Podcast files: irksome omissions

I've become a bit of a podcast junkie, especially since the electrical troubles started in my car and the radio/CD player no longer works. I just download podcasts on to my phone and listen to them as I drive. This helps me keep awake during my zero-dark-thirty commute to Port Townsend three days a week. If I'm really tired, it helps keep me awake on the way home, too.

Soon I hope to delve into the realm of podcasting myself, mostly as director/engineer for my historian husband who really needs to have one. That said, I listen to 'casts with an ear for what works and what doesn't; what seems smooth and professional, and what is grating and amateurish. I like short intros with minimal music. I like folks who get to the point and dig into it. I don't like constant background music in a 'cast longer than 30 seconds or so. I loathe team podcasters who talk over each other. I am utterly bored by teams who drone on about in jokes and digressions of digressions. I like people who keep up a steady pace without seeming rushed. I cringe at speakers who punctuate every single sentence with "um", "er", and "uh" over and over and over. Stop that.

I really appreciate folks who add album art to their files. It's one of those "metadata" things that really isn't that hard to add, and it makes for a nice "at a glance" visual branding thing on a smart phone or Mp3 player. I really REALLY appreciate folks who have taken the time to actually give their sound files titles, track numbers, and other markers. Again: this is not rocket science. It's really annoying to have to do this oneself so when one is perusing files on one's Mp3 player one sees things like "The Bobcast_Episode_12_flirting with quirts" instead of "TB20dkhfdkl19dl.mp3" or just "Bobcast". Note: don't go looking for a Bobcast, because I just made it up.

I will go so far as to make my own album art for a 'cast that I like enough to download several episodes of. I like to be organized.

Island Apart by Steven Raichlen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book resonated with me perhaps more than any other novel I have ever read. I'll still always have works like "Lord of the Rings" at the top of my favorites list, but LotR is more of a "I want to be there" and "this journey is important to me" kind of experience, "Island Apart" feels like the author got in to my head while he was writing and concocted a tale just for me. The setting, Martha's Vinyard, is an East Coast version of where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The male lead in the story is an extreme version of me: reclusive, introspective, and wary of painful contact with other humans. He's perfectly content in his solitude and comfortable living life his own way. The other islanders refer to him as "the Hermit", and it fits.

I'm a big fan of Rosamund Pilcher, and this is basically her style but told by a Yank in a Yank setting, with the requisite flashbacks to an earlier time and gentle explorations of interpersonal relationships in a colorful setting. Skillfully drawn characters galore. The female lead does a bit of overreacting at one point, dangerously close to the "psycho-harpies" who annoy me in cheap romance novels. But it's a brief, solitary moment and doesn't mar the story at all.

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Feeling a little blue

Next month it will be a year since my cat Gimli disappeared. I still grieve about it. I still miss him terribly. He was amazing: so full of life, such a huge personality, such an imp. I loved him a lot. I haven't been this broken up since my first cat, Isis, died in 1988. I don't know why I bond so strongly with some of my cats. Maybe it's because certain of them have personalities that synch with mine in some mysterious way, and that fulfills a need for me that I don't fully understand. I've had so many disappointments, so many dreams squished, made so many bad decisions in my life, and maybe the affection of these inscrutable creatures is a kind of psychological balm. They're always there, consistently loving, yet unpredictable and fascinating. They know when I'm hurting and are content just to sit with, or on, me and commiserate.

A quick lick on the nose or a head butt from a lithe, sinuous, amazingly athletic predator goes a long way to make up for slights or other fallout from humans who really should have more understanding. That feline companionship is truly comforting when I'm sick or in physical pain. I always feel terrible when they're hurt or sick and my efforts to soothe or heal them don't seem to be working, or just take longer than I'd like to see results, because they're always there for me. They are perhaps not exactly my "children", but I am responsible for their well-being. I love them, and can't imagine life without them.

If I die while still harboring cats or any other animals in my life, I can only hope that some caring individual would take them in and care for them until the end of their lives. I guess I should set up a will with a section in it for just such a contingency. My husband is a good man, but I wouldn't want to burden him with the care of so many animals after my passing. He enjoys the cats on his good days, but taking care of animals isn't something he ever asked for. As I write this, a very old lady cat is sitting in my lap. She started out semi-feral and is now retired from the feral life. I hope I can end my days as gracefully as she is doing, and with my fur as unruffled.

I've become a podcast junkie lately. I especially enjoy "Writing Excuses", "Sword and Laser", and "The Secrets". The "Chillpak Hollywood Hour" is also an occasional favorite. There are a handful of podcasts that I linked to from other sites, or that were otherwise recommended to me, but the style of those 'casts just didn't work for me so I never went back. Here's my advice to anybody thinking about doing a podcast.

1. If there are two or more people in the podcast, please try to keep it from getting jokey and do NOT talk over each other.  I find that "drive-time radio jokey duo" style of 'casting the equivalent of nails on a blackboard. Also be careful of wandering off-topic, especially if this means inside jokes and nattering about personal stuff. Nobody cares but you guys, so save it for Off Air socializing.

2. Music: Snappy intro jingles are nice, but when it's all said and done I don't really care about any music you may or may not have as an intro or outro, I just care about what you have to say. A good, clean recording goes a long way toward keeping me engaged.

3. More musical mayhem:  The jarring "are you paying attention?!" monkey-banging-on-a-drum riff. A news station local to me (KIRO 97.3) does this with their twice-an-hour traffic/weather reports, and it's really, really annoying, especially because of the heavy percussion. When I'm listening to late-night radio, the last thing I want is a sudden burst of obnoxious jazzy crap with a drum machine track that won't shut up.

4. Even more music whinging: The Ear Worm. Please don't feel compelled to run some noodley tune behind the whole podcast. Don't get me wrong. I love music. I've been known to play piano and harp. I run Pandora while I work on the computer, but that is music of my choosing, and there's a time and  place for everything. When I'm listening to a podcast in my car, or over the racket in my kitchen, a music track under soft-spoken vocals is at best just distracting, at worst really annoying. That seemingly innocuous guitar jingle you've carefully edited into a loop to run behind your monologuing is auditory Chinese water torture (looking at you, Michael Stackpole...but your podcasts are still so worth my time that I'll keep listening, dang it).

I love being read to, and podcasts are a nice change from the audio books that I devour constantly. For me some are just plain entertainment, others a poor person's grad school. Keep 'em coming, just don't force me to listen to repetitive jingles while you deliver your words of wisdom. What you have to say is far more interesting to me.

The Children's Hour: A Novel by Marcia Willett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Charming story about dealing with love, loss and family. Sort of "Rosamund Pilcher light". Brave use of present tense for the flashback scenes of wartime England, but it works. Believable characters, nice character development arcs, satisfying resolutions without being overly saccharine. I would definitely read more by this author. I find this type of story to be good "summer reading".

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The Dresden Files, by Jim Butcher

Fool Moon by Jim Butcher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is the second book in the Dresden Files, being the first-person chronicles of a Sam Spade-esque Chicago detective...well, wizard, actually, but a wizard who hires out to solve crimes and other difficulties. He's in the phone book. I really love this character and the "hard-boiled detective meets the supernatural" concept in general. I also like the actor who is reading the audio versions to which I'm listening, James Marsters, but it's taking me some time to get used to his narration style. He is maybe two degrees above a mumble most of the time, which means I sometimes have to punch up the volume so I don't lose parts of sentences. Buzzy Media need to raise the bar a bit on their sound engineering, because I should not be hearing mouth noises and gasps of air as I do on these recordings. Ouch. Still, Marsters lends the tales the right tone of resigned, fatalistic self-deprecation, and that works for me.






*spoiler-ish*










Still, the only thing that I find really annoying about these first two novels in the Dresden Files series is the character of Connie Murphy, the tough-as-nails Police Detective who occasionally hires Harry to help out with "special" cases. I realize that this character has to be pretty hard-bitten to make it in the mostly male world of law-enforcement and keep the respect of her peers, but she crosses the line in to "bitch" a bit too often for me to like her at all. For somebody who purports to believe and respect Mr. Dresden's abilities and profession, she seems far too eager to mistrust him and slap the cuffs on at every turn. I can't really see why Harry professes to care for her on anything more than a professional (as in "source of income") basis. I'll give the third installment a go and see if she hasn't learned anything by the end of it. At the moment I find her pretty unreasonably tetchy

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