Author Topic: PC Giant: The Curandero And The Swede: A Tale From The 1001 American Nights  (Read 32247 times)

knigget

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The story was so good I never noticed the audio, and narration was perfect for the content.  It also resonated with my own experiences.  Two thumbs up!

http://www.apoGrypha.blogspot.com

What would have been written. 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)


supergrover

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Like others, I was interested in the story, but couldn't listen more than 10 minutes due to the very poor sound quality.



Alcairha

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Beautiful touching story with a great ending - I loved it, including the story nestled in the story nestled in the story. Then again, I loved Carlos Ruiz Zafon and Isabel Allende too. My favorite character was the Mexican witch doctor/therapist. I agree the audio was awful and the narrator's mostly flat recital didn't do the story any favors either.



jjtraw

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Quote
For me, the main character of the story was Storytelling itself.  That was the point for me of all of the stories within stories, branching out and tendriling and some disappearing and some coming back to the main thread.  The story was about the power of just wrapping all of your experience in story and thereby imbuing it with irreversible significance.

Very well said, internalogic!

The final point - if you can't tell the story of your own life, it's missing the soul of it - that was powerfully, powerfully conveyed. Made me cry.

And the reading was spot-on. I know a few, great oral storytellers, who can take an everyday story and make it hours-worth of art, carring your attention through a thousand digressions. It takes a sense of tension, and timing. This had both. Congratulations to both Daniel Abraham and Kip Manley - very well done, both of you.

The audio quality, as has been said, was terrible. At first, I honestly thought the character was "Uncle Dad." (The story of how he met his wife musta been something else...)

So, here's another vote for remastering. I'm grateful for the chance to hear the story, and I would *love* to have a copy clear and good enough to share with friends not familiar with the podcast.



Dave

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Hey, did this story ever get re-released without the static? I'd like to give it a listen...

-Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)


DKT

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Unfortunately, it has not, although it was talked about and may still be a possibility. Let me look into it some more.


DKT

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"Actually, it's a pretty good story."

And you all should get to hear it - and hear it much more clearly - very soon.

 :D


DKT

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Happy Valentine's Day, people! It's been re-recorded.

You can find it either in the original post, or in this blog post.

Enjoy!


yicheng

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Awesome!!!!   ;D



DKT

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Well, this is humiliating. It turns out that there were some blips - repeated lines, etc. in the narration. If you haven't listened yet, you should probably late until the corrected version gets posted. Apologies to everyone, especially to Mr. Abraham. We'll have it fixed as soon as possible.


stePH

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Well, this is humiliating. It turns out that there were some blips - repeated lines, etc. in the narration. If you haven't listened yet, you should probably late until the corrected version gets posted. Apologies to everyone, especially to Mr. Abraham. We'll have it fixed as soon as possible.

Mine downloaded from the feed this morning. Will the re-corrected version go to the feed and auto-download as well, or will I need to go to manual?

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DKT

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If you've already downloaded it, then I believe you'll have to grab it again manually.

The corrected version should be up tonight.


DKT

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Well, this is humiliating. It turns out that there were some blips - repeated lines, etc. in the narration. If you haven't listened yet, you should probably late until the corrected version gets posted. Apologies to everyone, especially to Mr. Abraham. We'll have it fixed as soon as possible.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd the corrected corrected version is now up at our site. Thanks for your patience, everyone.


Dave

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I facepalmed a few times listening to the uncorrected version, but the story was good enough that the glitches were quickly forgotten. Glad to finally get to hear the whole story! Thanks, guys.

-Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)


Kaa

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Seems like I remember this one when it was first released, and I couldn't hear a single word. So I'm glad that it was re-recorded.

However, I found the story too rambling, too confusing.  It would perhaps be better in print where the reader could see the gaps that are intended to denote changes in time. And perhaps it was because I listened to it in two sittings rather than just one, but by the time I was into the second listening, I had forgotten the framing story...and the framing story inside the framing story...and the one inside that...

So, yeah. Not my favorite story. But not horrible, either. Just not to my taste.

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Max e^{i pi}

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Hmm...., recursive storytelling.
Fortunately I have a CS mind and was able to follow this all rather easily.
Some of the stories were better than others, but all in all it was very nice.
I missed this on the first time around, it was before I saw the light. (Well, heard the light).

Cogito ergo surf - I think therefore I network

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Unblinking

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Hmm...., recursive storytelling.
Fortunately I have a CS mind and was able to follow this all rather easily.
Some of the stories were better than others, but all in all it was very nice.
I missed this on the first time around, it was before I saw the light. (Well, heard the light).

Luckily it didn't spawn an infinite recursive loop that continued until it used up all of your memory!



Max e^{i pi}

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Hmm...., recursive storytelling.
Fortunately I have a CS mind and was able to follow this all rather easily.
Some of the stories were better than others, but all in all it was very nice.
I missed this on the first time around, it was before I saw the light. (Well, heard the light).

Luckily it didn't spawn an infinite recursive loop that continued until it used up all of your memory!
It can't.
I'm the top level call to the story, it starts and ends with me. The end case is one of three:
1. I turn off my player.
2. My player runs out of battery.
3. I fall asleep.

Yet another case of the real world beating the computational one.  ;)

Cogito ergo surf - I think therefore I network

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Unblinking

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Hmm...., recursive storytelling.
Fortunately I have a CS mind and was able to follow this all rather easily.
Some of the stories were better than others, but all in all it was very nice.
I missed this on the first time around, it was before I saw the light. (Well, heard the light).

Luckily it didn't spawn an infinite recursive loop that continued until it used up all of your memory!
It can't.
I'm the top level call to the story, it starts and ends with me. The end case is one of three:
1. I turn off my player.
2. My player runs out of battery.
3. I fall asleep.

Yet another case of the real world beating the computational one.  ;)

Ah, but if it were ended improperly it wouldn't deallocate the memory and release it back to the heap.  You'd have to reboot to get it all back, and humans don't reboot very well--shut everything down and it's a little difficult to get it all running smoothly again.



Max e^{i pi}

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Hmm...., recursive storytelling.
Fortunately I have a CS mind and was able to follow this all rather easily.
Some of the stories were better than others, but all in all it was very nice.
I missed this on the first time around, it was before I saw the light. (Well, heard the light).

Luckily it didn't spawn an infinite recursive loop that continued until it used up all of your memory!
It can't.
I'm the top level call to the story, it starts and ends with me. The end case is one of three:
1. I turn off my player.
2. My player runs out of battery.
3. I fall asleep.

Yet another case of the real world beating the computational one.  ;)

Ah, but if it were ended improperly it wouldn't deallocate the memory and release it back to the heap.  You'd have to reboot to get it all back, and humans don't reboot very well--shut everything down and it's a little difficult to get it all running smoothly again.

Reboot? I never reboot my computer to recover from a memory leak. There's a magical incantation for that:
Code: [Select]
$sudo fuser -a -ki

Cogito ergo surf - I think therefore I network

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iamafish

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nice story. Took me a while to get to it because it's sitting at the bottom of my 'currently downloaded' list, given that they're in numerical order.

I didn't hear it first time round because I only started listening to the pods recently.

At first I was a little put out by the fact that the stories seemed to be going through a list of all the minority groups in the US. Black guy, gay guy, Indian guy, Mexican guy, etc. But soon I got that that was the idea. I like recursive stories, because I forget where we started and then get the 'oh yeah' moment when we return to the original story. All the stories were satisfying and interesting, and tied together really well.

It seems that length effects my enjoyment of PodCastle more than the other pods. I don't really dig the flash fiction and tend to really enjoy the long episodes. I guess that's because fantasy is my favourite genres and I'm used to epics like LotR or series like WoT and SoT. I like sinking my teeth into fantasy.


H. Bergeron

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I listened to the re-recording of this story and don't even remember the original recording - I think probably I skipped it due to the sound quality.

What a loss!

This story was great. I listen to my podcasts while I'm doing work around the house or driving, and sometimes follow with half an ear for a little while. This story made me laugh with its digressions into other stories as I was following along and then suddenly would be thinking, "Wait, how did we get here?" It really reminds me of a man named Willem Lange, who is a commentator on Vermont Public Radio and also a writer. I saw him live at First Night in Burlington and he told the story of breaking his leg (and missing the previous year's First Night) for about 45 minutes - a story that started, he said, back when he was a young man, working at one of the last residential logging camps in New Hampshire...

I love this kind of purposeful rambling along. It's very irritating if you're talking to someone and having a conversation where it happens, but it can be very fun if you're willing to just trust the speaker - the storyteller, as someone earlier in this thread put it - and enjoy the ride.

I approve of this story. I don't necessarily like Uncle Dab's stories within the story and their unapologetic depictions of "the queer" and the ghost of the girl, but I really liked the moral of the tale - that everything has to have a story. That's how we connect, it's the way we share information with one another. It's important to be able to tell stories, rather than just reciting facts, or saying "one thing led to another."

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jjtraw

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Thank you, thank you, thank you, for reposting this story! It's one of my favorite Podcastles :) I'm sorry Kip Manley was unavailable to narrate, because the original reading was great, if poorly recorded. But on the other hand, if he had been available then we would have missed Dave Thompson's reading, which was also wonderful!

You've made my day :)

-JJT



tinygaia

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I actually listened to this story the first time around, but I wasn't participating in the forums then. It's odd that I don't remember the poor audio quality - it must have been bad, to warrant a re-recording - but as I listened to it again, I only remembered liking the story. Is that a commentary on how good the story was or on how low my standards are? O.o

Anyway, I like the story's similarity to the original 1001 nights, which also goes around in circles, but mostly I like that it's true to the narrator. Forget the American highways and deserts and what-have-you: the setting of this tale is the main character's weird uncle telling him a story. I'm blessed to have many friends and relatives who are great storytellers and their method is very similar to this one. One thing leads to another.

Also, in my mental movie of this story, the part of the Curandero was played by Danny Trejo.