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.

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.

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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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Not a lot to talk about today–I couldn’t find any topics on the internet even, and the dog has been acting up because he is avoiding going out to play in the rain so I’ll keep it short.

We’ve been kind of hanging around the house a lot lately. Last night we saw a pretty entertaining Woody Allen written-and-directed film “Melinda and Melinda,” which we appreciated as a very experimental, risky film with an original, comedy vs. tragedy theme, but I was struck (as usual) by the simple fact that Woody Allen cannot write dialogue to save his life. Nobody talks like that! And I am a person who adores Woody Allen. I gave it three stars on Netflix for that very reason.

I play a very cool Blondie cover of “11:59″ by The Postmarks, from their album By The Numbers. Go check them out. I found them on MusicAlley.

Oh yeah, please call me to prevent shows being really short like this.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935

Today on Reddit, a person named ldsgems pointed out that two years after his untimely death in 1998, The Church of Latter Day Saints (Mormons) did baptism by proxy of the famous astronomer Carl Sagan.

This has made me so angry I had to podcast about it. The Mormons were already on my shit list for baptizing the Jews who died in the Holocaust, though Dwight didn’t think there was anything insulting about that. We used to fight so much that we nearly broke up over it! Anyway, James Randi said that Sagan was an agnostic, not really an atheist. I read several great Sagan quotes.

The George Hrab song “Out of My Mind” from his album Interrobang is then played. You should really check out his awesome podcast Geologic and also he does the opening music to 365 Days of Astronomy. His music can be found on CD Baby, iTunes, and any cons he shows up at, such as Dragon*con and Balticon! Heck, the man’s all over the internet. I got this song off of MusicAlley though.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935.

Kind of a rambling show today. Took Copernicus to the dog park. They are making it hard for dog people there. Does DeKalb County want to sell the park to developers or something? We live on the wrong side of the tracks from Brookhaven, which is a really nice area “inside the perimeter,” near Buckhead. But also we live near what Tom Wolfe in his book A Man in Full, called “Chambodia.”

I tell the story of how we go our house. We first moved to Sandy Springs (ITP), then North Springs(OTP), then Norcross (OTP), then I got a job in Tennessee (way OTP!) (where Dwight also hoped to move but couldn’t find a job), so we gave back and bought a house here in ‘92. We met in Athens, GA but moved to Atlanta because jobs were scarce there.

Today, I am playing “Bill’s Kill on Loucille” by the (Norwegian) Love Bugs from their debut album Love Bugs Me. It was found on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935

I try very hard to be open-minded and enjoy knowing people with different opinions of politics, religion, and even try to get along with–gasp!–meat-eaters! Sometimes though I do get into arguments, but I really do try to be polite and listen.

Today I am playing “Midst of Your Mystery” by Laura Cheadle from her first album Falling In. I hope you like it. She’s got a really bluesy style going on here. I got this off MusicAlley by Mevio.

By the way, if this show sounds a little choppy let me know. I was recording it in drips and drops because I kept getting interrupted by humans, dogs and telephones, which I guess means humans yet again.

I’m using my Zoom H2 as a microphone, recording directly into the computer while I am waiting for my replacement USB audio interface device to come in. Let me know what you think the sound is like. I’m finding it a little cold-sounding, but it might be fine.

If you listened to this show last year, you might have heard about Dwight’s Uncle Clifford, who moved in with us after Dwight’s mom died. Clifford is 87 years old and is suffering from Alzheimers, and last summer he developed a heart condition and had to be hospitalized. It was suggested by the social worker at the hospital that we get him moved to a nursing facility, and so we did. He is living in a small group care home.

We found out, from looking through some of his old papers when he moved out, that he was actually in the Merchant Marines for a short time during World War II, and actually joined up a week before the Japanese surrendered. So we sent off to the Veterans Association and their paperwork showed it was actually a day before the last day of war, but no matter. He is eligible for benefits due to the timing of his service and so today the director of his home, who used to work at the VA Hospital in Atlanta, took me there and we got him enrolled into the system. This will help him on his housing and drug benefits and he will now be able to see VA doctors. This will be very helpful to him and to us, as we were having to pay for any expenses he couldn’t cover. It was a real hardship as I quit my job in the first place to take care of him as he is a wander risk and couldn’t be left alone. Now that the economy has gone sour, I can’t find a new job right now no matter how hard I try and our expenses are tight.

Today I’m playing “Iron Horse Stampede” from Get Three Coffins Ready from their new CD Get Three Coffins Ready: Era III - An Experiment in Audio Science and Static Manipulation. I found them on MusicAlley by Mevio.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935

I am not a self-promoter. None of my podcasts have ever had that many listeners, except maybe Rocky Horror Pod Show, and then not even. One time, Coffee and Tea Show had a bump of ratings on Podcast Alley though.

I mostly listen to small and/or new podcasters because they need the ratings and I want to help them out. But I used to listen to Evil Genius Chronicles, where Dave Slusher once asked the question to the effect of how small of an audience do you have to have where you’d stop podcasting? Personally, nobody listens to my show, so it would be pretty small–I’ve stopped podcasting several times but it was because of complications in real life, not due to lack of downloads.

I am in the mood for some psychobilly, so I play “Thelma and Louise” by Horrorpops, from their album “Kiss Kiss Kill Kill.” I found them on MusicAlley.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935

Today sucked for podcasting. I recorded a show at a flooring place with Dwight and Halley and the sound quality was horrible. I tried to save it and finally chucked it.

Then Dwight and Halley decided to paint and unhooked the DSL modem and router and paint needed to dry to hook it back up.

Then Copernicus beheaded a toy rooster.

So anyway, enjoy “Science” by Any Day in June, from their album “Love in the Time of Poverty.” You can download a free copy of this album under a CC license from their website, or for better quality, you can purchase it from iTunes, Amazon MP3, Napster, eMusic, or even as a CD. I found this song on MusicAlley, by the way.

This is a second take on this show as the first was too controversial with my family. And I had to go behind a restaurant to record this because I couldn’t use my computer because Halley was using it, and Dwight was also hammering something, so excuse the traffic sounds, except for on the very end.

We are having to send off some samples of vinyl floor tiles because they are crumbling and may be exposing us to asbestos. Scary! By the way, the only hardware store that had the mail off kit is a local Ace Hardware. None of the big box hardware stores (which I won’t mention because I don’t want them to get hits) have them and therefore suck.

Halley has been out picking up job applications. I wish her luck, and me too. This is the worst time I have ever had finding work.

I play Grand Atlantic’s cover of Beyonce’s “Single Ladies.” They were found on MusicAlley.

Voicemail: 678-368-4935

Today I fell in the mud.

My music is “(I Got No Knees For) Praying” by The People. Find them on MusicAlley.