound trying to make it sound more “alien”–there’s nothing wrong with your iPod!

I had a great time talking to the artists - Nick, who had the aluminum foil hat and Phillip with the alien mask. There was also a young woman who spoke but I didn’t catch her name. We discussed our favorite conspiracies.

Then it was time for the movie. Before the movie started, they had some slides with different mind-control instructions and soft chanting of “Sleep…sleep…sleep….”

Music: “Alien Occupation” by Ben Base

“Alien in a Bottle” by Uncle Dirty, from the album Alien in a Bottle

“If the Aliens Came” by Ian Knapp, from the album Into These Oceans (You can download four free Ian Knapp mp3s at his website, by the way.).

All of the music came from MusicAlley by Mevio.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

Last day of NaPodPoMo for 2009!!!!! It’s been very fun this year.

I got my mother-in-law’s Vermont Country Store catalog in the mail today, and I share with you some of the more amusing items.

Then I play the very pretty song “Come Here to Me (The Ice Cream Man Song)” by Emma Wallace from her album A Reason to Stay Up All Night. I found it on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

NaPodPoMo is winding down. I don’t know what my podcasting schedule will be after this month, but I will do my best to keep it up.

Shawn of Shawnogram left a very nice voicemail.

Today Halley, Maia and I went to a birthday party at an inexpensive sushi restaurant. We ate vegetarian. Then we went to a Korean grocery store to buy food for Maia to take to school tomorrow.

Also I applied for a job on the internet and when it got to the stupid psychology test that many employers make you take to weed out potential employees, I realized that I had mixed up the letters that indicated Strongly Agree with Strongly Disagree and had therefore failed the test. I am angry because I had already spent three hours filling out the application, in which they wanted to account for every single place I had ever worked in my life and also every period of unemployment, plus addresses, phone numbers, supervisors, etc. I am 50 years old. I can’t remember most of that information, and at any rate, many places of employment have moved or closed. I am growing extremely frustrated with the job search. I am beginning to believe I won’t find anything ever again.

Today I got a very nice thank you letter from a musician whose music I played on my show yesterday– Ilya Polishchuk, the incredibly talented Ukranian artist who does the one-man band Freeky Cleen. He sent “You Can’t Save Me” which is so fresh it was recorded yesterday. It is from his album Street Roots.

The only other musician in November 2009 who thanked me for playing his music is Adam Hoek, who is now a friend of mine on Facebook. It’s awesome when you can make friends with a musician–I have no musical talent myself and don’t really run around with too many musical people!

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

I am still having problems with my mixer. I replaced the USB audio interface, but the mixer is still cutting in and out and I’m getting bizarre effects at times. I also am still hearing radio interference when the mixer is on. I am not a happy camper. Obviously something is loose.

I just watched the six-part 1996 BBC miniseries “Neverwhere” by Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry. It was wonderful, though it was obviously filmed in low-budget videotape and the quality suffered greatly, reminding me of 1970s era Dr. Who. Neverwhere was a fantasy series involving a young Scottish guy named Richard who lived in London and who was engaged to be married, but a chance encounter with a young woman named Door who had been stabbed changed him and brought him into an alternative world called “London Below” as opposed to “London Above.” Brian Eno contributed the haunting score. There are quests, ordeals, betrayals, scary encounters, assassinations, riddles, and puzzles, and the episodic formula led to an adventure game quality. The series is out on DVD but I found it on Netflix Instant Watch.

For the music on today’s show, I play the southern-rock tinged “Jellyroll Lovin” by the one-man Ukranian band Freeky Cleen from the album Street Roots. I found the song on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

I talk about how we may not be able to do Christmas this year as we are really tight on money (Off topic, and not in the podcast, I’m not really that much into the holiday anyway and it isn’t any skin off my teeth if the whole thing would just go away, but to each his own!).

We went to visit my sister-in-law for Thanksgiving and brought Dwight’s senile Uncle Clifford. On the way back, he was in some fantasy world in which he had left his keys to his house in Portland, Oregon (which we assume was sold for back taxes about 8-9 years ago) at his neighbor’s across the street and he didn’t know how he would be able to get back into his house. Then he was worried that he left his second wife Ruth as well as her mother somewhere and she would be worried about him. He doesn’t talk about Ruth much–she apparently left him for another man and she’s probably also long dead. So it was an excruciating drive for me.

As it’s the first day of Christmas season (yuck), I play “Santa Claus is Freaking Me Out” by Lord Weatherby. I read his blurb from Garageband.com, but I got the MP3 from MusicAlley from Mevio. I hope you enjoy it, you crazy Christmas-type people, you.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

Happy Thanksgiving to all Americans listening to this, as well as those who are not Americans, because we all have something to be thankful for, I hope!

On November 4 I was interviewed by Jennifer Navarrete of Morning BrewCast and Tech in Twenty. She was the one who came up with and started National Podcast Post Month (NaPodPoMo) back in November 2007, and this is the third year of it. She decided to interview people who are participating this year and she was very kind to consider me worthy of her focus. I decided that I would save reposting this until Thanksgiving this year and am very glad to share it with those who maybe didn’t hear it.

I play “Perfect Day” by Atomic Brother from their EP Silence Collide. I found them on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

On Tuesday night, I finally got a chance to see “The Room” in a theater, not the way it was meant to be seen, but the way it should be seen, a la Rocky Horror-style audience participation. Thank you to Samantha and Veronica for going with me. Thanks to Samantha, Veronica, and the three people in the parking lot who had gone to see Antichrist instead of The Room–I stupidly didn’t push the button on my Zoom H2 twice and it fooled me into thinking I was capturing audio when I wasn’t (and not the first time that has happened either!). Thanks to the fellow who handed out plastic spoons before the show began (Sorry, I didn’t catch your name). And thanks to The Room Soundboard for the movie soundclips!

Music at the end of the show is “Propaganda (Liberal Bullshit Mix)” by Al Phlipp & The Woo Team from their album Retarded Genius. It came from MusicAlley by Mevio.

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Yesterday, I brought up the heartwarming (or heart wrenching) story of the man who was in a coma for 23 years, but a PET scan revealed that he had normal brain function and is now able to communicate with a special keyboard. It made me think of The British theoretical physicist Stephen Hawkings, who is able to communicate brilliantly via computer even though his body is non-functioning due to Lew Gerhig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis).

I did not see photos of this nor did I see a video, but skeptic guru and magician extraordinare James Randi saw Dr. Nancy Snyderman of MSNBC’s video, and it was apparent to him, as well as anyone who looked closely, that the man’s finger was being used as a “Ouija” pointer to type whatever the person handling him wanted him to type. This is called “Facilitator Communication” and is no more true than dowsing or spirit writing.

Randi’s article says:

The “facilitated communication” process consists of the “facilitator” actually holding the hand of the subject over the keyboard, moving the hand to the key, then drawing the hand back from the keyboard! This very intimate participatory action lends itself very easily to transferring the intended information to the computer screen. In the video you have just viewed, it is very evident that (a) the “facilitator” is looking directly at the keyboard and the screen, and (b) is moving the subject’s hand. The video editing is also biased, giving angles that line up the head of the subject with the screen, as if the subject were watching the screen.

This man in the msnbc.com piece is not seeing the screen. He is not aware of what is going on. He is an unknowing victim of these charlatans.

Why do these people do this? This is haunting, especially since my husband and I had to remove life support from our own little son, who died at nearly two and a half months of age. Our son was an ECMO-treated (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) baby who developed complications and finally it became obvious that we were only prolonging the inevitable. To this day, I sometimes dream he is alive, even though we have his ashes in a small urn in our kitchen, because we never were able to take him home when he was with us.

Tonight a bunch of us are going to see The Room at Plaza Theater in Atlanta. Be there if you want to be on the podcast.

Music today is “Desert Woman” from Mather Louth and Radio Noir from their album The Swamp Jazz Sessions. I found it on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

Today I took Dwight’s Uncle Clifford to the doctor for a complete physical. For a man his age with his poor cognitive abilities, he is doing pretty well. He had an EKG and a chest xray, as well as a prostate exam, which he absolutely didn’t want but the doctor insisted he have.

Last night I was looking around on the internet and I found out the most horrible story on The Guardian. It seems this Belgian man named Rom Houben was in a horrible car wreck in 1983, which left him unable to communicate. Doctors mistakenly thought he was in a vegetative state, not realizing that his brain functioning was normal and he merely couldn’t communicate but could hear every word his doctors said. 23 years later, Dr. Steven Laureys, a neurologist at the University of Liège did a specialized brain scan on him and discovered his plight. How he knew to do this the article does not say, but man, what a horribly frustrating life this poor man must have lived. He is now being trained to use a keyboard with his right hand, which still has some movement and says that the day he was found was the day he was reborn.

Dr. Laureys says that it has been his experience that around 40% of those patients that he has examined who were thought to be in a vegetative state were found to have some brain function.

Now I have a new phobia to keep me awake at night. It’s like being buried alive!

I play a cool cover of Elton John’s “Crocodile Rock” by the 80s band The Joneses. It can be found on their double album Criminals / Tits and Champagne according to their MySpace page. At any rate, I found the song on MusicAlley.

Flyswatter Show

 

Liberal. Atheist. Vegan. Different.