The 188th edition of Social Blend (which almost didn’t happen!) features Keith Wagner aka DarkNemesis618 and musician Corey Koehler aka MusicGoat as we kick off looking at Facebook announcing their IPO and the impact of this move for social media. We then take a look at the current Republican race in the run towards Election 2012, which spans out to all kinds of political and social commentary, from unions to education, and from corruption to the vaccination debate.

We also condemn and scoff at some of the actions of the “elites” this week: from the demand to have welfare applicants piss tested, to politicians complaining about being subject to the laws they voted in, and more. We follow up on the latest ACTA and Megaupload news, which leads into a discussion about the recording industry and upcoming bands.

Ferris Bueller trolled the internet this week in the lead up to the Superbowl, and we look at Bobcat Goldthwait‘s preview for his new movie, God Bless America. On the topic of movies, we also discuss the upcoming third chapter of the Shaun Of The Dead/Hot Fuzz series, entitled The World’s End.

We close out the show with Corey’s new song, “Why Wait“, and also our regular segments, looking at ridiculous “end of the world” stories in the Countdown to the Gutsfuck of Humanity, and our WTF stories of the week. All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

For Episode 187 of Social Blend, we’re joined by special guest Rick Kelvington, responsible for some excellent Doctor Who and Star Wars mashups on YouTube, as well as mashups of other popular movies. Also joining us are Social Blend regulars geek journalist Tom Cheredar aka Tched from Venture Beat, and musician Terr Ciavarra aka Media Nox.

Kicking off the show, we follow-up on the controversy that was SOPA – as the protests died down, the news came out that the Feds had siezed and shut down popular website Megaupload, in strangely coincidintal timing with both the protests and Megaupload’s plans for a new watershed application. And as SOPA and PIPA were shelved, the War on the Internet continued, with eyes turning to the global ACTA agreement and Lamar Smith‘s insidious PCIP Act. Social Blend deconstructs them and gives you a brief overview on these new threats of censorship.

Later in the show, we turn to entertainment news, looking at the recent announcement that George Lucas is retiring from filmmaking. Or is he? We also take a look at some awesome videos of young kids bringing the rock and metal on the music front.

We close out the show with our regular segments, looking at ridiculous “end of the world” stories in the Countdown to the Gutsfuck of Humanity, and our WTF stories of the week. All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

It’s the 186th edition of Social Blend, and for this show we’re joined by the legendary Lee Garnett aka nComment and the Bacon Queen herself, Amy Vernon. After a long wait, Lee’s epic nComment comic WAR, which focused on the war between Digg and Reddit, has finally reached its conclusion with its third chapter. We discuss the release of the comic, the development, and what’s next for Lee and his comic series.

It’s time to catch up with the West Memphis Three again this week, with the release of Paradise Lost 3 on HBO, and Peter Jackson releasing the trailer for his WM3 documentary, West Of Memphis. Meanwhile, dominating the web this week was the Blackout Protest across the internet against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA) – we take a look at the protests from sites such as Wikipedia and Reddit, and discuss latest developments in the War of the Internet!

Jumping into entertainment news we discuss the latest Star Wars news, and we close out the show with our regular segments, looking at ridiculous “end of the world” stories in the Countdown to the Gutsfuck of Humanity, and our WTF stories of the week. All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

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For the 185th episode of Social Blend, CRANIUMELODY returns – a special of our podcast that underrated or obscure tunes for you to listen to, by some awesome artists that you really should check out!

And this time around, we’re travelling back in time to the year of 1987 – 25 years ago! A year that was especially good for the music scene, most notably the genres revolving around rock and metal.

Joining us for Craniumelody is our good friend Corey Koehler aka Music Goat. For this episode, each of us have chosen a few songs from 1987, and hopefully some of which you might not have heard before.

We dig into our cobwebbed memories and years of terrible fashion sense, to bring up some songs from 25 years ago that not only set the moment in time, but have become timeless themselves.

For our special Craniumelody, we play some music from Frehley’s Comet, The Cult, Choirboys, Celtic Frost, Rick Astley, Midnight Oil, Grateful Dead, Sonic Youth, Bruce Willis, and KISS.

From metal to pop, and from hard rock to early alternative, we become obsessed by some obscure/underrated songs from 1987 that are memorable!

For episode 184 of Social Blend, we’re joined by filmmaker Audrey Ewell who discusses her new project: a community based film project being made by over 50 filmmakers called 99%: The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film. Terr Ciavarra aka Media Nox joins in for the interview, while Audrey gives us a preview of what’s happening with the new documentary, where it’s going, how you can help, and what’s coming up in her future projects. Please check out the 99% links in our show notes below to find out more and find out how you can support.

Later, Brian Hill aka Bdog2g2 joins us for the second half at the show, where we kick off looking at the news of President Obama signing the NDAA bill. We follow up on our SOPA coverage from last week, and also look at Scumbag Verizon facing the wrath of the internet for “convenience” fees. We remember those we’ve lost this week: the man behind Darth Vader’s sword choreography, the voice behing Iron Maiden’s Number of the Beast, and the chimpanzee behind classic Tarzan.

Finally, we close out the show with our regular segments, looking at ridiculous “end of the world” stories in the Countdown to the Gutsfuck of Humanity, and our WTF stories of the week. All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

The 183rd edition of Social Blend moves to the conclusion of 2011, and enters 2012 (our 5th year of podcasting!). Joining us for the transition to the new year are Brian Hill aka Bdog2g2, and Brian Bickerton aka Tau_Zero. We kick off the show looking at the Internet waging war on GoDaddy in response to their support of SOPA – and the impact this boycott is having.

We also wave goodbye to Kim Jong Il who is ronery no more. On the web, we look at Regretsy taking on scumbag PayPal; and in relation to shitty customer service, we also look at the latest online war: Penny Arcade vs. Ocean Marketing. We give major props to Suicide Silence for using money from an auction they did to buy toys for disadvantaged kids for Christmas. Well done, guys, horns up to you all!

We also take a look at the exciting new movie trailers that popped up over the Christmas Break, including The Hobbit, Prometheus, and The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, we close the show with some of regular segments: a look at FloriDUH, and our WTF story of the week. BUT we have a new regular segment, playing on the endtimes predictions for 2012 – so listen up for that!.

All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

Social Blend 182 looks back at the year that was 2011 – it’s ups and downs, highs and lows, and all the bits in between. We have a special guest for this episode – That Chris Gore from Attack of the Show and PodCRASH! Also joining us is fellow TARDISblend Time Lord, Tom Cheredar aka Tched from Venture Beat. We kick off looking at how 2011 treated Social Blend and Mixxing Bowl, and how a challenging year it has been.

From there, we reflect on the biggest world news events of the year, from the Japanese Tsunami (which generated some of the most breathtaking footage ever taken), to the creepy terror attack in Oslo, to the Global Protests spanning the world, including Occupy Wall Street. We also remember some of the notable folks who passed on during the year.

We also jump into the world of entertainment – looking at the movies, music, television, and games of 2011 that we covered and discussed on Social Blend; as well as some of the bigger internet memes that dominated and herp-derped their way to 15 MB of Fame. Finally we take a look at what we consider our WTF Story of the Year to be…

All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

Well, DILLIGAF to everyone again, as we close out our fourth year of Social Blend and move into our fifth! Next year will mark 5 years of SB, and we can hardly believe it. But what we do appreciate is the support you all have given us since the beginnings and especially during 2011. So it’s time that we celebrate with THE BEST OF SOCIAL BLEND 2011. This compilation is a collection of the best moments from all of our episodes during 2011, from the ridiculousness to the sobering moments, spanning over 50 episodes.

One thing we need to point out: during this year, we lost a loved member of our community at MixxingBowl.com. JeffK aka Janejas passed away in early 2011. He is very much missed, and we pay tribute to him at the very end of the podcast, so listen out for that. Also at the end of this special episode is a preview of the new updated opening theme we will be using for shows next year.

We want to give our thanks to everyone who guested on the show during the year; and of course most significantly, and as always, our thanks goes out to YOU: the listeners of Social Blend for staying by our side and checking out the show. You all make this worth the work and energy we put into the show, and we look forward to 2012 (and the end of the world) in becoming a bigger and better year than this one!

So here’s the Best of Social Blend in 2011. Rock on!

Enter the realm of edition 181 for Social Blend, as we’re joined by musicians Corey Koehler aka MusicGoat and Terr Ciavarra aka Media Nox. We kick off the show with our continuing coverage of West Memphis Three news, while the guys are now free, news comes out of another documentary headed by Peter Jackson. We also continue examining the SOPA and PIPA bills, threatening the existence of the Internet as we know it.

Also in DC, we review the horrifying news of the Senate passing the awful National Defense Authorization Act as it now moves to the House of Representatives. Meanwhile, the world continues to dwindle into Depression-like standards, as we also continue our coverage on Occupy Wall Street as well.

Additionally big in the tech world this week is the news on Carrier IQ allegedly logging and tracking users of smart phones and other mobile devices. In film news, we discuss Star Trek 2, Starship Troopers, and Lincoln; and in space news, we discuss the discovery of Kepler-22b. Finally for our WTF Story Of The Week, we discover how Facebook causes arson!

All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!

It’s Social Blend 180, and we’re joined by Terr Ciavarra aka Media Nox and Tom Cheredar from VentureBeat. We kick off looking at the new updates to MixxingBowl.com, which are all looking awesome! Meanwhile, over at Reddit, the Trees took over the site with most of the largest voted submissions of the week… but why?

We also look at some new legislation that could see US citizens arrested and tried by the military. On the topic of legislation, we continue looking at SOPA developments that may censor the internet – while the RIAA/MPAA continue efforts to be the biggest douchebags of the century. Meanwhile, we continue looking at law enforcement conduct at the Occupy Wall Street protests; and examine the ever continuing epidemic of Pepper Spraying, particularly at Black Friday sales!

Later, we view the videos of racist women on UK trains becoming viral this week on the web, and ponder why so many in so little time. There’s also some news in the development of The Dark Knight Rises. Finally, for our WTF story of the week, we react to the news of a 6 year old becoming labeled as a sexual predator because he played doctor with another child?!?!?

All this and more on this week’s edition of Social Blend!