My Brain Has Its Own Holes

In 1388, on the coast of France, then called Germany, three Pristinian Monks wearing dog collars & x-ray spex decided they no longer believed in a "catholic" god. They wanted laughter, fun, adventure, ha cha cha cha! & they certainly the fuck weren't going to get it in 14th century Germany.

They wrote a book, which they called "the Bible" - they wanted to piss people off - they were, in fact, the first performance artists - which to this day smells a lot like stale beer. The three monks outlined a festive way of living which can be enjoyed with only a minimal of fuss &, with aspirin, only a smallish hangover.

That philosophy became unpopular when priests with scary weapons killed the three monks, but it has experienced a resurgence today among born-again villains & crazy hippie children. Though no one outside the inner circle has seen "the Bible," leaked pages have been recovered, only to be thrown down in disgust when people realize they're called "leaked pages" because someone took a leak on them. So far no one has been eager to see the pages which are claimed to have be "wiped out."

This has nothing, however, to do with Self Help Radio, the radio show which, rather than spend a long time researching a topic & sharing deep, important knowledge on the air, took the easy way out last week, & totally faked a show about fakery. & no one was fooled!

Don't believe me? Listen for yourself at selfhelpradio.net. The entire show is there & shall be for a while, so please use it in whatever lawsuit you're currently involved with. Standard super saver shipping restrictions apply.

The story of the monks, by the way, is NOT a fake. It's a lie. Tell me what the difference is.

Dioxin For The Future Now!

Self Help Radio will be heard today on the radio. This is an incredibly good bit of luck, as I have spent a large amount of time listening to music in the hopes of playing it for unwitting strangers this very day. But the best bit of luck involves one of my favorite bands. They are a local band but they sound like they're from the future. Not that they sound like some space-rock, Devo-esque, or Star Wars Creature Cantina thing - or even Klingon opera, although this particular one is obviously an influence - this particular band sounds like they're from a magical future where every bit of music you hear is good & radio shows like mine are easy to make because all choices sound wonderful.

The band is called Luxuriator, & although they have told me they're imaginary, there's a realness in how much I really, really like them.

Why do I gush so? Because I have been thinking about a show about fakery - which I'm doing today - & out of the blue, the pink & blue Official Luxuriator Courier Moped left a song on my doorstep. Usually, it's a Flight Of The Conchords song - or maybe prank calls made to Robyn Hitchcock - but no, this time it was a new Luxuriator song! I had to dig out my eight-track - they like to give me songs on eight-track - but dig I did, discovering a song called "Fake=Fake."

Imagine my freaky joy when I realized that a theme I was working on had coincided with a song written by the best band in Austin! I was convinced they had broken into my house, so I changed the locks, drugged the cats & dusted the house for prints. (I found a really nice print of Van Gogh's Hairlips that I thought my girlfriend had thrown away.)

Now, of course, the show is coming, & I just wanted to say, "Hey! You might could hear it on their myspace page, but Self Help Radio is proud to play Luxuriator today!" I am pretty damn excited! You must be too!

That's today during Self Help Radio's idiotic examination of "fakery" from 4:30 to 6:00 pm CST on 91.7 fm KOOP, live on the web at koop.org & available archived over the weekend on selfhelpradio.net. If you miss it, you might be unable to digest beans for a week.

Why Not Spend Some Time In Your Own Thinking?

Good day. As propmaster for the "Self Help Radio," it behooves us all for gradually requesting the compensation required to adequately instill in the listener &/or reactor of quality audiophonic experience what we in the business call "understanding." There are, to avoid the constant activation of self-defeating jargon, what experts call "ten important steps" in a contrary assimiliation process for the betterment of a "Self Help Radio" as well as a "listener modification process." They would be, in order of numerical:

1) Condescension. Surely in what many would call a turbulent egotistic existence you must facilitate your own deference up to but not necessarily including hubris. We require this of any guest who may find him or herself within the confines of normal &/or common sensical entertainment adventures.

2) Carriage, or what the ancients called "mien." What's mien mean? It doesn't imply anything mean - in many ways, the average consumptive of the "Self Help Radio" merely gratifies the hitherto in what can only be described as a antithetical manner.

3) Craft. From a purely simplistic standpoint, aesthetic implies action, whereas passivity implies traction. For the engaged reporter of the "Self Help Radio" an appreciation of source & formatting is otherwise obligatory.

4) Cash. In case you want a snack or something.

5) Candor. We must not specifically be honest, but a measurable amount of embarrassingly confessional surely peppers the soup in whatsoever nakedness should be displayed to the public's chagrin.

Among these are of course other considerations which we shall not cardinally number for scriptural purposes. These would perhaps best be summarized:

6) Creature Comforts. For an empty house is a lonely house, which cannot specifically be called a home.

7) Celerity. For a show which is timed, one might sometimes feel a need to feed the seed of speed. Technically or counterclockwise.

8) Cursory brevity wit. As it means in the unoriginal Latin.

9) Castigation. Formerly the list specifically hinted at "confession," but a consultant confirmed the corruptness of the current clergical community (then & now), so a non-religious, if not entirely materialistic, form of self-reproach is to be preferred if not entirely designated.

10) Conference Call. Are you free Friday?

As the goalkeeper in the fundamental baseball grid of the "Self Help Radio," I welcome the extraneous & the commentary. I hope we've learned our lesson today & surely tomorrow whoever tunes in will have more of a sense of the gist than those whose reading skills, while languishing, have failed to meet the meagerest of expectations for online survey taking.

Please thank yourself for your participation.

Whither Fakery?

A newspaper headline in my gmailbox grabs my attention: "Once ravaged by war, now vacation spots". Do you need any more proof that life is an illusion?

Self Help Radio this week will celebrate & berate the deliberately not real.

I am not entirely sure why. But I am self conscious about it. Stop looking at me. These are my real feelings.

Preface To Fakery: I Am Not Faking Being Sick! I Promise!

But if you are in bed too because the beginning September made you ill, you can enjoy lots of sickening Gary on the radio over at the Self Help Radio archive page. I disturbingly did three extra radio shows this weekend, & it nearly killed me. So you can enjoy a Self Help Radio that's all about the indiepop, an Ear Candy that's also all about the indiepop (plus a song by Burt "Robin" Ward), an episode of This Great White North featuring Canadian postpunk, new wave & punk from thirty years ago, & finally an episode of the House Call all about the demon alcohol that exacerabated my illness. What fun!

Now I must take pills & get some sleep. Please enjoy the radio shows.

An Embarrassment Of Garys

I will be laboring on Labor Day.

TODAY FRIDAY THE 31st I shall be doing my regular Self Help Radio gig. From 4:30 to 6pm. On today's show, I will shoot a man.
TOMORROW SATURDAY THE 1st I shall be sitting in on Ear Candy, playing indiepop in a totally not gay way. Saturday from 5 to 7pm. On tomorrow's show, a woman will shoot me.
SUNDAY THE 2nd I shall be sitting in on This Great White North, & my substitute show will feature Canadian New Wave, Postpunk & Power Punk from the late 70's & early 80's. Sunday from 7 to 8:30pm. A Canadian person will not be shot on Sunday's show, because they don't have the gun problems we have in America.
MONDAY THE 3rd LABOR DAY I will be sitting in on the House Call, playing indie musics about drinking, since, besides radio, that's what I'll be doing most during the weekend. Monday from 3:30 - 4:30pm. On this show, I will shoot myself. Not on purpose. I'll be cleaning the gun & it'll just go off.

Streaming live at the times mentioned above CST at koop.org. Archived as soon as possible at selfhelpradio.net.

Listen, & your mind will be changed about gun control!

Damn Junkies!

Lizabeth writes to me: Gary, you get angry a lot or you pretend to be. What's going on?

She wrote me, by the way, on myspace, which is a store for lovers. She wrote me even though she doesn't want to be my "friend." Or she at the very least didn't send a "friend request." & she wants to know why I'm mad?

It's not well-known but I haven't yet found my voice, &, as such, I am often disarmingly confused. One day I write like Ernest Faulkner, the other like Kurt Barthelme. Then, without knowing it, suddenly Grace Paley dies & I feel sad because I still dream, even though I am currently under half her age, of making out with her every time I read her writing. Damn it! Grace Paley never knew I existed! Someone, please, set me up on a blind date with Lorrie Moore!

Anyway, even though it's more regret & sadness that rule my world, it's true that I am wholly helpless in the face of my obscurity, my lack of talent, my inability to get any better at "deejaying" &, for that matter, life, in such a way that occasionally I feel that the only rational response is blind rage. I'm sure you understand.

Having said that, though, I am never really angry when I write on this blog. All I feel is love. Love & hunger. Love, hunger & some kind of French feeling for which only the Germans have a word. Also I feel nauseous, but mainly that's the way you suck your fingers when you read this. I know, it was sexy when you were nineteen, but everything is sexy when you're nineteen - now it's gross because everyone knows you never wash your hands when you go to the bathroom. Seriously, what would it take? A few seconds? Do you really think bacteria are evolving because of your actions?

Whatever. I'm not angry. I'm just dumb. Get used to it.

Whither Indiepop A To Z # 10?

The demand for chocolate - shall we call it hunger? - goes unabated. We must set out to look for it, arming ourselves inconveniently, knowing there are those whose whole hearts bleed viscous, wormy hate for those of us who truly love the chocolate. They must be stopped &, if possible, utterly destroyed.

Now that we know what we want, we shall seek it. But where could the chocolate be? It is not on the radio, it is not on the TV. It is perhaps under the fingernails or in the pockets of children, but we will not want that chocolate. We want chocolate safely waiting behind wrappers. Alas! The chocolate is enslaved, & it can be bought! Who enslaves the chocolate? Those whose whole hearts bleed viscous, wormy hate!

Hmmm.

It occurs to me that the phrase "those whose whole hearts bleed viscous, wormy hate" could be used to describe a lot of people, including many people I know (you know who you are). What's this? I am getting feedback?!?

In a critique of this piece, which I haven't finished writing yet, neo-Marxist author William Stink asserts that I am trying to equate the "hunger for chocolate" with the working class's need for revolution while the wormy-hearted are obviously the bourgeoise. The exact opposite is being discussed on the famous website, Conservative Douchebag, where people who don't get out much & enjoy masturbating to photoshopped pictures of Dick Cheney finger-banging George W Bush have decided that the chocolate lovers are hungry capitalists waiting for deregulation, while the wormhearts are liberal bloggers. I am sad to say no one's right, since I haven't finished writing this yet. Sorry.

Where was I? Fuck. Have I ever told you how really, really hard it is to plot a story? I had a terrific plot for this all worked out, including a very O. Henryesque twist ending involving the narcotic properties of chocolate, & also a very moving description of heartworm to encourage lazy dog owners to take better care of their pets, but when I started to get reviews of today's blog, I completely forgot how the middle part went.

In a sense, I've confined my undeveloped story & its undeveloped characters to a kind of "literary" limbo. Because now I must go home. & I'm reading now from a blogger named Frog Mouth that my excuses here are actually an attempt to be self-reflexive & "tear down the computer screen" that separates me from my audience. Ha! He doesn't know that I don't have an audience! What a maroon!

Only one long blogger - my mother, writing in her secret blog that no one in the family knows about - has bothered to ask the most important question, which I find touching: What the hell does this have to do with Self Help Radio & indiepop? She has some ideas. If you can find her blog, you'll be mesmerized.

Preface To Indiepop A To Z # 10 - or is it 10? - how long do I intend to keep this up?

I am swamped like swampland today. I am tired like bald tires today. I am sleepy like a sleepy person today. I am writing like a person who has to write things anyway. Why do I feel that way? I feel that way because I have feelings that are that way.

Or does life truly exist in a lifelike fashion? Can we hope for events that are eventful? Do we want tales that are told? Songs that are sung? Should it be so chancey to take a chance? Do we requires skills if we are to be skillful? Not, you may say, if it's your fears that are making you afraid.

In any case, I am looking forward to planning my radio show this week. I have been mulling over thinking about the "theme," which is a continuation of the Indiepop A To Z which I have been doing every two months, or at least bimonthly, this year. I could say that I want to tell you how good it will be, only I humbly admit I am too modest for such a thing.

As one may attempt to try, while others may fail to lose, surely I am simply starting to begin. If you can't understand it, maybe you can at least make sense of it. Yes? Yeah.

Alberto Gonzales Was A Real Fine Lady

My Department Of Justice is a sad Department Of Justice today. It is sad like Iraq, sad like Laura Bush's special naughty place. For our friend Alberto Gonzales, a lovely woman & an accomplished ventriloquist, has left the Department Of Justice because of conflicts with her European tour with Hillary McDuffle. (Also, she's been romantically linked with famous faux lesbian Russkies Tatu, which has made her marriage as sad as Afghanistan, as sad as the man who asked Jenna Bush to wed him.) We here at the Self Help Radio blog, who loved her in the Diane Keaton vehicle "Hollywood Friskies," & who is desperately looking forward to her action-film-genre-slash-obligatory-Quentin-Tarentino-crossover-event, "Obvious Cultural Reference," we must admit we are sad, too. Sad as North Korea, sad as the privates in David Petraeus' tent when he's been on the bottle, working on his September report.

We're almost too sad to mention that our unworthy radio show, known variously as "Self Help Radio," had a show on Friday about the jukebox, & that show is available for listening to in its entirety at selfhelpradio.net. But we know you're going to be sitting at home, like we are, listening to the wonderful mix CD that Alberto Gonzales once made us, which consisted only of "Send In The Clowns" on all twenty-five tracks, with the middle one - track thirteen - a beautiful karaoke version by Alberto herself.

God DAMN she was a real lady.

The Slow, Sad Decline Of Our Friend The Carpenter Ant

It may surprise our religious friends that the savior of the insect species was not ever a carpenter ant. No, the Insect Messiah will probably not come from colony species such as ants, bees, termites or Scientologists. As we pore over our insect religious texts, we understand that the Insect Messiah will travel long distances to preach to worker ants & worker bees, often outside busy nests, mainly attempting to liberate the workers from their queens. Queens in such cases are perhaps equivalent to the ancient god-kings of the old city-states. In any case, the Insect Messiah has her work cut out for her.

But one needn't be terribly concerned with the Insect Messiah to feel both pity & condescension toward the carpenter ant. This particular species of ant is particularly pathetic. For many hundreds of years now, its culture & literature have languished, & no scholar in her right mind disputes the reason: the shift from living in rotting logs to living in rotting human domiciles. What was once a thriving ant society, with dance, philosophical discussion, & hearty persecution of the drones, has now become a docile, dull totalitarian hive which spends its few leisure hours listening to Fox News on the television. Carpenter ants cannot vote, of course, but studies have shown that if they could vote, they'd to a single ant vote for the Butt Party. This, in contravention to many millenia as free thinkers & robust political gadabouts. It's enough to make the scholar weep for insectkind.

It's no surprise an industry has sprung up making big bucks on the control & eradication of the carpenter ant - they have truly become unpleasant creatures, boring to be around, simple-minded, dull-witted, tiring. If we are to believe their own literature - which has, fortunately, been saved by spiders in their complex spider libraries - these creatures were once the bon vivants of at least the Formicidae world, although their charm even now surpasses that of the boorish wasps, but that's not saying much. One can, if it so suits one, weep for their cultural programming & their capitulation to it, but instead it seems to many that, on the eve of the return of the Insect Messiah, we must move to other, more fertile areas of insect progress & scholarship, & leave those lost causes behind, praising their contributions in the past but regretting the fact that, when the insects rise up to consume the world, the carpenter ant will be not be an integral part of the revolution, but, alas, will find itself among the consumed.

No One Is Purtier Than You

What would you say to my twitchy eye? Would you try to poke it with your stick? Would you be able to stop the nerves that make it flick & jump so? With your magic stick?

My twitchy eye can't be bothered with your half-assed alchemy. It does not fucking believe you. You know why? You & your poking stick are not threatening, no matter how much you wave it about or how many stories you tell about it. My twitchy eye twitches with skepticism.

Frankly, my twitchy eye thinks you're a twit. Furthermore, my twitchy regards with some nausea the fact that you desperately need people to be afraid of your stick. Your stick is your diaper & your mama's teat. Grow the fuck up, mutters my twitchy eye under its breath. It can't stand the look of you.

Do you really think my eye is twitching because of you? Ha! Ha ha! My eye's twitching because it's tired. It fucking says so here. So don't be waving your dumbass stick at me as if I give anything like half a shit about it. I am just staring too long at my computer screen. You deluded fucknut.

My twitchy eye must go away from the computer now. I see you are busy making friends with people who admire your stick. Of course! Of course!

Whither Jukeboxes?

Little Snarly lives in the back of a cubicle. All day & all night little Snarly hears the breathy workers as they rattle their keys & their keyboads all the worklong day. Little Snarly wonders if she too were ever a breathy worker, since she has a ring of rattling keys around her waist, & a flat rattly keyboard at her fingertips. But little Snarly cannot breathe, & little Snarly cannot move. She lives frightened in the back of her cubicle.

Little Snarly was not always afraid. Little Snarly used to have a friend. Her friend was full of coins. Little Snarly's friend would pull out a coin & force the gleaming round metal into machine slots. He'd give little Snarly soda, newspapers, candy, telephone calls, bubble gum, toys, anything, anything that could be got by a coin in a slot. But the thing little Snarly liked best wasn't something she could hold in her hands, but something she held in her head: music. Her friend would put a coin into a jukebox & music would come out! Good music, bad music, music you could dance to, music that'd make you laugh, music that'd make you cry, all kind of music! Little Snarly would sit on the folded daily newspaper, chewing gum, eating a candy bar, drinking a soda, sticking tiny stickers on her hands, & sway, sway, sway to her friend's gift of music.

Little Snarly remembered a sad day when her friend ran out of coins. A coinless time began, & her friend, either ashamed of his lack, or perhaps going somewhere to get more coins, her friend disappeared. Little snarly missed him a great deal, missed him more than the newspapers, the candy, the sodas, the toys - but not more than the music. & it occured to little Snarly that, perhaps, she didn't need her friend to get the music. She just needed the coins.

So little Snarly found the cubicle. The keys were dutifully wrapped around her waist & the keyboard was set dutifully in her lap, & little numbers came out of the workers' mouths which told little Snarly that, at some point in time, if she rattled her keys like them & if she rattled her keyboard like them, & if she managed to breathe just like them, she would get coins of her own. So, one coinless day, with only the sound of the rattling of her breathy workers coming in over her cubicle walls, little Snarly rattled, too.

She rattled until she was out of breath, & then she caught her breath, & then she rattled some more. She couldn't quite rattle in the way the breathy workers did, so she tried different kinds of rattling, & when she did this, one worker, called a supervisor, would come into her cubicle, readjust little Snarly's key & reposition little Snarly's keyboard, & then leave her alone again. It must be said, no matter how hard she tried, little Snarly could never rattle like the others did, & she experienced more & more dread every time she tried, because the supervisor's visits were more & more frightening. She kept trying, though, because she couldn't help think about the coins. The coins she would get to help put music in her head.

One day, the supervisor came to little Snarly's cubicle, & wasn't there to readjust her keys or to reposition her keyboard, & little Snarly knew from the smile on her supervisor's face that he was there to give little Snarly her coins. Her heart raced. Her brain was so hungry for sounds other than rattling & breathing that it pounded. The supervisor handed little Snarly an envelope. Little Snarly grabbed for it, almost dancing in her seat. She could hear outside her cubicle that the others had stopped rattling, too. Everyone everywhere was holding their breath.

The envelope was light, too light, but little Snarly opened it anyway. Inside were thin strips of paper in dull colors, folded neatly, as if cut neatly off a giant strip of paper, then folded, & placed into an envelope made just to hold the dull, smooth, same-sized strips of paper. No coins at all. There were no coins in the envelope!

Little Snarly waited for the outrage from beyond the cubicle. But there was none. A single simple sigh emerged from all the workers & then, after the sound of what had to be the same strips of paper in the same handy envelopes stuffed into pockets or drawers or purses or wallets, the breathy workers began to breathe again, & the rattling started again, this time with more determination, more purpose, more self-satisfied somehow, more menacing.

Little Snarly couldn't move. She didn't want a single rattle to come from her. She breathed silently. She simply didn't understand. & she was scared. So she moved slowly - without a rattle - into the back of her cubicle. Where she now lives. & she has forgotten about the coins, & she has forgotten about the music she wanted in her head. & because she makes no sound, her breath nearly silent & her body still, the workers- including the worker called the supervisor - have all simply forgotten about her.

Preface To Jukeboxes: This Used To Only Cost A Nickel?

Even with the magic of the iPod, I still wish I had a jukebox. I'd take a digital jukebox - surely they make them that way now - just as long as it's big & full of flashy lights & lets you pick songs from a list. A jukebox is second only to a radio show in having near-complete control of what the people around you are listening to.

There are two jukeboxes in my memory that make me happy.

One was in Garland, Texas, when I was growing up. This one played 45 rpm singles. My sister Karin, de facto (yet resenting it) babysitter for me & my little brother, would occasionally take the two of us with her (& her incredibly skanky friend Tanya) down Cranford & across Saturn Road to a place called Paco Taco. (Maybe it was Paco's Tacos, but I remember it as Paco Taco.) There was a jukebox there, along with what was probably medicore Taco Bell-y Mexican food, although this was the mid-70s, so I don't even know if there were Taco Bells at the time. The jukebox, though, Karin loved. She always played one song - a song I can't think of ever without thinking of her - which was Foghat's "Slow Ride." In that way kids get when they're trying to be a part of something they don't entirely understand, my little brother & I would get excited, too, when she played the song - & I seem to remember that the food always came at the end of that song.

Whether it happened more than once or twice, I don't know. But it apparently stuck in my head. It's a happy memory.

The other jukebox probably no longer exists. either, but it resided for a time in the back area of an Austin dive called The Hole In The Wall. It played CDs. My buddy Mike & I would go there, &, since we were both pretty inept with the pool cue, we invented new rules for pool that weren't as embarrassing as the ones everyone else used, & we'd drink pitchers of beer - ah, & I'd smoke, back in those lovely days when I was a smoker & you could smoke in bars - & get increasingly drunk as we'd get increasingly worse at pool. (One of the rules of our pool, if I remember correctly, was that, if you made a particularly bad shot, you had to give your pool cue to the other player, since it was obviously the cue's fault, & you wanted your opponent to have the bad luck.)

The Hole In The Wall's jukebox was pretty piss-poor, so mainly we'd listen to what other people programmed, but I in particular loved to play "pool" to two songs on that pathetic nickelodeon: the Knack's "Good Girls Don't" & Bruce Springsteen's "Born To Run." I can't recall if there was anything more hip on that jukebox, but other, cooler jukeboxes (which seem to be cool only because they have the last few Johnny Cash records & "Sandanista!" by the Clash on them) never seem to impress me much anyway.

A jukebox is more about where it's at than its content, it seems to me. Those two jukeboxes were at the right place & the right time to make me happy & therefore to give me happy memories.

Dues Paid In Advance

But what, might I ask, is the opposite of groin?

Let us instead praise heartfelt ice creams. I nominate Ben & Jerry's Oatmeal Cookie Chunk. Or should I have said "heart-stopping"? Never mind. My cats beg for it. That's good enough for me.

I have pulled a muscle in my back, but I have since applied heat & I feel a little better. Ice cream in no way helps with the nausea, but what else can I do? My girlfriend is doing research & I am afraid of wasps. How else can you recommend doubt & disbelief to your friends &/or loved ones?

Oh! Before I forget! If you missed the Self Help Radio radio show I did last Friday (or the Friday before that, going back an entire year & sometimes more), you can listen to it as if it were on for the first time, except as an mp3, at selfhelpradio.net. If you like it, I promise I will make more (also, I will make more if you don't like it, but that shouldn't bother you). Like most radio shows, it's a mixture of music & talk, but unlike most radio shows, it's actually completely naked. & unashamed. It's not reacting to a repressive religious upbringing or anything - it just simply doesn't wear clothes. Maybe you find that sexy?

If ice creams lasted forever, would we all be fat & sticky? Do all words have opposites? Why don't we have breakfast together? Especially later in the day?

That's all I have for now. I am going to pretend that I can play lead guitar to sneakily try out for the Ramonalisas. I may be able to fool them if I hum loudly while I am "playing." Ha ha! We'll see!

Sad Story Of A Sensitive Man

This is an absolutely true & ridiculous story about me. It happened yesterday. I wanted to share.

I was waiting at the busstop yesterday, listening to songs about bones in my continual decision-making process about the songs I will play on my show, & reading Christopher Hitchens' wonderful new book, God Is Not Great, when, as is not uncommon, a homeless fellow, who had been standing next to me but not making eye contact, turned & asked for change.

I had to turn off my iPod, & turn to him, & he was a scrawny, filthy thing, with teeth all back & a face cracked & red with damage from too much sun & way too much alcohol. I'm not sure what all he said, because he was still talking as I was pulling my iPod out of my back pocket & turning it off, but I did hear him say, "A little change I gotta get me something..."

I generally give change to whomever asks for it, as long as I have it, & I gave him the 85 cents I had in my pocket. He was curt as he grumbled a "thank you" & made a beeline for the convenience store across the street. I noticed he had talked to me as the bus was driving up - I guess he felt I'd be digging in my pocket for change anyway, so he could hit me up then. Very crafty!

I didn't think about him at all for the rest of the day & wouldn't have, I'm sad to say, except when I went to get some whiskey that evening, last night, he accosted me outside the liquor store as I was going in. I didn't have any change & I said so, & he turning away before I finished as he sensed he wasn't going to get any money from me. But that's not what makes this a sad story of a sensitive man. What makes this a sad story of a sensitive man is what follows:

I was a little offended that he didn't remember I had given him money earlier in the day.

Isn't that pathetic? I told my girlfriend the story & laughed at myself. How could he not remember the ugly sweaty dude waiting for the bus who helped him get his morning drink on? The nerve! The gall! The impudence!

How sad is that? Oh, don't answer. I am become a caricature. Don't I know.

Whither Bones?

I live with an anatomist. She has a skeleton - not a real human one, but one that accurately represents the bone structure of your average human being, only made out of plastic or something. It's in our living room. It doesn't like me.

Let me first say that I am the least "spiritual" person you'll ever meet. I don't really have any beliefs that go beyond the material world. I don't think there's sprites or fairies or gods or devils or ghosts or poltergeists or Merv Griffins out there (well, not any more, in the case of Merv). But I do know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that that plastic replica of a human skeleton is not only alive - it wants to consume the flesh of everything in my house.

Everything? you may ask. Yes, you may. The cats & the dogs, the rats & the frogs, the gnats & the hogs. The hats & the logs. The chats & the snogs. The spats & the togs. The fats & the fogs. The mats by the bogs. The pats on the cogs. Everything, but especially those things that rhyme with "cat" & "dog." Also, me. I don't rhyme with cat or dog (though I do rhyme with "Hairy Stickerson") (which, I know, has nothing to do with this, but I was feeling left out) (it isn't a bad rhyme, you know) (my girlfriend rhymes with Bogda Butch-chin-tree - that's a much worse thing to rhyme with) (anyway) I don't rhyme with cat or dog, but it still wants to consume my flesh.

Why does it want to consume my flesh? Because it has no flesh, duh. It will consume the flesh of the living things in the house & then it will look like some kind of fucked up man-woman-beagle-cat thing. But it still won't be able to talk. That's the flaw in its plan! It can't talk.

So, on Self Help Radio this Friday, I am giving it a voice. My theory is this, & a very good one it is at that: since it wants to talk more than it wants flesh - in fact, since it thinks if it gets flesh, it'll be able to talk, but it doesn't know how completely stupid that sounds - if I give it a voice, it won't want to kill me anymore. Ergo, a show about bones. Which is all it is, really. Hungry, envious, murderous bones.

I know, I should just throw it out, but if I do my girlfriend will kill me.

Preface To Bones: The Deliberate Mistruth Of "Cracking Knuckles"

Here's a picture of some bones, & what you can call them if you want to talk to them.

I have never broken a bone. I have dislocated a bone, but the bone found its way back, usually by asking a friendly doctor & being told the proper way back. I am lucky I haven't broken a bone. Maybe it's because my bones, like myself, are cowardly. Every chance my bones have had to break, they have instead chosen to run & hide. My skin, which may be a little braver (or feels it needs to be, anyway), has therefore been bruised a lot. Thanks bones!

I once saw a person break his foot by getting up incorrectly. It's true! But I didn't hear a bone snap. I can't imagine that would sound very good. Perhaps it would sound more squishy than "popping your knuckles." It seems to me that most television shows & movies leave out how squishy it must sound when things move around in our flesh - including bones, knives, bullets, etc.

Oh yeah, I've never been shot or stabbed, either. I've lived a dull life. My girlfriend came back from South Africa with African Tick Bite Fever. That's like being shot & stabbed by one bad-ass African Tick. I guess I got bit by a Brown Recluse Spider once, but I got it by stepping on it in a sock I hadn't worn all winter. The spider bit me in self-defense. That's not the same.

Someone told me that the bad thing about not having had any broken bones is that, the longer you wait to finally break a bone, the older you get, & therefore the longer it'll take to heal. That will suck. But, knowing my bones, they'll wait until it's something major, like a hip, or my skull. Jerks.

That picture above says we have 206 - 350 bones. That seems quite a discrepancy. Why tell us the low number most of the time? I mean, I always heard we have 210 bones. Are there some folks with more bones? Are they more likely to break them than those with the small number? Or does the larger number mean you get more small bones, like in your ear? Are there people out there with a hundred bones in their ear? Do they hear a weird rattling all the time? Does they drive them crazy? Do crazy serial killer types have more bones than those of us who couldn't harm a fly? Have I hit on something here? Should I go & pursue that degree in sociology I've always wanted?

Bones ask more questions than they answer. They're like beagles in that regard. Hmm, I wonder how many bones a beagle has...

The Disappointing 200th Post

Wow, what a letdown. After all that hype, too. Could there have been a more disappointing 200th post to the Self Help Radio blog? I am so sorry. Please enjoy the complimentary rue.

To be fair, the media shares some of the blame. Maybe because it was a slow news cycle, or because of the weird promise I made while drunk that I had cured cancer & invented a way to make money out of cheese. I wish I was like other drunk people & didn't spell check my pronouncements! Alas! Alack!

Also, I am angry at YOU. You know who you are, even if I don't. Your expectations, which should be pretty low, considering the previous posts on this blog, were way too high for this, the 200th entry. Your emails, your planned "post parties," the rumors you began to spread about "guest entries" - Matt Damon? George Jetson? Ramblin' Jack Ponytail? Robin Williams in a burka? - how could you? - all of this contributed to a status which this lowly, unambitious blog couldn't attain. It never had a chance.

But I have to be honest. My mother deserves a lion's share of the blame. She raised me to dream big but act small. I remember, when I had come in second in a spelling bee in fifth grade, & didn't get to travel to Washington DC for the finals, she told me, "It serves you right for even trying. Now you're disappointed. If you hadn't entered, you wouldn't be upset now about going to the nation's capital, which is a shithole anyway. Give mama your hand, I need to put out this cigarette." & that was a high point of my childhood. The point is, if I wasn't my mother's son, I wouldn't be the disappointment I have since turned out to be.

Of course, none of it is my fault. So, let me formally apologize for this disappointing 200th post & let's move on to more or less the same sort of thing for the next one hundred. Oh boy! One hundred more posts! Who would've thought? Etc., etc.

Suddenly! 199 Posts!

The countdown to 200 continues. Wow, that's a milestone. I can't even imagine how great it'll be. Most people in the world don't write 200 letters in their lifetime - they don't read 200 books all their lives - or even know 200 words, when you think about it. But I - me! - have, just in support of what many describe as an astonishingly piss-poor radio show, written almost 200 posts! There should be a celebration - certainly expensive alcoholic drinks should be passed out & imbibed- & there should be dancing - & speeches by dignitaries who will put my precious prescient words in their proper context - death row inmates spared - a national holiday! Oh wouldn't that be swell. What an accomplishment! Nearly 200 little paragraphs of ramblings about Self Help Radio &/or my tiny life. Sigh. This might make up for nearly forty years of broken dreams.

No. No, it doesn't.

If you feel sticksome & glueish right now - & maybe were feeling that way on Friday, but didn't get a chance to listen to my show then - the theme was "glue" - you can now go to selfhelpradio.net & listen to it in its gummy gooey entirety. What fun!

& tomorrow: the 200th post to this blog! Keep an eye on the news - I bet the networks will be covering this one!