Most of the 2 dozen people arrested are being charged with rioting.

News sources all over the area have come down in support of the police, and citizen commentors on websites all over the web are absolutely enraged at the kids (and 6 adults) involved in this event. Everything associated with this story is layered with anti-technology and anti-youth sentiments that I wouldn’t think exist in this city.

I don’t trust a single report I’ve read or watched so far. So, internet, do your thing.

If you are a Philadelphia high school student andyou were there at the flash mob earlier this week, or you have a friend that was there, please contact me through this website. If you were a witness to the flash mob/riot, please also drop me a line. I have questions for you, and your privacy and anonymity will be respected.

I am not a journalist, and I’m not a cop — I’m a geek on the web who lives in Montco who doesn’t have enough information, and I suspect the grownups aren’t telling me the truth. If some direct sources show up, I may write about this story.

One

How about we start out with a nice dirty story? If you head over to Nobilis Erotica, you can hear Dani reading werewolf anthropological erotica, and no, I’m not kidding. (Foundling, Nobilis Erotica. Adults Only. NSFW. Etc.)

Two

Once you’re done listening to that, if you want to hear my melodious voice, Nobilis wrote a dirty story that’s currently playing on the Metamor City Podcast called Dreams of Change. The first part is here, and if you listen carefully to part 2, you’ll hear my melodious voice playing Jane Randall in a very short walk-on part right smack in the middle of the story. What, you don’t hear me talking? Listen again — I did this part as a last-minute favor for Chris Lester, and I’m guessing he didn’t realize I wasn’t quite properly voiced for a super-feminine role. I play the female half of a magical creature that flips at will between being a boy and a girl, and quite by accident I ended up with a lower voice than my male counterpart. So, for the sake of speed, they chipmunked me up a little bit. It’s a good story, though, if a little gratuitously dirty.

Three

Last podcast item: there have been a couple of Braindouche! updates since we last talked, the most recent having dropped tonight. And it also involved Nobilis, who is now officially my new online girlfriend. You see, I’m the idiot  that offered to do all the production for his next podcast novel, Scouts Remastered, and, well…

So, I’m editing voice tracks the other day, and one comes through completely mangled. All noise. I don’t know what happened, and neither does the guy who recorded it, but once that was resolved, I listened to the ruined track again. It was interesting noise, if you can believe that. (If you listen to this podcast, you’ll probably believe anything.) So I says to the guy, I’m keeping this track for Braindouche!, it’s interesting noise and I’ll make something out of it.

So the most recent track is a piece of music called Surely. Go listen to it.

Four

In Nobilis-free news, Sweet Tarragon has a new shop yay! Sweet Tarragon has pretty much stopped selling on Etsy, yay! And the look is all redesigned for the new branding, yay! Go buy some stuff. The amazing part about the new Sweet Tarragon online shop is that we built the whole dang thing ourselves. Which leads me to…

Five

Our newest secret project has finally come fully to the internet, Wicked Plum Shops! The same technology that runs Sweet Tarragon can be purchased for a reasonable fee for anyone who wants their own simple, attractive ecommerce solution. The link is in the sidebar, so it must be official. Go check out Wicked Plum Shops, and say hi to our own personal wicked plum mascot, Bob. The whole thing is in limited beta, so while you’ll enjoy a fabulous discount on the service, you’ll need to sign up to get in line first. It’s still a baby, so we start nice and gentle.

Six

Jesus christ that was a lot of snow, and there’s more on the way.

Seven

I… can’t remember anymore. I know I’m forgetting things, but that’s enough for now. Click links, spend money, keep me out of bankruptcy, sleep well.

1. Sequoia has obvious, uniqure personality.

2. Sequoia’s handler/cameraman is obviously deeply in love.

3. Grarr bite bite bite!

4. Calico. Love the calicos.

5. OMG LITTLE PINK TOES!

I got an email with this header in the ol’ electronic mailbox today from the local chamber of commerce. As a member, I get messages like this from time to time, announcements of different presentations and networking opportunities. Times being what they are, the tech and social media presentations have been on the rise. Unfortunately, they’re overwhelmingly being offered by either graphic designers who don’t know the ass from their internet, or that special breed of slime leech, marketers who market marketing.

Needless to say, the attendance at these things is brisk, but the quality of the presentations is absolutely abysmal.

I feel like this puts me in a tough position. There aren’t many people in this general group who are tech-savvy enough to be able to spot bullshit when they see it, but overwhelmingly folks around here know that they don’t know jack about the internet. Now, I know this means that Hot Glue Media should be running around to all the business organizations and geeking out loud to all and sundry, establishing ourselves as the local tech experts, but that’s kind of difficult because we’re kind of crazy busy doing actual paying work. I get it. That needs to be resolved.

The thing I’m not sure of is whether or not Dani and I should be attending these things anyway. Part of me doesn’t want to be seen condoning these folks, especially not at $30 bucks a plate and no open bar. Another part wants to go to speak up and make sure good information is being presented. A third part worries that the second part will come off as bitchy and demeaning and rude and Kanye-esque for stealing the spotlight away from the presenters, who generally paid good money to present. A fourth bit of me wants to take the first part out for ice cream, and a fifth part wonders if it wouldn’t be more effective to attend and be subtle about my tech superiority, essentially starting whisper campaigns at my table over the rubber chicken.

I don’t know what to do. What do you think? Have you been in similar situations? Can you help me? I’m at a total loss, so anything at all would be appreciated.

If you’re a nerd for music technology, or synths, or electronic music, or, yanno, me, watch Moog: The Documentary.

And away we go! 

donna reid recipes

A Donna Reed cocktail: shake 2 ounces vodka with 2 ounces sour mix, pour into tumbler over ice, fill the glass the rest of the way with cranberry juice, garnish with an orange slice and two vicodin, and consume in the evening while pondering exactly where everything went wrong in your life.

do you need money to be rich?

Initially, you do need some. We’ve all seen recently that while one can be rich with money, one can also be rich on debt, and as we all know, you can’t get into really serious productive debt if you don’t have money.

youtube videos of bitches jerking a guy

Yeah, good luck with that. Why are so many people so determined to find porn on youtube, when there are plenty of perfectly good on-demand, free youtube clones that do nothing but serve up dirty movies of every possible flavor? This is the internet, people, get with the program.

there is no such thing as constructive criticism

This is only true among teenagers, bloggers and tabloid fashion columns.

find out who sent you that formspring

Not likely. Just like the rest of the internet, in exchange for letting other people run your applications you give up the right to access the metadata that those applications generate, converting that access to a privilege.  Sometimes you’re allowed to look, sometimes you’re not. In the case of formspring, you’re not. And frankly, that’s part of the game. If you don’t want people sending you messages anonymously, don’t get a formspring.

To your health. Now git.

If I haven,t mentioned it before, I recently got a Motorola Cliq phone, and it is AWESOME. I just downloaded an android app that is supposed to be able to be able to make wordpress go remotely, called wpToGo, and this is the obligatory test post.

The Cliq is cool, but I highly disapprove of the decision to make the apostrophe a special character. This may be an advatage to you all, tho, because that means you,ll always know when I,m posting from my phone, due to the commalisciousness. Plus-1 Stalker points to you.

Included is a picture of me wearing my new hat and gloves. I haven,t figured out if it,s possible to take a picture to post from within this app, but signs aren,t good.

I dissaprove of being limited to one category by wpToGo.

Thus far, I give wpToGo on the Cliq two hesitant thumbs up.

Why do most podcasts suck?? — Scott Roche

How badly a podcast sucks is highly subjective, and subject mostly to how close you are to either the subject or the producer. This means that if, say, you have a buddy who does a podcast on flight sim games, and you’re also a flight sim nut, your opinion of the show will be way more forgiving on it than mine will be.

And not everyone has good taste.

And almost no podcasters are professionals or have pro training or experience in their field or medium.

And almost no podcasters have a budget to procure the right tools.

Lets just assume that all of this is granted, ok? Accepting that podcasting is an amateur, enthusiast genre with very small audiences per show mostly made up of personal friends of the podcaster, we can start trying to judge podcasts a little more impersonally. Even if you try to judge podcasts on their own terms, there are still a lot of genuinely wretched podcasts on the net.

Oh no! Gasp! Content criticism is rude! If you don’t like it, don’t listen! Suck it, internet. It’s not personal. I have right here 5 Reasons Meredith Thinks Your Podcast Sucks, grown out of years of intensive podcast consumption.

1. Your audio blows.

It takes a  lot to have audio that’s so bad, a listener will turn off your show, but it happen all the time. Having cheap equipment isn’t an excuse, because if you can get the audio into the computer, there are free tools available that can work miracles in post-production. There’s no excuse for excessive noise, blatant screwups, low volume, and all-around crappy production if you just take the time to make a nice show.

At the same time, you don’t need to put out professional-quality stuff, either. It’s a podcast, and you’re probably not a professional, so don’t feel bad if it doesn’t sound perfect. Some podcasters actually advocate for leaving your edges a little rough because it’s an integral part of the DIY aesthetic. How polished your production will be is a decision you’ll have to make for yourself, but if you don’t bother to at minimum run your track through Levelator and give it a full listen through from beginning to end, I’m not going to bother listening to it.

2. Your show lies.

There are approximately 80 bazillion podcasts that should be titled The Me Show, or My Friends And I Podcast As An Excuse To Hang Around And Chat, and there are lots of shows that are exactly that and make no bones about it. That’s perfectly fine. What frosts my ass is when a podcast is supposed to be topical, and the shows never bother with the topic, instead just bullshitting around individually or in groups. For some reason, video game podcasts seem to be particularly guilty of this. Again, I’m not against blathercasts, personal journals or buddy bull sessions, but if that’s what you’re going to publish, don’t pretend you’re doing a podcast on computer flight simulators.

3. You’re a douche.

A podcast is a fantastic foundation on which to build a cult of personality. It starts with cheap production and ends with me being a disembodied voice in your head. If you’re going to take this route, and many do, try to actually have a personality to build a cult around, ok? Queercasters seem to be most guilty of this, where the podcaster’s goal is to portray himself or herself as the most awesome thing ever, and only succeeds in insulting other people, being insulted by other people, and portraying a remarkable lack of redeeming qualities. Your show sucks because YOU suck, and that’s one thing Levelator can’t fix.

4. You’re inflexible.

Long ago and far away, in 2005 or so, someone somewhere decided that podcasting (audio podcasting, anyway) is at its best when shows are 20-30 minutes long and released once weekly, and somehow this became gospel*. This led directly to people establishing their podcast “format” and sticking to it religiously, cramming otherwise perfectly good shows into these artificial boxes because they thought they had to. With this basic assumption comes a whole host of other standard moves that far too many podcasters try to impose on themselves because “that’s how it’s done”. For instance, promo breaks, which are really commercial breaks but without any money involved; a common structure that mimics television, theme-intro-housekeeping-break-primary topic-break-secondary topic-credits-outro-more credits; releasing podcasts under Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivates licenses. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but over and over again podcasters do things like this to their podcast without sparing a moments thought to whether or not it’s a good idea.

I blame this type of behavior as the primary reason why podcasters stumble and fade. When a show is full of stuff because it has to be, instead of stuff you want, it becomes work and it stops being fun and the show goes away. Make the show you want to make. Release the show when it’s done, make it only as long as it needs to be, and only include in it the stuff you love. Don’t try to mash your podcast into some sort of shape you think other people will like, just make the show you would want to listen to. You won’t make any money doing this, so keep it fun. If fun for you is fulfilling a production schedule or promoting other podcasts, that’s awesome, but don’t do anything because you think you have to. Don’t be afraid to just do the fun part and ignore the rest.

5. You’re just filling time.

The other day, I downloaded a podcast for freelancers. The show is just a series of book authors who write books that are of interest to freelancers, everything from business theory to motivational self-help dreck. The interviews are usually interesting and informative, and I enjoy listening to them, but I never listen to a whole episode. Why? The host always plays a podsafe song at the end of the show. The song isn’t related to any topics of the episode. It isn’t to my taste. It’s been bitcrushed in the editing process. The only thing this song enhances is the length and size of the podcast. When a podcaster does this, I skip the song.

Another podcast I’ve listened to in the past would regularly go through the following rigamarole: “Hi! Welcome to my show! It’s time for feedback! Or it would be if there was any feedback. Now it’s time for the rest of my show.” Utterly pointless waste of my time. He didn’t ask for feedback, he didn’t make a joke about being lonely, he didn’t do anything but stick to the script like a moron. If you’re going to podcast and you want other people to listen, respect the time your listeners are taking with your show and don’t waste it. Make the minutes count. Get to the fucking interesting part already, and don’t pad your show with useless boring crap. Podcaster, edit thyself.

~~

If you want to subject yourself to this abuse, go fill out the Fauxspring for yourself. It’s anonymous!

* This is based on the presumption that a podcaster isn’t going to want to spend more time on a podcast than it takes to make a weekly show, and the rule of thumb that the average commute is between 20 and 40 minutes. In my personal experience, listeners like shorter and more frequent podcasts, and more is better. The most popular podcasts I’ve ever produced were a series of daily shows that were 45 seconds long, each. Wacky, ain’t it?

i bought many books that are worthless.

Ahh, college, halcyon days of beer, faux intellectualism and being forced to buy $300 new textbooks because last year’s edition used a different header typeface that you’ll use once in a 4 month semester.  

behind screen living

From what I understand, there are three classes of people who work in the entertainment industry: performers, executives and everyone else. Everyone else includes technicians, writers, camera people, the folks who do Craft Services, editors, all those people who make their living “behind the screen”. From what I also understand, it’s not the easiest way to make a living, as most of them work in an essentially freelance manner in a saturated market. To make a living, most of those folks work hard when they can and hustle when they don’t. Seems preferable to me than living the unpredictable life of most professional performers or the utterly BS-soaked world of the executive, but I have weird priorities.

killer roast chicken

Funny you ask! Dani just released a disgustingly self-promotional cookbook, and it contains my favorite roast chicken recipe. You can go download it the minute it’s published. I’ll let you know, I promise.

shrunken women choose your own adventure

I checked, and there are in fact at least three websites dedicated to interactive microphiliac pornography on the internet. This is not one of them, sorry, but good luck in finding something to your taste.

my husband nephew has hots on me

Young men sometimes have inapropriate crushes on people close to them. It’s normal, and it’ll resolve itself eventually. On the flip side, some women can sometimes project their own narcisitic self-perceptions on those around them. This is fretfully common. Stop doing that, you self-absorbed nitwit.

first time for a boy frugal a soft voice

As a general rule I am pro-prostitution and anti-virginity, but I cannot in good concience reccomend that a young man discard his purity on a cheap hooker. Find a well-regarded medium-to-upper range escort service in your city, and keep in mind that if they offer you some sort of upgrade, luxury, platinum-plus tier of  more expensive girls, they’ll be the same girls as the “normal” tier.

mobile blackberry 8330 porn/blowjobs

There’s an app for that.

making a living as used bookseller

Also known as “skirting bankruptcy”. It can be done, but it’s a very hard way to make a living, especially as the storefront bookstore industry is contracting. Interestingly, the online used bookseller model and the storefront used book seller model is combining in nifty ways, and I suggest you check out the franchise Books4Less as one example of this. The future of this particular niche seems to be in large warehoused used book inventories and tracked individually, with every book listed in multiple stores online, and the whole thing is open to walk-in customers.

you are a judgmental bitch

Yes I am. If you want some of that, submit a question to my Fauxspring.

That’s it. Go do something important now.

I’ve tried it both ways(… shut up), this blogging crap is one hell of a lot easier with twitter and facebook and all that other well-developed social networking stuff than not.

Moving on.

You’ve heard of formspring.me, right? I’m not going to link to it directly because formspring accounts directly lead to spammy twittering, but you can go find it if you like. Formsprings fascinate me. They’re little doodads that run a little blog-type-things, and they function somewhere between advice columns and blog comments. Formspring is… a very specific sort of interaction that’s common on the internet, but has never really been distilled down in this manner before.

In the past, I’ve aspired to be an advice columnist. For a very short time, I actually was an advice columnist. Formspring is a perfect cocktail for getting me completely obsessed. I found the actual Formspring website a little… extraneous, so I built my own.

Let me introduce a new toy on the blog, my Fauxspring. Go there, ask questions, get blogged, and if you want to keep an eye on questions and answers as they happen, click here for past questions.

And, since all this social networking is so efficient, I posted a link to twitter and got the first question in precisely 9 minutes. Here we go!

When will something good happen for me? -The Wizard of Gosz

Good things happen all the time. I’m a bit of a Pollyanna, sure, but going through life being easily delighted makes life kind of delightful. Even when the rest of the world is shitting on your head, there are lots of little insignificant good things happening to you all the time. Pay attention and enjoy making the green light or spotting a wacky customized car or pulling a comically huge potato chip out of the bag. I’m not going to say it’ll cascade through the rest of your life and improve everything, but it’ll make the moments between the momentous a little less insufferable.