EP306: Radio Nowhere

[Wilson Fowlie]

I especially liked the little extra bits, like the static and the beep.

Yeah Wilson, wanted to ask -- how did you get that static into your voice?

Since you ask...

This was the first story recording I have done using only Audacity - previously I've used the sequencing software that I use for making rehearsal tracks for my show chorus.

I did look to see if there were recordings of static available for download. There are, but I didn't end up using any, because it turns out that Audacity has a White Noise generator. I used that to generate several seconds of the static noise, then used Audacity's 'envelope' tool to raise and lower its volume (and that of my voice, though in the opposite direction, naturally).

Audacity also has a tone generator, which is what I used for the answering machine beep.

The one thing I wished I'd done after submitting the finished recording was to have put Ziggy's voice on the answering machine through a filter to make it sound like it was coming through a telephone (not too much, just enough for atmosphere).

[kibitzer]

Cool! Audacity is pretty damned awesome, especially for the price ;-)

[Scattercat]

I'm glad I'm not alone.  Usually I'm the only one who feels like a story was bludgeoning me with foreshadowing.  I don't have quite the same active dislike for this story as some, but I certainly wasn't overly fond of it.  If we had dialed back on Ziggy's sitcom-level hint-dropping a bit, made Liam's grief less ridonkulous, and actually gone with the jerk ending (Liam walks through the empty world, approaches the college radio station, and begins to speak: "This is Radio Nowhere.  Is there anyone out there?  Is anyone still alive...?"), I'd have been happier all around.  As it was, the motifs were overly aggressive (Sonic the Hedgehog isn't as ring-obsessed, I swear) and the ending fell very flat for me due to the previously mentioned difficulty empathizing with someone as clearly in the wrong as Liam.  (Really?  He has only *one friend* in his life?  Even I'm not that bad.)

Interestingly, I suspect I'd have been much less antagonistic toward the story in text.  The ability to skim and speed-read would have made the experience much more enjoyable.  I realize this is damning with faint criticism, but I think the inflexibility of the audio format (can't skip accurately, can't speed up easily, fifty minutes to complete compared to seven) turned what would have been a forgettable but not unpleasant story into a real grind.

[Talia]

I really, really want to hear Radio Voice Guy's story. I wish this story had chosen to explore that more, rather than take the route that it did.

[Devoted135]

This was definitely not my favorite for many reasons that have already been covered extensively. But the narration was great, and I loved the little extras like the static. Also the "live" intro and outro, that was fun.

[Unblinking]

I have been going INSANE since I heard this story on Sunday. WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MAN? is he still alone? is he dead? why could the duck stand on water?
the rest of the story was just OK,  apart from the voice, I found it very predictable.

It is a rare species known as the Jesus Duck.  Besides it's odd water-walking adaptation, it is also capable of sending telepathic messages in the form of radio broadcasts.  Usually these take the form of a confused and terrified man, or sometimes a dating website infomercial.  This characteristic is thought to attract Ham Radio enthusiasts and physicists who can't stop grieving over their long-dead spouses, which comprise one of two parts of the ducks primary food source.  The water-walking adaptation serves to attract their other food source, people with Jesus complexes.  The duck lures these people out onto the apparently solid water, and then waits for them to drown.  For this reason, the Jesus Duck is thought to be the origin of the legends of the will-o'-wisp.

[Kaa]

It is a rare species known as the Jesus Duck...

You, sir, win One (1) Internet™ for today.

[Dem]

Completely quackers.

[childoftyranny]

Just to be difficult I present my theory of, WHY LIAM WHY?, what if our poor boy was actually trapped in his own time bubble. He was literally unable to move onward, obsessing over one day internally, as opposed to the external method of Groundhog Day. This might be a far stretch but for reasons beyond me this schmuck didn't strike me as annoyingly as he did others, perhaps because he didn't monologue about it... In this situation instead of what he thinks, going back into time, he luckily stumbled across a window back to the same stream as the rest of the world. It really seems the only sensible explanation as to his extreme obliviousness, that he could not even think of loving someone else because he loved HER.

[kibitzer]

It is a rare species known as the Jesus Duck.  Besides it's odd water-walking adaptation, it is also capable of sending telepathic messages in the form of radio broadcasts.  Usually these take the form of a confused and terrified man, or sometimes a dating website infomercial.  This characteristic is thought to attract Ham Radio enthusiasts and physicists who can't stop grieving over their long-dead spouses, which comprise one of two parts of the ducks primary food source.  The water-walking adaptation serves to attract their other food source, people with Jesus complexes.  The duck lures these people out onto the apparently solid water, and then waits for them to drown.  For this reason, the Jesus Duck is thought to be the origin of the legends of the will-o'-wisp.

[citation needed]

[Wilson Fowlie]

Ahahahahaha

[Wizard of Zoots]

I couldn't figure out why a college radio station would be playing a radio drama. I don't think ours does that.

Why wouldn't a college radio station play a radio drama?  I don't think my college had a radio station, but if there had been one, and it had played dramas, I would've listened.  It seems especially plausible if there is an active drama club trying to reach out and get people interested in theatre.

"Moon Over Morocco" is a real thing (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Over_Morocco). Since I've heard radio stations playing vintage audio drama (or audio comedy) before, I didn't think it was all that odd.

Of course, what I did find interesting was that it actually exists. I'm curious and want to hear it, but not curious enough to spend $40, which is what it costs to download it from the ZBS website.

I’ve been a fan of ZBS ever since I heard the 4th Tower of Inverness serial over 30 years ago.  Moon Over Morocco is 10 hours long.  So $40 isn’t so much to ask.  I must have played that series at least 20 times, it never seems to get old. Tom Lopez the creator actually was giving it away as a free streaming download not too long ago.  Course if you want to read the story he also is selling the script for that production for just $10.

[bolddeceiver]

First off, love the ZBS reference, while I was a bit more a Ruby than a Jack fan, still brought me back.  I find the ZBS stuff a little too over the top with the new-age spirituality when I go back to it now, but I enjoyed it immensely back in the day.

Now to the story  

A lot of the comment I was writing in my head is already here, so I'll try not to overduplicate, but it just didn't do it for me.  The plot was good enough, if a bit predictable.  The time-travel mechanism was unclear and inconsistent in its effects -- why was it transporting people and ducks but not brick walls, radio transmitters, and other scenery (and don't say "it only affects living things," as far as physics are concerned those are just more energy and matter in a fancy pattern)?  Was it just affecting these two people and a duck -- if so, why on earth, if not why isn't there any sign of anyone else noticing these unusual phenomena?  Also, why is there always conveniently a duck handy to illustrate whatever it was supposed to be illustrating?

The characters, though, were where it really fell apart.  As someone who has experienced the untimely loss of a significant other, I don't love how often fiction seems to say that anyone who suffers such a loss must be terribly broken decades later.  This guy doesn't need a time machine, he needs a good therapist.

Ziggy was even worse.  If you have romantic feelings for a friend, sorry, let me go back and emphasize, a friend, one who you've been friends with for a long period of time, through which you've both been in romantic relationships with other people, it's your job to say something about it.  Giving passive-agrressive hints and acting like a martyr because they're not picking up on it is simply ridiculous, as there's every chance the person has picked up on it but isn't interested and doesn't want to cause a scene by acknowledging your hints and turning you down, or has picked up on it and is interested but doesn't want to make a scene by acknowledging your hints just in case they're misreading them, or they have just so contextualized your relationship as a friendly one as to not pick up on it at all (as outsiders we can see that she digs him, but he's been in an at-least-15-year-long platonic friendship with her).

I guess both characters were too broken -- and too willfully broken, Liam unwilling to get psychiatric help, Ziggy unwilling to speak up about what she actually wanted -- to interest me that much.  By the end I was having a hard time following the plot because the characters were just so irritating.

On the whole the production and voice acting were great (although the drunk acting could use some work), and it's always a mix of fun and jealousy to get those con reports.

[bolddeceiver]

I’ve been a fan of ZBS ever since I heard the 4th Tower of Inverness serial over 30 years ago.  Moon Over Morocco is 10 hours long.  So $40 isn’t so much to ask.  I must have played that series at least 20 times, it never seems to get old. Tom Lopez the creator actually was giving it away as a free streaming download not too long ago.  Course if you want to read the story he also is selling the script for that production for just $10.

Also, if you just want to get a taste of ZBS but aren't sure you're ready to drop the big bucks, a lot of municipal library systems with decent audiobook collections have the stuff in their stacks.

[Wizard of Zoots]

Also, if you are interested in how Moon Over Morocco was recorded using sounds recorded in Morocco (podcast 5) and other tips on audio drama recording, Tom Lopez has free pod casts available on his site, ZBS.org

[FireTurtle]

Since the Jesus Duck question has already been answered, and anything I really wanted to say about my feelings of the story have been well-articulated by others, I will attempt to articulate what I thought happened with the "Ziggy on the water" issue.
I interpreted her motive as being a sort of passive suicide (and hey- thats consistent with her character!) She basically told the MC that by "resetting" his life she would be effectively wiped out, so I figured she thought she was gong to die anyway, why not sit on the ice/ground/whatever. And, if he failed, she would die anyway and it wouldn't be her fault. All just because she was completely incapable of saying she was in luuuuv with some total loser.
By the way, did anyone else find it kind of ludicrous that this man was able to basically fire up the collider whenever he wanted to run tests that blacked out the whole campus night after night (and who invited this guy to stick around either? "Gee- lets hire that uber-dead girlfriend-obsessed creepy weirdo to work at the collider, cuz all the other applicants seem so sane...." I mean, how did this guy manage to get his PhD or whatever when all he can think about is his dead girlfriend? What was his thesis: Quantum Vector Analysis of Blue Toyotas at 00:07?

Stepping back now. I was glad the story was left on my iDevice because I had to drive home late and the frustration kept me awake and perky throughout the drive!

[Ghoti]

I rather liked the misdirection of the non-foreshadowing-after-all songs picked for the radio - Break On Through to the Other Side made me note the lack of subtlety, and then just after It's the End Of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) everything went dark… And then the lights came back on and the story ended elsewise.  Clever.

My better half has rightly called me Captain Oblivious in many respects, but even I was feeling sorry for Ziggy, who was at the point of throwing herself at Liam like wet pasta in hopes of finally sticking.

Count me in with wonderment at the whole Scared Lonely Radio Voice Guy thing; that whole thread could have been cut out of the story entirely and nothing would have been lost but for listeners' frustrations.

[Scattercat]

The lonely radio voice is the only part of the story I like.  It's a bit of unexplained weirdness that enhances the mood in a more subtle way than many of the other elements.  (It's also most likely a possible future impinging on the same space, with Liam having cut himself out of time entirely and trapped in a Langoliers-esque version of the college.)

[matweller]

I guess I took the voice on the radio as being a glimpse of what the future held if the old girlfriend was saved -- a future avoided by choosing the new. It was a bit of misdirection and another motivation to avoid that path at the same time. To me it was not only not extraneous, but I think in a somewhat longer version of the story, it would have been revealed to be part of the main character's motivation for changing his mind.

[Listener]

The story was way too long, and too implausible (he just HAPPENS to work for the Canadian version of CERN?), and that voice -- which I personally thought was someone broadcasting "War of the Worlds", since IIRC the story and/or Jackie's death occurred in October, so, y'know, Halloween -- needed payoff.

To be honest the story feels like it's too early a draft to be published yet. Like there's all these big ideas and set-pieces and relationships that the author wants to include because it's personal to him in some way (my guess is that he went to this college and worked at the campus radio station), but instead of going back and shaving off the bits that don't make a ton of sense or get properly paid off, he just submitted it and the editor who purchased it liked it as-is. Which, you know, is totally fine, but I can understand why so many people were so upset about various parts of the story.

[childoftyranny]

Another piece I saw people wondering about was the "convenient" disappearance of the ring at the ending, I think that could tie in with the radio guy, and would be the reason that his cries are the last thing we heard. The obvious foreshadowing is that doing this stuff would trap Liam in some alternate universe/time, well why are we assuming that didn't happen? His final haunting words, "I am.", could easily be an indication that the original voice was once again on the outside.

I know that the obvious response to my words is that I am being too kind, that reading into some of the strange unexplained things and asking, "what if they are clues" rather than writing them off as poor choices. But I think a few of these ideas make the story far more interesting and enjoyable, if they might not have been the purpose. Gosh, presenting that harkens me back to Criticism in college and the one theory, whose title I forget, which you consider the ideas that are read from it matter far more than what the author intended. That was the opposite of the historical method wherein people figured that what it meant at the time in context was the most important bit.
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I'm not sure what I think about the concept that this guy working at psuedo-CERN as being too convenient, yea that he can run a collider by cell-phone seems a bit fishy, the real question is that they are running the campus and a collider on the same grid? But I digress off that and relate that my old campus had at least a nuclear reactor (currently down due to its license expiring) and possibly some smallish collider because I know we have a high energy physics department and develop partical sensors so I'm not sure that depending on the University of what else what a single person with some silly obession might be pulling. Its a bit of a stretch for sure, ah well.

[pootboy]

this was actually one of my favorite pods.  i guess the pockyklips voice really did it for me, even if the grieving man/time travel tale is a bit overcooked these days.  which is also why the ending was very frustrating for me.  but i think matweller cleared things up for me a bit, albeit not all that cleanly-- i'm thinking the voice is a glimpse into a pocket-universe of some kind, a la donnie darko?-- that would have been generated had he meddled with the time-line-- he would have been trapped, alone, in some starless, timeless (e.g. why the water is walkable-- time stops, thereby solidifying matter in fluid states??  tho that doesn't explain why the duck is...oh nevermind, i can't even deal with the f&cking duck right now) static limbo--  only problem is, he/they would have RECOGNIZED his OWN voice instantly, coming from the radio, if it were indeed him, trapped in a timeless pocketverse.  

i know it's considered crass, but at this point i'd love nothing more than the author to step forward and spell this out for us.  i've enjoyed trying to decode this, but I think we've gone as far as we can and I, for one, am now just chafing to just get some answers to the riddles.

[Spindaddy]

I think that Wilson's reading really made this story enjoyable. The static radio voice actually startled me (I was driving home at 2am and needed something to keep me going for the hour + ride) to the point where I laughed at myself and then nervously lowered the volume a bit.

I've known people like Ziggy and Liam, but they are so dysfunctional and insane with their own craziness that staying near them makes you just as crazy--but even the people I knew figured their baggage out before hitting 30. Sure, they are still flakes, but they are flaky together. Fifteen years is way too long to pine over someone that you met over the course of a year--and chasing someone for over 15 years borders on the insane.

I still enjoyed the story. I edited the 15 years into 5 years--because that made way more sense to me.

I was disappointed there was nothing more about the "kid in the tunnel" where it was boarded up and I think there was a bit further disappointment that the voice just disappeared.  I had half hoped Liam would save Ziggy only to find an angry Jackie standing there.

[Thomas]

ok, 15 years?? a bit farfetched, 10 is stretching things, 5-7 would have been better, both for the mourning and the girl in waiting (What woman would wait 15 yrs?? not many)

as to the other elements of the story, the foreshadowing: there where three outcomes predicted, he saves his wife but loses the girl, he realizes he is love with the girl and forgets his insane obsession, or something goes awry and the end of civilization occurs. the author, i feel, took the easy route.

It seems as though the author put in the "Is anybody out there?" as a red herring and everyone has bought into it. It was a distraction that worked.

I personally have issues with time travel stories and generally do not enjoy them, but this one had me intrigued and kept me interested enough to stay with it

[Listener]

It seems as though the author put in the "Is anybody out there?" as a red herring and everyone has bought into it. It was a distraction that worked.

Red Herring!