Dimland Radio

dimland radio 2-9-13 show notes

A New Way Of Doing Things

You may have noticed there were no show notes for last week’s show. That’s because there was no show. The week before I was having technical difficulties. Although I was able to record my show, I kept getting kicked of the network.

Since then I’ve tried broadcasting a couple more times with the same problem still occurring. So, I decided to take a break last week and then prerecord my show. This way I can put the show in the feed and it should play in my regular time-slot. (I’m writing these notes on Saturday afternoon, so the show hasn’t aired yet. We’ll see if it works.)

I want to thank fellow Z Talker, Chris Davis, for helping me get set up.

A Correction

Yep, even your humble host can make a mistake. I know. I know. It’s difficult to believe, ain’t it?

Back on my show from 1/12/13, I had remarked about how similar the Denver Broncos defeat in the playoffs was to my MN Vikings NFC Championship game loss in 1999. The Broncos opted to run the time out in regulation and take their chances in overtime. I thought the Vikings had done almost the same thing going into halftime, but, I was wrong, it was at the end of regulation.

Neither team thought it a good idea to try to win the game and avoid overtime. Neither team won their game. What a shame.

Do Not Feed The Trolls

I’ve been learning about internet trolls lately (see previous posting). And I think I was hit by another one at work through our email. We have a job listing on Craig’ List and someone emailed a response that I thought reflected a poor attitude.

I almost responded, but I remembered the old adage, “Do Not Feed The Trolls!”

Psychic News

I happily shared two news items related to “psychics” accused of breaking the law or being sued for attempting to capitalize on their family’s “good” name. That name? Van Praagh. Good name? Yeah, right.Follow the links to here and here.

Movie Recommendation: The City Of Lost Children (1995)

Sony Picture Classics

This French film is very surreal and a bit disturbing. It’s also very cool. Visually striking with terrific special effects, you will believe in clones. It stars Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Drive) as a strong man who befriends a little girl street urchin. They set out to save the children of the town who have been kidnapped by a mad scientist in order to steal their dreams. Check it out!

Music heard on the show (Whenever Possible, I Will Link To The Song)…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram’ by The Yoleus

First ad break bumpers: ‘Pictures Of You‘ by The Cure & ‘Sex Beat‘ by The Urban Guerrillas
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Lie Detector‘ by The Screaming Blue Messiahs & ‘Absolute Beginners‘ by The Suburbs
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook’ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

what a troll sounds like

Two posts again I put up the review of the podcast of Assault of the Two-Headed Spacemules in which I was a guest. I gave the reviewer the benefit of the doubt, because it seemed he went to the show with expectations that weren’t fulfilled.

Douglas Arthur, the host of the show, runs a laid back, conversational style of show. He picks a topic and a guest to join the conversational and just let’s the chat go where it will. Our reviewer seemed to expect something else.

Our reviewer got his chance right away. Doug just posted the outtakes of the conversation. And our reviewer got to work. Below you will find he review. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems our reviewer seems like a troll.

What do you think?

It was recently brought to my attention from a “critic of a critic” that I needed to listen to other episodes of “Assault of the 2-Headed Space Mules” to gain proper perspective — if I was so inclined to critique. Well, I didn’t quite do that. Instead, I was afforded the wondrous dimension of outtakes material to the installment I did actually review.

The presentation starts out grossly enough with host, Douglas Arthur, announcing that he “just had some milk and is all phlegmy.” Feeling a need for immediate spiritual redemption, he acknowledges the birth of a baby girl from one of the unpaid assets of his production; you know, the otherwise downtrodden pariah type that serves Doug in the capacity of co-host, sound technician, and cyber janitor. I couldn’t tell you if the poor fool’s name was John Curtis or Curt Johnson, but isn’t that just the man’s most imaginative quality to contribute to the realm of the unknown?

*Paraphrasing* Penelope Raven is her name…and if I know John well enough, which really isn’t too well, *chuckle chuckle* I’d say her middle name was nominated in honor of–” some ridiculous sci-fi character of the ’80s. Hey Doug, if your indispensable bud, let’s say, had a boy with any portion of the word “Nimrod” in his new title, you might have had a worthy reference point there.

Shortly arriving thereafter was a useful bit of annexity [new word], at least for the purposes of satisfying my own curiosity: In the original airing, Dr Dim was complimented early on for his factoid knowledge of the TV cult classic “In Search of…” Doc glossed over the praise in a sort of matter-of-fact way that made me a tad suspicious; quickly, I pulled up the Wikipedia entry and found myself reading along with Dim — verbatim. I failed to mention this in the original critique because — really — there were more certain failures to muse on.

However, in this particular revelation of chatter, Dim does disclose the implementation of Wiki; I guess the only question now being: did he know the admission would be edited and thereby sought to pass off a deceptive Rainman-like prowess, or was he acting with the understanding that his information was being supplemented to the public by means of external source? The tricks of the trade, I tell ya! (In Jim’s defense, I should have acknowledged that I thought it rather amusing that he considered “Omni” (magazine) as the gateway to porn in Doug’s case in the edited version; when one considers that Bob Guccione married the publisher of that magazine (as was so mentioned), it truly proves to be a fine piece of both informative & entertaining broadcast!

Another point brought out in this late-arriving-to-the-scene recording was that Jim was not actually a debunker. These were Jim’s words himself, and I don’t disagree, for debunking implies real work — like due diligence enacting disciplined focus.

But I can’t really marvel at the fact that these modest gents gave mention that they were Marvel (comic) fans, even though I was one myself. Too often times, there is a tendency for comic enthusiasts to stress they were strictly Marvel readers (as opposed to Detective Comics, aka DC) as a declaration of intellectual status. And although Dim did concede he was a Batman [being of DC domain] supporter, I can’t atol [another new word] recall why. I think that’s where the alpha waves intervened in the good name of relief. Who knows what batty explanation he had for that lone departure in genre, and may that remain another unsolved mystery!

There was, believe it or not, one part of this outtake compilation that I thought had some magnificent potential: Doug mentioned that his father was a hospital administrator who used to bring home a slew of comics from one of the commercial outlets within the grounds when he was a boy. He went on to speculate that his dad probably got a significant break in price as multitudes of comics sat on the rack and progressed into the ranks of newly-backdated materials. I would have really loved to have heard what titles these comics ranged from, what years they represented, and what became of all that then-junk! I didn’t get any of that — but a bad fukn segue, doooooooooood!

dimland radio 1-26-13 show notes

An Apology

It may be a repeat of the tech issues I had when I attempted to air my 100th episode way back on February 25, 2012. The server that Z Talk Radio uses to broadcast our show through out the internets kept kicking my show off the air. Well, that same sort of thing was happening last night, so the folks in chat couldn’t enjoy the show.

I hope that it was server issues and that next week there will not be a repeat of showus interruptus.

Pedantic Moment #1

I thought it would be fun to do an entire show of pedantic moments. I’m sure there are those who would say my show is always a show of pedantic moments. But still.

The first moment covered TV news readers having the tendency to say “we’re” instead of “we’ll.” As in when they send the newscast to break. They say, “We’re back after these messages.”

No! We’ll be back! Future tense, not present tense. You say “we’re back” when you come back for the break.

Pedantic Moment #2

Next was a series of complaints about things people do when applying for a job. Needing to make me wait on the phone while they get a pen and paper, their cell phones ringing while filling out the application and sitting for the interview, and one young woman not letting me take her picture for her ID badge (I like to get pictures and lots of paperwork filled out right away, so I don’t need to set up another meeting.) because she didn’t think she looked pretty enough. It’s a janitorial job, not a modelling gig.

Pedantic Moment #3

Stamps, I went on about stamps. First, to admonish folks against complaining about the cost of a first class stamp. Come on! 46 cents?! It’s a bargain at twice the price.
Then I pointed out that the USPS introduced the Forever stamp in 2007 and people no longer need to head to the post office to pick up those lower rate postage stamps to make up the difference. Forever stamps are good no matter how much the USPS raises the rate of the first class stamp. They are good forever!

So why bring that up? Well, several of the podcasts I listen to do ads for Stamps.com. And in those ads they say using Stamps.com means you don’t have wait in line at the post office to buy the lower rate postage to make up the difference. But people already don’t have to do that! You know, because the stamps people use now (and since 2007) are Forever stamps. They are good…FOREVER.

Pedantic Moment #4

Then I addressed the Beyonce lip-syncing the National Anthem controversy. I really should have predicted on last week’s show that she would do that, because ever since she lip-synced on the Oscars in 2009, I’ve been suspicious that she ever sings live. I think she wants her performances to never show any flaw and she can’t be sure of that if she hasn’t pre-recorded her songs.

Pedantic Moment #5

This last pedantic moment was to point out that not all of the proceeding pedantic moments were really examples of pedantry. You know, sort of a meta pedantic moment.

Assault Of The Two-Headed Spacemules Appearance

I was the guest on fellow Stuck In The 80s fan, Douglas Arthur’s show. It’s a conversational style podcast in which Doug and a guest or two will chat about a given topic and let the conversation go where it will. Our topic was the mystery mongering (or investigating, depending on your point of view) TV series ‘In Search Of…’ I enjoyed the talk immensely.

Not everyone did, however. In the previous post on this site you will see the review of the show by a semi-regular listener of Dimland Radio. Normally, this listener is a bit of a provocateur. He likes to challenge me and some of the folks in chat. That never bothered me. I should be challenged.

The thing is, he completely missed the point of Doug’s show. He expected a more informative and confrontational interview show. That’s not what Doug does.

Well, Doug just posted an outtakes show featuring the overflow of our conversation. Parts where we just got too off topic to include in the regular show, but interesting enough to do an outtakes podcast. Well, maybe not interesting to our reviewer.

He posted a “review” of the outtakes that was intended to get us angry. That’s what a troll does. Nothing constructive. Just insults. I’ll do another post to include his latest pearls, so you can be the judge.

If you would like to be the judge of the shows, you can listen to the ‘In Search Of’ show here and the outtakes show here.

Boy, this blog is really getting long. Better wrap it up.

Movie Recommendation: The Caine Mutiny (1954)

Columbia Pictures

Another classic! Another film starring Humphrey Bogart. This movie depicts a naval captain who has seen enough action and has lost his touch. He seems good Navy at first, but his erratic behavior leads to a reluctant mutiny. The four principles actors (see the poster above) are very good. The one drawback of the film is the ridiculous love story between a young ensign and a singer who doesn’t think his upper class mother will except her. It feels forced on us. Use those moments for a bathroom break or to get a snack or to practice your fast-forwarding skills. The rest is very good.

Music heard on the show (Whenever Possible, I Will Link To The Song)…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram’ by The Yoleus

First ad break bumpers: ‘Love Is A Stranger‘ by Eurythmics & ‘Cry If You Want‘ by The Who
Second ad break bumpers: ‘She Belongs To Me‘ by Ramones & ‘Cig In Backwards‘ by The Suburbs
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook’ by $5 Fiddle

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

the review are in

Assault of the Two-Headed Spacemules

Recently, I had the great pleasure to be a guest on Douglas Arthur’s podcast – Assault of the Two-Headed Spacemules. Doug is a Facebook friend and a fellow fan of the Stuck in the 80s podcast and blog. Doug’s show is a laid back conversational look at pop culture.

He and I have an affinity for the 70s/80s syndicated paranormal investigation show – In Search Of… We saw that the entire series had been released on DVD and thought it would be fun to do a show on it.

So we did!

I enjoyed our chat. You might, too.

However, as I stated in the title of this post, the review (not a typo, there’s just one, so far) are in! And this reviewer wasn’t as pleased as I was.

Harry Canarri is a Facebook friend and a semi-regular listener of my show, Dimland Radio. He decided to share his thoughts. He didn’t care for the talk. I think he went in with expectations of a different kind of show. I include his review below with no other comment than…

Enjoy!

“Trumping Skepticism with a Brand of My Own” … Just yesterday, I heard a rebroadcast of an extremely low-rated program (stuck somewhere in cyberspace with no help on the way) dedicated to a wonderfully intriguing TV series from my childhood, “In Search of…”.

Featured on this particular show was Jim “Dr Dim” Fitzsimons — a proud member of Harry Canarri’s 50c Bunch on FB — presumably to inject an air of skepticism to this particular airing; where Jim goes, so goes skeptical content. And one cannot be sure whether on not the process is voluntary, either.

The host (not to be supported through naming) came off as well-spoken as Jim, but devoid of the geeky, snickering tone. Unfortunately, he established very early on that we were in for a softball interview: the Good Doc fired the first shot when he took exception to the host’s claim that the supposed Bigfoot in the famous Patterson film [that surreal footage of a primate-looking creature looking back and scurrying away from a cameraman rather close up] was an admitted hoax, as the man in the furry suit eventually came forward — only to have said man’s credibility challenged by Dim! But when the rebuttal amounted to an lamb-like retreat…ughhhhhhh.

I found that segment entirely uninformative. The least they could’ve done was tell us how to address a group of these semi-uprights stampeding their way into our collective consciousness. A flock of Bigfeet, anyone? Or maybe it’s good that none of these Bigfoots on the loose were ever captured and domesticated, because you just know pornography was the next stage of assimilation; Hollywood would have squashed sasquatch much the same way they did Bruce Lee when he threatened their hierarchy and empire 😦

The topic of UFOs was also unremarkably broached too. One may question the validity of such a subject, but make no mistakes — the phenomenon itself is real. God forbid these self-righteous energy vampires grow some cognitive skills in their skulls and say something like, “The reason there is no concrete UFO evidence is because these crafty “craftsman” operate along extra-dimensional means. FFS, just consider the astronomical distances these beings must traverse and navigate through. It’s almost a given! …” Yup, that’ll be the day, when a full-time skeptic tactfully expresses an original thought.

Then there was other extraneous matter to consider…or not! I voted “Not!” with my brain evidently, being [yes, I recognize that several pockets of the good ol’ USA don’t themselves recognize this application of the word “being”] I cannot recall any of it — except the part in which these vain creatures refused to disclose their real ages, lol. Dim sheepishly admitted to being “a shouting distance away from 50”; his temporary suitor claimed to not be too far behind. Age was clearly relevant to many reference points here; don’t know why it had to be mired in secrecy, gentleman.

Oh, I also remember my FB friend saying that he really appreciated the fact that the first few seasons of Scooby Doo [and perhaps all of them?] had a worthy general theme to ’em: don’t be afraid of a ghost (or some other paranormal depiction) because it’s really the janitor (or some other mundane creature!)

Jim thought it was an excellent primer…for the young skeptic wannabe. Hey Jim, I hope you didn’t blow Santa’s cover for the kids’ sake too, because although Santa is a fictional character, what’s under the cover is surely real 😛

The lowlight of the host’s contribution to the transmission of brilliant radio under the stars came when he declared the show “Unsolved Mysteries” as successor to “In Search of…”; apparently emboldened by his ability to say anything and get away with it, he finished cementing himself by stating that “Unsolved Mysteries” was the precursor to “America’s Most Wanted.” The latter may be somewhat closer to the truth than the former, but I guess by amateur-radio standards, both may be deemed correct.

In the final stages of the show, Dr Dim hearkened back to the original topic — “In Search of…” — which got lost in the shuffle of meandering hoof and mouth disease that went far beyond Bigfoot and his apparently voracious appetite for media attention. He said, [paraphrasing] “You know, if it weren’t for “In Search of…”, I’m not sure I would be the person I am today.” Um, would that be a good thing or a bad thing, Jim? Now that’s one medical mystery definitely worth exploring, Dr.!

dimland radio 1-19-13 show notes

A Little Talk About The Weather

It’s gonna be cold around here for the next few days. We’re told the high temperature for Monday won’t even break zero degrees! Yep, it’s gong to be less than no degrees!

Situational Awareness

It was from the Adam Carolla Podcast that I first heard the phrase “situational awareness.” It means to have a good sense of situational awareness a person doesn’t think they are the only person on the planet, They are aware that someone might be waiting for their parking space, so they don’t dawdle.

Well, I brought up a situation in which more people ought to be aware of what they are doing. I see it every time I go grocery shopping. Some people just don’t get that when you push your cart along the aisle, you stay to the right! Always think to yourself, “Which side of the road do I drive on?”

When you come up with the answer, you’ll know which side of the aisle to push your cart.

Science Hero

I did a profile of an official Dimland Radio Science Hero. His name is Zach Kopplin and he’s a young man who is taking on the Louisiana state legislature and their anti-science law that allows teachers to teach creationism (religion) in science class.

Zach realized, at age 14, that no one was taking on the 2008 law. So, he did.

Science Zero

Well, well, well, it turns out the Megan Fox believes in silly things. You know, the usual stuff. Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, Leprechauns. Leprechauns? Really?

Oh, well. What are ya gonna do? You could read more here.

So Sad

Such cool setting for an art school!

“Well, I did not think the girl could be so cruel and I’m never going back to my old school.”

Ok, I might try, but after June 30, 2013 I won’t be able to. You see, that is the day my old art school, College of Visual Arts, will close its doors.

The school opened in 1924. I attended from 1983 through 1986. And it was a great time and a terrific school. Unfortunately, the recession, a lack of an endowment, and a tuition of over $25,000 (what the hell?!) a year has caused the school to lose enrollment numbers. So much so that it can more longer afford to stay open.

I talked about a few good memories. I sure hope someone organizes a reunion of sorts.

Movie Recommendation: The African Queen (1951)

Horizon Pictures/Romulus Films Ltd.

A classic! Directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, it’s an adventure story of two polar opposites thrown together in a boat on a river in the African wilderness. Very entertaining. And you get to see Bogey do a monkey impression. That must have been the scene in which he earned his Oscar.

Music heard on the show (Whenever Possible, I Will Link To The Song)…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram’ by The Yoleus

First ad break bumpers: ‘Peek-A-Boo‘ by Siouxsie & The Banshees & ‘Show Me‘ by The Pretenders
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Coming Up‘ by Paul McCartney & ‘Cig In Backwards‘ by The Suburbs
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook’ by $5 Fiddle

You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.