Who he's not, though, is pretty well-encapsulated by this podcast. Sad to say, he--or let's drop the third-person here--sad to say, I am forced to repudiate pretty much every word of this thing. Not the words of Ian and Alise, of course: They're natural podcasters, the both of them, wizards of riff and badinage. I am talking about myself. When I say I don't sound like this, I am not, or not only, talking about acoustics. Not only talking about the standard revulsion of hearing oneself on tape, or whatever the digital equivalent of tape is. 'On harddrive' just doesn't sound right. But anyway this goes deeper, causes more distress, splinters my identity, shoves the identity-shards up my nose and into my ears, causing nearby children to laugh and be right in their laughter, to hurl balloons inflated with grape soda in my direction, leaving me sticky and not at all clear on exactly who I am. Sure, there are people more charming than me. For example, people on television. And lots of other people too. But I'm not so bad. I'm definitely not this. Stilted, inarticulate, droning endlessly about dying dogs. What was I thinking, with that dog anecdote? My timing was all off. My rhythm. Probably I'm just making it all worse, here. Okay, that's all.