Self Help Radio 011119: Thinking Of It

(I found the clipart I used up there here & here.)

Is this what you were thinking of when you thought of a show about thinking of things?  You might think, "What will he think of next?" or even "Why didn't I think of that?" but ultimately there's always so much we're thinking of, it's hard to sometimes think ahead & think "What will I later be thinking of?"  This show, then, collects many things people just like you or me (except, in many cases, famous musicians) & what exactly they were thinking of at some moment (that moment is, of course, when they wrote the songs).  It may cause you to reflect on the things you think of, or it may cause you anxiety because you never thought you had to think of such things.  In any event: so much here to think of!

This show I am thinking of, which is about thinking of things, is (I think) at the Self Help Radio website at this very moment.  Remember, you'll need a username (try "SHR" without the quotation marks) & a password (try "selfhelp" ditto), but you'll get to hear two hours of great music & so-so attempts at funny, & the details are listed below.

At the very least, think fondly of the show.

Self Help Radio Thinking Of It Show

"All I Think Of" Koko Beware _Something About The Summer_
"Thinking Of You" The Colour Field _Virgins & Philistines_
"Are They Thinking Of Me" Brian Eno _EnoBox II: Vocal_

introduction; accounting; the Grammar-O-Tron 7000

"Thinking Of You" Don Cherry _Thinking Of You_
"Think Of Me" The Prisoners _WiserMiserDemelza_
"Think Of The Ways" Golden Grrrls _Golden Grrrls_
"What Do You Think Of Love" Shrimp Boat _Cavale_
"All Day I'm Thinking Of You" Wolfie _Putting It Together (B-Sides 1997-2000)_

interview with & performance by body musician Bogogob Smith

"Thinking Of You Baby" Amos Milburn _Vicious Vicious Vodka_
"You're All I Can Think Of" Most Valuable Players _You In Honey_
"Thinking Of The USA" Eater _British Punk Rock 1977_
"Think Of These Things" The Field Mice _For Keeps_
"When I Think Of You" Whirlaway _You Make Me Smile_

interview with author David Fruchter

"If I Think Of Love" OP8 _Slush_
"Do You Ever Think Of Me" Laura Cantrell _Not The Tremblin' Kind_
"I Know What You Think Of Me" Barcelona _Simon Basic_
"Thinking Of You" Bill Fox _Transit Byzantium_
"I Think Of Demons" Roky Erickson & The Aliens _The Evil One_

interview with "psychic prestidigitator" the Great Sherdini

"Why Didn't I Think Of That" The Marlowes _Somewhere Down The Road_
"When I Think Of You" Twiggy _Twiggy & The Girlfriends_
"Thinking Of A Dream I Had" The Walkmen _Bows + Arrows_
"Everytime I Eat Vegetables It Makes Me Think Of You" The Ramones _Subterranean Jungle_
"I'm Thinking Tonight Of My Blue Eyes" Bob Atcher & Bonnie Blue Eyes _The Golden Age Of Bob Atcher & Bonnie Blue Eyes_

conclusion & goodbye

"Thinking Of You" The Flatmates _Love & Death (The Flatmates 86-89)_
"Thinking Of You" AVO-8 _Is This The End?_
"Thinking Of You" The Thermals _We Disappear_
"I Close My Eyes To Think Of God" Comet Gain _Realistes_
"I Think Of You" Harmony Grass _Valentine 2000_
"I Still Think Of You" Guy Blackman _Adult Baby_

Whither Thinking Of It?

(Image from here.)

Here now for your educational edification is a conversation I recently had with myself:

ME: What are you thinking of?
ME: Do you mean, what am I thinking about?
ME: I meant what I said.
ME: You could also have said "What are you thinking on?"
ME: Did I say that?
ME: You could have said that.
ME: But I didn't.
ME: You didn't say a lot of things.
ME: There simply isn't enough time.
ME: Oh I don't know.  You take a lot of time to say not a lot of things.
ME: So you won't tell me what you're thinking of?
ME: Why don't you know?
ME: Why should I know?
ME: You're me.
ME: No, you're me.
ME: Primacy is irrelevant.
ME: The hell it is.
ME: If you're me, or I'm you, we'll have the same thoughts.  QED.
ME: Unless.
ME: Unless what.
ME: I am coming up with a counter argument.
ME: No you're not,
ME: How could you know?
ME: Because I am you.
ME: It hardly seems possible.
ME: You're just me pretending to be difficult to drown out the other voices in my head which don't seem to originate from me so can be easily understood to be a harbinger of madness.
ME: Yeah I hate those voices.
ME: Which is why we make conversation with myself.
ME: I never knew!
ME: You always knew.
ME: How could I know?
ME: Because damn it you are me!
VOICE: Hello!
ME: Did you hear that?
ME: Yipes!  Okay, ask me again.
ME: What are you thinking of?
ME: Good question!  Let's make it a radio show.
ME: Hot dog!

That's how this week's show came about.  Also, I've doubled my medication, by which I mean whiskey, & am drunk every four hours on the dot.

Tomorrow.  Noon.  Self Help Radio Dot Net.  If you think of it.

Preface To Thinking Of It: Having Never Once Thought Of It

Do you want to know a word that I can pronounce correctly which I don't ever say correctly in my head?  You do?  Holy shit.  Hold on a second, I need to note this in my diary!  You never want to know the stupid things that I say.  Are you feeling well?

This is the word: carotid.  It means (as an adjective) "relating to or denoting the two main arteries which carry blood to the head & neck, & their two main branches."  As a noun, it just means those arteries, although people will often say, "carotid artery."

Here's how it's supposed to be pronounced: car (like the thing you drive) rot tid.  But faster.

Here's how I say it in my head: carrot (like the vegetable) id.

Why does that happen?  When I was a kid I would often mispronounce words to help me spell them better, like I would say "Wed-ness-day" so I could remember the letter d in there, or I'd say "sub-tull" to put the letter b in subtle.  But I heard the word "carotid" many times before I saw it written down.  Or maybe I didn't.  I never took anatomy or anything, I am just assuming I heard it first on E.R.

& now it occurs to me that this has nothing to do with the theme of this week's show, which is "thinking of it."  & now I am kicking myself for realizing I could have written, "Now that I think of it, this has nothing to do with this week's show."  Man, if only you could I don't know delete a sentence on the blog before it's published & write something else in its place!  But that sort of sci-fi fantasy is so unbelievable I won't even suggest  something so weird!

Might I also mention, I am putting words in italics far, far more often than usually.  I guess I am taking advantage of the ability to do so - in email, I still put a word in-between asterisks to indicate italics, *like so*.  I learned that in the early days of the internet.

Are we done?  Are you glad you asked about how I say the word "carotid" differently in my head than outside my head?  Do you know feel the need to make an offering to the gods that you can't actually hear me talking inside my own head?  It's fine that you don't want to do so, but seriously it sounds a lot like just listening to me talk, except, in the very few times it comes up, I pronounce "carotid" incorrectly.  I'm sure that would get annoying, or maybe we'd never even notice it.

If you could hear my head-voice does it mean I could hear yours?

Oh.  You stopped reading this a while back.

What Is Life, A Postscript

It never fails.  After I do a show, really almost moments after, I find something - sometimes it's a song, sometimes it's an image for the blog, sometimes it's a quote - that I could've used for the show.  This time it's a nice paragraph from Eric Idle's new "sortabiography" Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.  What a nice thing I could have shared:

"After Brian, I took a long sabbatical, immersing myself in astronomy, learning about the immensity of our Universe, & generally self-educating myself in cosmology. I spent the nights gazing at the unbelievable numbers of stars wheeling overhead in the Milky Way, & wrote a lyric about it.*  I also read life science books, trying to understand evolution & the extraordinary appearance of life in the Universe.  I could understand the physical Universe expanding & banging away, but why does life evolve over billions of years to become you & me?  This opened my mind to the central question of the Universe: What is life?**  To my mind, nobody has yet answered this question adequately. Well, alright, Professor Brian Cox did, but we were both pissed at the time, & we have completely forgotten what he said. Steve Martin, a philosophy graduate, said that life exists so the Universe can experience itself."

Yeah, the book's got a lot of name dropping.  It's weird, Elvis Costello's autobiography is like that, too, like, I'm reading about someone I admire, I don't know why he or she needs to tell me they were friends with famous people.  Anyway, it's quite fun & funny & that quote would've been nice to insert into the show.  But oh well.  I'll just insert it here.

* He & his wife were living in France at the time, in a place with electricity or running water, so it must've been fucking gorgeous at night.
** This question was italicized in the original.

Might I Air Some Dirty Dishwashing?

Everyone knows that their dreams are the most interesting things in the world & everyone else who listens to such dreams described doesn't know what they're missing.  For this reason alone I share with you a dream I had last night which exposes my bareness for the all the world to read.

But before that, can I mention how tired I am most of the time.  I also might be depressed.  I think one of my eyes has gone missing.  I can't see my own eyes, so I can't be sure.  Oh shit, I could use a mirror!  Or a lake.  Well, it's too late for a lake.  & the nearest lake is filled with sleeping ducks (I am assuming for the sake of blandishment that ducks sleep on the water & not, say, in sleeping bags floating on the water) & they might be mean sleeping ducks or worse yet ducks that get really fucking angry when they're wakened by big humans trying to see their reflection in the lake in the middle of a dark night & they may take my other eye.

There was something else I meant to mention but I closed my remaining eye for a bit then my cat Boone came up on the little desk next to my computer & he started to talk to me about things like cat college & whether cats thought rugby was manly or silly & then I was like oh fuck me this is another dream isn't it?  So I had some pizza & woke with a bag of Hall's cough drops in my mouth.

The cough drops aren't all that helpful these days but when I had a nasty cold around Christmastime, I
also (this was told to me by my wife, who's not a medical professional but don't tell her I told you that) had some form of bronchitis which I don't know if I ever had before (welcome to your sixth decade you old fuck) but I need to stress it's undiagnosed, I didn't have a doctor put on the gloves & swish around in my lungs (if that's how they do it) but I did cough quite a lot, & when it cools down here (it was 75 degrees today, fuck you very much) & I'm outside in the cold, my lungs want to cough.  That's why the cough drops were on my desk although they look nothing like pizza, & also don't taste anything like pizza, unless you mean mentholated cherry pizza, which, if that's a real thing, & I just talked it into existence, I'm sorry.

Thirty minutes ago you said, "This has gone on long enough" & I haven't even gotten to my dream, which to be honest was a plain old anxiety dream so I'm glad you took this time to tell me a bunch of shit I'm going to go forget now.  But thanks for coming, or whatever your reaction was.

That last line was a Martin Mull joke.  I needed to confess that.  & oh yeah, I found my eye.  It was in my head but not abnormally so.