Me and my Big Mouth

Those of you just joining us from mp3c, welcome aboard! Feel free to drop a line here and let me know you came by. Those of you in h2g2 who are stopping by to see how I'm doing, I'm back! Didja miss me?

To be honest I never really left. My friend Leora Salo turned me on to MP3.COM and I've just been experimenting over there. Pretty fun. I now have a bunch of CDs I've made off my new burner, which I can listen to in the car. I also have purchased CDs from artists whose art I wanted to support, and I got some free CDs from mp3c which are multimedia slugfests of music: over 100 mp3 files per disc. It's pretty happening over there.

But the Guide is truly home for me, so over there I'll explore audio and over here I'll explore text. Oh, which reminds me.

If you happen to have come here from mp3c you probably already know, but if you are one of my h2g2 regulars and you haven't been to mp3c yet, you're in for a treat. You're about to be able to listen to me make a complete and utter fool of myself with a microphone. Yep. That's right. YOU can now hear Zach Garland's baritone vocal chords in delicious wonton soup stereo. Complete with vague hint of hick Texas accent and all. Just Click Here and if it doesn't work be patient. The mp3c gurus over there are making a big mess with links right now but things should be up and running smooth some time before the end of the next millenium.

I have already taken one of the many things I've written for h2g2.com and recorded it audibly for all posterity to mp3 file. It's the entry about divorce that I wrote some months ago. I was going to recite more of h2g2 into mp3 format but due to legalities I'm limited to only the stuff I personally wrote. To be quite honest most of what I write for h2g2.com is simply too longwinded and cumbersome for the project. I am also using material I wrote in 1998 during my sojourn as an online diarist, and I'm working on new material as well.

At present it is only my voice without any musical accompaniment or sound effects, but I'm hoping to remedy that in the future. I have some collaborative gentlemen from other parts of the world (Germany for example) who are considering taking bits and pieces of my words and sampling them into future projects of their own, which should be exciting.

What's that you say? Can I read stuff you've written for h2g2 into mp3 format? Well, I could, but legally I'd need your permission and it would just be a lot of red tape I'm too lazy to bother with right now. You can read your own stuff into mp3 format though and submit it to mp3c. In fact I think if a bunch of us h2g2ers attack mp3c en masse that would be pretty cool. However at present I'm limited only to what I've written. I can't even read stuff I've edited legally, without permission of the writer. It's a complicated mess and I wanted to keep this simple. Never say never though. We'll see if there's a way to do that in the future.

Well that's my update. Let me know what you think about the possibilities here. Anyone remember that tape series Douglas Adams did awhile back where he was reading from his books to a live audience? I got those tapes. I dig those tapes. Did you?

This is kinda like that, only not as funny. I'm so excited!