I still think way too much for my own good.

We'll just say I have feelers out in a few places. Actions taken, messages sent, things done, just waiting for responses.

One of these things was an audition Saturday for Metamorphoses, being put on by Generic Theatre Company here at GW. All the shows I've ever seen by Generic have been positively exceptional (the most recent one, Stone Cold Dead Serious, engaged my mind so deeply that I was compelled to see it twice and seriously tempted to go a third time), so I did go into this audition knowing that despite the various ways in which I've proven myself, I'd probably be playing up in this new context. The tone and words of the closing salutations they gave me at the end of my trial told me that, despite my best effort, I had completely bombed. Now, I've been turned down for at least one improv act before, but I'm not sure I've ever been completely rejected for a play. So, a combination of my lack of faith in my own senses, my curiosity, and utter denial leaves me anticipating their cast selections.

But other things are out there, also, prompts for things technical and interpersonal, warranting at least acknowledgement if not a complete response. Some are already slightly awkward. Some would become more awkward if I were to press harder, so I won't.

But, goddamn, it's as if over the past week I learned how to become invisible, without any of the benefits. It's bugging me, perhaps more than it should.

It would have bugged me more last night, but I figured out an excuse to seek relief. I was to record the fifth episode of The WasteCast. I was absolutely going out of my mind! It felt as if nobody in the world existed who was interested in my welfare. I got so sick of the inside of my room that I went to get dinner just to leave. I wasn't even particularly hungry, but sitting at home, alone and consummately unacknowledged, was sharply grating on my nerves. I started to consider that, since I didn't want to go home, maybe I'd have to record the show in the form of about four five-minute phone posts, but decided that it was way more post-production than I was willing to do.

So, after dinner, I stopped by the Mitchell Hall 7-Eleven for some frozen confections, and then reluctantly dragged my feet back to my home, room 108, to once again desperately seek out even a shred of human contact. When at some point I found out that Meris had replied to some comment I made in the previous few minutes, something clicked.

(A little background: Meris is an online contact I made at least as early as the spring of 2001, and maybe earlier. We didn't really talk all that much until a much more recent moment. Between when we met and when we actually started talking, I had lost and re-found school and learned a bit more than I had already known about Ween, while she had married a soldier and undertaken some significant geographical movement. Currently the main line of communication between us is the nasty LiveJournal—which I use myself almost solely to maintain written contact with a subset of my friends who actually put real journals on the thing, and to make the occasional phone post. But on occasion, amid extreme boredom on both parts, wacky phone calls do ensue.)

I deduced that Meris was online, so she'd probably be able to talk on the phone for at least a little while.

Thanks to a purchase I'd made earlier in the week from Skype, I would be able to receive phone calls on my Mac... and record them into the show.

Minutes later, the recording of The WasteCast 1:5 was underway, with Meris, via telephone, as the first guest to ever make an appearance. The show ran past 49 minutes, beating out the previous episode, which had been the longest, by over 20 minutes. And it was good!

Why was it good? Why am I so vastly prouder of this show than any of the four previous? I'll give you two reasons.

One, this episode was the first ever to meet the ideal I originally had for the program—to translate the wonderfully quirky yet regular conversations I have with my friends into a listenable, easy-to-digest, mass-media form.

The first thoughts I ever had about making the show were that it needed to have a few interesting, possibly out-of-left-field lines of thought to work from. When talking on such things on a journal, my usual method of mass communication, I've noticed that sometimes I leave out entire important parts of my thoughts just because they are so obvious to me that I forget they merit mention, and nobody is right there asking me to reconcile that gap. Feedback would therefore be crucial. With an on-demand, non-live audiocast, though, I wouldn't have the added interactivity benefit enjoyed by, for example, DJs on Radio KoL, who are able to read the text of a chat room as they stream and thus maintain two-way communication. Plus, well, a show of just me the whole time could easily turn out too dry, or even too preachy, while also lacking variety. So I decided near the beginning that if I couldn't have a live audience proper, I should at least have a person or two around at the scene of the crime as a reality check and a source of energy.

Then I realized that, in my mind, I had just described what happens every time I sit down with Mark or Alex. It's a conversation on not-exactly-everyday topics, and an interchange of opinions on those topics that are informed, or at least interesting. The only difference would be that I generally don't tap my phone or tape conversations I have at restaurants.

(That, and I don't have my own theme music on cue when I walk into a room. That is something I've always wanted.)

But, because by the date I'd set for myself to record the first show, I lacked some crucial equipment to route any sort of teleconference audio into the recording, I was alone for the first show. Getting together all the necessary equipment ran over two more episodes. Neglecting to arrange for a guest made the fourth a loner as well. The fifth would have been the same way if not for my SkypeIn purchase and a little last-minute genius.

But it wasn't, and that is that.

Two, holy shit! Have you ever talked to Meris?

Certainly, the presence of just about anyone else with me would improve the show solely for the dynamic and diagnostic purposes noted above. I wasn't quite sure what else to expect from Meris under this circumstance, not because we hadn't talked on the phone before—we definitely had—but because the non-candid thing could be a significantly different context, and, well, knowing that I wasn't doing this one alone was so essential at the moment that I quite frankly didn't care about anything else.

But, Jesus, the first time I listened after the save to verify the levels and encoding, it really hit me that Meris is fucking hilarious! I mean, yeah, I'd known this before. But somehow, to me, it came out of nowhere that it would translate so well to a recording. It took me by surprise. Meris is witty as all Hell. She knows how to talk, and that's what made issue 5. If I have anything to say about it, she'll be back for more WasteCasting at some point in the very undistant future.

That this show worked so well makes evident to me that shows with Markus or Alex, or any of a few other select individuals, should be pretty damned good, as well—if I can ever manage to get the elusive souls on Skype at the right moment, that is—because each one has an angle on things that would make the flavor of a show unique. The possibilities excite me.

I've been trying to get the word out about The WasteCast, especially now that I've done a couple episodes that turned out pretty damned nice. But advertising is hard enough when one is paying for it, and I'm not—yet.

I've spent more of the past couple of weeks on improving the personability of the Radio Sprawling website than I have on schoolwork. (That's not saying much, unfortunately, but that's beside the point—I've worked on Radio Sprawling quite a lot.) The access logs were indicating that, even after getting to the site, users weren't listening to the show, and it was easy to see that they were being scared off by the details, that there was no one-click means to instant gratification. But, thanks to some valuable input from a couple of close friends and some quick re-engineering, I'm confident that the site itself has become friendly enough for most people to use it properly. The focus of the site changes has been to get The WasteCast into the user's ears as quickly as possible; as with many such things, one can count on the item to sell itself (if it's indeed worth buying at all). Listening no longer even requires the user to know anything about setting up a podcast player. All it takes is the Flash player (which one can count on being installed on the machines of most of even the non-tech-savvy) or any MP3 player that supports M3U playlists and HTTP streaming. That's for the lo-fi version; when a user is sold on the concept, it's trivial to ease that user into a podcast subscription via iTunes, or less trivial but still easy with another podcast-capable player like Winamp. And those who really know what they're doing have more advanced options, of course.

So, now that the show is reasonably accessible to the novice, the focus has become to get people to visit the site and listen in the first place. I contend that this is the hard part. The links in my various profiles are already exhibiting a greater degree of success than before I reworked the site, but with only a couple of exceptions, I'm still the only one really pushing the show. I happen to be at a strange moment in life where the people I maintain regular contact with have, like me, become sort of loners in their own respective communities. (That's not so much bad as it is inconvenient, of course.) And Alex, aka the best PR man that DroCore has ever had, is currently MIA—not literally, as it just occurred to me could be the case with someone in the military—but almost too busy with his work to breathe, let alone even listen to the show, which would preclude talking it up to anyone else.

If that situation doesn't somehow improve by the time I've reached maybe seven or ten quality episodes (1:5 being an excellent example, and 1:4 wasn't so bad, either), well-placed paid advertising might be the next step. After all, everyone knows that you can buy your friends! ;-) Flyers or Facebook ads might be interesting options. But this is a labor of love, created largely in the interest of developing a little underground following for a few more unique souls in the world. I'm willing to pay to promote that, but any sensible businessperson can tell you that there's a penalty to promoting something too hard before it's ready. If the product is only mediocre at its debut, the brand becomes permanently associated with mediocrity, and that's nearly impossible to shake, even if the product itself grows to become spectacular.

At this point, The WasteCast is worth whatever word-of-mouth it can earn on its own. That's gonna be the case for a while, and that's fine. Once there is a few solid hours of real listenability, we can talk about paying to get it into the ears of complete strangers.

I feel so much better than I did when I started the post. I contend that one of the most effective temporary treatments for symptoms of moderate psychosis is a decent distraction.

I'll get back to feeling nasty inside about all that other stuff tomorrow. Maybe by the time I do I'll have a fucking response or two.

In hopes. Raise that glass.