I know that it sounds a bit ridiculous that I, the Sacred Scribe, "second unto "Bob," as I'm often inaccurately introduced, had not actually gone through that formality. Surely, you think, I've put in $30 worth of extra work at some point; surely the thousands that I lost over the years keeping the boat afloat should buy me at least a LIFE PRESERVER. But I am no different from any other SubGenius. If I had wanted to keep putting it off, and deciding that $30 was just TOO MUCH TO PAY for eternal pleasure and cosmic squirtfullness, then I would fry just as surely as will Joe Pink next door. Same goes for Philo Drummond, Janor Hypercleats, Paul Mavrides, even Dr. Howll. I don't believe we ever actually saw the actual $30 from any of them. Sure they're on the mailing list, sure they saved "Bob's" life many times, but so what? If ain't $30 it ain't $30.
It is the CARDBOARD MINISTER'S CARD and the COSMIC FACT of the SPENDING of the thirty that is the true Ticket. There are no "back stage passes" to the Escape Vessels, my friends.
I hope my wife and my children send in their $30 too. If not, too bad. I'm not gonna "buy" their faith for 'em.
It didn't take more than 3 weeks to get my Membership Pack. It takes longer for most people who send checks, because we have to wait for them to clear. In this case it was more like a money order, cash, or a credit card order, because I wrote the $30 on a SubGenius Foundation check, and we knew I was good for it.
I just had to share my spiritual rebirth with you all.
*******
Other rebirths are aborning. SubSITE is still actually "AT" SUNSite at UNC, and for now you should keep using our standard URL, but if you're trying to force a pal or lost soul to visit SubSITE, and can't remember its rather unweildy and nonstandard URL, you can now tell them:
http://www.subgenius.com
For now, only use that when you can't remember www.subgenius.com. It WILL later be the permanent proper address for all things Foundational. For right now it's just a doorstop, sort of.
*******
To understate it, we are excited about this Real Audio development. HOUR OF SLACK #563 is up and running in RealAudio at SubSITE. It's costing us nothing. It is all done on cheap home equipment. It actually works. Anybody can hear the Church shows anywhere, anytime they want to, with ordinary standard gear... ehhh, and a 28.8 modem. (If you only have 14.4, we still have the shows in TrueSpeach also.)
Rev. Eyre Rend aka Wandarer is to be elevated to the status of a minor deity for his courageous experimentation, brilliant technical skill, and his superb taste in cults, for what he has done for HOUR OF SLACK and all Church audio. It may well be that he has in fact devised something very special for Internet audio in general. We are still trying to figure out WHY this works so well, when it's not supposed to, without costing thousands of dollars!
I have to wonder, why aren't more people whipping out their own "shows"? Why are so many still sitting around complaining about how bad TV is, and how awful the radio is, and how all the bands suck, when they now have absolutely no excuse for not showing the rest of us HOW TO DO IT RIGHT???
To me, that is the most wonderful thing about the way el cheapo tech is gradually tearing down the walls of Conspiracy media, NOW, at the very last second, just before ALL MEDIUM SIZED MEDIA PRODUCERS ARE SWALLOWED UP BY THE FEW GIGANTIC MEGACORPS.
To me, what's so wonderful is NOT that more people can hear the show. That's great, but most people would probably think the show SUCKS even if they heard of it. It's not even that after 20 years of busting ass trying to slide THE SLIGHTEST SLIVER of sedition and subversion and good old weird shit under the CRACKS of the Conspiracy doors, so that the Word of Dobbs got out to the market, maybe, just for half a second, that now it's easier; no, and it's not even that once again we, the Rebel Forces, have won a slight respite from the all-consuming, all-controlling FCC-FedGov-PoliCor-BigSister-GasCo-DrugCo-Publishing DeathStar, for another few months.
No.
The reason I am so excited by little advances like this, is that now, the next time I hear some pompous whining 20 year old know-it-all with 5 tongue rings bitch about how all bands suck and all shows are stupid and nobody has anything interesting to say, I can hand them the fucking microphone and the keyboard and say, "WELL THEN HERE: YOU SHOW US HOW TO DO IT RIGHT."
THAT is why I love being able to do the show in RealAudio so much. It's not that my little SHOW is necessarily all that great, although it is; that's a matter of opinion. Maybe only 5 people ever pay any attention to it. Fine. All I know is, for the last 3 years you couldn't hear the show in Dallas, and now you can again, AND WE DIDN'T NEED ANY CONSPIRACY HELP to do it. FUCK the station. FUCK the transmitter. FUCK the record company. FUCK the record store customer geeks. FUCK THE EXECUTIVES ONE AND ALL. But most of all, FUCK THE CRITICS!!!
'Course you do have to have a web site, or a friend who'll loan one.
I WILL ADMIT that, well, yeah, when push comes to shove this RealAudio isn't perfect. You have to know what you're doing in the digito-tweakery and sampling-rates and all like that to make it sound its best... that's what Rev. Wandarer does. His RealAudio files sound MUCH better than most, and he puts a lot of effort into that.
And... naw, it ain't really like FM stereo. For one thing, it's mono. And it does have a strange special sound to it, a faint digital flutter that seems to come and go... I'm sure some bands will be paying extra to get that effect on their albums. And when there's a whole HELL of a lot of background sound detail, it muddies up some. But GENERALLY it sounds every bit as good as what used to come out of my first boom box. Pretty full sound. STARTLINGLY full sound in fact. I've been watching the development of internet sound for awhile, from a distance, and this quantum jump liked to shocked the living ghee outa me.
Sound from my computer usually comes out of two crappy speakers on the Apple monitor. Wandarer's RA files sound LOUDER than some audio CDs I have and dalmost as clear. When I run the sound over to Tarzan's Radio Studio across the room, and pump it through the BIGGER shitty speakers, it's almost JUST FINE.
I foresee a great future for hilarious audio. Things that should never live in stores, like prank call tapes, are perfect for "Net Radio." Check out the blooperian celebrity bashing and shunned audio moments in the LATEST DOWNLOADS section of SubSITE.
HEAR the HIDDEN TALENTS of
WILLIAM SHATNER
JANOR HYPERCLEATS
LINDA MCCARTNEY
AND SO MANY MORE!
Wandarer says he's going to take on the job of massively revising our audio pages, which (like the Art Mines) were originally laid out for something SANE and MANAGEABLE, not the sprawling multi-armed beast that it has become.
Next time you go to HEAR with Dobbs' "EARS," follow the link to Wandarer's site for what can only be called "A FUCKING ENCYCLOPEDIA" of sound files of EVERY kind. Download times are minimal. He's also got a whole page dedicated to helping up upgrade all your plug-ins and sound apps so the stuff runs smoothly.
A-ooogah; ihemsih; kreegah bundolo.
Death to vermin.
Original file name: aOOOgah
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