Oop

Hey there. I forgot to tell anyone who is still reading this blog that I've migrated over to Wordpress. Tally ho!

Last-Minute Announcement

For those of you just joining us, my radio show The Dude Is from Circumstances is scheduled to move from Friday nights to Thursdays at the same time of 8-10pm PST. However, rather than wait a whole week to make the switch as originally planned, I'm putting the change into effect immediately, so we will be going forward TONIGHT. As always, you can tune in by clicking on the 'Live 128k' there on the left menubar, or just following this link.

Hope to see you there!

Boldly Going, and About Damn Time

I need help.
But first, a little backstory.
After having the TV unceremoniously unplugged in my early teens, I never got back into the habit of watching television. It was strictly movies for me: no commercials, definite ending point. It wasn't til around the time of Six Feet Under that I finally considered that there might be some television actually worth watching; Babylon 5 followed, and then the Whedon dam broke with Firefly/Serenity. This led to the Buffy/Angel marathon of 2008, and the coda of Battlestar Galactica more recently.
With all these shows under my belt, I've come to a point where I lack any obvious contender for what to watch next. Dexter? House? I'm reaching.
But in the back of my mind I know what I have to do, and why I've resisted doing it until now.
The influence of Star Trek is hard for me to measure or understand. I enjoy Wil Wheaton's twitter musings and writing, yet have no perspective on where he comes from. I've seen only one or two of the films over the years (none of the big ones at any rate). The recent update renewed my interest, but I sensed something missing when I watched it with die-hard fans of the show; there was no way I could know what they were experiencing. I never used to mind this massive gap in my understanding of the cultural landscape, but as they say, to everything there is a proper time.
Here's where I need help.
I was always reluctant to dive into Star Trek largely because there was so damn much of it, counting all the different series'. But which ones do I watch?
My gut tells me that the original series and TNG are required viewing, but those two alone leave with ten-odd seasons to get through. I don't know if all of it is necessary, and if not, what I should watch and what I can skip over. I could just wing it, but in the interest of doing things properly (as I imagine anyone would want them done), I'm throwing this plea into the void.

Thank you in advance.

Warts and All

Happy New Year.
I know it probably seems as if I've gone radio silence once again - even my Twitter feed has been particularly quiet lately - and that I've again fallen off the proverbial wagon. The truth is, I've been writing almost every day since the amnesty; it's primarily involved timed writing practices and exercises in telling the truth, getting at the heart of things, etc. Basic stuff. It has naturally yielded a lot of terrible, scrawled pages in various notebooks; so while I've been producing a good amount, none of it has added up to much of anything worth sharing. So it goes.
The theme so far has been that of trying to replace old habits (ID tags: perfectionism, fear) with new ones (ID tags: truth, comfort with making terrible things as an inevitable part of the natural process). It is not an easy thing to do, but - lucky us - life offers constant opportunities to practice it. In the realm of writing, I've held to this by accepting the fact that what I have to say is much less polished (and definitely less insightful) than I'd like. No more blogs about resolve and revelation from me - I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, like everyone else - and I'm not gonna say otherwise anymore, as it would Not Be True.
Until I muster up the guts to share my terrible, unfinished writings with the big scary internet, consider this as a surrogate offering: For the past two weeks I have been recording my Friday night radio show and uploading it via Soundcloud for all to hear. It is live and unedited; if I am nervous or fuck up a transition, it is there on tape. The first portion of last night's show was lost due to an Audacity crash, and in a moment of doubt I considered re-creating the lost half with iTunes (as I'd done to make the pre-New Years show), but it felt wrong and contrary to the spirit of things. So there it stands, warts and all.

While I'm on the subject: I have officially begun my 2nd radio show, which is gearing towards nothing other than getting writing done. Consider yourself invited.