Puzzling Evidence

"Listeners are expendable."

Also known in some circles as "The More Than An Hour Less Than A Show show," Puzzling Evidence is a radio program that broadcasts from KPFA radio in Berkeley, California from 2AM to 5AM Pacific Standard Time on Friday mornings. A blatantly anti-commercial combination of talk radio and media barrage, this three hour program of cacophonic voice and sound may sound to the uninitiated as, well, cacophonic voice and sound. The show consists of an unspecified number of individuals talking sometimes to one another, sometimes to themselves, and sometimes to confused callers. These callers either call in by accident, or they purposefully call in and vainly attempt to sound as cool as the masters of the microphones. These same callers often fail, because it's difficult to hear what's going on when calling in.

The show often makes reference to dogma from The Church of the SubGenius and in-jokes regarding same, which is intended to confuse 'normal' people who tune in by accident, while simultaneously entertaining those who think they are in on said in-jokes, while often such references make fun of the very people who think they grok it. Those who think they are in on the in-jokes are oftentimes found to be the butt of said jokes. These wanna-be hipsters are referred to periodically as 'bobbies' aka poseurs to The Cause of The Church. This program is related either directly or indirectly to other radio programs you've probably never heard of, like the Hour of Slack, Bob's Slacktime Funhouse, and Over The Edge.

"If a fetus is a person, how come it looks like a steamed prawn?"

Other obscure references to history, politics, culture, discordianism, and whatever else is wallowing around inside the participants' heads at the time, also periodically surface amidst this improvisational approach to audio entertainment. Amidst humorous juxtapositions of wordplay and conceptual contrast, occasionally the show explores issues of philosophy and cultural angst, perpetually aiming a metaphorical mirror at society until one gets a feedback loop that temporally asuages the collapse of a pocket dimension from which there is no escape. Many who have been subjected to exposure to this show find the impression that Puzzling Evidence continues to broadcast even after the program itself comes to an end, or the physical apparatus utilized to receive the program's broadcast is in fact turned off. This phenomenon is known as endoplasmic retrocycling. It has yet to be ascertained whether these emissions are con or X-ist in origin.

"For all the new listeners just tuning in, let's turn on all the turntables!"

Doctor Hal "Howling" Robbins is one of the more recognizeable voices, once one gets used to the swirling maelstrom of strangeness. Robbins has an uncanny ability to sound authoritative as anything from improvised ramblings to complicated collegiate textbook pablum to excerpts from The Book of the SubGenius spews forth from his mouth at an alarming rate. Often accompanying Robbins is Doktor Philo Drummond whose reports and ramblings are alternately thought-provoking and ridiculous, and are even on occasion mistaken for informative. Other voices come and go, including but not limited to Michael Pepe, Saint Janor Hypercleats, Doug Wellman, Gary Gabroagfraan, and other names which have escaped my memory at the moment, but I'll add them as they occur to me: radical leftists screaming into a wheel except of course for those which are not.

Often one can hear two or three conversations happening simultaneously, while sound effects and music fade in and out throughout the program, which appears to have no actual format, beyond the intrinsic format that is itself. Use of audio clips from motion pictures, random sound effects and a curious variety of music can virtually misplace the 'characters' of the show to any location they wish, with no concern about describing how or why any of these events can occur or how the voices in the radio could move from the radio studio to the jungles of Africa then seconds later be transported to a time when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth. Beware of the kitties and the babies. Those sounds often attack the radio programs' featured players with little to no warning.

"The hologram isn't saying anything."
"Perhaps you're not listening hard enough."

This is a slackful program that would never function in its present state via commercial radio, but has existed for decades entertaining the minds of those who like to think outside the box while also perplexing those who, in a word, don't. Puzzling Evidence may be noise that no one can properly comprehend, even those who participate in its production, and yet it is a constantly evolving radio program that stands to bear witness as to why publically funded radio is required in America, to perpetuate the unfettered creativity of art in modern culture.

Update: 2006/12/22 on or around this date, portions of the above subdeenieness were read on the air by none other than Dr. Hal himselvis, or one of his clones. He only got about halfway through before he grew weary of the redundant repetitive redundancy, and they moved on to discussions of televisized UFO abductions.