Oh Ye Of Little Fates!

Perhaps a few introductory remarks might be in order. For those of us joining you overseas. In case your ship, which shall sail, sails alas! I am happy to brief the settlement & offer the customary light fare that recruits expect in every buffet & bar on this side of the world. Alas!

1) There will be no fondling of hallowed topics on this radio show. It's either fuck them or get out of the way.
2) When I say "sit still," I mean "sit still." When I say "look away," I mean, "panic!"
3) The importance of yard work - or the fretting about thereof - shall not be undersold.
4) Recently it has come to my attention that you require prerecorded cues to determine when you need to laugh. This is unacceptable.
5) However, subliminal sounds (which sound a lot like goats weeping) have been inserted into archived radio shows to help you know when you are supposed to be amused. Don't thank me all at once.
6) Fire breathing may seem hokey but it can totally mess your throat up.
7) Even metaphorically.
8) I was thinking about it, though, when you have fantasy movies or books or whatever & the graceful gallant knight is battling the wild, evil dragon, & the dragon roars & flame comes out of its mouth, that flame is basically the dragon's flammable spit. Am I right? Like, the spit has a chemical reaction to oxygen & turns to flame. If so, that's just gross.
9) Because, you know, human fire breathers have to put liquid into their mouths in order to blow fire. Human spit is not flammable. Not ever. Not even for people with Butt Breath.
10) Butt Breath cannot be detected on the radio, which may explain why so many people at KOOP have Butt Breath.
11) They know who they are.
12) It's getting so that your average meeting at KOOP, even when held at a fancy downtown eatery, smells like it's being held in the front restroom of the United States Diarrhea Club.
13) If you know what I mean.
14) On this radio show, we don't talk about body parts much.
15) On this blog, it's all butts & balls.
16) & saliva & blood.
17) & recalcitrance & woe.
18) Do not operate heavy machinery for a few hours after my show. This isn't because of something my show does to your brain - this is because it's Friday & you're supposed to be off work. & when you're off work, you drink. A lot. So don't operate heavy machinery when you're drunk. Duh.
19) Light machinery is fine.
20) Light machinery is machinery an eight-year-old girl can pick up & carry around for seven minutes.
21) Singing along is fine.
22) Sexing along is weird.
23) There is only one other thing to mention.
24) Why must you constantly change record labels?
25) I can't keep up with your reissues!

For more in an active sense, you can as of right now go to the selfhelpradio.net archive page & listen to last Friday's exciting & exacting episode. I will be over at your house later today to ask you how it made you feel. Make me scones.

Head Up The Ass & Away

Oops. I didn't write anything yesterday! What will the Yagfijhi Tribe of Outer Greentopula do without my nonsense to fete their prophecies? Too late! They've all returned en masse to Tony Danza.

When we last left out this discussion, we were discussing how digusting it is that, the older people get, the shallower they become. But then the Grey Goose said, "Are we only talking about people who talk about rock & roll as if it's a way of life?" "No, no," said Jonathan Swift, trying valiantly to pass a kidney stone. "Shallowness," he continued, "is as common as pimples on the butt of existence." The audience cheered. I managed to ask the prestigious panel, "Well, can we choose not to be shallow?" There was hearty laughter all around.

"You can no more choose how shallow you are," said the dish who ran away with the spoon, "than you can pick the consistency of the viscous membrane that coats all of those inner tissues which are regularly exposed to outside sources." "That's a lie!" said Emmy-award-winning actress Desiree Fluke. "I am the product of the sum of all my parts." "All your parties," former Soviet Ambassador Ted Danson quipped, to a smattering of titterings in the solarium.

In spirited philosophical discussions such as these, it's not uncommon for commoners to feel they need to inject some common sense. "Come on," said Peasant Hobo, "you're acting like people understand what the fuck they think. They don't. They're stupid, they're shallow. Especially if they pretend that some art form defines them like a religion or an ethnic group. Also, panties are gross. Why can't women wear boxer shorts like men? & don't get me stared on thongs. How can a dude who has to wear cast off clothing enjoy his day in a thong? Anyway, I want to ask you all as I wander around the room if you can spare a dollar for a man who's really hungry & who lost his virginity for his country."

The evening got late, but since it was the longest day of the year, no one noticed. Everyone thought we were in some fucked-up Northern English city like Newcastle or the Bronx, where the sun doesn't so much as set in the summer as lie low. Presently the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse went on a beer run & three drama critics drank WD-40 & convulsed quietly to themselves on the bathroom floor. Bob Dylan came to the door & he was beat up. Time ceased to feel timely. A discussion about the properties of sleepy metals seemed about to wake up the room, but then the concierge brought us all chocolates & ginger ale & we knew it was nearing the end.

Your homework assignment today is to tune in to a radio show online (might I request koop.org at 4:30pm today central standard time) & regurgitate its highlights in a blue book on Monday. Ta!

Whither Quitting?

Fuck. I thought that said "whither quilting?" I had material about perse quilts & medallion quilts & story quilts & paper quilts. I even had a joke about saying "I had material" in reference to quilts. I even fucking MADE A QUILT in Photoshop to post to the blog. But it turns out my show this week is about quitting. What jerk wants to do a show about that? Not me. I quit.

I mean, I quilt. I am a quilter of the highest caliber. Do you want to know how good a quilter I am? Well, do you know the meaning of these words?

postrelate
feebrut extension
rulling the inside weadet
hunfitching
moscle round
kenfoil

No? Then you're not a quilter of the highest caliber. That's because they ONLY use words like these when you are of a high enough caliber of quilter to learn what these words mean. & these words are kept more secret than L Ron Hubbard's frozen brain - you won't find them in any dictionary. No. I am being a total jerk & breaking all the Quilt Club rules (the first two rules of Quilt Club, etc.) just to make a point. Sometimes when you're thinking about kenfoiling the feebrut extension, it behooves you the rull the inside weadlet postrelately instead of hunfitching the moscle round - or the moscle sidearm for that matter (that's a quilter joke). & that's why I feel comfortable telling you.

Oh yes, these quilting terms are REAL. Just because you don't quilt doesn't mean that I made them up. & also, these terms have NOTHING IN COMMON with the weird dolphin-sounds that needepoint people make when they hang out together. That's not a real language. They're just making noise. Those people are freaks.

Maybe one day I'll do a show about quilting, but I guess I need to read the memos more closely. Luckily, I understand too well that the theme next week will be Indonesian Pots, A To Z. A snap!

Preface To Quitting: Are You Hiring?

Holy mother of skank! I don't think I'm quitting Self Help Radio this week, nor is Self Help Radio quitting me. Indeed, I am committed to the radio show until they pry it from my cold, sweaty hands. Note: you don't have to kill me to get my show! But my hands are sweaty!

How many things have you quit? I've quit smoking. I quit eating meat longer than half my life ago. I've quit pretending that you love me. I have quit a couple of jobs, but I didn't quit school - I actually finished it. I haven't quit life, though it seems to me that life has quit me. I haven't quit using square quotes around words like "square quotes." I haven't quit using lots of exclamation points although this makes me seem like a ten-year-old girl!!!!!! Have I quit using question marks. Does anyone know if I've quit using quotation marks. I have quit eating at fast food restaurants, thanks to the visceral unhappiness of Super Size Me, as well as the book (but NOT the movie) Fast Food Nation. I have quit believing in being in love, though I haven't quit loving. I haven't quit pretending, in the moments I go to sleep, that I am living in a superhero world that I invited when I was ten. I haven't quit helplessly seeking happiness.

I know that in time am going to quit my job, my city, my life, even my radio station, at some point. But I won't be quitting this blog today. Maybe tomorrow. But tomorrow I may quit talking about my radio show on this blog. & I won't be doing it because I am a quitter. It's not because I can't quit being ironical. But it is because I just like quitting things. Although I miss cigarettes. Agh!

Don't you quit me, though. I needs ya.

Apple Juice All Day

I'd like to dedicate this song to my two oldest friends from 15th grade, Pork Rib & Spanky. I have no idea where they are today, but if I google their names, I get a barbecue joint in New York, so who knows? They might be sandwiches now.

I'd also like to dedicate this song to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board. It takes a lot of money & a certain kind of ballsy stupidity to consistently stand for & promote the wrongest possible things day in & day out, but you do it. I love you guys.

If it's not too much, I'd also like to dedicate this to people with teeth. Recent studies in our species' continuing evolution have explained that, as we eat more mushy food, teeth are no longer going to be selected for. That explains why so many American children are being born without them. Well, that's cool, but for those of us who still have teeth - this is for you.

Before I start, I should say that this song was inspired by the recent immigrant debate in this country & also season 5 of "Friends." Both are eminently thought-provoking, though only one is hilarious. I confess I was huffing lots of decaf roast around the time I wrote this, so if the song smells funny, you'll know why.

I promise, I'm not one of those prima donna artists who needs a Shasta enema & Malayasian snickerdoodles on my rider, but I would ask please the front two rows, can you guys make sure that you don't clip your finger- or toenails during the performance? I know, Peter Gabriel has the same hang-up, but he does have a particularly nasty hunk of dead human stuff stuck under his foreskin, so it's not quite the same. Just try to remember to clip & trim at home. It keeps everyone happy.

Where was I? Oh, yeah. This short number got me my country club membership as well as three free passes to The Gay Conspiracy: The Movie. I sing it like a tennis star, from my diaphragm, or like an architect, from a diagram. Here goes. One, two, three, four...

WE INTERRUPT THIS TO TELL YOU: SELF HELP RADIO'S LAST SHOW, ON JUNE 15, 2007, ABOUT "TRAFFIC" IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR DOWNLOAD HERE. YOU WANT IT. YOU WANT IT MORE THAN ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE. GO LISTEN NOW.

Thank you. Well, I told you it was short!

Scared Of Cinderella

Fables being what they are - sleepy, mistrustful, metrosexual - it should come as no surprise to the modern consumer that the Great American Cheese Belt is undergoing a fashionable makeover in order to compete with the cooler (eg, chain-smoking) Overseas Cheese Markets. This documentary will show you how.

"Now THAT's what I call a gangbang!" was the way President Bush (no offense) described it to his "fuckwit pals" in the agricultural community last Thursday while touring a midwestern air pollution factory which, sources close to this reporter - but frankly closer to my wife, with whom they went to school - have confirmed, is the number one producer of air muck & filthy in all the kingdom. The President, who later consumed an entire dwarf while laughing heartily at an entire season of "30 Rock" shown simultaneously on 32 plasma TVs, praised American ingeniousness & also, for some reason, Michael Caine.

Michael Caine could not be reached for commitment.

But if you like people whose voices trail off as they get that look in their eyes that suggest unspeakable dread, you'll absolutely adore the 2008 Swarm Chili Deployment. The wonders of the space age make a slight return with this hip & ghetto fabulous way to feed everyone who believes in Jesus & who can't afford a too, too Hollywoodish high colonic. Spokespeople for the groove have been dispatched to every suburban white flight checkpoint & will report back weather permitting.

We know you've been sharing your holiday snapshots with a community of grim rueful failure, but did you know you can caption those same photos in the privacy of your own head? No more will antagonistic family members wonder what national freak of nature you're standing in front of as they count your chins & wet themselves online. A spellcheck is placed within a mouse click, but only for the lucky winners (chosen nightly) who can correct identify a local prostitute, City Council member or a relative from a series of Google Cloud Photos.

Which way, you may well ask, is the Self Help Radio way? The experts will be releasing the highly anticipated sequel to their 2005 report, What Says Hunh?, which mentions the show obliquely if at all. After the fulmination & the letters of apology to all the available media outlets, as well as the video game/pornographic novel, the results may be reviewed THIS FRIDAY & EVERY AVAILABLE FRIDAY on Self Help Radio from 4:30 to 6:00pm. Online is listened live. There is furthermore no excuse.

Next week: why do you look so sad? I don't think that's appropriate.

Leave My Husband Alone!/Waiting For The Coffee To Download

What has he ever done to you? In strange regalia, the modern radio listener approaches, all wires & field mice, to start the busiest of loafsome days. He's not a strong man - he's a tender man, a man of love, a lover not a fighter. Like tender strips of moss-flavored skin he or she makes a democracy with his her choice of music slash infotainment. I don't know why you can't just leave him alone. Like hands held for prayer or "tell it to the judge" a morning of warm woe begins for this listener, this listener who has chosen to give it all up for embarrassing, homocidal or syruply mediocre. I mean, what has he ever done to you?

Why is this? Does it make you feel like a big person to pick on someone who can't defend himself? Perhaps the next-door neighbors put flyers up for their most recent suicide pact. Do you think it'll make me want you? There's a chance a promotion at work just netted free cigarettes or free cigarette burns. I could never love someone like you. It's true, local music never was what it used to be, but the local dailies & weeklies, monthlys & yearlys are still trying to convince everyone there's something to write & read about. I want someone like him - someone who may get the shit kicked out of him by cads & bullies like you, but someone who has a heart & a brain & not what you have instead - two fists! It's important to remember the names of the roadies & bouncers, because they're the ones who'll get you drugs & backstage dawdling. Just stop it! If you doze during the live DJ set, you might get to see the club owner beat up his "partner." You'll kill him! If not, well - thank god your work is next to the plasma center. You asshole he's not fighting back!

As a child, you wanted to play "junkie & dealer," & now, as an adult, you want to play "child." So you'll hit me too? Returning phone calls may be easier than ever, especially since phones are ubiquitous as assholes with phones, but you are being frisked at the convenience store for weapons & viruses, & all you really wanted was small talk & perhaps advice on how to keep the flintlock on your musket clean. What a strong, strong man you are, picking on two people weaker than you, people who obviously DO NOT want to fight you. While you're booking the mariachi band for your own funeral, it hits you: like an embarrassing drunken Facebook photograph, you've been automatically saved & backed-up. You know the police call this assault.

Which doesn't explain your radio choices, even if it informs them. Stop it stop it stop it stop it! You'll need to see if there's a greeting card with a stranger's name in the candy aisle so you can begin sucking up again. You're killing him! You'll feel only slightly bitter, especially since you can't hear anything anyone says, & most of us are no better off than you. God damn it I said stop it why can't you stop it! But shouldn't we feel sad about it all? Oh god oh god oh god look at all this blood! Isn't there something we can at least say we'll do to make a change? Leave me alone leave me alone! Or is it really enough - the emptiness, the repetition, the callous over your heart, the radio you "listen" to? Oh my god someone help me! I believe you. Someone help me! I hope you believe you.

Whither Traffic?

I take a bus. Or should I say, the bus takes me? I don't drive to work. I drive only when driving is the only way to get somewhere. Like a liquor store at 8:50pm. Or a latenight rockshow. I love to drive don't get me wrong. I just don't drive. So what do I know about traffic?

I have not trafficked drugs. I have trafficked with demons, though they were minor demons (meaning under the age of 2100 years) & they wanted drugs from me, so they went away empty-horned. My bus, which is neither really my bus nor even the same bus daily (I check the numbers), is often stuck in traffic, & the bus driver will swear like a demon. Also, there's this one driver who has horns, or she wears her hair weirdly, which could be the same. Or different.

About a year ago, I did a show about driving. Two years ago I did a show about the effects of saltpeter on the central nervous system. That show was seized by Homeland Security. I miss that show. I hear it entertains no one at Guantanamo Bay. Three years ago, I tried to do a show about steering wheels, but it revolted against me & it became a show about steering committees, & I refused to air it, instead rerunning a show I did about the great Cheese Strike during the war on sailing. That one won a Tony. Sorry, scratch that. It won a Tony The Tiger Award. Because it was grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

I was talking about my favorite bus, whose name (not coincidentally) is Tony, & how one day we were stuck in traffic, & the underpaid bus driver dude was having an acid flashback, & three giggly girls in the back were humming Shangri-Las songs out of tune, & out of order, & Tony said, "Traffic sucks!" & I was saying to myself, as I always do when a bus talks to me, "Thisisn'treal thisisn'treal thiscan'tbereal this-is-not-real." But then Tony said, "You should do a show about traffic."

Suddenly, I realized that life was a dream & the only way to be free of suffering was by following the Eightfold Path. Then I looked down, saw that I hadn't yet finished the sudoko puzzle du jour, & the acid flashback bus driver drove straight over an old VW bug to make the exit ramp. That was then, this is this coming Friday.

Preface To Traffic: Steve Winwood Is My Summer Romance

Self Help Radio, the most breakfast cereally of all radio shows, has its good themes & its bad themes. A show I once did about sorghum may have netted me tremendous praise from the National Sweet Sorghum Producers & Processors Association, not to mention a couple of scary people who drink sorghum beer, but since it only featured one song, the Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Sorghum" (which isn't even a real song), & eighty-six minutes of me trying desperately to talk about sorghum, well, that show is widely considered the nadir of a radio program built on extremely low expectations. By contrast, the "free money" theme was well received, & only cost me four thousand dollars.

This week, our theme will be "traffic," which may or may not be annoying if you're listening in a car on I-35 getting completely fucked up on the fumes of the semi in front of you. I frankly don't care. What I do care about is that you people stop writing me & asking me if I will feature any factoids about Steve Winwood. No! No I won't! & I don't care that I once received a handjob from a priest in a confessional while he was humming "Higher Love"! I'm not proud of that. I'm not even Catholic.

I will, however, slake the thirst of you Winwoodians by telling my favorite Steve Winwood in the world. I know, everyone has their favorite Steve Winwood story, like the one about him dressing up as a priest & giving unsuspecting boys handjobs in confessionals, but this is not one of your average Steve Winwood stories. This one does not feature Jimi Hendrix or Ginger Baker or Eric Clapton or Malcolm X or Stephen Fry or Bunny Wailer or Dick Cheney or Kay Parker or Marc Chagall or Giorgio Moroder or Parker Posey or Marianne Faithfull or Lou Dobbs or Richard Hatch or Pepper Anderson or Roy Clark or Steve Ditko or Audra Lindley or Richard Hilton or Bobby Trendy or Arturo Sandoval or Rodney Allen Rippy or Dave Brock or Joe Mannix or Joe Montana or Josephine Baker or Ahmed Sékou Touré or Richard Dawson or Muff Winwood or Woody Herman or Estelle Getty or Trina Robbins or Kiki-la-Doucette or Jim Corbett or Bradley Whitford or Farrah Franklin or Mary Jane Parker or Saint Anastasia the Patrician or Steve Doocy or Casper The Friendly Ghost or William Tecumseh Sherman or Los Huracanes del Norte or Alf Landon or Barry Bonds or Ali Larter or even, now that I think of it, Steve Winwood. Yes, it's the only Steve Winwood story that I can think of that doesn't actually involve Steve Winwood. There won't be a reference to one of his songs, or one of his bands, or his mental problems, or his famous letters to Penthouse Forum, or his inability to form a complete sentence since quitting cocaine in 2004. In that sense, this is truly a great Steve Winwood story.

& that story is, frankly, too painful for me to tell right now. I will also need to ask my mother how she feels about it. So. Maybe tomorrow. Now, leave me alone, you Winwoodsuckers. There'll be no Winwood on Self Help Radio this Friday. Nor will there ever be any Winwood on Self Help Radio! I mean it!

Learn How To Have A Good Time All The Time

Guess what happens to me today? No, I'm not going to become one of the painfully deluded lefties who have volunteered to keep Hugo Chavez's nutsack clean & smooth - & for that, you know, he may try to take me off the air - nor am I going to be getting my weekly audio accu-beating during Magic ELJ's Soul Vaccination - that guy has it in for me! - no, I am visiting a medical professional & I'm getting a blotch removed from my personality.

I know, I know. You're like, "What? Isn't it your blotches that make you who you are?" Oh, I agree. But it turns out that this blotch may be pre-cantakerous. I'm just too young for that. So my metaphysician is doing a personality adjustment, & removing a small portion of my charm, simply because it was looking a little discolored & it was causing people to doubt my charisma. Imagine! They were thinking I was a painfully deluded leftie who couldn't wait to volunteer to shave & shampoo Hugo Chavez's ballsack! That blotch has got to go.

I believe it was Tim Magazine (or was it Newweek?) that reported that graphic, amusing descriptions of your fucked-up sexuality is the new sarcasm, but this blotch (I am told) sits somewhere between sweetly-faked honesty & the organ that generates a "hunh, life doesn't suck so bad right now" feeling when someone tells me they like my show. I may find these feelings lacking afterward, but I could retain as much as 90% of both. I just wish the blotch were sitting on top of my sleepiness. I'd say, cut it all out!

I hope I will be well enough tomorrow to expound upon a show about traffic, but if not, I'll double-team you on Wednesday. Just remember, I might be a little different. But at least I won't be sacrificing my intergrity & morality just because another blowhard dictator is paying lip service to some ideals I may believe. Yay!

Trigger Harpy

I am feeling negative. Stop me feeling negative. It would be nice for my negativity to have an outlet today. An AC outlet, please. Direct current is too direct for me. Doesn't it know? Jokes about one's sexuality are the new sarcasm.

However, there is no outlet for me. I have given away my show today to a pixie from the Northeast. He will leave hair all over my pillow & drink all my soy cheese. Worst of all, he will prove more exciting than my own show, so I'll have to spend the evening drinking toasts to my inadequacy. Then, of course, I'll get arrested for mowing the lawn at 4am. It'll be my 36th birthday all over again.

The goodest news is that I'll be seeing Patton Oswalt on Sunday. He'll make me have funnies. The other goodest news is that I'll be back next week with a special heartfelt Self Help Radio which will touch the hearts of all the children & their friends in the Travis County Monsterplex, now surrounded by the George W Bush Memorial Moat, & this very special Self Help Radio will be all about traffic.

Traffic! You know what it is, but you don't know what causes it. Also, you sometimes see people in traffic who are apparently having sex. What's up with that? How are they having sex in traffic & you couldn't get laid if you owned a yacht & your face cleared up? We won't be talking about that, actually. Nor will we be making fun of people with really black circles under their eyes. They don't deserve it, & they're still stuck in traffic.

Have a good weekend! Listen to KOOP! Don't get incarcerated!

Online Toffee Makers Revolt

I've been taking a lot of online "tests" that ask questions like "Are You A Homosexual In Your Own Pants?" & "Which Character On Law & Odor Are You Most Like?" & "How Many Fingers Am I Holding Up, Coma Boy?" They're a great way to wile away the time if you're afraid of the work you must do to satisfy the demon lords, but I was most excited recently to discover this particular survey, which has since mysteriously disappeared, as if I dreamed it & it never existed on the Interweb ever. I'll reproduce what I remember:

HOW MANY BRAINS CAN YOU USE TO COLONIZE GLIESE 581C?

This test determines whether you, unlike your roommate, have enough brains to colonize an Earth-like planet before supper. All responses will be considered final. You cannot go to the bathroom. While taking this test, humming is encouraged.

1) I know what boys like.
a) Boys like me.
b) Boys, like me.
c) Boys like meets.
d) Boys like meat.

3) Given three sides of a four-sided triangle, you can compute the fifth side:
a) On Star Trek.
b) On Star Wars.
c) In your dreams.
d) In your underwear.

7) Recent science indicates that RC Cola never really existed. That means that:
a) I've never been loved.
b) Sixteen dead blackbirds are all I have to show for my college education.
c) George Orwell was an a-hole.
d) The delicious taste of Flapdoodle is responsible.

8) Two trendy people live in Austin. They automatically:
a) Think anything they're told is good is good.
b) Think anything they're told is good is good.
c) Think anything they're told is good is good.
d) Think anything they're told is good is good.

10) I like mayonnaise...
a) In Springtime.
b) On long drives.
c) With news of dead Playboy centerfolds.
d) On long sandwiches.

12) A carpet is to a lizard as a picture of you in high school is to:
a) Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado
b) A caterpillar
c) Mud
d) Whistling

13) Which of the following is generally known as a gerund?
a) Not this one.
b) Unh-unh.
c) Not even close.
d) Wrong

17) I have never really felt love.
a) Boo fucking hoo.
b) Have a little something to drink, pardner.
c) Take back what you said about Avril Lavigne.
d) Two words: hooker party!

21) Finish this sentence to form the punchline of a famous Milton Berle joke: I can't go to the theatre tonight, sugar tits, as I am sitting on the toilet because of _______
a) Screaming Shits
b) Pulsating Piles
c) Rocketing Rectum Disorder
d) Lonesomeness

24) Which famous Hollywood United States Walt Disney President is best known for drinking his own semen every morning before running the world?
a) Dick Cheney
b) Ronald Reagan (the Gay One)
c) Ronald Reagan (the Straight One)
d) George Bush (either one)

26) This survey is attempting to help you access parts of your mind you didn't think were active because you believe nonsense like astrology & "The Secret" & people who get you high & say dumb shit like "Dude, we only use 90% of our brains - what would it be like if we used ALL ONE HUNDRED PERCENT." When you realize how incredibly much you've wasted your life, what will you most likely do?
a) Go on pretty much the same way.
b) Become your parents.
c) Kill yourself.
d) Kill as many people as possible before you're caught.

29) The number of bumper stickers I have on my car in no way reflects my crippling insecurity.
a) False
b) What?
c) They're funny!
d) I wish I had a car.

34) The number of divorces in the United States keeps rising. Why do you think that is?
a) Just write it down.
b) Seriously, we can't figure it out.
c) It's not one of these answers, though.
d) So this question won't count.

37) To answer this question, you'll need to think logically. Gert has five frisbees. All five frisbees are weighted down with Gert's tears. Gert's girlfriend of seven years, Nan, left him last night for a window washer. Gert wants to throw all five frisbees on the tops of the roofs of the five friends who knew about Nan's treachery but didn't tell Gert. Gert has been drinking for the past seventeen hours. The neighborhood in which Gert's friends live has seventy-four houses. Assuming the wind is light & breezy from the southeast, & the frisbees are flying at only 75% of their potential, & Gert sees one-hundred & forty-eight houses, whose windows will Gert NOT break?
a) The Nelsons
b) That Sex Offender With The White Van
c) Old Mister Woods
d) The Kaiser

40) Life on another planet will most probably be either much less complex or much more complex than human life. We're just saying. It's not like you're going to meet a Klingon or something. It's going to be algae or a being nearly Godlike that thinks you are algae.
a) I hope we meet the algae.
b) I believe Jesus wouldn't do that to me.
c) I'm so alone.
d) Leave me alone.

Postscript: The score I received on the "test" said:

You are ready, willing & able to colonize another planet. You think clearly, you are able to solve complex problems, & you believe it when people tell you things like this. You'll make a great guinea pig when we start shooting people in the general direction of that planet. Contact NASA right away. Go on. Do it.

Guess what! I am going to Gliese 581C! Yay!

Whither Ken's Last Ever Summer Invasion Extravagander 2007?

I first met Ken Lastever at a Hollywood Dachsund Party hosted by Carl Reiner. Both of us had been brought there because of a deep, abiding fear of John Locke. Also, two very different judges - the Honorable Nelson Motherfucker of Garland, Texas, & the Right Justified Honorable Elvis Twinkie of Brooklyn, New York - had sentenced us to Hollywood for youthful indiscretions which the two learned justices hoped we could turn in lucrative careers. We failed, however, & after an abortive attempt to drown Robin Williams in a punch bowl filled with his own ego & unfunniness, we fled, hoping never to see each other again.

Years after that, but before now, I ran into Ken Extravaganza at a Bush Election campaign fundraiser. It was four hundred million dollars a plate, but Ken had had a plate pre-installed in his head, & he was showing it off to the faith-based-inclined. I had been attempting to make a bong out of a Bible when none other than Karl Rove came by & showed me which of the epistles made better rolling papers & the man himself, Laura Bush, came running into the gala event like a cat at a rocking chair fire. Using soothing words & a hand pump, Ken was able to calm the crowd & insert post-hypnotic commands into their brain, which would make them feel something akin to joy when they saw draft dodgers clear brush. This, like many things Ken did, would backfire later, & he testified his regret at the Cindy Sheehan murder trial in Dimension X a few months later.

While I rightly admire Ken for his radios, I am at loggerheads when it comes to his shows. Or maybe it's the other way around. However, he did cure me of the brain hiccups, & though he has not promised to meet me in the People's Court to settle our bills, the assistant pastor at the church by the bus stop to which I am constantly late has let me know that he thinks it would be the organic thing to do to let Ken Radio steal ninety minutes of Self Help Radio this week while I sit in the corner & really, really think about my life, & how much of it I've really enjoyed, & how little of it I have left, especially if I lose my left eye.

So I ceded one week to Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, the Summer 2007 Invasion Tour. & like all those Democrats who voted to give George Bush a war, I will regret it & it will hurt my chances to be president. But only for my Block Association.

Preface To Ken's Last Summer Radio Invasion Extravaganza: Embedding Secret Words In Plaintext

After forty-three years of stand-up, I decided to enjoy the leisure of a more supine comic. It coincided with the tenth anniversary of my third anniversary of forgetting that I was in medical school. Which is one of the main reasons I didn't need to be around this week. It's not just the loneliness of the applause - or the long-winded runner - or the man who has the "cleaning" job of scraping the fake blood off the wall on television crime shows - though all those things did contribute. Sometime in the past. When you still cared.

The years go by, & your blessings are counting on you. You're the main authority on the subject matter of shit that's been happening to you. Unless you are being filmed, in which case there'll be lots of footage. & not just footage. Headage. Breastage. Torsoage. Hipsage. It's the age of the bodyage.

I wish I could tell you more about Ken's Last Ever Radio Extravaganza, but we've only known each other for a short time. I'll meditate on it tonight, & tomorrow, I'll throw all caution to the wind & make up several lies & one important truth. Like I am the president of Venezuela!

My Name, Your Newspaper

It's happened to almost all of us almost once: local notoreity in the local news magazine. (Some of the rest of us appear on local children's shows when we are local children.) (The rest of the some of us appear on a pederast's blog accidentally because we're standing next to the child at the beach where the pederast is secretly taking pictures with his patented "towel-phone" (tm).) It just so happens I've appeared in the local rag holding a mop & pail for my middle school's "Clean Up The Filthy Mouths Of The Unbelievers" event, where we went to local non-Christian churches (of which there weren't a lot, so we ended up outside of Catholic schools) & we did minor custodial work on their front steps, at which places our Youth Minister, Pastor Demon, screamed if there was press present. Interestingly, one of the kindly old friars who worked at one school always gave me a couple of bucks for my work; since it was sinful money, I spent it on porn.

Anyway, this is just to say that ONCE AGAIN, I don't appear at all in the newspapers. Why is that? Certainly not for lack of photogenic qualities. I'd suggest a conspiracy, but I am afraid of the sort of people that attracts. Besides, I know the reason why. I'm too edgy. Too cool. Too mediocre at what I do. Too forgettable. & that's just something they can't get past. They're looking for real newsertainment - all I can give them is enternews. & their figure of speech department is cash poor at the moment.

Speaking of, how long does it take you to eat a muffin? I have discovered that, in a morning where there are lots of muffins, I can normally finish, say, half a muffin in a little under thirty seconds. But give me a whole muffin (after the half muffin), & I'll nibble on the whole muffin for hours. That means that I spent five hours on a muffin & a half today. For fuck's sake! That's newsworthy!

But ring the village bells & call home the village whores, I am announcing that last Friday's show, which looked at popcorn in a way that no other radio show that's dealt with popcorn ever has, is now available for podcasty downloading on my site. It's at the top of the archive page. Go listen. There's a free muffin with every download!*

* If there's someone around to give you a muffin.

Charles Nelson Reilly, RIP

Goodbye, Chuck.

Last year, for Christmas, for myself, because my girlfriend & my family don't really buy me presents, & because I don't really buy anyone but me presents, I treated myself to a seasonal gift by buying the Match Game Box Set. If they collected every episode of Match Game on DVD - all nine hundred years of it - I would be one of those people who would buy it - & watch it. For the rest of my life.

Of course part of the reason for that was Charles Nelson Reilly. So I am sad that my head has been up my ass for the past week & I didn't even notice he had left us. I also am furious that there wasn't a national day of mourning, with nothing but Charles Nelson Reilly on the television.

They better correct this mistake when Richard Dawson dies, goddamnit.

Self Help Radio, today at 4:30pm, on the air in Austin at 91.7 fm, live at koop.org (CST), archived eventually at selfhelpradio.net. It's probably safe to say I wouldn't be such a goof if I had never been exposed to - over & over throughout my childhood - Charles Nelson Reilly.

When Owls Attack!

Back in the 1960's, everybody was a Marxist. It seemed to me that capers & ashtrays could be rolled into the one thing that is more intellectually satisfying. In America & Israel, I've interviewed people who thought a monkey should give birth to a man. How does it feel to be at camp like that? I find myself concerned in more belief strongly to engage in dialogue with people like you in an Irish accent. In case we've missed something.

Repeatedly, I've been brought up short. The trump card can't be argued with. In this book, my misunderstanding is to talk about this a bit. Faith said she was needed only when she wasn't in evidence. However, I come from when you do say what kind of use to support the fair questions of immediacy. What are the final stages? It tries to make the best possible sense of things.

We can't make a decision to step out. We do need to talk, probably. Take two. One way or another. Not even steven. All sort between naught & a hundred. My attempt to get there, that is to say, is that's there's an inherent improbabilty in saying exactly the same thing of any kind. You can make a probably cognitive judgment. There's a tension to the side of things. Let's live a life beside of that.

I understand what you believe; I wish I understood why. If you feel it flows, I'm very happy to take it. They're all different - how do you know this is the right one, & not the abstract of the physics? Grasping - some realize some of it. Look - it offers the narrative, the way of looking at things, to hold personally that what is good is brought to fulfillment. I would hope they'd want to dialogue with you!

Fundamentally, the world is your oyster sauce. I never said what you said was indicative of having the rest of the night to manufacture labels or never-you-minds. Qualitatively the reasoning seems to misspeak. Nevertheless. It's been what some might call a pleasure to reassuringly talk. That's enough of that.

Whither Popcorn?

This tale is told in five parts. "Chapters," you may say. If you're some kind of storyteller.

Part I: The Link

79 Versions Of Popcorn.

Part II: The Story From My Childhood.

I once knew a kid named Gus. Gus's family had a microwave oven. Mine didn't. The first time I saw a microwave oven, I was a little excited. Because I am/was a comic book geek, I knew that one got super powers from overexposure to weird rays. So I kept wanting to open the microwave oven while it was on, to expose myself to microwaves. I could have become a super hero! Gus's mom wouldn't let me.

We never ate microwave popcorn at Gus's house, though. The family never had any.

Part III: The James Brown Connection

"Popcorn" became some inexplicable idiom in the funk community. James Brown started it. Apparently it lasted for some time. It has absolutely nothing to do with the "Hot Butter" hit of the same name. I can't say for certain it's anything but a dance craze, but I warn you, I miss sexual innuendo unless it's spelled out in the same stark relief that makes Dan Savage's column Savage Love about as erotical as a photocopier. Although I am sure someone does find that erotic, & has written Dan Savage about it.

Part IV: The Weird Coincidence

I have been planning/working on this show for at least a couple of month, & I just today noticed that the Funky 16 Corners Radio website did a show last week about the James Brown Popcorn craze. I will trust that you believe, especially after you listen to my show, that I was not influenced by this one iota. You can download mp3s & dig the funky popcorn flavor here.

Part V: The Promise

I'll have lots of different songs about popcorn on Friday. I ate popcorn last night. I like popcorn. Come listen to Self Help Radio when we talk about popcorn. You freak.

Preface To Popcorn: If I Ever Catch That Whoremonger Orville Redenbacher, I'll Wring His Neck!

I am in no way beholden to the popcorn board. No matter how much free popcorn they send me. Covered in delicious fake granular cheese. Or chocolate. I'm not picky. Pickles! I wonder if I could get free pickles, too! Popcorn & pickles. It's like I am a mentally ill pregnant woman.

I hope one day you will learn how to make popcorn. Meanwhile, as I vainly floss, I tell you that last week's show is up up up for your listening displeasure over at the Self Help Radio site. If you missed it, you missed a special guest appearance by David Bowie & Iman, & a chance to hear me get kicked in the teeth.

No time! No time! I must have more popcorn or I am doomed!

The Self Help Radio Memorial Day Memorial

Memorial Day was founded in 1492 by Columbus in Columbus, Ohio, to mark his ability to sail a ship across the Appalachians. That was something to remember. Today, I remember the following things:

- I remember where I hid the cookies!
- I remember that I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow & she said I shouldn't eat cookies for two days before the appointment.
- I forget what the doctor said.
- I remember the delicious taste of cookies.
- I remember that occasionally (or maybe all the time) people die for something they call "a country."
- I remember whenever I am driving anywhere in the United States that there are lots & lots of empty spaces which are separated from the roads & the cars & the people in the cars by fences.
- I remember that that means that someone owns all of that.
- I hope that the people who are dying for this country maybe own some of that space behind the barbed wire, or else, well, it's kinda silly, you know?
- I remember that the people who own a lot of the country don't have to die for it, since they can afford to pay people to do it for them.
- I remember why I am depressed all the time.
- I remember where I hid the heroin!
- I am glad that I have a day off.
- I... Zzzzzz...

A Morrissey Adventure!

Hey! What if Morrissey were a pirate? Or a superhero? Or a stylish undercover cop busting heads in a corrupt town only he could clean up? Or a space-hero, fighting off invading alien hordes with two laser guns & a microphone?

Okay, none of that sounds fun at all. But I will tell you that, today on Self Help Radio, I'll be celebrating Morrissey's solo career with songs he's recorded since the Smiths fell down & hit their head & died, plus I'll be playing fabulous covers of Morrissey's solo songs by people who wish they were as fabulous as Morrissey, as well as songs that Morrissey himself has covered during his very long solo career. He's been releasing records as "Morrissey" for almost twenty years now; the Smiths existed for maybe a quarter that. Amazing.

I have a special treat for creepy Morrissey fans, available only over the Memorial Day weekend. If you go to the Self Help Radio webpage & click on the link that says Morrissey Contest, & write me an email about how much you like Morrissey, you could win a Morrissey tribute CD that I will make myself with only a sponge & a rusty spanner. (Actually, it'll be pretty much the music I play on the show - without all my blabbing in-between.) It's the way one Morrissey fan shows his love for other Morrissey fans.

So tune in, you sad bastard! I won't let you forget the songs that made your cry, or the songs that saved your life!

The Flabby & The Fastidious

A moral to this story might be: do you care about your blog? Do you want it to be a good blog, full of righteousness & collectible bonus points, or would you rather your blog be a kleenex you might use to wipe away sadness & indiscretion?

Can a moral be a question? There's no question we have a problem with morals. I have no stories to tell that don't involve a fox, a man-whore & the Fromberg, Montana, Glee Club Rejects. Except for this one:

A man, his man-whore, & two former members of the Fromberg, Montana, Glee Club, were sitting in a bar daydreaming about the way things sometimes are, when in walked the most devastatingly beautiful fox they'd ever seen...

No, that one has a man-whore, a fox & the Glee Club rejects in it. I guess it's come to this: I'm all out of stories.

Which reminds me of a dude I used to know named Charlie Shuttle. Charlie was the hippest cat to ever hustle pool or contradict authority the old backwash of a city called Garland, Texas, had ever seen. Snap! That was the sound Charlie made when he got you in a headlock because you were messing with his girl & he'd just pop that top vertebrae out & you were crippled for life. Snap! Charlie Shuttle didn't get in trouble because his dad was Police Chief & his mom was the town drunk. So he had all his bases covered, if you know what I mean. Snap! Guess you'll think twice again, wheelchair man, before you give ol' Charlie Shuttle the stinkeye one more time. Snappity snap!

I wasn't friends with Charlie Shuttle, but I did subscribe to his magazine. He died in an electrical fire on a solar panel after falling thirteen stories from a windmill during the 1986 meltdown at the Garland nuclear reactor. Some idiot tried to save him by tossing him into a pile of coal, but a natural gas line burst & he suffocated to death. There was a sad irony, though - his parents decided to bury him on their family farm outside Granbury, but what should happen while they were digging the grave - they struck oil!

I know, I shouldn't lecture you, but sometimes you're as dense as a dense thicket. Why are we friends, anyway?

Whither A Show About Morrissey?

Yea, but the man is like unto a god to me. Nay, not because of his grand homosexuality nor his snarky wit. Nay, not because Wilde is on his side, while only Bowie is on mine. Yea, he simply spake what was true in my ugly, lonely, yearning little shell of a heart. In ways that no one else could, set to music, something true to dance to, did Morrissey seduce me. So I honor him completely & utterly.

I'm so glad to have grown up & am now able to say, "Oh, I don't like this," etc. Blind worship is for limited intelligences. I ignored him while his career fell apart in the mid to late 90's because he wasn't making very good music. I thrilled two years ago to his comeback, & was disappointed by his most recent record. But for the first time in my life, I'll get to see him live this Saturday. You'll get to hear music by him, covers of his solo work, & songs he's covered while solo. No! No Smiths! Stop living in the past, you Morrissey you!

Live for this Friday. Then dance with me on Saturday.

Preface To A Show About Morrissey: If He Cancels Again I'll Just Die!

I have this dread feeling when it comes to people whom I admire greatly that, if left alone with them, I wouldn't be able to say anything & they'd dislike me immediately. This is partially why I have become such great friends with Scott McLellan. Part of me wants to say it'd be different with Morrissey, but everyone thinks they'd have a great relationship with Morrissey. It's not like people who become friends with Elvis Costello, then come to loathe him because of his current wife. Morrissey's wife is, I'm told, very down to earth. Like June Cleaver with chest hair. She uses all parts of the tofu when she cooks it. She is, it has been widely reported, the sort of girl you'd bring home to meet mother. Not father. Mother.

I have never met Morrissey, & I won't when he comes to town this week. But I feel like I really, really know him. Not like that asshole Johnny Marr. Do I get a sense of him from the new Modest Mouse record? No! I get a Mousey feeling, but that fucker's not Modest. Why should he be? Didn't he write the music for "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out"? Yes, he did. So he can call me all the names he wants. He can shit on my head when I am lying bleeding on the pavement because Morrissey kicked me in the teeth again, I DON'T CARE. He's allowed. But I still don't know him.

I used to know Morrissey, too. In his lean mean period, after he released one crappy record too many in the late 90's & was forced to turn to Bingo to make ends meet. You'll remember those days - I was afraid I had scarlet rubella, & you were daydreaming of making a reality television show where you'd be trapped on a desert island with only fifteen fifteen-year-old boys & girls & the soundtrack to "Hackers." Morrissey existed almost entirely in our heads, saved from ten years before when we were lonesome & we didn't want to believe people could take anything more seriously than we did. Morrissey disappeared, though - up the ass of the universe, I once heard you say - & you disappeared, too. You became part of Kenneth Lay's Ethics Squad & you were the number one Blowjob Researcher in Washington, DC.

Neither one of you did badly, though - Morrissey made a comeback & he's coming to town this week, & you went to the private sector & now study blowjobs for GE. I am estranged from you both. I guess, like the characters in the songs that Morrissey sings that I listen to & which I'll play on my show Friday, I got left behind.

No tears! I am not the saddest clown! Worry me not, endless past! I shall be free of you one day, if only because I plan to remove pieces of my brain one by one until I no longer remember grunge! I am prepared for collateral damage!

Tomorrow: a very long poem to Morrissey written when I was 17 & had never been kissed. Not even by Morrissey.

The Campaign To Make Memorial Day A National Holiday

I was a little sleepy when I wrote this so I was doe-eyed & cute. There was gunk in my eyes. I kept yawning over words & stretching out while we were talking & making it hard for you to understand. I was thinking that, you know, being suffocated by a pillow sounds marvellous.

Because existence is a fruit cup, I am slapping some water on the face of the present time & managing to spend a little & save a lot. You may have an inky inkling where this dialogue is going: yes, we need more days off. The Europeans have it right: don't ever require anyone to work ever. 30 hour week? 30 hour fuck you! Now, where's my health insurance? I need to go to a clinic in Brussels & have my ass removed.

Aside to Scott McLellan: you have been utterly & completely forgotten by everyone but me.

I was at the lake house this weekend - I mean, the lake of fire house - I mean, the firehouse by the lake - I mean, the firehouse once visited by Veronica Lake - & I noticed that the bags under my eyes are getting a little frayed from overuse. This is why I am a champion of allowing everyone unlimited carry-on bags on flights. Or on busses. I haven't been on a bus in years. I mean one of those busses that goes from town-to-town. But just this year, I've been on a place, a city bus, a trolly, an airplane, a magic carpet, a ten-speed bicycle, a hunchback's back, a space shuttle (but I didn't fly in it or anything, duh), a convenience store conveyor belt, & a helicopter. But no bus that goes from town-to-town. Mainly because I haven't wanted to go from town-to-town.

Someone is telling me that I need to enjoy the finer things in life. What does that say about me? What does that say about what that person sees me surrounding myself with at the moment? The only sort of nice things in life? What happens if it turns out my life is nearly exactly like Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, when really it's supposed to be like Law & Order: Criminal Intent?

I'm stuck in an elevator now, & there's a woman laughing at an adverisement next to me, so I'd best do what I do best: scream out the lyrics of "You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown" in Esperanto. That makes the journey more exciting for all of us.

Tips For Wasting A Lazy Sunday

1) Add gin to your lemonade.
2) Mow, mow, mow.
3) Look for redundant videos of Zach Galifianakis on Youtube. Decide - beard or no beard?
4) Divide your Elvis Costello records between when he was good & when he started sucking. Yell at his sucky records. Yes, even if you feel bad about New Orleans.
5) Call your mother. Doze while she talks.
6) Piss your cats off by following them around & doing everything they're doing.
7) Make up a rain dance. Do a rain dance. If it rains, jump in the air, pump your fists & say, "You are my bitch you sky god motherfucker!"
8) Sundays are clothing-optional all over the world.
9) Think about shopping, think better of it.
10) Go to the Self Help Radio website & catch up on the episodes you've been missing. Last Friday's train wreck of a show - about parades - is there for the eating. Yum yum!

Like Living In A Basket Of Henna

I think I'm the only other person besides John Phillip Sousa who has written songs specifically for old people renewing their vows or otherwise getting remarried. I hesitate to mention this because I am a modest man with an Amber Alert, but I am also an accomplished singer slash songwriter (I sing, & I slash songwriters) who is suffering now, not for my art, but against my better judgement. I want to be able to promote my business on my radio show, but I cannot. The FCC doesn't allow it. My mother frowns on it. My cult leader Wiggles 1 says it's bad for my Hobbit Karma, & the woman I love won't let me buy spots on late night television. She's afraid they'll compete with her "hot sex line!" spots.

They used to say, "In for a cuddle, in for a snog," but that didn't play well after reruns of "Gilligan's Island." So we sewed a hole in the cave & made out for the Big City with sneezes ablaze. Our GPS powered by a drunken attempt to find the fastest way via Yahoo Maps in the dark led us straight to the obligatory horror film casting call. I couldn't shriek with so many corn nuts in me, so I got to play the gay ranger. You got to skinny dip in a South Dakota prison while humming an MC Hammer tune (which, technically, means you were humming a Rick James tune) & the killer (played by James Spader) caught you, tied you up, & removed your bridgework. We made fifty dollars that day & fed it to the local rabbits.

An Appalachian firehose told us stories of riches & treasures downstream in the Pisgahs, so we rented a jalopy from Archie Andrews & made quick time (our musical interlude was only two minutes). Alas, though we were armed with a Richard Gere quarterstick & a half-drunk bottle of Martini & Rossi, we were still bested by the clans of roving Elf-Fuckers who patrol the other side of those old hills. They only let us leave when I kept kicking their ass at Trivial Pursuit. & you didn't want to bring it!

What I am meaning to ask is, can we forfeit time? What happens to a dream demured? As I remember the delicious way they killed realtors - slowly, with great care, in empty houses with great resale possibility - I try not to reflect on future failures. Instead, I wil file a lawsuit. If you'd like to be a co-plaintiff, or if you'd like to be sued, I know a guy who knows a girl who knows this family in Washington DC who knows this bathhouse which is run by this dude he knows who keeps videos of all the patrons & the number-one biggest "rubber ducky in the bath" client is none other than former head of the Soviet Union Raymond Burr!

If you don't believe me, at least listen to my radio show. It's like a ninety-minute long song, broken into ear-sized chunks.

The Critics Are Quick To The Draw

My post yesterday was a widely anticipated attempt to mix internal rhyme ("doggerel") with external rhyme ("Dylanerrel") to capture the fresh new sound of our post-Global-Warming culture. But reactions were decidedly icky:

Paul Walker Poot in the Stalon Onlin (yeah, they spell it without an e - whaddaya gonna do?) - said, "Once again, a radio personality (if you can call him that, which I can't, although I just did) attempts to meld their mundance audio experience with the flights of poetic fancy. The results literally made me weep tears of blood."

The usually supportive Maryann Serialkiller over in Spate said, "Though I am usually supportive, I feel as though the liberties this deejay takes are embarrassing & overindulgent. More music, sir, less poesy."

My old middle school Texas History teacher, the late Papa Jim Burns, when I read the piece to him, told me via the Ouija Board: "Your feet are flat. Stop making cheese with your mind. Knit socks stopped the last ice age. Give me two pennies with a kiss."

The film critic known only as 1975 said on his blog, "I was going to start reviewing more than films, but the first blog I found was an obviously self-hating homsexual attempt to rebuild his closet from the moans & groans of his 'listeners.'"

On a more cheery note, on the blog called "Living With Advanced Phlegm Deficiency," the brave soldier named DryMouth763 said, "If I never had to read shit like this again, I could die happy." It's so wonderful to see someone come to grips with what is obviously a very disgusting disease. I'm pleased I could play a part.

However, this bodes ill for advanced reviews of tomorrow's show, & I would like to point out that the staff of writers I employ for Self Help Radio - the Blog - are not the staff of writers I employ for Self Help Radio - the Radio Show - but only because I don't have a staff of writers. Instead, I have some magic Darren Aronofsky tree bark which I eat a little bit of, dream I am a bald Hugh Jackman, then I settle down & do a radio show. The tree bark is what makes all the difference.

The only drug I take before I write these blog entries is fear. Fear, & a little oxygen. I'm sorry I have failed you so.

Whither Parades?

This is the fourth iteration of my explanation why there's such consternation about the association of my radio station & the word "parade." Once again, I must explain, though I admit it cause me pain, I would fain let you sustain one more drop of rain of the confusion which has lain about the wreck of train that is my disdain (what a sorry refrain!) I have for those who, in the main, cannot but crane their necks to obtain reasons why I am doing a show about "parades."

Why do you need to know? Is it because I tell you so? You wouldn't search high or low, no, you are lazy & you are slow, but to a computer you will go & with some "browser bookmark" in tow, you find the link to my show, & then to the blog to feast on my woe, though never must you look too long to find out why my theme is what my theme is that week.

But I don't think you really care. Oh yes I dare to say so, where you once thought I was timid, now I rise from my chair, making the hair on your neck bristle back there - it's not fair that I, fully aware, spend all this time to bare my soul to apathetic you, in your lair, as you stare or blink or say, "Gare, that's not true," then drift off, it's not rare, it's the disinterst you wear when you lazily glare at my blog as I write something else about my show.

I love my radio show & I want you to like it so I continue to write these things even when I lose my "rhyme time." "Rhyme Time" is a factory-authorized time of day when you are allowed to rhyme to your heart's content. People who sign up for "rhyme time" are not allowed to rhyme continuously for any time other than rhyme time. Otherwise, they may destroy the space-rhyme continuum. I would have loved to continue the poem. But my time is up.

Parades this week. Parades are fun. Parades might get you laid. Ooops. Forget I rhymed that.

Preface To Parades: Whatever Float Floats Your Boat

Madchester Martin, in his impotent history Parades & The Fancy Men Who Love Them, forwarded the astonishing thesis that parades were a metaphor for parades themselves, making the idea of parades a simile, & the sound that parades made a self-fulfilling onomatopoeia. This is why he was later voted king of France, but in his early years, supervising the clean-up crew at the Pigeon Towers, he often wondered why parades were the way parades were though parade uniforms looked silly at any time of year besides Halloween. He also dreamed of a never-ending parade that only stopped when he woke up.

The last time I went to a parade, it was kinda gay. Actually, it was very gay. It was a Gay Pride Parade. I was not the only straight person there, nor was I the only straight person there getting some hot gay sex. But being at a Gay Pride Parade doesn't make you gay. It doesn't even make you a paradophile. It just means you're prideful. Chew on that, Voltaire!

Voltaire, by the way, did not invent parades. If it's just one crazy French guy marching down the street making bugle noises with his mouth, that's not a parade. That's just goofy. So too the saying, "Be my parade!" is incorrect. You need at least ten people & two floats to have an official parade (this is in the Oxford University Parade Rules Handbook, New Millenium Edition). People who tell you you must have animals are liars. Probably they work for the Parade Animal industry. Those bastards will say & do anything to get work.

I know many of you are afraid that I am just a shill for the Parade World myself. This is not so. For example, when I did my show last week about addresses, I made it perfectly clear that I myself had an address. During the show I did about owls earlier this year, I made it clear that I owned four owls & was an owl-breeder who sold owls on OwlBay. I have always been upfront about my financial, social, or sexual relations with the topics I explore on my show. So even though the International Big Parade Conglomerate (funded by UNESCO & the World Bank, at least until Wolfowitz is fired) has bought me new clown shoes & an official baton from Boca Raton, I don't feel I am doing them much of a favor by having an entire show about parades. Indeed, they'd prefer I leave the topic alone. Every year I do a Christmas show, fewer people celebrate the holiday. That's known as the "Self Help Radio Curse."

Tomorrow: President Truman on parades: "We must have them here so we don't have to have them there."

Cemetaries are for LOSERS

I was talking to this dead dude the other night - yes, it was a dream - & he was telling me that, even though his soul is able to soar free & do what it wants - & believe it or not, he tells me that looking at nekkid girls all the time gets boring because they hardly ever do things like in pornographic movies when they're alone - a lot of them fart most of the time, he says, & he's one of those shades who can also smell stuff which just sucked on a level that seemed impossible past death - he said that he couldn't be truly free until his body rotted away. That's the sadness about our burial system, he said. It traps spirits on Earth. Which meant that dead folks like him, who died young, had to hang out with dead racists & Nazis & other ignorant folk whose bones were still around. He also said it was very uncomfortable because there were a lot of "pre-humans" like Lucy around & they were dull, dull, dull. "Evolve!" he used to scream at them.

Anyway, I woke up realizing that that dream was completely unhelpful. I know, I should be one of those exciting pseudoscientists who buy into dream interpretation & who sleeps with crystals shoved up my nose & who changes the aroma of my bedsheets to match my next day's needs (does anyone really do that - hot dog! I invented a pseudoscience!), but I'd prefer that, if my dreams wanted to help me, they be direct. Don't have some dumbass corpse making shit up to amuse me - & I dreamed I was laughing my head off - but instead, have the corpse come to me - it could be anything, it's a dream, so let's say, a rabbit - the rabbit come to me & say, "Hello buddy. Here are the reasons your radio show sucks. Here's how to fix it."

I learned this phrase from Sam Harris: "too cute by half." He said, "that zen koan was too cute by half." But I am saying now that my dreams are too cute by half. By three quarters, even. My dreams are too cute by six bits. & that's got to stop. Or I'll be forced to huff paint until I pass out.

I am publicly telling my mind: shape the fuck up. You totally blew it when we tried lucid dreaming. You still let me obsess about dumb stuff way too much. Let's start with settling down the flights of fancy in my dreams & being more constructive. & I promise, in return, to put more drugs into you than I have been recently. I know you love that.

Speaking of love, you might love listening to last Friday's episode of Self Help Radio. It exists in sexually provocative mp3 podcast form for all your digital music needs. Get it now! Before you die! Because all music when you're dead sounds like the Doobie Brothers!

Home Invasion (Version)

No one wakes up this early on a Sunday morning unless there's a church that needs forgiving. I am into my second week of Having To Walk The Dogs. The dogs are in their second week of Making That Human Walk Us Early In The Morning. I also have to confess I dream about When It's Time To Mow The Lawn. Also, I think it's just sinking in that the Arm broke up. Did I get a fucking phone call? What happens when phone calls fuck? Are their children disposable cell phones?

It's Mother's Day so naturally thoughts turn to matricide. I think Freud said it best when he wasn't talking. To get back to me, I am not entirely sure why I never made a living as a torch singer, but I do know I got in a lot of trouble when I brought the torch into banks, restaurants, & the occasional bus. "Why not a candle?" a kindly maitre'd might say. "Or one of those nice little lights that children & thieves put next to their beds at night to scare away monsters & the East German secret police?" "Would you like to hear our specials?" he would add.

The difference between you & me, I believe, is continuity. I spent so long - I still spend so long - I may continue spending so long - cramming my head full of stuff that I naturally forget about things from time to time. (Sorry, Fiji!) I remember one time when I was talking about the first girl to kiss me - someone who's name one shouldn't forget - & I couldn't recall it. (Sorry again, Fiji!) I remember it now, of course. I also vaguely remember what she kissed like. It's not the first time you've heard this, but: she kissed like a polka.

Here's an unfair thing about googling for men. If you're googling, say, the first girl you ever kissed, just, you know, to find out what the hell happened & how many children she's stuck with for the rest of her lousy life, you might not be able to find her because she'll more than likely have changed her name. Maybe more than once! How unfair is that? Any girl who cared can always find me on the critical list of people who need new livers, but I can't find out how many times they've had to go to court to bail their sprog out of juvie.

Speaking of my mother, I do owe her a debt of gratitude (& about nine hundred dollars) for always being there when I arrested for screaming at cheese with a household pet. (That's on the books in Garland, Texas - look it THE FUCK up, skeptic.) Some might say it's flattering to share a felonious condition like that with such notables as Thomas Jefferson (arrested in Paris in 1778 for hollering at a brie with a twelve-year-old poodle) & Emile Zola (arrested in Virginia in 1899 for "arguing with a wheel of cheddar" while two golden retrievers looked on), but years of therapy & the humiliation my friends so gladly put me through (a featurette on ESPN-6 was grueling & only looks good on my resume) makes all that an ambivalent experience at best.

I raise a toast of actual toast (it is morning) to my mother & my mother everywhere. I wish I had some jelly to wash it down with. The things one does for love of king & mother!

Finding New Bob Dylan Quotes (In Your Grandma's Old Bible)

Lookit! It's a Friday & a Friday is & has been for the past year a Self Help Radio day! If you're happy & you know it, clap your blog!

I remember being a Tuscan wench at the age of nine who was amused by the phrase "boxing of the ears" whilst reading nor rereading Botticelli & his children's literature ho ho. For indeed, what is most punishful about that, putting a box on the ears? Ah ha, the children cannot hear. But no! I asked my pal Romeo McGreavy (who was also a Tuscan wench but two years older) & he didn't TELL, he SHOWED me. Boxing ears is bad like shaking baby is bad. Perhaps we shouldn't even WRITE about it. Ouchy.

I must confess, even though I flinch now, I do miss the random, amusing violence of childhood. Looking back, I am now aware that most of my insecurities, my sexual hang-ups, my inability to cope with darkness & small places that smell like cafeterias, my pronounced stutter when I am amorous, my lack of feeling in three of the fingers on my left hand, my fear of trough toilets, my sense of nausea when someone scratches on a big chief tablet, my mind's weird habit of repeating the calvary charge bugle in my head every time I walk through the door of an institutional-looking building, my need to be handcuffed to a chalkboard at least once a year, my habit of calling any woman with big hair "mom," my emptiness at not getting recess twice a day, my anxiety about jello in beige plastic cups, & even my dangerous joy in letting Elmer's glue harden over my eyes, nostrils & mouth, I know these were probably caused by the random, amusing violence of childhood. But so what? I can still miss it. I can miss it like an abusive spouse.

WHY DO YOU TRY TO TELL ME WHAT I CAN & CAN'T THINK? You're worse than the CIA. At least they have prescribe governmental parameters about what you can think. But they also spring for little radios to implant in your ears. I know, I used to have one. Until Romeo McGreavy boxed my ears & disconnected it forever. I have been alone since.

Here's a list of dos & don'ts for today's Self Help Radio:

1) DO listen.
2) DO keep listening even if I make you sick to your stomach.
3) DON'T vomit in your car. Pull over & lean your head out.
4) DON'T drive for a while if you're still sick.
5) DO keep listening, though. Some people eventually develop a tolerance for Self Help Radio.
6) DO call me if you think you'd like to talk. I am not allowed to convince you either way, but I have had training at an Energy Crisis Hotline.
7) DO make your friends listen by calling them & holding your cellphone up to the speakers.
8) DON'T be friends with them if they don't like the show.
9) DO ignore rule 8 if you want to have sex with the friend.
10) DON'T tell me if you have sex, though. My girlfriend's in DC for two more weeks.

I hope you'll listen!

You Shouldn't Judge A Blog By Its Blogger

Two random thoughts: 1) "myspace" is kinda cynical. I understand the desire to promote yourself until your balls are a bright blue, but still, I find it weird that people who have to know I don't play them on my show want to be my "friend." Is it too much to ask why you want to be my friend? Because I am on the KOOP myspace page? You make me sad. 2) Who do I have to blow to get on the blogger "notable updated blogs" blurb that's always there when I log on. Do they tell you when you're notable? Is there a cash prize? I make myself sad.

No one has noticed (apparently) that my radio show is sporting a whole new set of teeth. That cost a pretty penny, but I will point out, when one's radio show can convincingly sound like a character in an Erskine Caldwell novel, it's time to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. Unless, of course, you're supposed to be an old fart country music show. Teeth get in the way of yer chaw! Spit out the bicuspid, grammy! We're having biscuits made mushy in hot white gravy!

Speaking of local bands, I can't sleep at night because I am afraid of local bands of ruffians that wander my neighborhood & break into my house & steal my stuff. I worry more because I don't own my own gun. I own a timeshare for an AK-47 that a friend in New York is using to renegotiate a contract. It just so happens I am disarmingly disarmed while my girlie, who has all the mad Lemur Fu skills in the family, is away in the nation's capitol walking slowly behind FBI agents to see if they care. I hope my poor sleeping skills do not affect my poor radio skills. But something always suffers, whether it's people who remember Roger Staubach or people who cut their teeth with a sieve.

I will be spending tonight rehearsing my line for my radio show (the line is this: Gary! Don't fuck up your radio show!) (I don't read that line on air) (the FCC doesn't like that kind of language, especially coming from me), so I'm sorry I can't return all your call. Maybe we can simply pretend our outgoing answering machine messages have coded replies to our queries? Or do you not like the word "query"? Do you think it's kinda gay?

I was going to offer you a present, but I am going to pay for reminding everyone of Roger Staubach. Since he doesn't give me any money, I can only hope he's not up tonight, googling his own name while smoking fine Moroccan hash & daydreaming about the time we held hands at a Dallas nightclub. He didn't tell me he was married. Nor a quarterback!

I must go now. I want to be a loner.

Whither Addresses?

I have forgotten where you live. Also, I have lost that little book I use to remind me where you live. As well, I don't appear to understand the general abbreviations for byways & other paths which are generally part of descriptions of place where people like you live. Dr. Ave. Blvd. Rd. Cir. Ln. Str. They confuse me. I don't apparently know where the hell I am.

Do I really think a radio show about addresses will help me? I once did a show about kissing, & no one kissed me for a month. Not even my cat. & she's a kissing slut. I believe that science has shown that religion will tell you that logic fails when reason is ignored by spiritually-motivated myths & fables. It takes a grain of salt to power the quantum mechanism that proves beyond a shadow of a fact that my show is the radio equivalent of "opposite day."

Also, people say I am nothing at all like William Shakespeare.

I was trying to misspell "contraindicated" one day many years ago (or last year) when someone asked me what my address was. I wanted to be funny, you know, like Bugs Bunny dressed up as Lincoln talking to Yosemite Sam & saying, "Look me up at my Gettysburg Address," but I apparently said something like, "I can't believe you're such a fucking freak," & now that person is suing me for defamation of a cartoon character. Nevertheless, it hit me: if people knew where I lived, they could write me letters, or come visit me. Pizza delivery folks would be able to bring food to me. People who walk around neighborhoods selling stuff could come to my door. I would have a presence in a telephone book. I would be able to say, as I haven't much of my life, "I have a place where I sleep." It seemed so magical that I cried, I broke down & cried, right then & there, in the dentist's chair. I know that James Joyce & Meryl Streep would call that an "epiphany," but I don't know anything about prostitution in the Bible, so I'll just say it was a life-changing moment & leave it at that.

Now I think I'll ruin it by doing a radio show about it.

That's this Friday. You might want to iron your shirt & stock up on spices. Just sayin'.

Preface To Addresses: How To Use Online Maps To Find Treasure!

From this point on, please, stop talking to me about pirates. Not only does it not make any sense (the only pirates you should be afraid of are love pirates), but you're just trying to cash in on Pirates Of The Caribbean Part 90: Keith Richards Is A Vampire Pirate! I liked you better when you were interested in hobbits.

I take as my text this week The United States Book Of The Phone, written in 1884 by Old Mother Bell. With an afterword & an afterthought by a fellow called Zip, whose code you might be familiar with. It's easy to crack. Let us take an example. Give me a series of five digits. What? 23432? Dude, you're in Suffolk, Virginia!

Those codebreakers from World War Doo have nothing on me.

This week's show will feature such feats of fancy. It's sponsored in part by imaginary parts of the United States Postal Pistol Service & of course Mapscomp, the famous map makers that got me out of many a tight jam with their 1000 page map booklet I always keep in the glove compartment of my wallet. Ha ha, the sheriff in Algodones, New Mexico, didn't know who the FUCK he was dealing with when he tussled with me & my boyz. Bam! Mapscorp says Los Colonias runs parallel to Los Romeros & it was a brief ride through someone's yard to BYE BYE overweight lawmarm.

We lost Toby that night, though. He was a good man. He was shot in the ass mooning a deputy. The medical examiner said the bullet travelled up the colon into the skull. It made us all feel bad for the all the times we called him "shit for brains."

Nowadays I've retired from my life of fun to enjoy a weekly radio show & my postpunk postcard collection. For those who are curious about my little patch of wheat: I lost it to the chaff parasite. But I managed to get inoculated, so we'll try it next year. Thanks for all the cards & letters. I burned them with my tears.

Do you remember where you live? I plan to find out tomorrow.

A Brief History Of My Great Love For England Dan & John Ford Coley

I'd really love to see them tonight.

But what really burns my butthole is that "Dan Seals," once the swingin' seventies were over & no one wanted to listen to his grooves, decided to go over to the dark side of music, "contemporary country" & fucking totally discarded the name "England Dan" because I guess he thought country fans would dismiss him as royalty or something. Selling out motherfucker.

That doesn't make me hate the good stuff, though. I mean, let's put it this way: twelve hundred Americans die every year choking on grapes (a fact I just made up, but it sounds good) & yet I don't hate listening to jelly. Especially when it's settling. They say Debussy conceived his most beautiful pop records while listening to jelly settle. & he didn't just settle for jelly either: he listened to whatever was in a jar. He even listened to jarred things as they agitated. Agitate is what my brain just told me is opposite of settle.

I like to do stuff regularly, but I also like to mix it up. That may explain some things, but it doesn't excuse others. An example: the Hotel Vietnam, located in Parsley, Kentucky. What were the Joneses thinking? They weren't. They weren't thinking. & now Jeffrey is going to need even more crack to treat his PSTD. It was like picking a baby's name from a random page in the phone book. With explosions.

I'm tickled pink to announce that, despite the evil mechinations of the Adversary, last Friday's show makes its podcast-sized debut on selfhelpradio.net. Just click here to get to the page that has the show on it. I can't remember doing it, but the recording seems to have me on it, so I guess I was there. It reminds me of the four times I might have lost my anal cherry before I actually did. The good news is, my dentist at the time will be in jail until 2009. The bad new is, I THINK I HAVE A CAVITY!

Changing Your Life, One Comb At A Time

The text messaging revolution has found its way to our iron-clad shores. Alas, I am without a legend. Can someone tell me what IWIWAUNL means?

In a few short hours (two, actually) or in a lot of long minutes (120?), there'll be another Self Help Radio & won't you be sad you made fun of my dad. I'll be making noises into a radio-quality microphone that will resemble the same sort of English that Will Rogers once spoke, only with a little less stammering & a mouth not full of tabacky. If you can understand what I am saying, I will have achieved one of my goals for today. The others include:

12) Find a lot of money in a dead man's pockets.
15) Write a great poem in my head while driving & forget it forever.
21) Learn to drink in my sleep.
23) Make out with dog(s).
27) Boogie until head wet with sweat.

The full list, which is modified daily, is available for downloading online through RSS feed once I figure out how to do it. A popular drinking game in Singapore nightclubs involves reading my "daily goals," then drinking a lot until they're translated into Singaporese, then drinking some more as drinkers realize I have boring goals. Caning is not the only way to end such a night, but how bad can it get?

Meanwhile, as the waves of time beat against the chest of existence, you've been distracted enough for me to put last week's show for your downloading pleasure over at selfhelpradio.net. Warning: do NOT listen to this mp3 podcast recording while listening to Self Help Radio live. It will bend space & time & you'll have to live through middle school all over again.

See you when you hear me, pilgrim.

Whither "Keep On"?

As I write this, much later than I normally write this nonsense, there's a magnificent storm happening in Austin. I had to drive through about two feet of water tonight, past cars who were in deeper than I was - & where *I* could have been, if they hadn't blundered there first. I love these kinds of storms, especially when I am more or less safe & dry, but I also think the power could be shut off at any moment, so I should type fast.

By the way, there were people there helping the stuck-in-the-water cars. I'm not that self-absorbed that I wouldn't have stopped. I don't live in the middle of nowhere.

Also, I am the only person in Austin who doesn't have a cell phone. My pets have cell phones, I don't. Someone had called a tow truck.

Which reminds me, I saw a tow truck today with a Jesus fishie on it. I know that businesses put those Jesus fishies on their logos, etc., to let Christians know they're a Christian business (whatever that means), but I wonder, do they know that it makes some people go, "Eew!" Isn't that the opposite of what being a business is all about? Also, what makes a Christian tow truck different than, say, a Muslim tow truck? More forgiving of debts? Would someone like to try that one out?

So the show in barely two days has the theme "keep on." Once again, I noticed that phrase almost peripherally & wondered how many songs repeat the phrase. There were a lot. I said, "I'll form a show around it." I took my medication. I had a nice sleepie. The days came & went. Soon, my schedule told me that I had to do that show. Now I will do it. But first, I'll take my medication. Then I'll have a nice sleepie.

Or maybe I'll go play in the rain.

Preface To "Keep On": I Want To Be In An Urban 1970s Sitcom Please

This week on Self Help Radio, a team of stinky linguists will decontruct the phrase "keep on." Then, the rest of the time (89 minutes) will be devoted to a long exposition of my painful childhood. & why not? Everyone thinks this "theme" is filler. I hear your sneers. I feel your squeals. I taste your haste. I see your inability.

Here are things I'll be discussing when I am not cussing:

1) How one learns that the pretty girls say very bad words & also fart when they think one is a deaf-mute.
2) How the same action that gets you cred in the second grade - say, bringing your favorite comic books to school - can have the opposite effect in the eighth grade.
3) How cruel youth can be when they're beating the living shit out of you.
4) How trying to be as inconspicuous as possible during twelve long years of schooling can make it impossible to reconnect with your old friends thirty years later on "classmates.com."
5) How easily one can be convinced that being locked in a closet on weekends can be a good thing for a child with an active imagination, especially when one's mother has a silver tongue.
6) How sex can't be explained through pornography or the colorful expressions your friend Kirk uses, even if they seem descriptive enough.
7) How falling off a motorbike can make you bleed a lot, & how the laughter of your fellows compares with a calm, drug-heavy ride in the back of an ambulance.
8) How much one can add to one's sleep requirement by sitting in the back of the room.

Oh, I can keep on doing this for a long time. I may keep on doing it all day Friday. Will you keep on listening? I will keep on hoping that you do.

When Pirates Dance!

As April ends, I want to remember the fourth month I experienced in 2007. It seemed gloomy, rainy & sad, but also weirdly sunny, bright & warm. I may have lost fourteen dollars this month. But I also may have gained a new tooth. As April ends, I am forced to wonder: was I involved with April at all? Or did I simply just mow the lawn a couple of times & then sleep fitfully?

In April, I found out the bees are dying. My own experience with bees has been that, while they appear to be listening, they really retain nothing. After I patiently explained the difference between sugar, high fructose corn syrup & aspertame to a very sweet worker one afternoon, she still wanted to make out with my diet soda. Then she stung me & died, which I found a little too much. My mother used to guilt me like that.

If there's one lesson we should take from April, it's that daylight savings time is taxing. Oh shit, that's like a pun. Ha ha! Or, we can say that tax day saves you everything but daylight. No, that's not true. I know. That the only thing safe from tax day is sunlight. Unless you deal in solar futures. Then, never mind.

I promised last April that I would keep a running tally of the number of times I clipped my nails this April, because I had dreamt that Sid Caesar told me that your fingernails grow twice as long but your toenails twice as slow in April. Or maybe I had dreamt that April Stevens had warned me about the Ides Of March last month, because that's when Caesar died. Or maybe I was just daydreaming while watching HBO's Rome. Did that end this April?

April's not over yet! There's still time to win the lottery, grow a goatee, nail 95 theses to your church's wall, become a vegetarian, design a series of stamps that commemorate McLain Stevenson, bag a thrush, help a friend learn her vocal scales, care for a particularly sickly tree, crawl from the wreckage, reject a telemarketer's advances, get lost in someone's eyes, hit it but don't quit it, & possibly squeeze in a good cry with a friend.

But hurry!

Oh, & if you're interested in what was happening in the middle of April with Self Help Radio, my Black Cassette show is available for your listening pleasure.

What To Expect & When To Expect It

Because I am on the radio, people expect me to know virtually everything about everything. I surprise them because I do. Ta-da! I know virtually everything about everything. It's just how you define "virtually." & "about." & "everything."

Much buzz has been generated in my own head this past week about my triumphant return to the airwaves to do Self Help Radio once again. Sure, many lives were lost in the crazy coup d'etat my foes from NPR & the "Everything 99¢" chain stores waged to get me off the air. They're still cleaning all the blood & raisins out of the carpet at KOOP. But though I was forced to retreat for a week, I am returning this Friday, like MacArthur to the Phillipines. & everyone agreed that the radio show MacArthur did the night of his return was the best radio show of his long career.

Not many people have written me to ask, "Gary, do you forgive your enemies for their ridiculous attempt at depriving the world of your genius?" Of course not. They are my enemies & we have an agreement. Besides, it's come to my attention that many religious figures urged forgiveness, & none of them ever had a radio show. There's a correllation there if you squint hard enough & have someone tap you incessantly on the forehead at the same time. I won't be drowned in the mistakes of the past, any more than I'll be clotheslined by the errors of the present. Right now, my concern is for the catastrophic boo-boos of the future.

Tomorrow is the new tomorrow; yesterday is yesterday's yesterday. The days of the week shall be renamed with the names of species of bees that are dying off. Please let me know when they announce the end of the world - I will therefore be able to start smoking again with impunity.

Ah, Self Help Radio. You are again safe, protected & loved. Let us converge in twenty-four hours, at the four-thirty time slot, & see what we can see. Embrace me! Embrace us all!

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 8

Why make lists at all? Why best ofs and worst ofs & top tens? Could there be something wrong with it all?

The first "best of" list was not, as many have supposed, the Top Ten Best Laws Of The Land by Hammurabi, who, & many people don't know this, was also a disc jockey on the weekends. No, the oldest & among the best "best of" lists was a series of rocks, flower parts, animal guts & strangely-shaped twigs, made by none other than Lucy - the fossil of her "best of" list was found with her fossil, meaning she was probably obsessing over something when she died. Who's to say?

But is the Indiepop A To Z a list or merely an attempt to make some kind of "encyclopedia"? The folks over at twee.net probably didn't think their list of indiepop bands was definitive. They just wanted people to see what an example of indiepop was. Leave it to a freak like me...

Someone has probably guessed right now what the whole point is: it's a chance for a lazy deejay (me) to show off what a large record collection he has (duh) by following some dumb list. I'm sure someone's done it for all kinds of genres. I just happen to be doing it now. & even though it's a sign of laziness, BOY is it exhausting.

I thought of something funny just now. If you collapse "record collection," you get "recollection." Isn't recollection just a collection of records? I so want to become Andy Rooney right now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. I continue a hopeless task on Friday. Tune in. We won't finish the Bs, but we'll get mighty close.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 8: Eight Times The Charmer!

Hello. Self Help Radio returns this week with the eighth installment of our popular "Indiepop A To Z" series. We last left off with a band called Brincando De Deus, so, as you can imagine, we're going to start - if not finish entirely, although I truly doubt that - the Bs.

This will be a return to Self Help Radio after a week off. If you must know, I was forced off the air by a brief but bloody military coup in my own home. If you heard Self Help Radio last week, you might have noticed the show was programmed by what sounded like very fat & lazy beagles. That's because our dogs found a way to lock me in the bathroom, eat everything in the house & then rush to do my show. I spent the weekend cleaning up after them. But I was able to reassert control when they realized they couldn't use my credit card. They're my dogs, so there's obviously a family resemblance, but in the photo on my credit card, I am clean-shaven. Foiled!

By the way, it's very obvious to me the dogs didn't think of this themselves. But the cats kept their paws clean. Or, if their paws were dirty, they cleaned them carefully before I noticed.

Anyway, I am committed to continuing the Indiepop A To Z for the time being, so let's put all the unpleasantness of the past week behind us & forge ahead. Eventually there'll be a gigantic audio documentation of indiepop from a to z which will be like a giant Ken Burns documentary - saved in someone's collection but never listened to.

Viva!

Whither A Self Help Radio Without Gary?

I should title this "Whither Death & Taxes," as that is the theme this week, but since I won't be doing it, I am concentrating on my absence. As you should. For what is my absence but the lack of my presence? Surely I woke up this morning expecting to be there, & you should be expecting me to wake up next to you every morning. Wait. What? I mean, you should expect that I am on the radio when I am supposed to be on the radio (you know, like we're supposed to be happy), & when I am not there, you should be thinking, "But where is Gary? Could he be (as we might assume he be) in a mess o'trouble? For he ain't got a lick o'sense! But maybe he'll find a bit o'luck, & we'll see him when we see him." You should be thinking that, by the way, in a bad Southern accent. If you're thinking it in a good Southern accent, you're missing the point.

Instead of preparing for my show in (what is it now?) nine days - & this show will change everything you think about dope dealers & greeting cards, I promise you - I have been watching the Larry Sanders show. If only Self Help Radio could be the Larry Sanders Show. This is my fictional invitation to a fictional talk show host played a person who has the beautifulest of all names, Gary, but spells it with two rs as if to say he's better than those Garys who spell with only one r. & he is. But he's the only one. Take that Garry Fucking Marshall! I didn't need you to finance my movie anyway.

So the show won't have me this week, but you will have the show. Except the show won't be hosted by me, so, although I am certain Art Baker will do a fabulous job, it won't quite be the show that I do. You know, the show that I do to you. For you. Because it is just me & you, my love, & the problems of one very minor radio celebrity & one completely oversexed listener don't amount to a hill of beans in this laser-hair-removal world. What are those problems? Well, I'd suggest we start at the Potsdam Conference & work our way down.

I'm hungry. Want to grab a bite to eat? Cool.

Preface To A Self Help Radio Without Gary: What If It Becomes A Habit?

Dearest Friends,

I am sorry I cannot be with you this week. Self Help Radio has been, alas, the victim of a buyout. A hostile takeover. Evil corporate ethics at their worst.

So this week, Art Baker of Jamaican Gold has kindly decided to step in to be a place-holder (& to do a damn fine show, I suspect) while the dust settles. While the lawyers fuck. While the money is counted.

This probably means a great deal to you, the shareholders. After all, you urged me to go public in October. You were all like, "Gary, your show is a public treasure! Let's all own a piece of you!"

The blame is partially my own, of course. I have a gambling problem. My problem is, I don't know how to gamble. I am completely incapable of learning the rules to any particular game. The cards need to add up to 21? How can they do that without calculators? The little ball goes where? Okay, I've put my coin in, why doesn't the machine move? Tens are wild? Is that like saying "nines are frisky but ones are dull"?

In any event, I lost even my controlling share in Self Help Radio. Next week, I will be an employee of the show, not the owner & proprietor. Which reminds me, I need to get a new shingle to hang out front. Anyway.

I can't be at the show this week, but please tune in to hear Art Baker talk about "death & taxes" & play songs about it. I'll be back the next Friday with a continuation of the Indiepop A To Z series, but, alas, you'll hear these chilling words - the death rattle of a show killed by commerce:

"Self Help Radio, a fully owned subsidiary of Bloat Enterprises, Worldwide. All rights reserved."

Sigh.