msb-0048 Together

msb-0048 Together

Feedback come first so...

I'm still not able to give any feedback on Dr. Code's book because Lee, my wife, has seized it from me and is reading it.

But from the comments she insists on making to me, it appears to be full of sound nutritional advice, like stuff on omega-3 oils and something I'd never heard of emu oil.

More on this when either I can get Lee to give a synopsis, wish me luck, or I can give it myself.

In the mean time, I've been reading "No Time to Loose" by Pema Chödrön.

Even if you're not into eastern mysticism or comparative religion or much of anything else dealing with Buddhism, you have to admire the phrases she quotes: "For those ailing in the world, until their every sickness has been healed, may I myself become for them the doctor, nurse, the medicine itself."

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msb-0047 Oh Wow! indeed.

I got feedback almost immediately from Miss Chriss.

"I'm so psyched up you are getting the word out about MS with your podcast.

So often it feels like we are forgotten because we aren't the 'disease du jour'.

Keep it up!"

I don't know what to say. (But you know I'm bound to try. :-)

If I'm getting the word out, its because people other than MSers like podsafe music too.

(The words of an old Monty Python skit rise unbidden to my brain: "I like a nice tune. You're forced to!")

But my primary focus is about weaving us MSers together.

Its about making a web of us so that we can be strong together, rather being left by the side of the road, one at a time, like debris or detritus.

300,000 or more of us is too large a number for anyone to glibly ignore; a politician or a company or an HMO or anybody who makes money off of us. (And make no mistake, people are making money off of us.)

Its nice that non-MSers can see us as people too but, at the risk of sounding callous, that's not what I'm trying to accomplish here.

I want to get the word out to us, the MSers, first.

Our drugs, our products, our services, our needs, our wants. Together we can rise out of our couches, wheelchairs and beds.

I've had it with denial.

I've had it with being ignored.

MSCPodcast.com is a way for us to get a voice coming out of 300,000 throats.

Where even a whisper can make for a mighty roar.

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My stats are driving me nuts.

They just aren't consistent.

Either I'm rolling through the entire population of MSers (I should have such luck, for the most part they haven't heard of me,) or some of you are making download decision based on some criterion that is just baffling me.

Congrats. I'm now about to lose any remaining hair atop my dome from all the head scratching.

Stuff I though was going to do well doesn't. (And sometimes the stats sucked like a two horsepower shop-vac wiping up a basement after a flash flood.)

Stuff I wasn't so sure about had great stats.

Ya gotta drop me an email telling me how you decide what you're going to get: charles @ MSBPodcast.com

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I've been reading a couple of books on propaganda techniques.

They aren't very readable and while I will have the links in the shownotes, I really don't recommend them. Well, not "per se" but it does make for interesting reading.

Don't be like that.

I read a lot.

What else do I have to do with my copious spare time?

I don't like commercial TV.

I hate how the content has become so chopped up by and secondary to the ads.

I like the way they used to do it on many European channels. Like the Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen ("Second German Television").

They ran their advertisments in a block at the end of a program and they were all good. They had to be...

I like PBS but they currently on their twice yearly "Begging Hiatus".

I loathe the rapidly shrinking pool that commercial Radio has become, as the ClearChanneling consolidation has happened over the past decade, as the talent has been evaporated, distilled away.

I just don't listen ot it.

Its been months since I tuned the receiver to anything but the frequency my iTrip uses.

Its all become a become a wasteland of stupendous soporificity.

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Anyways. One of the book I've been reading is by Erward L. Bernays (I bet you though I was going to say Marshall McLuhan, a fellow Canadian of note.)

Keep in mind that the book was written after the first world war but before the rise of the Nazis. Goebels had still to come to prominence.

I was reading it to see exactly how the phenomenon of mass media manipulation was structured; before it rose into an art form. (And with Leni Riefenstall, it was an artform.)

Its amazing to reflect that none of these techniques existed before the turn of the 20th century. In fact, none of the techniques existed formally a scant seventy years ago.

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Look again.

This medium, podcasting, is less than two years old.

Oh there were expirements and trial balloons leading up to this but podasting itself is less than two years old.

The tools are evolving as I write this.

Likewise, the techniques are evolving as I write this.

We are making up the rules as we go.

But, by writing them down and adding to the store of knowledge, we are standing on the shoulders of giants.

As Miranda said to Prospero: "O brave new world,
That has such people in't!"