Digital Garden: Audio Dramas

When I was a little boy my mother used tapes from “Benjamin Blümchen” and his female counterpart “Bibi Blocksberg” to lull my sister and me to sleep. As we grew older the themes became more mature. There were crime hörspiele from the German “TKKG” or the American “Die drei ???” until there were no more tapes and just TV.

I rediscovered them a few years ago, when I moved to Bottrop, because I needed something to occupy my head while I strolled through the forest. At first I used non-fiction podcasts; mostly Maron’s “WTF” and some tech-related stuff (TWiT.tv). After a quick dip into the troves of the public radio, I stumbled upon the Audiodrama subreddit, where to this day I occasionally head in to get new material. Although there is a tendency to always suggest the same ten shows, its main moderator – webmaster of the aptly relevant Audio-Drama.com – has a weekly list of new shows. If this won’t do, I check the latest issue of “The End“. (Sidenote: I’m aware of services like Podchaser and similar communities but never got the hang of them.)

7 Suspects
Whodunnit about a tech entrepreneur in ten parts.

A New Winter
We are in the UK, it’s the year 2000, a family has been brutally murdered and the narrator gets curious and in creepy shit.

Agent Stoker
A “special” agent with a drinking problem is tracking down rogue AIs.

Archive 81
In his new job as an archivist, Dan develops a faible for tapes. Supernatural tapes,

Blis-ta
An one hour play about two homeless girls. Heavy accents but one gets used to it.

Cabin Pressure
The funniest entry on this list! An airline crew flies from A to Z. All episodes are available on Archive.org (see link in title).

Candy Claus Private Eye
Santa’s bastard child cleans up at the north pole. Funny!

Corked
Scripted true-crime story about wine and characters with a peculiar note.

Dark Woods
Somebody dies in the forest and the game warden and his ex-wife, the mayor, get involved.

Drifter’s Symapthy *new*
Emil Amos retells how he became the musician he is today. Interspersed with music-heavy episodes.

Filthy ’47
In a short but funny series a pulp-author and her hero must prevent a continuation of the second world war.

Hunted
Entertaining hunt of a group of prison escapees.

I am in Eskew
Weird audio fiction about a guy who is in Eskew. How did he get there? How will he get away from there? Will he?

Knifepoint Horror
Uncanny stories about the not so mundane. Best enjoyed in small doses.

Lee-Ann’s Spare Fridays
The protagonist wants to enjoy her work-free fridays, her sister suggests otherwise. British narrated comedy.

Life.After // The Message
Two somehow related tech thrillers.

Limetown
Another fictional true-crime story. This time a whole town disappears.

Malevolent
Lovecraftian horror show about a private detective and his inner demon.

Mansfield Mysteries
Cosy crimes comedially decrypted by courteous crone.

Mirrors
Ghosts, different timelines, a nice blend of sci-fi and the eerie.

Ocean Dreams *new*
Space Dolphins and other talking animals and humans in an hilariously fun romp.

Old Gods of Appalachia
A horror western show. The voice of the narrator is “chef’s kiss”-material.

Passenger List
Yet another fictional true-show. This time a whole plane disappears.

The Deca Tapes
Whodunnit in space. Ten parts but with individual stories.

The Diary of Aliza Shultz
Magical reality anthology sprinkled with meditations about reading, writing, and the largest cat in the world.

The Great Chameleon War
Aural trip where chameleons go nuts and finally start killing people.

The Harrowing
It rains on a Scottish isle, as it does tend to happen. The perfect weather to summon the devil.

The Lovecraft Investigations
Modernized versions of Lovecraft stories. Start with “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward”.

The Magnus Archives
Spooky stories narrated by an archivist. With a bloody red thread going through all of them.

The Milkman of St. Gaff’s
Howie gets a new job as a milkman. Things and people go udderly crazy after that.

The Program
Self-contained stories where technology meets sociology/philosophy in a world where the Program rules.

The Silt Verses
Spiritual successor to “I am in Eskew” in more than one sense. There are gods and water. So much water.

The Sink
Short BBC show about sleep and dreams.

The Storage Papers
Campy narrated stories where in the end it’s nazi aliens from the depths of hell.

This Thing of Darkness
Psychological dramas around a forensic psychologist (two series as of now) from the BBC.

woe.begone
It’s not easy being Mike Walter. First you cut your arm off, then you are time traveling.

Wooden Overcoats
They put the “fun” in funeral home. British show about the business of dying.

Digital Garden: Webcomics

Growing up I read a lot of comics, making good use of my library card. Besides the occasional horror or fantasy novel I always had time to put one or two DinA4-sized albums of the Belgian/French classics (“Asterix & Obelix”, “Spirou & Fantasio”, “Gaston”, “Lucky Luke”, et al) in my backpack. They also had the American comic strip collections of “Garfield”, “Hagar the Horrible” and of course “Calvin and Hobbes”. I read those, too.

But there were no superheroes. I knew of them, I watched the movies with Christopher Reeve and Michael Keaton, but I never read them. Until “Spawn” got released in Germany. Month after month, I could borrow single issues from a friend, the same that introduced me to “Magic: The Gathering”, although in contrast to the cardgame the superhero comics didn’t do it for me.

It took until I was in my 30s before I – thanks to the internet – read Gaiman’s “Sandman”, finally finished Smith’s “Bone”, discovered Vaughan’s “Saga” and Lemire’s “Black Hammer”, while skipping most of the text in Moore’s “Watchmen”.

For what it’s worth, I also once watched “Fritz the Cat”.

Having said all this these are the webcomics I enjoy(ed) presented in alphabetical order and updated every so often:

Deeply Dave
An animated underwater adventure with music, which gave me strong Flash (Adobe not DC) vibes.

Diesel Sweeties
Pixeled robots and drunks and geeks and Indy-Pete.

Freefall
A space-saga that is funny, started in 1998 and is still going strong.

Go Get a Roomie
Girl who likes to sleep around finds girl who likes to sleep. Sex, depression, the whole shebang.

Oglaf
It starts with a female warlock, who enchanted one of her male underlings so that his cum reports on him when he masturbates.

Questionable Content
Slice of life comic, I once subscribed to. Besides that I have no real recollection about its content.

Red Meat
Discovered via Rotten.com way back in the days. Unrelated strips of unrelated characters that are odd (emphasis on “odd”).

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Comic strips scientists and philosophers might giggle about.

Spores
Animals on shrooms. Part of False Knees, which you may know from the memes.

The Abominable Charles Christopher
Funny, talkting animals and a Sasquatch on a mission.

The Weekly Roll
Dungeons and Dragons hijinks with a side-splitting funny group of adventurers.

Wulffmorgenthaler
Absurdist strip. It was funnier when it was back on Kaliber 10000.

Digital Garden: Introduction

During Corona, I stumbled upon the concept of “digital gardening”. Maggie Appleton describes it better – and more beautifully, I might add – than I ever could, but it’s basically a personal space to gather and publish (i.e. plant) “personal knowledge on the web”. In one interpretation – more akin to a blog – said knowledge is in flux, will be tended to (i.e. edited or rewritten) and might even grow into a full-grown blogpost or essay. In another interpretation – resembling a wiki – you have curated patches of knowledge and return to those every now and then to amend them.

I will use the latter and instead of a garden the image of a collection of butterflies spiked with tiny needles trapped behind glass inside a large wooden frame comes to mind. Or one of those library catalogs with indices and cards in tiny drawers. Also, instead of personal notes and thoughts my garden will mainly consist of links. Boy do I love links.

One might argue that this blog is already nothing more than a curated collection of links. Which is by design. I don’t feel I have much to add to the global think space, but I like pointing at things. The main difference is time. The usual blog entries are more or less important now. Entries in my digital garden are important forever.