Even the insane, and I mean the deepest of the clinically insane, think in a structure. Instability, deception, skewed perception and the like must still follow some form of logic. The way your character makes connections and associations, his progression of thought, and his moral barometer must follow an internal consistency. Otherwise, you're working with something random and, regardless of what deconstructionists want to say about it, you cannot build character without some kind of pattern. That pattern can shift and evolve, but it has to for a reason.

"I'm dead, doctor."
"What, Joe? That's absurd."
"Really, I mean it. I'm dead, 100% dead."
"Can dead people bleed, Joe?"
"No. I don't think so. Why?"
"Well, if I do this..."
"Hey, ow, goddammit."
"See, now you're bleeding. Ergo, you are not dead."
"Isn't that something?"
"It certainly is."
"Dead people can bleed."

It's all about interior logic.

I totally mangled the quote, but there you go!

House of Leaves site (link)

Craig Clevenger (link)

Stephen Graham Jones (link)

Endless Blue site (link)

Urbis (writer's workshop) (link)

Dove Chocolate (link)

Audacity is dead to me, now. I am officially making my move to acquire GarageBand 3. Ubercaster couldn't come fast enough, but they're taking their time to develop. Whether they make it to have a release in the first quarter of the calendar year, really remains to be seen - I have my doubts - but I do appreciate that they seem to be taking their time to not only develop it well, but also to not burn themselves out on it. One of the most hated enemies of open source development is that of overheating programmers.

Nevertheless, I have already switched to Quicktime Pro for the bulk of recording on my end; Audacity is such a resource hound. I don't mean to defame the program, as Will uses it on his Windows machine and hasn't reported any problems whatsoever, but I just think the version for OS X was rushed. Throughout the course of editing this past show, my computer crashed no less than twelve times. This is not an exaggeration; I counted at least twelve and then cried.

Show notes will get posted tomorrow, more than likely; I can't be bothered with it today, as right as I type this I'm waiting on my second class of the day, and have estimated that my time spent on campus will amount to a shade over twelve hours. Thursdays are no longer days of happiness for me, but Friday is a beacon of light, so I can spend some time re-listening to the show and typing up the links as I go.

As for audio quality - I know. Pops and clicks abound. The former comes from my amateur knowledge of this new microphone. I am actually amplifying most of what I say in editing, despite having the gain turned up to Eleven. I will have to see what I can do about that. But things like touching the microphone, playing with quarters, playing with ink pens, paper, etc. will cease next show. Hypothetically. When the show gets started and my neurotic ticks become pushed into the unconscious mind, you never know what can happen. I may actually chew on some chocolate. Next Show's Topics: Author Personas, Character Deaths

The problem is that everytime I try to upload it over FTP, it starts uploading at a good speed, and then within about thirty seconds, winds down to less than 1 KB/s.

Very, very frustrating. I'll see if it's me and try to upload over my college's connection. I've been trying to upload all last night and it just wouldn't do it.

1) Will's sick, still, and on-and-off, so this next show we've got my good pal Nick to fill in.

2) Nick filled in nicely, but technical problems and my brain-to-mouth connection just made the show a flat out disaster. We have the audio, just on a number of tracks that I'm going to have to splice together. It took about three hours to get one hour of audio with all the issues. Not fun.

3) Show #6? Probably not until Wednesday.

4) Thursday? Will should be up for recording by then, and this time I won't let him run off to "get drinks." He can drink on the show.

Clearly, Will's 102-fahrenheit fever can only have one explanation.

Needless to say, we haven't recorded, and thus it may be until Monday, I would gather, before we record again, which is... well, it may very well become our new schedule. Plan for Thursday, actually record on Monday, lay it down on Wednesday.

Yeah. Yeah, I think we can work that.

GarageBand 3, by the way? I'm there. You don't even know. No, really, you don't know.

I've played around with Quicktime Pro's chapter-making abilities. I'm able to edit the show in a good three hours if I sit down and do it. I'm not entirely certain how Podcast Maker would work with Libsyn. Perhaps if I had something that had me do more of the work, it would feel like it was worth the investment. I do need something better than Audacity, now. I believe we've gotten to that point to where we need some better features.

Ubercaster looks very, very promising, but it has yet to reach beta, and with the way Audacity likes to crash - nay, not crash, I believe the closer term is detonate - at the most inopportune times (like, say, after I've forgotten to save every three changes, and I decide to make just one more addition and I'll save this big different version), I could use some better software.

I'm considering GarageBand, which I guess if you're on a Mac (and I am), supposedly it's the best thing around. I may do my basic recording via Audacity, and then edit on GarageBand. I think just straight up audio, while many podcasts do that, doesn't quite do it. I like to have an all-around show. As you're listening, have chapter pictures with clickable links. The show notes while you listen. Obviously, if you're on iTunes - and from the numbers, nearly 100% of you are - you'll have this capability. Since you can make chapters in Quicktime Pro, I assume you can see them, as well.

If you're on WinAmp... I don't know, man. I don't know. I left 1999 a while ago.

I am getting better at editing, I think. It would be nice to have some audio people making or finding sounds that would fit what I'm looking for. What I do find is just patchwork, and I'd like to get something a bit more, y'know, that p-word. Professional.

Update: So much for Audacity. At about 8:30 into the show, silence. I had a bumper in there. I know I did, because I heard it when I did my final listen to make sure there wasn't any dead air. And it has disappeared. So I've had to re-open and simply erase that dead air, and then re-upload the file. We may have seen the last of Audacity for me.

Bash Quote Database (link)

Chuck Palahniuk's Official Site (link)

UnFiction (Alternate Reality Game hub) (link)

Endless Blue (link)

Next Week's Topics: Short Story Cliches; Lighting in Films

In any case, no, podcast hasn't been recorded. Did I say it'd be done by now? No, you misunderstood: We would be starting by now. See that? That's how I lie. I would like to think of myself as a lying connoisseur, if you will. And I hope that you forgive me for my betrayal.

I will be optimistic in that he got drunk, laid, and has had a twenty-four hour hangover. The other way it could go involves chains, whips and knives, and I would like to believe my co-host is still in one piece. Or at least, the primary piece of said co-host is capable enough to do a show this weekend. We'll see. If we don't get it to you on Monday, it'll certainly be edited and ready to go soon thereafter, and once he gets used to living amongst cows, he'll get back in line the way co-hosts do.

Or he doesn't and I'll castrate him.