Episode 46: The Calendrical Imperative

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Along with the calendar change every year, too many people take the opportunity to look back on the year, and to perhaps look forward with promises and platitudes. I thought, Why not join them?

So here we have Episode 46: The Calendrical Imperative. I made a big boo-boo in Episode 45 that I here correct. The correction quotes both Terry Gross and author Kevin Kruse from an episode of Fresh Air. I also give some inside scoop to my forced house-guest hiatus last Spring. It's interesting, at least, and will be the topic of at least one episode in the coming year, quite likely.

There is also the backlog of episode topics. Believe it or not, I have no shortage of episodes. It's hard for me to believe that, when I first started Attack Ads!, I was worried about not having something about advertising to say.

I today play the theme for the 1966 television sci-fi series The Time Tunnel, and open the show with Dmitri Orlov and KMFDM.

Episode 45: A Season Stuffed With Reasons

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Have two Holiday Seasons passed since I launched the Attack Ads! Podcast? Time flies when you're ranting against forces over which you have little control, I guess. Remember: Time flies like an arrow; but fruit flies like a banana.

This, the podcast's second late December episode, is Number 45: A Season Stuffed With Reasons, where I give you Dear Listeners a book report on Kevin M. Kruse's One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (Basic Books, 2015). I do hope to introduce you to Mr. Kruse's material, all about the money and effort that went into redefining the American religious tradition into one more business-friendly, with the appropriate amount of head 'splodey-ness.

In that light, I play selected portions of Tenacious D's "Master Exploder", a song from the movie Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny. I also open and close this holiday episode with two pieces from the Vince Guaraldi Trio, "Skating" and "Linus and Lucy", both from the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. Very briefly you will also hear the National Anthem for the former Soviet Union. KMFDM and Bernie Sanders open the show.

Episode 44: Total Annihilation

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What happens when warring parties place full efforts on winning their personal battles, but not a lot of attention avoiding pissing off a third party? Or worse, takes advantage of the third party, treating them as the prize to be won? Expect the title of Episode 44: Total Annihilation. The warring titans will find their battlefield prize turning against all of them, with collateral damage rampant and a change to the entire conflict.

Largely because this phase of battle through technology is new and emergent, this episode focuses on articles rather than books. We hear me reading: Ben Thompson's article Why Web Pages Suck from his blog "Stratechery"; Nilay Patel's Welcome to hell: Apple vs. Google vs. Facebook and the slow death of the web from The Verge; John Gruber's Safari Content Blocker imore from Daring Fireball; and Marco Arment's The Ethics of Modern Web Ad-Blocking.

Today's music is exclusively from the Cave Dog game from which I gleaned the title to today's episode. Music written by Jeremy Soule. (I miss that game.) I introduce the show with Jan Wong backed by KMFDM.

My Plea For Graphics Help

Hey, Listeners,

Jim here, with a problem. As I outlined in the Post Script to Episode 44, I need a logo, specifically one that will conform to the iTunes submission requirements.

Here's the skinny on format: Cover art "must be in the JPEG or PNG file formats and in the RGB color space with a minimum size of 1400 x 1400 pixels and a maximum size of 3000 x 3000 pixels." I'd like to keep it simple (for now, at least, which for me seems to mean "I'll use it for a few years").   Though I had some very different, very catchy ideas in the past, my need to just get this done has overwhelmed my desire to make it perfect (which has been the impediment all this time). 

Here's the text I'm leaning toward:

The

                 Attack Ads! 

                                              Podcast 

                           Reasons to live Free 

                                 of Commercial Media

All of this is, of course, in a box the size specified in the link above. The "The" above and the "Podcast" after "Attack Ads!" should be in a smaller font, as should the tag below.  For colors, I've played around with a few, but have decided to keep this simple as well, with just an off-yellow background and black lettering.

Again, if you can help—and have additional ideas you can throw into the mix—I would be very appreciative.

Thanks!

-Jim

Addendum, a couple days later: D'oh! I guess providing a place to send those graphics would enable those who wish to help to, well, help. Please email anything you come up with to AdAttacker (at) Gmail (dot) Com. Sorry I missed that necessary step earlier.