Blue Yonder

What?  Do my ears deceive me?  Is that Helix Nebula I hear?  It can’t be?  A new Blue Yonder?!  Yes, while it is true that we put BY in mothballs to concentrate on TV casting, every once in a while we feel the need to cut loose and get a little old-school, off-topic ranty, and our brief off-season has provided us just such an opportunity.  If you’re a fan of our TV-focused casts, like Breaking Good or Watching Dead, there’s probably not a lot for you here, but if you like general geek/gaming topics you might enjoy it.  For all of our old, die-hard fans, welcome back!

In this week’s show, A.Ron and Jim ponder some science, philosophy, pop culture and politics through the lens of SCIENCE!  First up, a research paper opens up the debate about spoilers we first had way back in episode 62, with a new study suggesting that reading pre-spoiled books is more enjoyable than reading them spoiler-free.  So take your spoiler tag, shine it up real nice, turn it sideways, and cram it up your candy ass!

We are back after last week’s hiatus.  Honestly, I’m heartbroken we lost the Jim Jones Experiment.  It was an hour long mind fuck of yours truly by Jim Jones, and it was weird, it was uncomfortable, it was hilarious by the end, and it would have been legendary, and then Jim deleted it, with no backups.  Because, I dunno?  Mac people don’t make good backups.  I guess?

GENCON, the “best four days in gaming”, is coming to our humble home town of Indianapolis next week.  We invited Michael “Madbrew” Brewer back on to give some tips for what to look for in this years convention, how to navigate the expo hall, potential new releases, and what you can safely avoid.  If you missed last year’s GenCon preview with Michael, you might want to give it a listen, as he discussed a lot more general GENCON survival tips, and his love for RPGs.

Busy week for A.Ron and Jim. A.Ron breaks down his various trials and tribulations including a Jim Jones mindfuck, a breakup, getting his PANFI on with his boy, and golfing in Satan’s Asshole. We also launched a very successful podcast on Breaking Bad, and were interviewed on The Amazingly Pulp SHOOOOOOOWWWWWW!! We bring the listeners up do date with some follow up to the male privelidge aspect of our cast with Madbrew last week. I don’t know what to make of this take, in particular, of a feminist pondering male privildge through the prism of her own white privlidge. I don’t doubt the basic truth of her premise, but I’m not sure what to do with this information.

We get excited about the upcoming GENCON and PAX events in August, and the breeding habbits of werecabbages.

And that’s just the bullshit! The meat is formed from an article at Wired about the new video game based “religion” of Chain World. We cover the twists, turns, and wheels within wheels turning within this story. Jim challenges you, the listener, to try and pervert and annoy us with our very own cast, and releases a vast swath of our show’s library under the Creative Commons license to facilitate this.

Then we lose our shit over a video two harpies and a man without testicles or common sense made about it not being normal for men in their 30s and beyond to play video games. This leads to a larger discussion of relationships and gender privilege. Jim previews the upcoming mindfuck episode, and then we half-ass listener feedback.

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[ratings]

This week we bring back Michael “Madbrew” Brewer from MadBrewLabs for a three man debate about insane co-workers, assholes in RPGs, gaming culture, inclusiveness, women and minorities in gaming, who has rights to our friendships, and what we can or should do about our White/Straight/CIS/Male Privilege.

Jim and A.Ron always pay their debts.  We owe you a cast, and today we deliver on that promise.  We talk about Florence + The Machine, Battle for Hill 218 (free online version), Battlestar Galactica (board game AND series), that fantastic new HBO series “Game of Thrones” that just finished up it’s first season, A.Ron’s revolutionary idea for a “sincerity” movement, and the surprising news that Kickstarter is the 3rd largest independent comic book publisher.

The write up for this one is going to be short and sweet, folks, because the content is long and savory.  We finally aligned technology and schedules and sat down with Ian for a talk about all things geek, legal, and lawery.  Want to know what it’s like to argue before the Supreme Court? What it’s like to be an Omeganaut at PAX?  How to fight back against unfair IP law?  If emulators are legal?  How much energy the Death Star took to destroy Alderaan?  We talk about it.  At length.

This is a terrible cast.  I honestly wouldn’t listen to it, if I were you.  I mean, I gotta keep it real, right?  I can’t say how awesome our casts are and it mean anything and then drop a turd and talk it up, yeah?  Yeah.

The guys release ultra-devastating power on the unsuspecting listeners this week.  First, A.Ron is incredulous with Jim’s shunning of the fantastic game, Angry Birds (now free on Chrome!), talks about how awesome Infamous 2 is, and declares that  X-Men: First Class blows the lid off the Bacon game for a whole new generation.