Blasphuphmus Radio Links

Well, January 6th is rapidly approaching, so here's some kpsu.org links that will help prepare you for my premiere episode at 3 PM:

Blasphuphmus Radio Program Page on kpsu.org: A little info to tease and tantalize potential listeners.

RSS Podcast Link: Slap this into your podcasting device of choice, and you'll always have the most current episode of Blasphuphmus Radio at your beck and call.

Playlists Link: Access this link to check out the tuneage you'll be hearing on Blasphuphmus Radio, which lists all the minutia and footnotes for every Audio-Essay we broadcast.

Track Content Link: Having trouble finding all the different Blasphuphmus Radio content on kpsu.org? Fear not! This "Track Content Link" will give you a list of everything we've ever added to the kpsu.org website. Pretty cool, huh?

Why Am I Not Surprised

Last term I went through a ridiculous series of Kafkan experiences with PSU, which involved (but was not limited to) being overcharged several times for services I never got, not receiving my financial aid due to clerical errors, lost pay checks (every single pay period, this term), bureaucratic policies that contradict other bureaucratic policies which make certain necesities impossible to accomplish, and a number of other lame problems that exist because people do not want to talk in person, nor do they want to deal with actual cash money.

I thought that Credit, combined with a lack of communication, caused this economic crisis in the first place. But, apparently, that hasn't gotten back to Corporate America yet.

My most recent frustration came in the form of an e-mail I got today, explaining that I could have received my Financial Aid check already if I had only explained to the dispersion company how I wanted to receive said check. (I shit you not: "We have a check for you, how do you want it?")

I called PSU and explained that since I started going to school four years ago, I have always received a check, and can't understand why they suddenly don't know that. PSU passed the buck, saying that they don't have access to their own students' Financial Aid information (!), but that the dispersion company does. (Why PSU doesn't have access to their own students records is only a small part of my confusion regarding this issue.)

After calling the dispersion company, I discovered that because they made a clerical error last term, and since I complained about not getting my check because of their error, they actually reset my account entirely to avoid making the same mistake twice. Rather than contact me and ask me how I'd like to get my money, they waited for the computer to catch the mistake as it was processing my refund, and they waited even longer for said computer to e-mail me, which in turn asked me to contact the dispersion company to set things straight. A mistake, I should point out, consisting of a several-tiered error THEY made.

Yeah. I'm sort of incredulous, too.

All of my attempts to point out how silly this was were met with complete confusion by the people I talked to on the phone. "What do you mean?" I mean, I said, how can someone who works in a job like this actually think this is a reasonable way to conduct business.

"Oh, I don't think about that stuff."

Right. Wasn't that the problem in the first place?

Be That Song? Links

Be That Song?: "Out With The New, In With The Old."

(Special "Is This Music?" Coverage for Hogwash while he's out of town.)

This is a 60 Minute audio essay about the Holiday Season, with music, sound effects, voice-overs, and a few commercials. For those of you who have never heard the kind of shows I do, this is an excellent introduction to my radio style, and a wonderful hour of holiday sounds for those New Year's parties around the corner. (Token mentions of X-Mas were, sadly, unavoidable.) Consider this my holiday gift to the city of Portland, and anyone else I forgot to get a gift for. Sorry.

6:43 PM Update:

Here's the official playlist.

X-Mass Day Recap

Historically, I have not been a fan of holidays, at least, not since I was a wee child. Once you are no longer the center of attention of the Holiday Season, it's hard to get excited about cold weather, unexpected winter expenses, and traveling to visit family that you might not be too interested in seeing just yet. I think most people go through this phase during the Cool Years: roughly, 16 - 30. It's when a human is most concerned with being cool and, more to the point, the most prone to behaving childish.

This year, things were markedly different for me, beginning with Thanksgiving with my Mom and Christmas with my Dad. There were a lot of other family members involved too, and what (exactly) about those two trips I enjoyed I can't exactly say for sure. All I know is that the usual sensations of wanting to get back home as soon as possible were not a part of this year's celebrations, to the point that I spent all day yesterday (after I got home) listlessly cleaning and trying to figure out what to do.

I can't exactly say that I'm a fan of the Holiday Season (as it's celebrated in the US), but this year I feel like something in me changed. Or, perhaps, it wasn't the holiday per se, but rather the act of spending time with my family that really set it off. I've been living on my own now for 15 years, and in that time I've spent only a very little time with my family. Part of that comes from different interests and pursuits: I'm in school, working on the long and hard road toward becoming some sort of academic, with all of the usual extreme-left tendencies and nuances that come with having been involved with bands and bars and that particular kind of subculture, while most of my family is involved in raising kids, keeping a job, and maintaining their sanity.

It's not that we don't understand each other, or even that we can't appreciate what the other does; it's just that, on a practical level, we don't relate to each other. It's hard to know what they're going through when I've never had to deal with babies on a day-to-day basis. Conversely, how many members of my family could make a 'zine from scratch, or know the differences between punk sub-genres?

The point being, I had a great time this year, and I don't know if that's because I've matured, or because they've gotten more interesting as people, friends, and family members. For the time being, I'm going to continue to believe that it's them and not me. I'm not quite ready to face the truth yet, anyway.

I Mean It

Happy Holidays.

I mean it.

New Radio Appearances

I will be offering my services twice in the next month to non-Blasphuphmus Radio appearances on KPSU:

On December 28th, 2008, I'll be guest-hosting Be That Song? (aka Is This Music?), presenting my newest musical assemblage, "Christmas Music (For People Who Don't Like Christmas Music)." Be That Song? will start at Noon, and run until 1 PM. You'll be able to listen by either tuning into to 1450 AM in the Portland, OR area, 98.1 FM on the PSU campus, or by accessing the webstream at kpsu.org.

Also, on January 31st, 2009, I'll be running sound for an in-studio appearance by Levator, who will be appearing on What's This Called? Levator has made several appearances on my old show, and prior to that made KPSU a stop on nearly every tour. This will be an awesome performance from Noon to 1 PM that day, and again, you can listen at 1450 AM, 98.1 on the PSU campus, or by accessing the webstream at kpsu.org.

And, of course, my new weekly show starts on the 6th of January. Wait, that's only a couple weeks from now!? Holy crap!

Blasphuphmus Radio! New Time!

Dig?

Blasphuphmus Radio News

There's been a lot going on lately as Blasphuphmus Radio prepares to become syndicated at KPSU, so as that process continues, I thought I'd tease a few of you with a preview of what to expect on the show.

Although we previously reported that we would be on at 1 PM Sundays, we have secured a 3 PM time slot on the holiest of holy days, Tuesday! I'll keep you posted with links and information about how you can tune in via the interweb, but if you live near or on the PSU campus, you can tune in at 98.1 FM. So, Tuesday at 3 PM. It's gonna rock.

I've made a tentative schedule for the 2009 Broadcast Season of Blasphuphmus Radio, but you should note that the operative word in the first half of this sentence is "a." It is not THE schedule, but merely A schedule, and is subject to change as I learn more information. I also wrote a Reference Guide that will help you interpret some of the things I put on the schedule.

Questions? You know who to ask...

Really?

When I was closing up the computer lab last night, I found a binder that a student had left behind. It happens all the time, actually, and with today being the last day for finals, I imagine some student was in a hurry to get to a party after his last test. I forget things all the time, and unless it's valuable, you don't have to worry about anything getting stolen.

So, no harm, no foul; I picked it up and went to put it in the Lost & Found box. As I set it down, I noticed that on the front was a huge, slightly torn Sublime sticker.

What? Sublime? Are they even still a thing? I mean, when was the last time you met an actual Sublime fan? At least, a big enough one to have a sticker on your binder for at least a year. In 2008. I mean, really?

Sometimes, I just don't get people.

As Of 3 PM...

I am done with school for 2008.

Now would be an excellent time to give me a call. I don't have anything to do for a month.

And not a moment too soon...

As Usual: Weird Not Strong Enough

The last year seems so strange to think back on. So much has happened, in my own life and in the world, and it's hard just to say, "Another year older and wiser," and let this one slide on into the wealth of time past that only vaguely informs us in the here and now. Of course, there's no reason to dwell on it, either. 2008, in many ways, was just the cream of the shitty-year crop. There hasn't been a year like this since 1997, a fucking terrible vintage year if ever there was one.

There are times, though, when it all seems like a dream, one that you're waking up from to find that things are different, that there is a future to look toward that will be drastically different, no matter what past experience says. My inclination, though, is to follow the advice of a certain song from The Twelve Chairs: "Hope for the best / expect the worst." It just seems like a more reasonable expectation.

But that's neither here nor there. I have a new job, year, & school term on the horizon for January. I have new friends in my life and new interests and ideas that will hopefully carry me through one more time.

I can only hope that this time around I remember to smile more, and take more pictures.

New Discoveries In Latrinalia

Found in three separate stalls in the men's rooms on PSU campus
(You may have to open the images in a new tab, and zoom in, to read some of these):


Guh? Astronomy Professor?

While I'm quite fond of the tagger who admits that his occupation is a waste of time,
I think I like the Haiku the best:

101
111
101

Solid.

Apparently, the gentleman with a green pen must have read my book.
(So does my dick every morning... I should have used that one!)

Derek Johnson Recap

For those of you who missed Derek Johnson's great live performance on KPSU the other day, fear not! The wonder of modern technology has enabled us to capture sound recordings in a digital form, for your consumption. This brand new technology will no doubt revolutionize your life soon enough, but today it has allowed for this marvel to bring the past into the present at any future time of your choosing.

Behold:

Part 1 Part 2 (Derek's performance ran a little into the second hour.)

Thanks again to KPSU for letting me host, this, Ricardo Wang for being hard up and needing to make real money that day, and of course, Derek Johnson for rushing into the studio at the last second and still pulling off a great performance.

Derek M. Johnson Live on WTC 12/6/08!

This just came in the mail from Ricardo Wang:

Due to the global financial crisis, and my own familial financial crisis brought on by having a new child, this weekend finds me selling concessions at a dog show for extra funds...

Consequently, Yet Another Pope Austin Rich will be guest hosting What's This Called? for Saturday, December 6th, 2008 from Noon to 1 PM Pacific Time (oddly, that's 11 AM to noon in Nome, Alaska) on KPSU.

Austin will be joined in the studio by a very special live musical guest, Avant-Noise Cellist Derek M. Johnson (formerly also known as M.E. & Me) from Olympia, WA! Derek will be making his sophomore live appearance on What's This Called? after melting the KPSU airwaves into a wreathing puddle of sonic ecstasy back in June of 2006. This new performance will be delicately sandwiched between appearances in Seattle at Gallery 1412 on Friday night and Worksound in Portland (820 SE Alder ST) Saturday at 8 PMish. They don't call him "the hardest working cellist in show business" for nothing!

As always we'll be STREAMING LIVE RIGHT HERE!

or on the radio in the Portland vicinity via:

1450 AM for the Portland OR/Vancouver WA metro area
98.1 FM on the Portland State University campus



Derek M. Johnson Live on WTC on 6/23/2006.

Stay Tuned

Oh, don't act all surprised or anything. You knew it was bound to happen, sooner or later.

Fighting The Symptoms

I try not to talk about the economic crisis, mostly because I don't know much about economics. Money has always been far too abstract for me to make clear sense of, and for most of my life I've had so little money, understanding it seemed somewhat moot. Doesn't do any good to try to understand something you'll never have enough of anyway. Better to stand in line for the gub-ment cheese and hope for the best.

However, one symptom I've noticed (with regards to the crisis) is a lack of humanity when dealing with the people on the other end of the counter. Modern life has afforded us many luxuries and new developments that, supposedly, make life easier. But as our finances have become more and more complicated in the 21st Century, more and more layers or banking have been added to the world around us, to help mediate the varied transactions we make in our lives. It was only within the last 30 years that the majority of people in America paid actual cash for nearly every transaction in their lives. Today, only the most sundry of purchases are paid for in that way. Money, for all intents and purposes, has become almost entirely electronic. And therein lies the problem.

To process the multitudes of electronic transactions that occur every day, there is a huge American workforce to handle the tasks. This creates an unusual dynamic with regards to the employee / customer relationship: where you used to always get something from a transaction like this (usually involving cash money or a service that was provided to you), now that everything is electronic, most transactions occur in the abstract. For example: I go to a counter to pay a bill. I hand over a card, it's swiped, and then handed back. No real money changed hands, and technically the service I got was that this clerk paid my bill for me. The actually service I was paying for is provided by an entirely other party, completely unrelated to the transaction that I'm involved in.

Weird, huh?

Now, the "counter" in the above example, is more often than not a phone these days, but the concept is the same. We make an abstract electronic payment to a third party person so another service we've received from someone else is now "covered." There are so many levels of removal from a real business interaction that it's easy to see how we achieved a financial crisis: people spend imaginary money to pay someone to process a service that we may or may not have gotten, regardless of the fact that we have real, actual money in the bank. Pretty soon, even the most diligent consumer, reaches a point when something doesn't add up at the end of the month.

Since school started in September, I've had three money snafu's with regards to PSU's Cashiering Department. That's one per month this term. (Provided, the term started at the end of September, and it's now the beginning of December.) First, PSU refused to accept a payment from me for a Dental Appointment, and yet wanted to penalize me for not making the payment. (I still don't understand that one.) Second, they mailed my Financial Aid check to my old address, after a full year of getting my checks at my current address. And then, today, I found out that PSU decided to mail my check to me rather than have me pick it up in the Cashier's Office, which goes against four years of picking up checks from PSU. (The fact that I could see the check sitting in an "outgoing" box behind the clerk didn't seem to matter. In the eyes of PSU, it was already out the building. No amount of begging could get her to give it to me.)

Now, I'm a fairly honest person who tries hard to be a good member of my community. I don't lie about important things, and I don't try to shirk my important responsibilities. I make efforts to pay my bills more or less on time, and outside of childhood indiscretions, have never stolen anything from anyone. This doesn't mean that I'm perfect, or that I don't make mistakes; actually, I probably screw up in some way once a day. I'm merely your average person trying to get by, day to day, with the hopes that I can achieve happiness and contentment in some form or another. More than anything, I have no interest in seeing other people suffer, nor do I feel like I shouldn't have sympathy for those around me.

What I find extremely interesting is that the current structure of the economy in America (and, I assume, most of the Westernized World) creates actual barriers toward allowing for a human understanding of these kinds of financial transactions. When I used to have to pay my bills in person, you developed a rapport with the clerks, and they sympathized with you when times were tough, or when something unusual occurred. Under the current structure, I can't even go to a counter anymore to pay my bills. PSU requires that you pay everything electronically, via their website. I can't even reach the same person twice when I call the Cashiering Office to complain, and when I call back a second time, there's never a record of the previous calls. I assume the (ironically) unwritten rule must be: If it's not written down, it no longer matters.

I've worked on the other side of the metaphoric counter at ACS (a company that handles farmed-out work from other corporate entities... another remove from the customer / service provided dynamic of the past). ACS tells you very specifically how to follow the correct corporate proceedures. Some of the rules at ACS included, "Never tell a customer that there is a manager that can field their question, even if there is one," and, "Even if they are in the right, you are never allowed to credit a customer's account." When a customer had actually been screwed over, and it was clear that we did the screwing, company policy mandated that I couldn't help them. The most I could do is listen to their problems, and say, "I'm sorry." Anything further could result in termination.

There came a point today, when I went to get my check, where the Kafkan nonsense of what was happening to me had reached its peak. The woman in front of me refused to escellate the problem to her superior, even after I asked her to. She explained that, even though I had been getting my checks at that window for four years, she had been in the Department for 18 months, and therefore, she should know better. I begged her to just hand me the check behind her, to which she replied that she would get fired for doing so. I finally posited the following scenario:

"So, what if I need to pay my rent, and because of this clerical error, I won't get my check for over a week. So now, I run the risk of being evicted during the week before finals. What do you think I should do?"

Her response: "Well, you should have thought ahead. I would drop out of school and look for a new place to live."

We have reached a point in our culture where we get paid to not care about those around us, at a time when we should be trying harder to be there for our community. I don't want to get lovey dovey and go live on a commune; I'm not even saying that we need to smash the current system and replace it with something better. (Though, I can't say I'm against that.) Just looking at the world rationally, I can't find a reason to not be concerned for the people around you. I got written up nearly every day I worked at ACS, because when a customer would ask for a little understanding, I dropped the performative role that I was being paid for, and honestly tried to find a way to work things out. There's no reason to spend your life at "counters," trying to defend yourself in a situation where you are poor and have no recourse. What possible harm can a poor person with no resources do to you? Now, look at the reverse of the situation: what can you do to help this person when they are at the end of their rope?

Can you really come up for an arguement to support being such an asshole?

In spite of everything, the woman at the counter today still refused to hand me my check. In frustration, I finally said, "Do you realize how inhumane your behavior is?" she looked at me and scowled.

"That's not my concern; I just work here."

I'm still in complete and total shock. Tonight, she will go home, open up her blog, talk about how well she did her job, eat a huge Middle Class Sized Dinner, and go to sleep feeling like a good member of her community.

My question is: is she? Am I the crazy one here?

Old Is New... Again

A recent familial rendezvous allowed me to meet up with my brother Kyle, who was storing the data to my old Blog that he used to host. Due to the wonders of modern technology, he was not only able to hook me up with copies of the data, but a means of accessing it in an easy-to-read way. Let's hear it for the wonder of computing!

What does that mean? Well, I will occasionally be adding new-old blog entries to this site, like this one, itself part of the new-old paradigm: it's a post about a 'zine I used to offer in the olden-days, that is now available again... or at least, was, until the old blog, which explained as much, became hosed.

Confused? Well, don't be. Just remember that, from time to time, some old content will occasionally resurface, and I'll probably draw attention to it. You can rest assured that it will only be the best of the best... or, at least, whatever is still readable all these years later.

My what a tangled web I weave...

Living Proof on Anti-Apathy!

My most recent foray into the world of recording bands came again last week on Wednesday, November 26th. Again, as a favor to Rachelle, I ran sound for local hip-hop heroes Living Proof. Again, this was for her show, Anti-Apathy, which features local music of almost any variety, in both the pre-recorded and live varieties. In this particular case, the show was actually broadcast last night, but we recorded the performance during the last minute rush before Thanksgiving. I almost missed my train for these guys, so that should mean something.

For clarity's sake: while you probably can't hear me directly, I set up the sound for these guys, and mixed / recorded their performance. Occasionally you can hear me clap and hoot in the background, but really, the magic is in the mix. Word.

You can download the show here for the next several weeks. (It was originally broadcast December 1st from 6-7 PM.)

Need a sound guy? I specialize in KPSU sound requests, Bat Mitzvahs, and anything involving my friends. Word.