Tag Archives: serial

Apr 05 2017
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podcasts

Podcast Review – S-Town (2017)

Hey 3.5 readers.  BQB here.

The first season of Serial was great.  The second, not as much but still pretty decent.

The peeps at This American Life are back with a new podcast, S-Town.

Short for “Shit Town,” its a tale of John, an Alabama man in his late forties.  He’s full of regret, fancies himself as an intelligent person but feels bad he never left his backwater burg.  When he overhears talk that a local young man committed a murder and got away with it, he contacts a reporter.  The reporter heads to the town to investigate and, well, that’s the point I have listened up to.

Thus far, it’s great and binge-able.  I highly recommend it.

Available on iTunes, or check out their website and listen.

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Dec 11 2015
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BQB Serial Club

BQB’s Serial Club – Serial Season 2, Episode 1 – DUSTWUN

Hello 3.5 readers.

Have you ever listened to the podcast, “Serial?”  In the first season, the hose, Sarah Koenig, presented the case of Adnan Syed and illustrated that how it is possible for all the evidence to be laid out in a case and for people to still be unsure of whether or not a defendant is innocent or guilty.

Koenig has a knack for storytelling style journalism and keeps things lively and moving.

Produced by the creators of This American Life, Serial is back for a second season.  This time the individual under scrutiny is Sgt. Bo Bergdahl.

You might remember he was a major news story last year.  In 2009, he walked away from his post in Afghanistan and six soldiers died while looking for him.

Last year, he was returned to the US after a prisoner swap with the Taliban that led to four major terrorists in captivity going free.

This is a tough one.  My blog is not political…at all.  But I do enjoy good story telling and Sarah Koenig is a master at it.  She definitely knows how to end every episode on a cliffhanger that keeps her audience coming back for more.

So here’s what I propose. If you’re listening to Serial, stop by here once a week and let’s chat about the latest episode, hash out the info and the evidence and try to figure out what’s going on.

Not gonna lie – I might pull the plug on this.  My hope is you all won’t get too political.  Were the wars in the Middle East right or wrong?  I hate this politician or I like that politician or whatever…not really up for debate here.

The crux of this season seems to be around Bergdahl telling his story and admittedly, as of the end of the first episode, it sounds pretty lame.

Briefly summarized – he claims he ran away because he had to create a “DUSTWUN” or a missing soldier situation in which the top brass pays attention.  He claims he had to do this because his unit was poorly managed and hoped this would get him an audience with someone with a high rank that could do something about his complaints about his unit.

I have to admit, that sounds like a pretty fishy story. “I was 23 and I was scared and so I made a dumb mistake and ran away.  I’m very sorry for the six people who died looking for me.”

To me, that would be more sympathetic than, “I was afraid my poorly managed unit was going to lead to people getting killed….so I ran away….um, and got six people killed.”

Anyway, let’s be civil (NOT POLITICAL) and look at it from an academic approach.  If you listened to this first episode, do you believe Bergdahl or do you think he’s full of a smelly substance?

I’ll say up front I believe he’s in the latter column.  My fear is that this guy is basically trying to save himself by impugning the character of a unit that tried to save him when he went AWOL (six of whom died in the process.)

And I get it.  I’ve never served in the military. Who am I to criticize anyone? But, like I said, I’d be sympathetic to “I was young and scared and made a mistake” but hearing him talk as though he is “Jason Bourne” strains credibility.

Cliffhanger for next week – um, it sounds like Sarah is going to call the Taliban on the phone to interview them.  Who knew they were even listed in the phonebook?

Check out Serial Podcast for more.

NOTE: To reiterate, please refrain from the nastiness of politics.  I’m not looking for comments to the effect of “I HATE REPUBLICANS!” or “I HATE DEMOCRATS!” and so on.

The podcast is interesting to me because, as she did in the first season with Syed, Sarah presents two sides of a case and leaves it up to the listener to make his/her own conclusions.

So in other words, we’re not talking about the politics of war – instead, we’re presented with a case.  A soldier walked away from his unit, got 6 people killed during a search for him, his release led to four dangerous people being freed.

Is Bergdahl guilty?  Yes or no and what about the evidence/interviews presented in the podcast make you think that way?

 

 

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Nov 11 2015
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Undesiredverse

The Writer’s Battle: Undesiredverse and Getting it Done

1371251154I can distinctly remember being a kid, sitting on a beach, notepad in hand, writing down details of a space opera in mind.  The central character was a badass dude in a duster.

Over the years, that storyline has existed only in my mind.  That badass’ name has changed many times, as have his wants, desires, motivations, his activities, and so on.

I’ve started and stopped a lot of projects in the past two years.  Every writer goes through that phase.  Some never stop.  Many always have a number of ideas they’re working on.

I’ve decided that Undesiredverse: Wanted will be my first novel.

Why?

  • The heroes are flawed – As we’ll learn, Roman is a degenerate drug addict.  Though he has some standards, he has also done bad things for money.  He’ll soon become a part of something bigger than himself, and be forced to choose a better path.  Meanwhile, Jones was once second in command to the Mighty Potentate.  He’s done something to incur the MP’s wrath, leading him to be stripped of all his supernatural powers and just be a regular, run of the mill alien.  I’m not quite sure we’ll learn exactly what AJ did, at least not in this novel.  But he too is looking for redemption as he’s not thrilled to be Roman’s lackey, but it’s a living.
  • The awesome setup –  Roman Voss is a bounty hunter.  Alien Jones is his trusty sidekick/pilot.  Together, they travel “the Undesiredverse” i.e. the collection of miserable planets whose citizens are too corrupt and violent to be allowed entry into the Rakan Collective, i.e. the Mighty Potentate’s pristine paradise one hundred billion worlds strong.
  • Villains that you’ll love to hate – They include:
  • SOURCEMIND: The dangerously sentient artificial intelligence who conquered an entire planet.  Though he’s stored in a massive mainframe on Omcoros, he could be controlling any machine anywhere.  Is he in your toaster?  Your toothbrush?  Did your TV just switch on by itself?  That wasn’t a glitch.  It was totally Sourcemind.
  • THE TARAZNI CLAN – After thousands of years of waging needless wars, a majority of the demonic looking beings who called Tolloo home decided to mend their evil ways and work toward a peaceful future.  Unfortunately, a minority of renegade Tollusks, referring to themselves as the Tarazni Clan, disagreed, seized the planet’s nuclear arsenal, and used it to punish the peaceniks by blowing their own homeworld to kingdom come on the way out.  They’ve been traveling the stars, conquering worlds ever since.  Earth is their most recent acquisition.
  • THE ONE WORLD ORDER – Earth’s planetary government, filled with corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who care more about saving their skins than their world’s best interests.  Currently operated by collaborationists who rubber stamp the Tarazni Clan’s demands without question.
  • THE VENDRAGONS – Not every vendragon is a terrorist, but there sure are a whole helluvalot of terrorists who are vendragons.  Religious zealots of the Vendragonism faith have separated themselves into two factions, the Red Vendrigo Cult and the Blue Vendrigo Cult.  They’ve been fighting for thousands of years over what color shirt Vendrigo, the holy man of their faith, wore one fateful day.  They literally agree on everything else, but varying holy book interpretations as to whether the shirt was blue or red have led to a very testy situation.
  • THE CABAL – the multi-species intergalactic space mafia.  Their hands, hooves, flippers, fins, etc are in everything.  They killed Roman’s family so naturally, he doesn’t like them very much.

MORE POINTS TO CONSIDER:

  • The story is easy to serialize – I need to finish my one post a day for a year challenge, but I also have to get cracking on writing a novel.  This allows me to do both.  The plot is that Roman and Jones go on a mission that ends up with them taking care of a very confused woman.  Every scumbag lowlife in the Undesiredverse wants her, but our trio has no idea why.  They become the three most “wanted” beings around and as they avoid capture by various scumbags, the secret of who the woman is and why she’s so important will slowly trickle out.
  • In other words – the beginning, middle, and end are clear.  Now I just have to rack up some daily word counts to get a rough draft onto paper.
  • But do keep in mind – this is just a rough draft.  It will be polished again and again before publication.

Finally, let me just say, I’ll NEED YOUR HELP.

Please check it out.  Tell me what works.  Tell me what doesn’t.  Point out potholes.  Tell me the problems you see.  Help me vet this and make it as awesome as possible.

Here are the first 7 chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

And if you prefer the Wattpad experience (it is a bit easier to read on mobile devices) – check it out.

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