msb-0052 Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. (Turn and face the strain)

msb-0052 Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. (Turn and face the strain)

apologies to David Bowie. :-)

There's not much feedback as I write this episode. (Talk about time shifting, I haven't even uploaded the episode for last thursday, which is still tomorrow for me.)

----

My wife Lee and I are officially registered for the Chefs for MS event.

The wine has been ordered. And the "bon vivant" won't be having any.

I'm putting my best foot forward which means I have to try and keep my speech clear.

Like a lot of MSers out there, I slur my words at the best of times.

----

I haven't heard a peep from Carlo Magno. Its been almost a month. I do hope he's alright. I know he'd been ill with intestinal bleeding.

I've been communicating with One Crazy Chick on my blog and will keep any eye open and ear cocked for any for any news.

I've also heard something yesterday on Channel 11 news, Tuesday August 22, 2006 as I update this, on using some chemotherapy drug: Cytoxan.

I will definitely ask Dr. Herbert about it but I'd have to be pretty sure about it because I really don't like the thought of having to wipe out my immune system, which the chemo would do, in order to rebuild it.

Like how long would I have to be without one because I'm not interested in having to live being scared of anything and everything.

----

"Where's msb-0049 and msb-0050?" I hear you ask. (Okay. So I don't. Its a couple of days off anyway.)

You may have noticed that the numbering on this blog is getting more and more skewed.

I am releasing some video only episodes as trial baloons.

Potential advertisers can see that they can reach an audience of MSers (that's you gentle people) for a very low cost when compared to the usual approach of using the mail.

Never mind what it would cost for them to use TV ads.

That's just plain lunacy.

Also, from the stats again, you have decided to download msb-0050 but not as many of you downloaded msb-0049.

Like what's up with that? Boss Fearss was actually funny.

----

MS changes lives, but its not alone on having that kind of impact.

MS usually hits people who have made some decisions in their lives and have chosen some direction to their lives.

MS just blindsides 'em with a pipe smash to the spine.

In that respect its a car wreck; its like a side swipe.

What you knew and trusted; yourself if nothing else, just isn't there anymore.

But MS is a disease and like all diseases, its completely fair (in a statistical sense.)

----

MS is utterly without prejudice.

Male or female, of almost any age (within certain limits for discovery,) black, white, red, yellow, its utterly without significance.

MS doesn't care about you beyond a hunger for myelin, and your spinal chord is on the menu.

MS is utterly without pity. It can't be appealed to, bargained with or pleaded to.

Most of the problems I have seen or heard, or heard of, are related to people's inability to accept that utter randomness.

Its a bitch to realize that you don't matter worth a damn in the larger scheme of things.

There isn't even anyone to crook a finger at.

Its not like Osama blaming non-muslims for his troubles tinkling or whatever's got his knickers in a twist.

MS happpens utterly without any respect to nationality, religious affiliation, social standing, occupation, sexual orientation or any other category you care to use to divide the chosen from the damned.

Nothing like a little enforced humility.

----

My life has changed several times.

Twice my life almost ended. (I was one of the first chidren in Québec to receive penecilin. I was sooo sick. I'm actually older than the spread of antibiotics outside of testing by the military. The second time was a car crash I walked away from that could have left me a smeary statistic skewered on a median.)

Twice my life got interrupted by MS. (Both times I have managed to recover, the first time almost completely and the second time, to a good extent.)

Once it got interupted by a terrorist act. (Osama bin Laden is equivalent in intent to every two-bit, tin-cup fascist dictator that's ever existed, except he doesn't even have any territory. On that basis, he doesn't even rate as much respect as a school yard bully. All he can do is wreck other people's things.)

Each time I had to pick myself up out of whatever bed I was in and just get on with the fact that life had changed.

I didn't want it to but what I wanted wasn't a consideration.

----

MS doesn't mean anything.

Its utterly impersonal.

But it is vincible.

It can and will be defeated, conquered, brought to reins.

No...

How about a metaphor that works.

It can be cured.

MS requires that we get to know it and get to know ourselves well enough to understand the mechanisms that cascade into an exacerbation.

----

I loathe people that accept "Its a mystery." as an answer for anything.

"Its a mystery" only because they're too lazy, cheap or intellectually crippled to look for a mechanism.

And those people need to change.

msb-0051 Oops, I Missed the Half a Century Show.

msb-0051 Oops, I Missed the Half a Century Show.

I've decided to celebrate the fiftieth show, albeit a show late, with a bunch of podcasting anthems.

Enjoy.

Send me some feedback: charles at MSBPodcast.com

----

To my audience ...

My stats are driving me nuts.

What happened?

Did a whole bunch of you come back from vacation and waited 'till now to pick up the old shows?

My stats for those shows are looking better now. Weird.

----

And to any potential advertisers ...

How did you like the videos?

• Such Great Great Heights, by The Postal Service by/for SubPop records
• Berlex Trial Balloon (by invitation only!)
• Boss Fear
• Slip Of The Tongue

(and wait 'till you see what's coming up next! :-)

And it would only cost $0.05 per view, instead of the current cost structure, such as pharmacos' marketing approach of $4,50+|- per person to mail it.

And they're left to hope it doesn't end up, unplayed, in the bottom of a drawer somewhere.

I don't own a VCR so that pointed up that there was nowhere else that you material could go, except maybe the trash.

This nickel per view is usually in addition to other media, like ads in the MS publications.

The internet is wonderful if you already know where you're going, that's what's behind the success of Google.

----

Here's an idea...

Lets try a grass roots movement to increase the audience.

If you like the show, you can spread the word, tell others you meet at some MS event.

If you'd like some cards email me: charles at MSBPodcast.com.

I'll be doing my bit too.

I'm going to an event sponsored by Teva Neurosciences on Sundau, September 10th, 2006 at the W Hotel in New York.

Its featuring:

• Dr. Joseph Herbert of the MS Comprehensive Center,
• Dr. Harold Atkins of the Otawa Hospital (where I was first officially diagnosed) and
• Ann Oswald, an MS Advocate at the Teva Booth.

All of your feedback has been very positive and encouraging.

Well ... all but one, from somebody who accused me of technophilia (and somebody tell me how the hell did she get to even hear my show anyway?)

She reminded me of the woman who wrote to me (with pen and paper, an envelope and a stamp, no less,) back when I was producing the newsletter for the Ottawa chapter in 1985 or '86, whining about my saying we all needed to use computers to overcome our respective handicaps. (Man I feel old.)

Now, once again, I seem to be on the bleeding edge of technology.

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."

----

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.

----

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

----

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.

----

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.

----

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!"

msb-0047 Oh Wow!

msb-0047 Oh Wow!

Feed back come first so ...

I got some from a Dr. Code. He's got a book on something I believe in, nutrition and MS.

This is some of the content of his email:

Hi Charles,

I am impressed that you are raising the awareness of Multiple Sclerosis in a new and unique way. Thank you for doing so.

My father was diagnosed with MS 10 years ago, and was forced to leave medical practice.

Since then he has regained his health though nutritional methods, and has written a book called "Who's In Control of Your MS?", ISBN: 0-9737918-0-2

(http://shop.drbillcode.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1).

----

More feedback:

Advertising people don't understand podcasting and RSS yet.

I can distribute any kind of content: PDF (Portable Document Format) files, audio and video.

One objection I heard from someone that manufactures a complicated powered wheel chair is that they don't want to use podcasting because their advertising is basically visual and needs to be to show off the features of their wheel chairs and that my podcast is audio.

I produce an audio podcast because its cheap, easy and fast.

Also, this way I can do it in my office regardless of how dimly lit it is (or not, depending on whether I close the drapes, or not.)

Also that means I can wear whatever I feel like and be my usual schlubby unkempt self.

On the internet, no one can tell you're a dawg.

But video places certain demands on production values (and expenses,) that I don't feel are necessary or germaine to building up a community of MSers.

But that doesn't mean I can't 'cast quality video (to a pod or to a PC.) (Actually I was stunned at the tools available to let me do it.)

Which sort of explains msb-0045 Video Podcasting and msb-0046 XXXXX Trial Balloon.

I can take video content and put it out there.

msb-0045 was a video podcast of something put together by or for "SubPop" for "The Postal Service" promoting the song "Such Great Heights." They are a great band and deserve all the success they get.

msb-0046 was a video podcast lifted from a promotional video, sent to me for around four bucks in mail each, that could have gone out for about USD$50.00 per thousand or a nickel (USD$0.05) each.

That's five cents versus four bucks. 1/80 the cost.

The stuff looks great and I have the appropriate software to run conversions across almost any format the companies care to supply to the .M4V format which, while not native to the iPod, plays well in iTunes or on an iPod, as well as any web based player.

However the current approach that XXXX used with regards to text should be tightened and the colors should trend more towards using primary colors.

It didn't look that hot on the DVD either.

I don't feel that bad for them.

Its all stuff that can be redone in post-production from the original footage.

Apart from the one download that some got, its available by direct contact to potential advertisers.

However. because it is an advert, or a five minute snippet of one, unpaid for and, as my wife rightly pointed out, until and unless we get a contract authorizing us to play it, could be considered copyright violation, its not for general consumption. (And I can play anything as long as I don't 'cast it.)

Sorry, but there will forever be a hole in the episode numbering.

(Mostly because its on the server wating for potential advertisers to get their own "private screening" and see what this mother can do what you take the training wheels off.)

----

Some other feedback was somewhat less positive:

Okay, you're right. You're absolutely right. I appologize.

But you really put it rather harshly. (You know who you are.)

Lets start at the beginning.

Let me introduce myself.

My name is Charles-A. Rovira and I have MS. (Just listen to me. I have no breath control and very little voice control left. Do I sound normal to you?)

I have had MS since I was sixteen when, in 1969, MS took all the neat handwriting technique the nuns had taught me, under pain of eternal damnation, and threw it into a cocked hat.

Still I managed to recover enough of my coordination to become a guitarist, and a damn good one if I say so myself.

But being a musician and eating regular don't exactly go together. Besides I accomplished what I'd set out to do, I got respect, and the rest was impositions, all guys telling me about "getting that sound".

I went into computers in Montreal, back when there were only mainframe and mini computers. Micros were in their infancy. This was in 1976.

I was fine until 1985 when I had a bad attack that put me into the Ottawa General hospital, for five weeks. That's when I was officially diagnosed with MS.

I used the time in Neuro-ICU to think about objects and object-oriented programming. Its easy when you don't have any distractions, like a body, or an appetite, or much of anything else.

I recovered, I wrote for a bunch of magazines that don't exist anymore and was making a nice life for myself when MS came a knocking again; with a vengence.

I spent one miserable month in 1997 trying to get my ass out of a Brooklyn bed and discovered that, this time, I was left having to use a cane to get around.

Like the last time, the previous attack, I thought about objects and data relationships.

Rather than sitting on my duff, feeling sorry for myself, I went to school and finally got a degree, in business.

----

I discovered digital audio recording, RSS and Podcasting about 9 months ago.

Now I'm trying to make a go of MSBPodcast.com because I see the possibilities that its extremely focused 'casting capabilities have for giving news and tunes to an extremely small percentage of the population.

MSers make up 0.0833% or 1 in 1,200 of the population.

No advertising firm in the world will touch that.

But the internet can weave every one of those twelve hunded into over 300,000 people.

That's a lot of people.

I am trying to bring these people, us MSers, together with music, podsafe music.

What I hope is that I can bring quality to audio and video while creating a channel for information that we need.

This podcast is what I have planned to do it with and through.

And that's who I am, dearie.

Those are my bona fides.

Any more questions?

----

More feedback:

I recently got in touch with Pat Metheny or at least with the webmeiser who's taking care of his website (I'll put it in the show notes.)

He may be providing some tunes to the Podsafe Music Network, the PMN.

You might be hearing some jazz on this show real soon now.

----

Even more feedback:

Things are moving along for ChefsForMS. Twelve bottles of wines have been selected and they'll be going into some "gift baskets" four at a time. It should be a fun evening. Dry for me but fun regardless.

msb-0044 Marilyn Monroe and "moi" (Believe it or not!)

msb-0044 Marilyn Monroe and "moi" (Believe it or not!)

Got Ya!

The closest I ever got to Ms. Monroe was when my father dragged me to the opening of a shopping mall in Ville LaSalle. Yes! Ms. Monroe was opening a shopping mall.

I remember thinking "What's all the fuss about?"

I was a very young boy at the time and wasn't into girls and all that messy biology stuff.

I wasn't drooling and making sidelong glances...

But all the older people were. (I'd call them adults but I suspect that that would be stretching your credulity. They were acting like gawking vessels of hormones. Jeez. You think you know your ol' man and he drags you to this.)

----

Hey, she'd be eighty-one years old this year.

She was born on June 1, 1926.

Its now August 2006. Do the math.

She'd be old enough to be my mother.

Now all these years later, it was back in 1961 or so, I am still thinking "What's all the fuss about?"

The mystique, of course, is that she was one of JFK's squeezes.

She was married, briefly, to Jimmy Dougherty, Joe DiMaggio and Arthur Miller.

Of the three, the only one I wonder about is Jimmy Dougherty.

But she left us some great pictures (which are scrolling past every few seconds if you've downloaded this podcast with iTunes) and some good movies.

Unfortunately, we don't get to see them except on occasionally on PBS and on the "Late, late show"on some oldies movie stations because the movie industry doesn't have much use for "dated content."

But at least you can make movies about anything.

----

Television has no use for anything that would upset anybody, specially the sponsors.

The less I say about that the better.

Its a hippocritical pipe pumping vapid and vacuous sewage into a wasteland.

Radio's was never much better.

That's why George Carlyn's "Seven Words You Can't Say On the media: Shit, Piss, Fuck, Cunt, Cocksucker, Motherfucker and Tits, even required a Supreme Court Decision. Supreme Court case of FCC v. Pacifica Foundation. (Hey. Its in the Supreme Courts' records. All seven words.)

Unlike Lenny Bruce, the little putz who kept using yiddish euphemisms, he actually managed to get the words out and into the court record.

----

But radio is a slightly different medium. It leaves much to the imagination.

You can be middle-aged, fat, balding, have body odor, bad feet and atrophied limbs, but if you sound good and have the right delivery, which means you can read faster than you can talk, you can be a golden boy on radio.

Look at Howard Stern. Nah, I'd rather not.

Or check out the Ouch! podcast from the BBC. Now there's a bunch of people who have their bona fides.

Of course, you still have the restriction on those seven words.

Ohh! What power, what Ju Ju there must be in the utterance of any of those seven words.

----

Podcasting is not subject to the FCCs vaguaries (both in form and in application.)

Its not a broadcast. Its by subscription or clearly by request.

But that doesn't mean it not subject to common decency (and the even rarer ... common sense.)

Gratuitous profanity is senseless and I say fuck it.

msb-0043 Was it good for you too?

msb-0043 Was it good for you too?

Feedback come first so ...

How did you like a shorter daily podcast? Its a bit more demanding in research but its a lot easier on my speech (and on your ears, I guess.)

Email me at charles at MSBPodcast.com.

Or record a voice email at www.MSBPodcats.com.

----

From the download stats, it wasn't so good.

Maybe you like the old format better; only twice a week.

Then again, maybe you're taking summer vacation.

I can't know unless you tell me. charles at MSCPodcast.com

Basically I've only had half the downloads that I usually do.

Its hard to make anything of that except that, since I didn't do anything else (except play some cool bands like CSS,) from my usual episodes.

----

One Crazy Chick got in touch with me after I mentionned going to Tai Chi on Friday (msb-0041 Broken).

Here is my reply:

"I love Tai Chi. I have derived a lot of benefit from it. I always feel energized and relaxed at the same time after the sessions.

While I would recommend it to anyone, I would check with a physiotherapist first to see if it might be contra-indicated for any reason.

Since you're into karate, you might find the pace quite slow. Its all about grace and flow. (Though some of the routines will leave you hurting, but it a good way. :-)

----

You may have noticed a return of Johnny Velcro's "Pod Pyrates" intro. He's allowing me to use it again.

(I love asking for permission. It lets me bounce emails around and catch up on how people are doing.)

He's been taking his kids everywhere while he and his wife have been house hunting. He's still looking though so its been a frustrating exercise.

----

I've just finished watching Bill Moyers speaking with Pema Chödrön.

Pema Chödrön is, to quote Mr. Moyers' pages on the PBS web site: (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/portraits_chodron.html, [it's all in the show notes folks, all in the show notes,]) "an American Buddhist nun and author whose teachings and writings on meditation have helped make Buddhism accessible to a broad Western audience."

I was stunned by this woman. By her own admission she no longer ventures forth from the monastary in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.

Her health may be failing but I was the presence of a wellspring of sanity and of calm springing forth from this woman.

I was also stunned by her attitude toward deity, any deity.

She has written many books, the latest being No Time to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva (Hardcover) ISBN: 1590301358.

Go to Amazon and buy this book. I have just ordered my copy on another tab in my browser.

We have chosen radically different paths to get to the same place. I admire her path as much as she would admire mine.

I have found a place and a time for deity and for myself and I let deity be in deity's place and time and deity can let me be in my place and time.

(Who would have ever thought of Max Planck as a theosopher. Sub-Planck space-time is made up of units shorter than 1.61624 × 10^-35 meter and spans of time shorter than 5.39121 × 10^-44 second.)

----

I am still waiting to hear if Carlo Magno will be resuming the trek from Seattle to New York.

----

ChefsForMS is still looming large ahead of me.

Eight bottles of good wine and my lips won't touch a drop of their content.

And since I won't be at home relaxing, but I'll be working instead, promoting the podcast, I'll have to be on my best behavior that whole evening. Dang ...

----

----

msb-0042 Broken.

msb-0042 Broken.

The heat has broken ... sort of/

Its only, only, eighty five here in Noo Joysey.

So all the songs are all about broken things.

Instead of getting up to record temperature, like in the triple digits, its only getting to eighty five. It still stinks.

----

Yesterday, something came across my 'junk' email inbox folder that caught my eye as I was deleting the usual messages with misspelt subject lines and the other dross that is immediately recognizable as Spam. (Hint to the clients of the loathesome spammers: 'Guess where your shit ends up, unread. I don't care how little it costs, you're still getting ripped off. Fuckin' fools...)

It was about Pat Buchanan's book: "State Of Emergency."

He is so wrong about why civilizations decline that its actually funny, funny, funny.

He thinks, if his xenophobic ranting can be called thought, that immigration will cause the decline and fall of "Imperium Americana" and that the 'States will decline because "we're letting in all these foreigners."

What kind of person call himself Pat? Am I supposed to think of a kindly, wise old man patting a puppy? He's more likely to yell al it until it either piddles on the carpet or jumps up and goes for his jugular. (Go doggie!)

Civilizations have all declined mostly because of changes to the environment in which they arose in the first place.

Changes to the water table have been behind the fall of civilizations from Angkor Wat, the empty palaces of ancient India, Kampucia the Middle East, places like Babylon, Ur, Sumer, the Hittites, the list goes on, to dozens of European Civilizations from Frisia to Gaul, to the dozens of empty cities in South, Central and even North America.

If you want a recent example, Nor'Leens is but a falling shadow of its former self. If it wasn't for the highway system it would be emptying down to sustainable level of population.

Basically the coastal wetlands had been starved for new soil by the very act of building the levees along the Mississippi, and them those levees failed.

Lets see him blame THAT on "them damn foreigners."

----

I'm still following Carlo Mano.

I'm still going to ChefsForMS.

I'm still promoting One Crazy Chick.

----

I'm still on about podcasting as the newest media because it IS.

Where else are you going to hear this next song?

----

Four broken records (sorry, bad pun) and they're "Not On The Radio."

That's it for me 'cause I got to get to work and then to Tai Chi.

Enjoy and have a good week-end.

msb-0041 Sub Pop ... popped.

msb-0041 Sub Pop ... popped.

Man, its scorcher out there; another day of sitting by the noisy air conditioner, not venturing outside of my office.

Its still too friggin' HOT!

----

I'm featuring some more of the music I found at the SubPop site because some of it is really listenable and fits into my format.

Music with a certain "je ne sais quoi."

----

Feedback comes first so here goes ...

From you my audience, (and I know you're out there, the episodes ARE being downloaded,) there's bupkis. Nada. Zip. Nothing.

A great sucking silence cloying at my soul. (Not really, but I figure its more dramatic sounding.)

Actually, I'm running an little experiment with GaragaBand and putting stuff out there in 'm4a' format and I'd like to know if anyone out there WITHOUT AN IPOD can pick them up on their MP3 players and get the full benefit of the changing images and chapters, or not as the case may be.

Send me an email charles@MSBPodcast.com.

----

Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff, who hosts the Pacific Coast Hellway, said in an email that he might use some of the music that I find on his show.

He quoted from another letter/email from me on today's show, and he mentioned MSBPodcast. Anything that gets the word out there is good... Who hoo! :-)

Yes, Podshow was not mentioned in the WSJ article "Mogul of New Media," but since Podshow has some investors and an actual business model, I'm not so sure that that's a bad thing.

Its getting the world ready and stirring up interest, while keeping the good stuff for potential investors for later.

I suspect that Podshow won't get properly examined until"Shadow Falls" gets finished,
"Ancestor" gets made into a movie OUTSIDE of the traditional channels;
and that this indie production makes some money for
the PMN for producing it,
the PDN for carrying it out to the fifty plus million iPod carrying audience, and
for and its investors, that would be me and thee and anyone else who sticks his or her wallet out when the idea gets floated out there.

----

Likewise I'm trying to get in touch with the PodPyrate, Johnny Velcro.

He seems to have podfaded on hiatus for a while now now so I'm wondering ... could I use his intro again?

----

I'm scouring the 'Net for podsafe mp3s and record companies, including 'beck's, that might be enticed into putting some tunes on the PMN, so that I could play them on this 'cast and other people could play 'em on their 'casts.

The GarageBand website is calling to me again with their selection of tunes, like the Sirens calling to Odysseùs.

----

In the meantime, I've got some more tunes from SubPop to fling your way so lets get the obligatory permission out of the way:

----

Question.

Dear Sub Pop, I was wondering if we could play (insert Sub Pop band here) or any of the songs readily available from your site on one of our up coming podcasts?

Answer.

While we're unable to give you blanket permission to use any ole song you want from our catalog, you may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/multimedia.php into your podcasts.

HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time.

----

They really should hook up with the PMN and be able to track all their music as it percolates through everybody's podcasts.

MSB-0040 Gawd its HOT!

MSB-0040 Gawd its HOT!

Feedback comes first, but its a two way street.

And I'm too pooped to give any back.

Its too friggin' HOT!

----

Right on Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff.

I am a disabled podcaster.

Like, who else has the time to devote to doing this shit right? Right?

But that's not the way to start an email which has nothing what-so-ever to do with, about, for or even against, disability.

Its a non-sequitur of the worst kind.

I am a disabled podcaster, but my podcasts aren't disabled.

And for doing such a great job on "Shadow Falls", [munk] and you get the first tune on my show, 'I am, Molly's theme.'

----

I'm not even going to try to get to work today.

I'll handle the conference call from home; within feet of my A.C. (The hallway betwen the office and the rest of the condo, like the bathroom, is a steamy hell, and so is the rest of the condo.)

I'd melt into an uncoordinated pile of spasms before I'd ever get to the corner to wait for a bus.

----

What?

You don't seriously expect me to drive a car in Manhattan, do you?

In Manhattan?

I'd spend my life in the car, driving in circles looking for parking and burning up the planet's fossil resources.

Not to mention then paying more to rent some "air rights," for my car, for a day, than my entire first apartment used to cost me for a month. And that included water, heat and electricity!

In New York all I get is the least open space posible under dirty concrete slab with some hot and cold unidentified running rodents (or, with apologies to Harry Harrison, was that really just a roach I saw, or was that merely the size of a small "Stainless Steel Rat"?)

----

"What about taking a cab, ya cheap bastard?"

Its easy to see you've never tried waiting for a cab in Jersey City, where I actually make my domicile.

"He'll be there in five minutes" gets real old when you've been waiting there for half an hour and have heard that repeated half a dozen times.

And, like the cabs are air conditionned?

I could get in, cane and all, but I'd have to be unstuck off the dark sun soaked vynil, like an egg fried in an old fashioned iron skillet, and poured out onto the pavement.

Screw that.

I'm just going to go and soak my weary butt in the tub or standing in the shower and cool off.

----

Have any of you gone and checked out a Crazy Chicks blog site? (The links are all in the show notes, folks; all in the show notes.)

I'm still waiting for Carlo Magno to get better, he's actually healing up right now, and to get going again. (I hope he's got enough brain to wait until its a bit cooler, Hell! A lot cooler.)

I'm still going to ChefsForMS. (And no, I don't get sea sick.) September 25th.

I know its not going to be the dreaded conference food meal of "chicken in ichor".

----

You're getting five short shows this week rather than the two longish ones.

We'll see how the stats react. You do know that you can download more than one episode, right?

And that you can set your RSS downloaders to getch all unseen/unheard episodes, right? Its a podcast. You can play it any ol' time.

Actually, I heard Adam Curry say something that really gives me pause. (My stats look like a saw with little predictibility from episode to epipsode.)

Adam said that he has seen his stats exhibit hat behavior and that the show notes were the culprit.

If they read like he had intetesting content, the show was downloaded.

If the website read like the show was going to be, uh, boring, people weren't downloading the episode. (Why waste the time on the wire if you aren't going to listen to it? Right?)

----

You know I used to wonder how I would fill the time but that has turned out not to be a problem. And I'm having so much fun.

(Now if only I could get my ass to a speech therapist and see if they can do something about my degenerating delivery.)

And an email would be very much appreciated charles@MSBPodcats.com

C'mon folks. Don't be shy. I don't names unless I have to. (Hey! Do want an Alias? Like an Otaku name?)

msb-0039 SubPop.

msb-0039 Sub Pop.

This episode is different from my usual 'casts.

If you've read the show notes at all, you know that I play a lot of music off the PMN (The Podsafe Music Network) because I don't want to get sued playing anything that could be in anyway be considered copyright theft.

But I ran into this application: "Democracy" from ParticipatoryCulture.org. (The links are all in the show notes, folks, all in the show notes.)

This is something that is just blowing me away.

It does for video what the internet, RSS and podcatching did for audio. (Think of the iTunesMusic Store on steroids and NOT needing a million bucks for the recording studio, equipment, transmitter, schedules and friggin' promotion "payola.")

I found two gems, both videos:

"Slip of the Tongue" which is very low cost, (the main set consists of a bus stop,) and
"Such Great Heights" which costs billions and billions (well not directly.)

Through a convoluted series of links followed and web sites visited, I ended up at SubPop Records which features some great artists and great tunes.

They also have their fair share of sub par artists and tunes, people who need a few more years of practice, honing their craft, but what of that.

As long as I'm going through the field and gleaning the wheat from the chaff for you, you don't have to suffer hearing it. I listened to EVERYTHING on offer. (My ears are still in shock.)

Why am I making this slip from strict legality?

Well I'm not. The site for SubPop has something in it that gave me the guts to try it..

----

Question.

Dear Sub Pop, I was wondering if we could play (insert Sub Pop band here) or any of the songs readily available from your site on one of our up coming podcasts?

Answer.

While we're unable to give you blanket permission to use any ole song you want from our catalog, you may incorporate any of the songs that are freely available as MP3s in the multimedia section of this website http://www.subpop.com/scripts/main/multimedia.php into your podcasts.

HOWEVER, we do reserve the right to change our mind about the availability of any song for any reason at any time. Fickle, no?

----

Fickle, yes but its the right of the artist and the copyright holder to decide where their music goes.

And we're always going to be caught between the Scilla of the new music and the Charibdes of the back catalog.

But Hooray! They GOT it! They understand the power that 50 million plus iPods have on content, on advertising and on promotion. They got it.

The only thing that the PMN would offer is a way to track the music's percolation through podcasts and to quickly thank the artists.

----

You're going to hear "The Postal Service" play "Such Greats Heights."

They also made a video of it. Remember when MTV had actual Music videos. Back when the M stood for Music instead of Mediocre?

The video takes place in a chip fab (or Wafer fabrication facility. There's less than 1,200 world-wide so I've got a short list of North American candidates to figure out which one was used.) Visually, it reminded me of THX-1138 and the Waldoes that Robert Duval was using to handle radioactive material.

Well we're about to desert the usual music.podshow.com format (though I'm going to have to work a lot harder to get in touch and thank the artists.)

Actually, there was enough material to make up this entire episode.

Lets take a listen, shall we?

----

I'm still plugging The Crazy Chick blog. Its hotter than Hades in Jersey City so I cant imagine how how it must be where she is.

I'm still planning to go and get fed by the ChefsForMS. (What would you recommend for wines for a ship board dinner?)

I'm still following what's happening with Carlo Magno.

He need some road/theme music.

Like "St. Elmo's Fire" which was written for and/or about, I think I seem to remember, Rick Hansen, a Canadian wheel chair athlete injured falling off the back of a truck. (Man. Its not easy trying to dredge some of this stuff up out of my memory. It been almost 20 years since the "Man in Motion" world tour.)

----

You can discover the most amazing things wandering our with your senses open.

In Wired (http://www.wired.com ) I stumbled over this blog entry:

Thursday, 27 July 2006
Destination: Out!
Topic: MP3s
Finally, the world has a free-jazz mp3blog! Seriously! It's called Destination: Out and it posts out-of-print music with informed, passionate writing alongside. This, and to a lesser extent Classical Connection (a [mostly avant-garde] classical mp3blog), is exactly what I hoped for when mp3blogs began to boom. People writing with excitement and verve about music I do not know and do not even entirely know how to love. And with samples alongside to help you listen for yourself! Bliss!

----

I've got some more news about Ray Kurzweil in the Wall Street Journal. (Links in the show notes folks. Links in the show notes.)

He has come up with a portable text-to-speech device, which costs too much, but only for now.

It would be good for temporary sight problems, like people with MS sometimes get. Perhaps we should get some donated to each chapter for when their members need one. (Philanthropy anyone?) I'd buy one myself 'cause I love gadgets but my vision's been okay since 1985 and, knock wood, its a little to buy one juts or the WOW factor.

This next bit I picked up from some media my wife was watching. I don't even know which network, never mind which show. Somebody came up with a user-customizable Bliss-board.

http://www.blissymbolics.org/ says "bliss is a symbolic, graphical language that is currently composed of over 3,000 symbols. Bliss-characters can be combined and recombined in endless ways to create new symbols. Bliss-words can be sequenced to form many types of sentences, and express many grammatical capabilities. Simple shapes are used to keep the symbols easy and fast to draw."

FrogDesign have come up with something called BlinkTwice Tango. ( http://www.frogdesign.com/?p=9 ).

Its cute, like all FrogDesign stuff, customizable, and not massive like static bliss board designs. It also has the ability to speak the bliss sequence of symbols so that a bliss user can communicate with a non-bliss-reading person.

msb-0038 Turn, turn turn.

msb-0038 Turn, turn, turn...

Feedback come first so...

I actually have some to report.

----

my LibSyn.com stats are looking better and better, faster and faster. (So why us getting feedback from you guys like pulling teeth?)

----

I got a letter read on Mark Yashimoto Nemkoff's Pacific Coast Hellway, pch-288 Gaybo.

Mark always gives me something to snicker about, but this time was a bit, uh, extreme.

He read the thing just like I wrote it.

Either he's a better reader than I give him credit for, which could definitely be, he's very talented, or I really wrote it like it sounded (and not to boast, but I am a published author.)

Tee Hee! :-)

It should help my audienship.

(Readership, viewership, audienceship?

Might be a faulty construction, but in English I don't think it really matters.)

----

I got some feedack from Miss Chris, a.k.a. One Crazy Chick.

She's a blogger (the address will be in the show notes folks,) and a fellow MSer.

She must be crazy because she lives in Phoenix Arizona where it was recently 118 degrees Farenheit. She likes it.

I would definitely describe 118 degrees as Hellish.

"Yeah, but its a dry heat."

Sure ... You're in convection oven instead of a "bain marie".

How's that supposed to be better?

One of the entries in Rogets thesaurus describes it as "infernal" and I would agree.

Man, I'm swimming in my own flop sweat here in New Jersey and its only 90 some odd degrees. :-)

But she seems to like it so there must be something to it (that I'll probably never discover.)

I like Scott Sloane of the Alaska Podshow Podcast because he's got stories about ice and snow and glaciers and ice floes, frozen pipes and crap like that.

I can't imagine myself in Phoenix in a summer heat wave.

Strike that.

I can imagine myself, as a puddle of dried up goo on the sidewalk.

Still I'm not making fun of her.

She knows Karate.

(Actually she reads like a fun person to know.)

Go check out her blog and give her some feedback and some encouragement.

----

I'm still following what's happening with Mr. Magno.

He had some set backs but he should be back on the road soon.

God speed Carlo.

(He's my friggin' namesake for Christ's sake.

Charles ... Carlo ...

C'mon, it doesn't take a degree in linguistics to figure it out.

They both share a common root: Carulus [ which means strong and manly! ] :-)

----

I'm in some talks with the Chefs For MS about not only going on the dinner cruise, but shelling out some sheckels and sponsoring a bunch of raffle prizes from the eight bottles of wine I could bring to the soirée.

We're not talkin' Ripple or Thunderbird here, (or even Bright's Canadian Sherry. [Glarg... Spew... {That's the foulest thing I can remember from my highshool days; getting bombed on that puke. Geah...}])

----

I'm getting some feedback of a sort from you my gentle listeners, despite what I say about dentistry. (Its like pulling teeth...)

My stats are showing me things that give me hope. :-)

----

The theme this week is going to be about time.

The older ones out there, like moi, will remember the Byrds singing "Turn, turn, turn."

"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven…
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance…
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away…"
(Ecclesiastes 3:1-6)

And the classy guitar riff that underlaid that song.

Of course I am not into that prophetic shit, which is basically a variant of a pissing contest, as to who's god has got a bigger smiter.

No I'm into time as a dimension of space-time.

A unidirectional arrow plowing through reality and keeping the then from the now.

Quoting Wikipedia: "This is the most obvious arrow in human experience:

We feel as if we are travelling from the past to the future;

we perceive and remember the past and not the future (although sometimes these are treated as two different phenomena).

However, because the workings of the mind are so complex and little understood, it is not obvious how the physical arrows of time contribute to this perception.

It may be that learning to generate the causes needed to produce desired effects embedded the causal arrow in our perception.

It has also been argued that the arrow of time as we perceive it results from the influence of the second law of thermodynamics on the evolution of the brain, so that the psychological arrow follows from the thermodynamic.

To remember something, our memory goes from a disordered state to a more ordered one, or from one ordered state to another.

To ensure that the new state is the correct one, energy must be used to perform the work and this increases the disorder in the rest of the universe.

There is always a greater increase in disorder than the amount of order gained in our memory, thus the arrow of time in which we remember things is in the same direction as that in which the disorder of the universe increases.

The link between this arrow of time and the thermodynamic arrow of time is best understood if we remember that the Second Law of Thermodynamics dictates that correlations between different parts of a system will be increased towards the future (rather than towards the past).

Since memory is correlations between our brain cells (or computer bits) and the outer world, it is obvious why memory should be created as time passes (towards the future) rather than vice versa (towards the past).

Additionally, our deeds may affect the future but not the past because affecting the outer world means to create correlations between ourselves (our bodies or brains) and the outer world."

This a very fancy way of saying that we can't affect the events of the past because they have affected the events of the present.

Given that the shortest moment of time, Planct Time, or 5.39121 × 10−44 seconds, is the shortest interval when there is a when, when there can be a then and a now, I consider that to be the clock tick of the universe. (Which also happens to set some upper limit on computational speed.)

There are calculatable, physical reasons why the parameters of the universe are set up that way and there are demostrable, physical limitations as to why the values for the parameters are what they are. (There are about and only twenty of them.)

What ever happens between the clock ticks ... is fundamentally unknowable.

(And that is where I would put any deity, [Allah, God, Manitu, Vishu, Yaweh, whatever] [and keep it safe from us, {and keep us safe from it.}])

I get off on suff like that. Am I weird or what? :-)

msb-0037 Lets try this WITHOUT a theme.

msb-0037 Lets try this WITHOUT a theme.

Feedback comes first so...

there isn't any really.

I'm still waiting to hear from MSers, from advertisers/makers of therapies, goods and services for MSers and from people like Caro Magno, the MSer who's treking by wheel chair from Seattle to New York, and the Chefs For MS who'll be feeding me on September 25th, 2006.

(The links are in the show notes, folks, ther're all in the shownotes; at MSBPodcast.com and downloaded with each and every episode.)

----

I'm just playing cool shit I find on the PMN.

I don't really have anything to say, sell, vent about and I don't have any axe to grind today so its all good.

Well I still hate the uncaring, unconscious, unfeeling, unspeakable human slugs who cumber this planet, blindly perambulating; tounging everything and being incapable of telling when they are tasting fine wine and when they are sucking on their own anus.

But that's just me being an angry not so young man.

----

I started this show when I came across an unusually named tune, "Sons of the Burgesss Shale," by an unusually named band, "Bell Hollow."

I've read "Wonderful Life" by Stephen Jay Gould (the links are all in the show notes, folks, all in the show notes,) and it of course caught my attention.

Hell, we're all sons of the Burgess Shale.

That's where the richness and diversity of ectomorphic shapes was truly evident. Some cataclismic event wiped all of them out except the shape all multicelled oranisms now respect.

Okay, I wondered. What could this be about?

I was rewarded by some fascinating music by this band based in Brooklyn, NY.

My old neighborhood.

It sort of got weirder and farther out from there until I reigned it in.

By song six, I got tired of trying to be deep and decided to have some fun with you all.

Then I discovered the singer we have on the penultimate two tracks: Wren Ross.

I love her "French Chanteuse" style.

We end with something which made me laugh the first time I heard it and again when I on the "UnRadio Show" by Travis Goss.

msb-0036 Milestone, millstone. What's the difference?

msb-0036 Milestone, millstone. What's the difference?

Feedback come first so...

I passed a milestone and didn't even know it.

I'm up over 2000 downloads.

Hoo-ray...

Sorry to be taking it so anticlimactically but that just means the next show is just a bigger responsability, to you all, all of you who have down loaded these 35 shows over two thousand times.

Many of you have downloaded more than one show, but I don't know who has, or how many people have been with me since day dot.

Send me an email at charles@MSBPodcast.com and tell me how many episodes you've downloaded.

Tell me about my "repeat visitors."

It would make a welcome change from the Vxiagrax and Rolex replica spam that usually fills my in-box.

Christ, that's annoying.

Over a hundred and thirty-five pieces of spam today.

I have MS not E.D.

So fuck your "VlzAGRA." My cell phone has the time so I neither need nor want a "replica Rolex." As for my believing anything about the stocks being touted in the "pump and dump" spam... I wasn't born yesterday.

Fuck the spammers, man. Follow the money. Put the hucksters out to pasture with million dollar fines. If the spammers have no customers, your mailbox will stay empty.

----

Okay, I know that my wife's PC accounts for thirty five of these downloads.

But she's got to doesn't she? ... I make her download every episode.

Then she critiques 'em. And, ouch, she doesn't pull any punches. :-/

Amusingly enough, I don't keep them on my systems.

Its enough that I put the episodes together.

I've heard it three or more times before it even gets uploaded.

(Okay, I admit I listen to 'em again on my iPod during the commute to or from work because I like 'em.)

----

I've also managed to get on PodShow.com.

That's a real hooray for me because I've admired what Adam Curry's been trying to do, and succeding at, since I first encountered his "Daily Source Code" back in the middle of 2005. (Way back in Term Five of getting my now completed Business Degree at MCNY.)

No, I don't remember the exact episode. But its probably back before he started calling it "The Delta Sierra Charlie" :-)

PodShow.com still has a few bugs in it Like Friday, July 21st, 2006, in the morning I tried to enter my show's "legend" and it just wouldn't take it.

Not Found
The requested URL /shows/show_bio.php was not found on this server.
Apache/2.0.52 (Red Hat) Server at msb.podshow.com Port 80

I'm sure the problem wil be worked out soon.

Its another venue where people can listen to me.

----

I'm still following Mr. Magno on his trek from Seattle to New York.

I hope the weather doesn't get too hot for him as he tries to make his way across the northern part of the United States.

Heat is the enemy of us MSers.

It increaces "noise on the line" and our nervous systems get all kinds of spurious effects, like effective weakness and spasticity.

Mr. Magno's going to carry a bumper sticker for MSDBPopdcast.com.

I think he should set up a Frapper map so that, whenever people see him, they can report on his progress.

----

I'm still planning on going to the Dinner Cruise from "Chefs For MS" on September 25th, 2006. I love good food.

----

The links are all on the show notes at MSBPodcast.com and they're downloaded with each and every episode. Including from msb.podshow.com.

----

This episode could be entitled "I Don't Have the Blues but I Play 'em, Part Deux!"

I could write something about the origins of the blues but its been done plenty of times before. I couldn't really add anything to what you can already find on the net.

Apart from the fact that I like 'em.

----

There was something in the Friday, July 14th, 2006 issue of the Wall Street Journal about the changing relationships between bands and the record companies, the artist-liberating effects of the internet and hints at the changing power structure that this is enabling.

Since the internet makes direct downloads of DRM music possible, straight from the self-promoted artists own recording studio to the end-consumer's computer and iPod.

Who needs to carry along the music industry? With all of its costs, inefficiencies insufficiancies, and other inadequacies.

----

In another issue of the Wall Street Journal here was something about "Sidewalk SUVs" a.k.a. mobility scooters.

The fact is that they're now being used by healthy people,
entirely to the detriment of those of us who actually need and would make use of them at theme parks and other area,
so that we're now faced with a long walk,
just becase some healthy person was inconsiderate enough to make off with something he doesn't need or deserve.

As far as I'm concerned, being a

• lard-assed,
• selfish,
• thoughtless,
• idiotic
• oaf of a moron,
• sitting on an
• ever widening,
• fat,
• lazy,
• zit covered

ass might make you repulsive enough to keep you from breeding any further but it still doesn't make you disabled.

Those are social handicaps, like bad breath, bed-wetting, or being unable to keep your goatee propely trimmed while you sprawl there like a beached whale in front of Mickeys Railroad tation.

I know you're not blind so which is it?

Are you that inconsiderate, selfish, uncaring, unfeeling, or are you just that plain stupid?

So get the fuck out of the chair you stoma and leave 'em for those what needs 'em.

And I've seen people park in handicapped spots right by the door at the mall because they're too fuckin' precious to walk from further back in the lot.

You tell me "Fuck you, gimpy" with a slap in the face. ...

Well good luck backing your land-boat out of the fuckin' spot.

If it doesn't have handicapped plates or a sticker, I'm gonna park right behind you.

If I box you in for an extra hour or two, I don't care.

I don't have this years latest model, in fact I don't own a car that I care about so ... wave "bye bye" to the shiny fenders on your "Escalade."

If a walk from the parking lot is enough to make you tired, maybe you should take that as a hint that you should perhaps seek evidently needed medical attention. "Conasse!"

Its sad, no make that its pathetic, that people who are so wrapped up in themselves are, in fact, running around in such shabby rags.

----

Well it seems I'm the one venting today.

msb-0035 Russian ... In a hurry

msb-0035 Russian ... In a Hurry.

Feed back come first so...

There's wasn' any from you gentle listeners.

Its like it vanishes from one episode to the next, only to resurface again ... I hope.

But its not the only thing that keeps me going.

I'm still watching for news for Mr Magno: http://www.thespiritofhope.org/ms-express/

I'm even getting him to carry a bumper sticker on Blue advertising my podcast: http://www.MSBPodcast.com/

I've just heard from Dana Blozis of the Spirit Of Hope Foundation that he's currently in the hospital (the heat must be absoutely killer for him because it's currently keeping me two feet from the air conditioner here in New Jersey.)

I'm still going to go on the 'round Manhattan dinner cruise: http://www.chefsforms.com/

The links are all in the show notes, folks. All in the show notes.

----

Today, you're not going to hear me go on about the RIAA, ASCAP/BMI and the assorted suits and crooks, because I'm going to be covering something entirely different that's going on outside of their reach, in Russia.

The official Russian music scene is, to paraphrase a New York Times article, a bland vanilla pop, payola ridden, state controlled, musical media.

In other words its a ClearChannel wasteland, but without any pretense at legitimacy.

Instead of the sly kind of intellectual property games being played out in America and in Europe, the money goes directly into the pockets of the Russian mob.

Piracy is rampant. CDs, DVDs and other consumer options are basically of dubious origin and quality.

The entire ''supply chain'' is corrupt and theft occurs at every point from everybody.

Its basically a leaky bucket where the persons at the bottom, the artists, are getting ripped off, but its by the mob instead of by the more, uh, legitimate interests who were able to squelch dissent, without requiring unpaid goon ''bone breakers''.

There is a genre called ''Chanson'' which has been compared, unfairly in my opinion, to ''Gangsta Rap''.

Its being labeled as a kind of ''Gangsta Rap'' because of the origins of the music. The origins are Russia's ''gulag''. It is sometimes referred to as "blatnaya muzyka", criminal music.

But the music ranges from the jaunty and lively to the romantic and plaintive.

It is a genre that comes from some of the worst excesses of the Stalinist era. Bands have names like Lesopoval, which means ''timber-felling'' which was a form of forced labor in the camps and particularly brutal.

Given the corruption and payola prevalent in the Russian music scene, it is kind of strange to see official disapproval of a truly legitimate musical genre.

The Russian Prosecutor General ''Vladimir Ustinov'' refers to it as ''propaganda of the criminal subculture.''

In Siberia, inter-city bus drivers are "banned from listening to chanson and other obscene music."

It is in fact, propaganda of the downtrodden, and in Russia everybody who isn't ''on top'' is on the bottom. There is not much of a middle ground, or middle class left.

The Russian mob has taken the funds out of the economy.

But even they know that's they'd better not touch the rich.

Besides the rich don't have money, which the mob would covet, instead they have power, including military power.

Russian ''chanson'' is like pornography for the ears. Recordings of it were and to some extent still are, distributed samizdat, passed hand to hand like carbon copies of Solzhenitsyn’s banned novels.

Its officially an irritant, or make that its an irritant to officialdom, because it has a strong strain of political protest running through it.

The artists don't make any money from their recordings. That's because of rampant IP theft.

But they do achieve some measure of fame, despite being relegated to late night plays on the radio. (One oddity is Radio Chanson which is third in the Russian air waves.)

They're popular in the rock-n-roll concert arena where most of the money does make it down to the musicians.

Pravda has no Isvestia while Isvestia has no Pravda.

But ''Chanson'' thrives in spite of, some might say because of, of the honesty and truth of the lyrics.

And why do I want you to know? And why should you care?

I have friends in far away places, tovaritch. And they really aren't that far. Like Brighton Beach. Though my association with te Emigre community goes back a lot further than that. Right Vasillli? Right Piotr?

Its music from real folks. Its real folk music.

While Blues was folk music from a particular brand of folk, it was become more stilted, more codified, less ameanable to reflecting what folk really have to say about life in generak, I think that Chanson is more able to reflect the range of what people are really feeling.

Just because you're going to have to learn cyrillic doesn't make it any less valid.

Its raw, its live and its lively.

Get used to it folks.

Its as real as Led Bellly and it comes from the same very human heart.

msb-0034 Woody Guthry and Home Makeover, Extreme Edition.

msb-0034 Woody Guthry and Home Makeover Extreme Edition.

Feedback come first so...

Johnny Boyd of the "Indigo Swing got back to me about playing his songs on the podcast.

It'll take a little while because some of his music is actually owned by Windswept. (I guess he didn't read his contract closely enough.)

I've got some education to do with a couple of people who probably never heard of the Podsafe Music Network.

----

I'm trying to get PolarSoftIce to become a sponsor. ( http://polarsoftice.com/ )

It about 100 degrees outside right now. (It's not so hot for Planet Siliconia, as Mark Yashimoto Nemcoff call of the "Pacific coast Hellway" calls Southern California, but its plenty hot for me.)

Man could I use their product now.

----

This just in!

I received an email from Keith Line of the MS Foundation asking me to help the Spirit Of Hope MS advocacy group.

He specifically asked me to mention the MS Express.
(http://www.thespiritofhope.org/ms-express/)

Carlo Magno, a wheel-chair bound MSer, his wife Angela, his antique remodeled wheel-chair Blue and his three-legged dog Katie are travelling 4,300 mile from Seattle to New York to see Katie Couric and raise a million bucks for research and awareness of MS along the way.

You go Carlo.

Maybe you'd like to do a podcast interview when you reach your destination?

----

http://www.woodyguthrie.org/

Yes, I'm going on again about the **AAs, ASCAP/BMI and the rest of the 'suits' to whom I'd have to shell out my sheckels to play Woody Guthry's music.

Woody would be ashamed of what's happened to his music.

It wasn't enough that he died of Huntington chorea.

He's now silenced as effectively as if he'd never been born.

Well not quite.

Lots of people are playing his music and I've just watched a PBS special on him.
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/guthrie_w.html

Woody Guthry voice is still alive in the hearts of people who listened to his music.

But he's not being heard.

(Its like Adam Curry said on his show last Friday. You don't hear a lot of reggae on radio anymore. Actually he was a lot harsher than that. He challenged anybody a find any reggae on the airwaves. I believe that there's still some played, in Jamaica if nowhere else.)

But Woody's music has gone from anthems railing against the very people who now sit on the back catalogs, to an utter silence.

You don't hear Woodie Guthry anymore because he can't be misunderstod.

His lyrics can't be misconstrued. They meant exactly what he said.

He was an angry young man, railing about everybody being screwed during the great depression, railing about everybody being screwed during the second world war, and railing everybody becoming selfish and not caring after the end of the war.

The Ballad of Tom Joad is an incredible work. Powerful.
This Land Is Your Land is another incredible work.

Woody Guthry was an extremly erudite and moving author and song writer.

And the songs grew "sub rosa"; by word of mouth; passed from one voice to another.

----

I loved his standing up against segregation during a submarine attack on board a WWII "Victory Ship" making a convoy across the Atlantic.

Upon being hearing somebody else singing, he went back there so listen to them. Upon hearing that he was in the "wrong" part of the ship he retorted: "If people are singing that good, we're right part of the ship."

And he brought them up to the midship holds where he'd been singing to keep up the morale of the troops while the blacks were relegated to a small hold at the back.

Color didn't matter, talent did.

He was popular. He had various radio shows over the years.

Until the money interests got in the way. The money people wanted his radio show to play to certain messages. Woody didn't want to play those messages. Goodbye radio show...

----

You don't hear a lot of the genres anymore.

Its all prepackaged crap.

The TV series The One is part of the malaise that's afflicting the entire industry.

• Take some people with dubious talent,
• people who would be the first to admit that they aren't worth the hype being generated,
• mix 'em up in an artificial setting,
• dangle a prize of a value as dubious as they are,*
• for doing something that they would be obsessed to do anyway,
• and use that as a vehicle to drive irrelevant ad revenue.

*The worst one is "A Recording Contract." Some prize.

They have an opportunity to mortgage their lives and futures to pay for getting:

• the opus recorded, (recording studios cost money, their money,)
• pressed, (CDs cost money, their money,)
• distributed, (shipping to a dealer costs money, their money,)
• stored (and the Sam Ash's of tsis world cost money, their money,)
• and promoted, (can you say Payola?, more of their money,)

but only if the music fits into a radio's pre-established, corporate-owned format and play-list.

Yeah, it sounds like real life until you realize that the only products you see are the ones that were 'placed' there.

All that happpens and all that you see, all the stuff that makes to final edit, is approved for its ultimate consumption by a bunch advertisers, who pay for it, and a bunch of suits.

The costs involved are really staggering to me and thee.

But if you're used to running a corporation of 500 or more people, the costs don't really seem that bad.

It can cost 10 million bucks to launch a brand of dog food. Not even to force you into owning a dog and into buying the dog the particular band of dog food. Its 10 million bucks just to get the name out here.

Needless to say, they just want to protect their investment in getting the word out.

Believe me, if they could make you buy their dogfood (or computer operating system) they would.

----

We're not discussing comparative economic systems here but inside every capitalist there's a monopolist or oligopolist lurking there, wishing they had a "cash cow" like Microsoft's.

Apart from Apple's offerings, and Sun Micro Systems compaatively very few desktops workstations, Microsoft gets money for every PC made, whether it is running Window's or not...

The Linux people a plenty pissed off about that.

Unix and Linux machines actually own the cluster supercomputing and commodity server system fields. ( http://www.top500.org/ )

Nobody ever trusts their information to anything touched by Microsoft.

Well they don't do it twice anyway.

----
http://abc.go.com/primetime/xtremehome/bios/ty_pennington.html

The TV series Extreme Makeover, Home Edition is just as blatant with its product placement, its pixelating images of products and people who didn't pay, but not many people are going to come together to put up a house for some people who need it in a week.

We're not talking about hanging a few curtains or changing a color scheme here.

So kudos Extreme Makeover, Home Edition.

And kudos to Sears for getting behind a show that actually does some good.

And kudos to Weyerhaeuser, Tyvek and all the other companies who demolish "un taudis" and then build a house for them what needs it.
( http://www.sears.com
http://www.weyerhaeuser.com/
http://construction.tyvek.com/en/index.shtml )

Okay, its shlocky. It goes for tears (of joy as much as of pain,) and tries to tug at your heart strings, but they're doing some people some good.

To the episode on an upbeat note, I bid you all "Till next time."

msb-0033 Silence Can Be So Reassuring Sometimes...

msb-0033 Silence Can Be So Reassuring Sometimes...

Feedback comes first but its 'private and confidential' so we're not going to discuss it.

I never thought of myself as an "Agony Aunt," but feel free to vent.

Some people have it much harder that I do.

Some people have it much scarier than I do.

And some people are just scared a lot more than me.

Yes, the future can be scary.

But what are you really scared of?

The future?

Or what it may possibly hold for you?

It can be wonderful anyway.

(Apart from episodic interruptions. Its like flying. Long periods of sheer boredom interupted by moments of stark terror.)

Its all in your attitude and in the attitude of those around you.

You can control your own reaction and that can calm that of those around you.

Usually, that can defuse the severity of anything you face.

Usually.

I'm the last one to deny that episodes don't leave lingering damage, or that you never get worse.

Like Bruce Cockburn sang back in 1983: "The trouble with normal is it always gets worse." http://cockburnproject.net/albums/thetroublewithnormal.html

There will be times when you just feel like a lone wolf, baying at the moon.

But remember, friends get you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no friends.

I agree though that, rich or poor, its nice to have money and that not having enough sucks worse than having too much.

I'm glad to lend an ear, or should that be an eye for an email?

----

I'm playing songs about Silence to reassure people that I can shut up about truths revealed.

----

I'm thinking, let me restate that, Lee and I are thinking, that we need to expand the audience of the show.

MSers are fine (Like, I should know that? Right?)

I will carry ads for their therapies, drugs, products goods and services, when the market wakes up to the potential of podcasting.

But, like Sonny and Cher sang back in 1965, (Jeez. I feel old, old ... old.): "They say our love won't pay the rent. Before it's earned, our money's all been spent."

She is suggesting that I go for a wider demographic, reach a wider audience and stop trying to laser in on MSers.

She put it very succinctly: "You can't help anybody from the poor house. Use your show to help yourself first and you can help MSers along the way."

As loath as I am to admit it, she's right.

I'm kind of like Casey McKinnon whose "Ms. Kitka" podcast eventually became "Galacticast". Its to her credit that its even more interesting now than it was in her old format. She was and is brilliant at drawing an audience.

But at least the name of this podcast is a TLA (a Three Letter Acronym) and we can just tell people MSB stands for something else.

On iTunes, people can still find me by looking for podcasts about 'Multiple sclerosis' and letting my late cat 'Wiki' guide them guide them to subscribe.

But the actual 'name' is changing.

But I don't really want to abandon you. Hell, I don't want to abandon us all.

----

And what's the Hell is going on with my stats?

I'm either staying the same, going up or going down. Lately its up though not much. Well, actually, if the stats aren't lying (and according to Mark Twain there are three orders of mendacity: lies, damn lies and statistics) the last episode has been rising with a bullet.

But I can't really tell which way the audience is going.

I'm getting a lot more web hits but the subscriptions look like they're stable.

Okay, they're way below where I had hoped to be, but I couldn't get the local chapters to pick up my article on podcasting this publishing cycle.

In Jersey, I had to hear about some volunteer quitting and supposedly that was the reason I didn't make it in the issue.

Sure... Yeah... And I was born yesterday.... At noon...

Look. If you don't care or don't want to help, that's fine. I can deal with that.

But I hate being lied to. I hate being kept dangling on a line like a fish. I've snapped many a line and spat out many a hook in my day. I wanna move on.

I knew somebody who put his life on hold for two years, (two years!) waiting on some bull-shit.

I determined that I would never do that.

Tony (yes he has a last name too,) taught me all I know about comparative music studies.

His knowledge of music and performances of particular pieces was encyclopedic.

I learned more about Corot than any man could without a tailor's measuring tape.

But I learned how to be impatient wisely from his example.

Anyway, I wonder if the screwey stats are due to potential advertisers checking out my site?

Or is that because more of you are not subscribing, instead picking up episodes off the web?

I need to know.

Reach me at at MSBPodcast.com by email, or Odeo me and let me know.

I am doing the responsible thing and letting the artists know when I play their works.

How 'bout if you let me know when you download an episode. (Don't worry about your email address. I get enough spam that I could mine all the crap I get for email adresses. I don't need any more.)

Send me some feedback. Become real.

Anybody can lurk in the shadows. Or it could be nobody.

Unless I get some feed-forward of your intentions, I'll just ignore it and put it all down to random noise.

And with the spasticity associated with MS, I had to learn how to deal with random noise.

msb-0032 Talk, Talk, Yackity, Yack...

msb-0032 Talk, Talk, Yackity, Yack.

Feedback comes first and I actually got some from some of the artists I've featured.

I played"Your Face is Not Enough" by the "three blind mice" on episode msb-0027 podcast (The links will all be on the show notes, folks.)

They sent me a nice message thanking me.

It turns out that they have an MS sufferer in their extended family in Lyndon's stepmother. She was diagnosed at the age of 36 and is now in her late 60s.

That makes me feel bad that they know someone but good they gave me some feedback. It turns out that I reached someone, indirectly but I reached someone none the less.

(Like when I turned the Detonators onto the PMN. They even got played on Adam Curry's Daily Source Code.)

But from you, my audience, there's a great silence.

I know the show appeals to some folks. The episodes are downloaded.

Good thing I'm playing music I actually want to listen to.

If I had do this off of a corporate playlist, approved by some soulless board of directors, it would really suck.

----

You may notice the new theme and background music on this episode.

I hope you do. But not too much.

Its not supposed to distract from the show or from the other music on the episodes.

Its from Guy David, an artist from Israel whose work I very much admire. I played him on msb-0015 The Domino Effect.

(Isn't the internet great? Before that I probably would never have been able to even hear from or about this fellow. Or the British, Russian or German music that I have featured on past episodes.

Before the internet and podcasting, I wouldn't have been able to run a podcast either. :-)

A link to his website is in the show notes. It will be in the show notes for as long as I use the music.

Maybe if I play his music some more, I can talk him into featuring a link from his page to my site and podcast.

He came up with it 'to order' and its is the first piece of music I have ever commissionned. I like it very much.

I think I'll order some more.

----

Let's not Talk About Sex. Salt 'n Peppa don't have to worry. They're not in here. I'm podsafe only. (Then again if they put something up on the podsafe music network, I'll be all over it.)

Okay, lets Talk About Sex.

Its everyone's favorite subject.

Specially with those who deny it.

Its supposed to be naughty or sumtin'.

Being French Canadian, I just can't see it. Sex is fun. Pure and simple. Its the most fun you can have for free.

Granted its supposed to be done in private, unless you're into that kind of thing, but its only been in this century that the kind of rabid, hipocritical puritanism took hold.

The Puritans were actually a lusty bunch.

Its only been something to be ashamed of since the rise of mass media. (Will H. Hays postmaster general under President Warren Gamaliel Harding and Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration Office, have a lot to answer for.)

I must admit that some of my most downloaded episodes were the ones where I talked about sex. Well sex and relationships.

But why should I? Talk about sex, I mean. (C'mon folks, that's your cue. Talk to me. Odeo me. Skype me. Email me. The links are on http://www.MSBPodcast.com.)

I promise I won't use it without your expressed permission. In writing.

Remember I like Harlan Ellison.

I'm not trying to rip anybody off.

Your feed back is confidential unless you say its okay.

----

The theme this episode is "Talk, Talk, Yackity, Yack..."

I'm trying to get an advertiser on board with the MSer market.

Of course they don't know about podcasting and are very leery.

They won't go into it until they know that this podcasting can deliver results.

On the other hand, I've got to reach more of you.

A whole lot more of you.

So I have to advertise too but without the advantages that podcasting would bring, a focused market.

So I'm hesitantly about to embark on a venture, with no guarantees of success.

Life has already thrown me a nasty curve ball that hit me smack in the spinal chord. What makes you think that I'd be so anxious to step up to the plate again?

Still, we're worth it soo...

I'm having to kearn a lot of stuff about advertising that I'll just put down as "grist for the mill".

One of the things I have already learned is that, while some agencies get it when it comes to podcasting, the decision making process takes place at a glacial pace.

----

Now, I figure that I've got some taste in music, and enough experience to know why somebody would opt out of the whole "music industry" business.

Its really hopeless to work for such a schizoid bunch.

"Make it sound different, but just the same as what's selling out there now."

That crap gets old fast.

I had an idea of featuring some music by "Indigo Swing" if I could get in touch with them.

Fuggedaboud it.

I can get the albums easily enough (and I own the albums, that you very much,) but getting in touch with the band has been a bear.

I think I've got an email address that will work now but, the internet d0esn't keep track of when something was last updated.

----

I figured I'd start small with some "public service announcements" about what's happening here in Northern New Jersey and New York.

Since this announcement is not sanctionned or or paid for by anobody, I 'd figure I'd promote an event I am likely to attend.

Actually, its about something I love, food. (I may be trim but I have MS to thank for my current lack of appetite.

I never actively think about eating and I'm able to keep my mouth shut around food but, believe me, it wasn't always that way.

I used to be a lot, uh, larger than my current weight. Lee is always accusing me of fading away to nothing because when she met me I used to be a lot, uh, more man to love. :-)

And while I may weigh less, I apreciate food more.

So we end with this:

Chefs for MS will be hosting their "Premiere Event, Featuring Sara Moulton as a Celebrity Guest and Honoree Chef"

The mistress of Ceremonies will be Super Model Emme.

Its happening on Monday, September 25, 2006.

Its being described as "A tasting event aboard the beautiful Cornucopia Majesty, sailing around the breathtaking views of Manhattan featuring the signature dishes of the area restaurants."

6:30 pm Boarding
7:00pm Sailing time, returning 10:00pm
12th Street Pier, Hoboken, NJ

General Admission - $100.00
Celebrity Champagne Reception - $225.00
(Including General Admission)

I know its a lot of money folks but it will be well worth it.

Maybe I can get a hold of her for a telephone interview as to why she's interested in doing this.