wshaffer

I've made it to my 7th cloudcast. I once heard a possibly entirely made up statistic to the effect that podcasts that make it to 10 episodes generally continue for a good long run. So, I'm only three away from that magic point.

I'm quite pleased with the eclectic mix of stuff in this episode, although part of me wonders if my listeners wouldn't be happier if I were more consistent. Time will tell, I suppose.

Stumbling in the Dark Episode 007 by Wendy Shaffer on Mixcloud

Okay, I know about the "special relationship", but this Guardian photo sequence is starting to border on Clinton/Miliband RPS. Milinton, anyone? (Seriously, though - when is the British press going to figure out that Americans are just touchy-feelier than Brits? Every time one of our politicians lays a hand on a Brit, it makes the newspaper. Oh, well - I suppose it's more fun than analyzing the precise angle of Obama's bows every time he meets an Eastern head of state.)

The Doctor Who Podcast Alliance appears to be an attempt to aggregate all the Doctor Who related podcasts in one place. Impressive - there are a few I didn't know about, although at the moment, they're missing one of my faves, Cadmium2. (Which is not exclusively Whovian, but then neither are all of the podcasts listed on the linked page.)

I recently discovered the blog, Sociological Images, and have been fascinated by it. Lots of really fascinating stuff over there. I think I originally stumbled across a set of posts analyzing gender portrayals in advertising, but there's lots of interesting media and social analysis over there.

The good news: I've made it to the middle of week 8 of the Podrunner Intervals First Day to 5K series. Which means I'm pretty close to running a 5K a couple mornings a week (or whatever the equivalent on the elliptical machine is).

The bad news: This morning's workout sucked. (Relatively speaking: Any workout you finish is a good workout.) I really had trouble keeping up the pace, and I've never been so glad before to reach the end of the podcast and cue up my traditional cool-down and stretching tune. (The Smiths' The Headmaster Ritual. Is every morning's workout my way of giving the finger to every sadistic PE teacher who relentlessly undermined my self esteem over my lack of athletic prowess during my teenage years? Just possibly.) Just to illustrate: this morning I covered 3.06 miles. Working out to the same podcast on Saturday, I covered 3.35 miles. That's a difference of about 10%, and having 10% less oomph is really noticeable.

There are three possible explanations for this:
- I'm getting sick. I've never had the numbers to quantitate it before, but in the past I've noticed that a decided lack of aerobic oomph during a morning workout is usually followed by a head cold 24 hours later.
- I'm getting bored with the Podrunner workouts, or the week 8 mix just doesn't inspire me. Possible. I'm determined to finish out this first series in any case, so we'll see how it goes.
- It's just normal random variation in performance, and I've never noticed before because I've never had as much consistent quantitative data on my workouts before.

Assuming I don't come down with a raging head cold, my next Podrunner workout is scheduled for Thursday. Wish me luck!

ABC Radio National's The Book Show had interview with Ursula LeGuin yesterday, mostly talking about her new novel Lavinia, which retells the events of the last six books of the Aeneid from the point of view of Lavinia. Lavinia doesn't really get much to do in the Aeneid - she basically gets fought over by the men and then gets to go off and found Rome with Aeneas after the book is over.

LeGuin seems to give her rather more to do - among other things, she meets the ghost of Virgil from the future.

I think I've got to read this book - as much as the Aeneid has long been an important book for me, the last six books always pretty much made me go "Huh?" (When I was a freshman in college, I pestered my lit professor with so many questions about, "What does this bit mean? Isn't this bizarre? Did the Romans really read this as an unambiguous work of jingoistic patriotism, because it seems much more ambivalent to me?" that the dear fellow finally turned to me and essentially said, "Miss Shaffer, why don't you major in Comparative Literature and do your senior thesis with me, and we'll see if we can answer some of these questions?" And there's a part of me (a very tiny part) that still regrets not taking him up on it.)

Just wanted to recommend Hanif Kureishi being interviewed for ABC Radio National's The Book Show. Aside from Kureishi's very funny comments on being made a Commander of the British Empire, my favorite bit is when the interviewer asks him, "What would you do if you couldn't write?" I just love the note of near total incomprehension in his response of, "What do you mean, couldn't write?" as if the interviewer had asked, "What would you do if you couldn't breathe?"

While I'm plugging podcasts: I'm probably the last person in the universe not to have heard Stephen Fry's Podgrams. People kept recommending it to me, but I couldn't quite understand the point of some guy blathering into a microphone about whatever is on his mind at irregular intervals.

Well, I finally broke down and subscribed, and having listened to all five extant podgrams in the past week, I'll tell you what the point is. This is not "some guy". This is Stephen Fry. He has elevated blather to an art form. He could do a daily podcast on what he had for breakfast, and I'd be downloading. And laughing. Check it out.

Putting off listening to the Weekly Political Review podcast, because it might contain "spoilers" for the week's Prime Minister's Questions, which you haven't listened to yet.

But, you know, at least I haven't started 'shipping any MPs. Yet.

Sometime ago, I noticed that just about the only way I was getting exposed to new music any more was via fanvids on Youtube. While there's nothing per se wrong with that, I've been looking to broaden my musical exposure, because the fact of the music being used for fanvids imposes all kinds of filters that have nothing to do with musical quality. For example: Songs used for fanvids tend to be short, because people rarely have the stamina to make or watch 8 minute vids. And they're skewed towards love songs (or lust songs), because people like to make shippy vids.

So, a while back, in an effort to broaden my musical repertoire, I subscribed to the KEXP "Music That Matters" podcast. While it's provided me with many hours of perfectly pleasant background listening, and provided evidence for the hypothesis that neither hip hop nor country are completely evil as musical genres, I realized today that in about four months of listening, I haven't heard a single song that I actually wanted to buy. Or even had a particularly strong urge to go back and listen to again.

One possibility is that I'm actually no longer really interested in music unless it comes with video of time-travelling aliens or attractive men in Napoleonic uniform attached. More likely, though, is that this particular podcast (despite its amazing diversity of DJs and genres) just isn't holding my interest.

I suppose I'll go trolling around iTunes for some other "music anthology" type podcasts, but I'll pose the question to the friendslist: How do you go about finding new music that you like?

The Adventures in Sci Fi Publishing podcast has a rather good interview with Terry Goodkind up, in which he explains, among other things, his opinion that the reason for the decline of science fiction readership is that editors have been indoctrinated with evil Kantian moral relativism.

I have to say, his description of Kant strikes me as off somehow, but then again, I always fell asleep when we discussed Kant at my fancy Eastern Liberal Arts college, so perhaps my indoctrination didn't take.

No, all mockery aside, the interview is pretty interesting. Neither Goodkind's fiction nor his politics are particularly my cup of tea, but he's clearly very committed to writing the best possible books he can, by his own standards of best, and I respect that.

I can't remember if I posted a link to the Kant attack ad back when Jed posted it on his blog, but it instantly sprang to my mind the moment Goodkind started talking about Kant.

Yesterday I listened to a show originally broadcast on Resonance FM, featuring Paul Cornell interviewing Peter David. Peter David seems like an interesting guy to interview - he can talk for minutes on end without needing the slightest bit of prompting. The discussion was mostly about writing for television, and writing television tie-in novels. One thing I found particularly intriguing was the discussion of the influence of the original Star Trek episode "City on the Edge of Forever" on both Peter David's novel Imzadi(which I haven't read) and Paul Cornell's Doctor Who episode "Father's Day" (the similarities there are obvious once pointed out, but it hadn't occurred to me before), and the influence of Imzadi on Cornell's novel Human Nature.

Also amusing for Doctor Who fans is the revelation, completely new to me, that Steven Moffat's mother-in-law is actually responsible for the BBC and its licensees having so many issues over the years with the use of the Daleks. Moffat's mother-in-law, Beryl Vertue, is now a tremendously successful TV producer, but back in the sixties, she was Terry Nation's agent. She negotiated the contract that gave Nation the rights to the Daleks.

I think this has finally completely sold me on the "Steven Moffat must become the next Executive Producer for Doctor Who" movement. Because then if the Nation estate gets weird about the use of the Daleks again, it'll somehow be comforting to think that the executive producer will be able to blame his woes on something his mother-in-law did when he was a toddler.

I recommend giving it a download and a listen: Novelizing the Small Screen.

I've been trawling iTunes for more podcasts to check out. I've found a couple that are well worth checking out:

First up, Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing, hosted by Shaun Farrell. Each episode features an interview with a science fiction or fantasy author, as well as publishing news and other tidbits.
( Adventures in Sci-Fi Publishing )

Next up is Cadmium 2, a podcast devoted to "Cult British Science Fiction". At present, that translates to about 50% Doctor Who, and 50% other stuff, much of which I've never heard of. They did do a podcast on one of the James Bond films, which I'm not sure really qualifies as "Cult" or "Science Fiction", but why be overly nitpicky? So far, I've only heard Episode 2 (a set report from the recording of the Big Finish audio play The Wishing Beast, including an interview with Bonnie Langford, who comes across as a total sweetheart), and Episode 4, an interview with Nick Briggs, the producer of the Big Finish Doctor Who line. But I'm looking forward to hearing more, even though this will probably lead me inexorably closer to the day when I decide I desperately need to own a region-free DVD player that handles PAL.