TANcast

Blog2ober
Day 7

Oh lordy! Those of your suffering through this never ending stream of blogs are in for a treat. I found a gold mine! I was looking for something on my old computer and stumbled upon a whole forgotten file of my writings from high school and college. Let me just tell you, everything I wrote was god awful.

One of the sub folders I found was file of old letters I wrote, mostly to women I was interested in. They are AMAZINGLY horrible. The kind of things that make me want to reach through the computer and kill my younger self. So OF COURSE I’m going to share them with you so we can all mock young, stupid Tim.

This is a letter I wrote to a young lady I met freshman year of college. She was a very cute volleyball player and we both lived in the Joe West dorms of San Jose State…yeah…I think that’s all the back story you’ll need…

Once upon a time…in the land of Joe West there was a beautiful, young athlete named Alana. She lived in the seventh echelon of Joe West. Below her, in the sixth echelon lived a young actor named Tim. Tim lived in the kingdom of 600 and enjoyed introducing himself as “Batman.” (He’s just weird that way)

One fateful day the actor and the athlete met. They enjoyed a magnificent feast with their mutual friends in the Dining Commons. It was a joyous occasion, with laughter and merriment. A jolly good time was had by all.

Not to long after that, Tim asked of Alana, “Alana, would you like to have dinner and maybe go to a movie this Friday?”

Alana responded…

Finish this story how ever you want to either by stopping by room 600 or calling *my number at the time*. But remember, the fate of these two is in your hands.

Oh apparently there was one more piece of background I should have provided…I guess 18 year old Tim used to introduce himself as “Batman.” How did he manage to go through all of college with out a single date? It’s a mystery.

Here’s the best part. For some ungodly reason, Alana called me and left a message. Yes, this insane bit of prose apparently reached it’s target audience. I wish I could remember exactly what she said, but it was basically something to the effect of “let’s talk” or something like that. I assumed she wanted to talk about how to tell me “no,” gracefully. I later learned she wanted to talk about going out. Yes, I had heard “no” from women so often, that when one was actually saying “yes,” I still heard “no.”

Postscript to that story…we never went out. I did not figure out that she was interested in time and she was snapped up by a smarter guy than me by the time I did. I love this story because it is awful on every level. But there are so many more horror stories lurking in this hard drive. Stay tuned…

Blog2ober
Day 6

I would like to walk back some of my “criticism” of Doctor Who from the last episode of TANcast. I haven’t sat back and just listened to the episode yet, but when I was editing the episode last night, I sounded very harsh when I was talking about the show. It sounds like I didn’t like the show. In truth, I think I like the show too much. Specifically, I like the character of Rose. As such, I was more than a little unhappy to see her go. Not to mention that the way it all went down was heart breaking.

But, I have to admit, that’s not bad in terms of dramatic story telling. It’s just not what I WANTED for the character. I think that’s my main “problem” with Doctor Who. The show never does what I want it to do. When I want a character to live, that character often dies. When I want the show to explain the mechanics of time travel, the show gives a joke instead. When I want the Daleks’ armor to be pierced by SOMETHING, it never ever is. (Seriously, isn’t there something that can break through their shells? A light saber? A resonance burst from the main deflector dish of the Enterprise D? Something?)

I said something on the show like “the Doctor isn’t really a character.” That is not true and not even what I meant to say. I was struggling to find the words to express what I’m only coming to realize as I write this. He’s not the character I want him to be or the character I thought he was going to be. He’s not the powerful pillar of virtue like Superman. He’s not the rouge tough guy like Han Solo. He’s not the thinking man’s adventurer like Captain Picard. Yet he’s kind of a mish-mash of all those things but with this zaniness thrown in. At any one moment he’ll flip from one of those archetypes to another and it’s ok ’cause…he’s the Doctor, he does whatever. That isn’t NOT a character, it’s just not the character I’m writing in my head as I’m watching.

But Rose is a character I felt like I got. She’s a young kid being shown incredible things. She has absolute faith in the Doctor. She has been my guide in discovering this world. And now she’s gone and instantly there’s new companions to take her place. It just feels wrong. It’s like when your dog dies and your parents try to buy you a new dog. That doesn’t quell the pain of the dog you lost, it only serves as a reminder that your dog is gone. Wait…did I just compare a woman to a dog? That’s gotta be misogynistic or something right? Just to get this on the record, women are not like dogs. You know that, I know that, and most importantly now you know that I know that.

So I’m going to press on with Doctor Who. I’ll try to keep an open mind. I do like that the Doctor is clearly still missing Rose several episodes into Season 3. I hope that trend continues. It’s good that the show is acknowledging her absence.

Okay…this blog was more rambling than a proper review, but I didn’t want to leave my comments from the last episode hanging without expanding the a bit.

There is now an Official TANcast Steam User Group™ so all you TANcasties and TANnasties can play together, in case that’s your thing.

This all came about because Andy is a friendless loser, and had to put out a public call for more Steam contacts so he can qualify for the upcoming Steam Machines beta test.

Seriously, how sad is that? It’s probably because he’s fat or ugly or something.

Anyways, several of you took pity on him (still accepting friends, BTW: Steam ID MysteriousAndy), but @JuffTheGenie took things a step further and suggested the creation of a Steam Group. This group. The one this post is announcing.

He’s probably psychic.

“So, why is this a thing?” you may find yourselves asking.

Because we always^† listen to our listeners!

Join up, or else you must hate puppies and rainbows and sugar and touching yourself!

Read the rest of this entry »

This week the boys talk about how Comcast sucks, the guy who runs silk road getting busted, and the endings of Breaking Bad, Dexter and Futurama (No spoilers).
.

[CONTENT WARNING] TANcast features mature language and immature hosts but is NOT a representation of the stand up act of Tim Babb. Listener discretion is advised.

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

Blog2ober
Day 5

Before I had a day job, I used to pack my wife’s lunch every day. (I probably should still do it once in a while…bad husband). A common thing I would razz my wife about was when she would be too busy to eat some or all of her lunch and it would come back home with her. One particular food item, a pear, came back day after day. I think it was probably two weeks. Finally the thing was so old it was no longer edible. So one day, my wife found this note in her lunch bag when she got to work. (And I recently discovered it, so you get to see it too)

Blog2ober
Day 4

On October 4, 2013, Comcast’s new x1 cable boxes suffered a nationwide outage. For the first time in weeks, my wife and I had sat down to watch some tv…midway through Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the outage hit. What follows is what I expressed on my Twitter feed from that point forward…

I think my favorite feature of my @comcast DVR is the one where it stops recognizing the remote and then freezes. #WorthEveryPenny

Just before my cable went bust, I saw a @comcast commercial bragging about their customer service. 20 mins later and…yeah, you know. #hate

Been staring at this screen for probably 10 minutes. @comcast, you are fail

Read the rest of this entry »

Blog2ober
Day 3 (sort of)

Well I accidentally fell asleep before writing my blog on October 3rd. Oops.

Didn’t I say I wanted Blog2ober to be better than 30 Days and 30 Blogs 3?

…and I have already failed by day 3!

That is some spectacular failure! Almost Comcast level failure. Speaking of which, I need to write tomorrow’s blog…

Blog2ober
Day 2

In case you haven’t heard, Warner Bros. is making a tv series about Gotham City. No it won’t have Batman in it. It’s a prequel. We get to see what Jim Gordon was doing as he worked his way up to Commissioner. It’s not going to be tied to the Nolan Batman Universe, the Zack Snyder Superman/Batman Universe, the Smallville or Arrow Universes…basically Gotham will be it’s own thing. My question is “why?”

That’s not true…my question is “WTF?!”

First off, why would I want to watch a show about Gotham City without Batman? They already have that show…it’s every crime drama set in New York. What’s next? Transylvania without Dracula? The adventures of Rose and Mickey before Doctor Who showed up? The TANhouse before Tim, Andy and Noah moved in? No one cares!!!

Secondly, Warner, you DO realize you have other comic book properties besides Batman right? It seems like 4 out of every 5 Warner Brothers comic book based projects are about Batman or the Batman universe. Did you lose Wonder Woman’s number? We better be careful, or this Justice League movie that Zach Snyder is supposedly building towards will look like this…

Just when you thought you’d had enough of me blogging everyday (and you probably have)…

That’s right, I’m keeping it going for another month for a total of 61 days of solid blogging!

Why? Well, I didn’t finish my series poking fun at children’s literature. I didn’t want to end on a political rant (yesterday’s blog) But mostly, I didn’t feel like I had enough good blogs in September.

So I’m going to try and challenge myself to do better in October than I did in September. It’s a low bar, but I think I can still fall short. Come with my on my journey of words and failure, won’t you?

No? Fair enough. Watch my new video at least?

30 Days and 30 Blogs
Day 30

I almost went the whole month without going on a political rant. But here it is, the last day of 30 Days and 30 Blogs 3, and the republicans have shut down the government. Sure the democrats could have just caved and defunded Obamacare, but “change the law or we’ll shut down the government” should not be a bargaining tactic.

Look I get it, republicans don’t like Obamacare. But it’s not just a bill now, it’s the law. It was approved by both houses and signed by the president. You lost this battle, friends. You failed to win in the Supreme Court. You failed to win in the presidential election. You failed to win the 40+ times you’ve voted in the house to repeal it. Let. It. Go.

If Obamacare was the only spending program going on right now, I could see this level of fixation. But the government spends TONS of money on so many different programs. You could have use Obamacare as a bargaining chip against the other “entitlements” you hate so much. “We’ll back you on Obamacare but only if you make cuts here, here, and here.”

Or you could say we want X instead of Obamacare. Where “X” is some other way to make sure people don’t have to go without health insurance. Because I will admit, I’m not in love with Obamacare. It’s only slightly better than our current horrible situation. So if you have a plan that’s even a little better than Obamacare, that would be fantastic! Maybe we can all keep coming up with better and better plans and fix this system in baby steps. But you’re baby stepping in the wrong direction. “I think we should just leave the crappy system the way it is,” is not a great rallying cry.

I would like to know who the moderate republicans were who tried to avoid this shutdown at the last minute. It’s a shame it didn’t work, but the next time Ted Cruz or Michell Bachman* steps up to the mic, let one of those moderate republicans speak instead.

*That’s probably not how you spell her name and I don’t care enough to look it up