Nanowrimo Ate My Life

It's been a while. I've been writing, just not here. :) Oh well!

I thought I'd pop out of my self-imposed seclusion briefly to mention the Podcast Awards. Oh, how I hate Hate HATE the Podcast Awards.

Here comes an avalanche of blog and pod entreaties to please vote for and nominate . Every podcast will be front-loaded with ten minutes of begging, pleading, and promoting, either themselves or others. My GoogleReader, I will probably just stop checking for a bit. After the commotion has settled down, all the podcasts and blogs will still be front-loaded; This time it will be with gratitude, along the lines of "Thank you SOOO much for participating! And listening! And voting! I love all you guys SOOO much!", which still gets annoying after about ten minutes. The only good part is, I can run down the nominee list and maybe find something new, so it's a little preferable.

Right now my husband is reading, silently agreeing, and also thinking, "Hun, you sound like some kind of misanthrope." I can dig it. Because there's something that bothers me even more than the blitz of self-promotion.

Does it bother anyone besides me that so many people treat this like some kind of referendum on paganism? Seriously, I wish everyone would just stop. Yes, there is a Religion and Spirituality category. Yes, a pagan podcast has never won, which doesn't bother me at all. Why on earth am I being entreated to vote on the idea that we need to be driving the other religions down the list? What does this accomplish?

You know what I do every year when I look at the nominee list? Silently discount the Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever, topics as I scan down looking for the ones that I like.

You know what a Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever person is going to do if "we" suddenly take the top spot, or the top three, or top ten? Silently discount the ones they aren't interested in as they scan down looking for the ones they like. Because where the 'other' religion podcasts fall on the list means something between jack and squat as far as everyone is concerned.

It's really more like they took several religion top lists and squashed them together. It's a popularity contest, and those always suck. Just sayin'. The whole masturbatory nature of shameless self-promotion just gets to me, you know? That kind of action is supposed to be private! (Unless you're in a club for that kind of thing. But you get my meaning.)

On a lighter note, it is pretty much the only time you're going to see Inciting a Riot and the Wild Hunt agreeing with each other, so that's kind of funny.

It's not that I want the Podcast Awards to stop. I think they're a great idea, and they help people find more of what they're looking for. I just want people to stop pretending that high standings means something more than "hey, people listen to my show!" Take the Wigglian Way, for example. It definitely deserves high standings.

I also, personally, can't stand listening to it. I don't know why. The topics are good, the people are definitely people I'd want to chat with over coffee or a beer. There's just something about it (too professional radio?) that I don't like. Taun-taun likes it, though.

On the flip side, I enjoy listening to PCP, which Taun-taun once described as "I'd rather stab a pencil into my ear drum". So I listen to one, he listens to the other, and we give each other the cliff notes for anything interesting that comes up. And neither of these opinions means squat for the actual quality of the show. Such is the nature of popularity contests.

Back to fiction!
Blessed Be,
Pennanti