Lonesomer Friday

A famous hypnotist walks into a bar. A not-so-famous hypnotist walks into a bar. A dude with those weird x-ray glasses with the hypno wheel on them which don't really work walks into a bar. A bar is open, a bar is closed.

More & more, life seems to contain more & more of stuff which I apparently said, felt & did, but to which I have increasingly less access. More than hypnotism, I think I'd like to have someone pump energy into my hypothalamus like they did on a recent episode of House. Whether it works on not, who know, but now I will be expecting to have lucid dreams/memories in high definition color.

Tomorrow I will have a new podcast for you - & this one will be very good I hope you know - & also rather silly - so please look around to find it & enjoy it on your Memorial Day weekend. Days off are good for listening to weirdoes & their radio shows. I would do it if I knew some weirdoes on the radio. Where have they gone I wonder? All the weirdoes?

You know where one of them is, at least! Have a good weekend!

Game Is The Name Of The Lame

I really enjoy making the Self Help Radio Extra mixes. If I didn't enjoy hunting down music for the Self Help Radio themes, I might just make weekly mixes. As it stands, I try to make time to make the best mixes, but even leaving the radio station that seemed to take up half my life hasn't really freed up my time - I find other things to do.

I wanted to have a new Extra mix up today, but instead I've been listening to records on how to hypnotize yourself for the next podcast. So I'll try to have the mix up this time next week. I'm lame. I'm really lame.

Speaking of, no one's very excited about my upcoming four hundredth post on this blog. One person sent me a link to a blog that was started around the same time as this one that has over a thousand posts. Imagine! Granted, the posts tend to be more links & they're smaller. Imagine! Also, they have nothing to do with a radio show/podcast the blogger does. Imagine! It also has pitchers of nekkid wimmen. Imagine! Should I find some wimmen for post four hundred & take pitchers of them nekkid? I might get more hits. I might lose the missus. Wow that's a lame pun. Especially since I'm not married. Also, I have no pitchers of wimmen anywhere, & none of those (I'll presume) have any nekkidness involved. Imagine!

Then I'm not going to make a big deal about the four hundredth post. What, am I crazy? 400 posts! That's amazing!

Wow, I'm lame. But this week's show will rock!

Whither Hypnosis?

I know what you're thinking. I'm going to hypnotize you & make you act like a chicken. Or worse, I'm going to make you act like a naked chicken. Or worst, I'm going to act like a naked chicken while you're hypnotized. Nothing could be farther from the truth! I want to hypnotize you to help you quit smoking. Eating too much. Wetting your bed. Biting your nails. Masturbating. Believing in God. Popping pills. Short-changing the customers. Wrestling with your demons. Mistaking sex for love. Running for office. Randomizing. Stuff like that.

You don't have to be afraid! Here, go visit this vaguely mystical-looking website to read some common myths of hypnosis. There! Doesn't that make you feel better? Hey, if a place called "deeptrancenow.com" says hypnosis is all right, it must be all right!

Listen, tootsie pop, it's just a radio show featuring songs & information about hypnosis. It's not scary! It's an adventure! I have spent the last seventy-two hours implanting auto-suggestions in-between the more comforting notes of all the peppiest songs I'll play on this week's Self Help Radio. But that's nothing compared to the subliminal messages in your average episode of "60 Minutes." & that doesn't include the truly terrifying pharmaceutical ads. I stress again: these messages are for your self-improvement, not for your embarrassment. They may make me laugh, but they're not a laughing matter. I know that. You know I know that.

You are feeling very sleepy. It must be the light of the computer monitor. It makes me tired, too. Please don't read any websites right now about politics. Read instead some calming stories about zombies. Zombies rule! But they're not hypnotized, & neither are you.

When I snap my fingers, you'll wake up & feel refreshed. Your head will be lighter & so will your wallet. Follow the lights on the floor to the door & exit onto the street going left.

Preface To Hypnosis: I Can't Hypnotize But I Can Mesmerize

Messages left in tiny boxes in front of houses in my neighborhood (which are not, by the way, for me) speak of cynicism & gloom: they warn of dissolving marriages, shockingly lowered values on recently-appraised homes, noisier dogs sneaked in during the night, a party which may cause inconvenience come Thursday. Was there ever a time when these notices spoke of happy things, like births, or career advancement, or just general good news? Who knows - &, again, I'm not supposed to be reading them.

If one walks a straight line from the edge of the driveway to the edge of the curb where one stands to wait for the bus, one naturally must walk through houses, back yards, flower beds, storage sheds, over cars & fences, past angry home owners with guns & sharp tongues, into & out of a few businesses, across one busy street & at least two or three not-so-busy ones. This is true about all the nearby bus stops, not just the one I take to get to work every day. Even the bus stops that lead away from my work. There is no straight line away from my house to any bus stop.

That makes me very, very nervous. Anxiety is an old friend, but as I get older, I can imagine the nerves fraying, like sleeves or tassels, until they're just dangling, fraught, always in motion. It's no wonder I sneak glances into the little boxes which hold the messages for others in the neighborhood - for the uptight effeminate fellow & his perfumed dog; for the happy couple with the motorized, air-conditioned stroller for their new sprog; for the grumpy old conservative & his solid gold walker, slowly making his day-long trip up the block & back; for even the visitors, solicitors or stalkers, who pretend they're part of this neighborhood & who everyone else pretends are a part of this neighborhood.

I couldn't tell you why I am disconnected in this way. I smile, sometimes I wave, but the people who live around me often turn off their lights & close up their trees when I pass. I cannot say if it's just that they dislike me or if I committed some kind of offense. I want to say to them, "But I bought the house! I do not rent! I do not lease! I mow my own lawn & put up my own Christmas lights! Look! Look! It's my name on the mail! It's my name on the magazines!" But what good would that do? Surely those who reject me have closed their ears like their minds & they can't hear a word I say. Just the sound of my footsteps trailing into the loneliness of my home.

The noise you hear is the neighborhood sharpening its teeth. The noise you don't hear is my television turning off as I look out my picture window & fall asleep staring into the street. The night comes, the night goes. All manner of things happen, usually, & usually you don't need to pay attention. The power goes off & the houses empty as we all look to see if it's a community event, & not something ridiculous like someone forgetting to pay their bills. We ask the questions, we stand around, we stare at each other's lawns, cars, for sale signs, political candidate signs, dying trees, edged shrubs, boxes of recycling. Then the power comes on again. We go back inside.

Something starts all over again. Something never ended. Something never began.

Another Non-Random Show Notification On Your Otherwise Spotless Corkboard

Posted this weekend: Self Help Radio show number - er - I mean Jesus I don't know what frickin' number show it is - it's the show about lemons. It's available where you normally find Self Help Radio podcasts & archived versions of the old radio show: both in my head & at selfhelpradio.net.

I want to add that you can certainly keep those suggestions coming about what I should do special for my 400th post on this blog. "Nude photos of my cats" is certainly a hilarious option, especially since they're perverts, but they have their own blog so you can already see them. "Free access to this blog for life" seemed a little smart-alecky until I realized someone could make the argument that "free access" means I have to pay their ISP bills. Fat chance!

But I do believe the four hundredth post should be exciting, special, awesome, tacky, windswept, consumptive, cricket & rad, so I am still taking suggestions. Number 400 (wow, like the hit film!) should break some time next week. I suggest you plan your parties now!

But don't forget the point of today's notice: a show about lemons at selfhelpradio.net! Have some with your afternoon tea!

A Twist Of Lemon

Tomorrow! Probably in the middle of the day! Or maybe sooner! But maybe later! The Self Help Radio podcast series continues with a lemony show all about lemons! It'll be tart & tangy, sour & sweet! It can clean your hair & your furniture! It will go good with beverages & garnish your entree! Wow! What the hell! That's one great radio show!

Now all I have to do is put it together. I wish it was as easy as writing about it. Damn it.

Pay attention to selfhelpradio.net tomorrow (Saturday) to see when I post the show, or write an email to this email address to ask me to notify you when it's posted.

Seriously, I gotta start working on that show. Why am I wasting my time on a blog? Jeez.

That Boy Hermes

According to the list of things which is collected for things in the thing-like interface which controls this blogging device thing, I am rapidly approaching my four-hundredth blog entry. (Well, rapidly. I mean, it's less than ten entries off, so it'll happen in like two weeks or something.) (It's certainly as rapid as any blogging I do I suppose.) (Thing.) I ask you, loyal readers of other blogs than this, what should be the celebration that we celebrate for the four-hundredth Self Help Radio blog? Here are some choices sent in by Mrs. Mull's second-grand class, Doonesburg, Ohio:

1) Photos of Gary being kicked in the head! (submitted several times)
2) Free trip to Planet Zed!
3) Tell us a story, tell us a story!
4) More money for lunch please. I am hungry.
5) A special song written for all the famous things that are four hundred!
6) Two cats for every orphan!
7) A rhyming dictionary for the lucky winner!
8) Three or more tours of duty in Iraq starting this summer!
9) A haircut & a shave!
10) Tacky joke gift vetted by your drunk uncle!

What else? What could it be? What shall we do? Wherever shall we go? Could there should there be a contest? Should there would there be a prize? Ought there be a law? Might there be a drawing (of names), or a drawing (of famous people in funny caricature)? I can't decide. You have to decide! Four hundred is a big number. Help me figure out what should happen when blog post number four hundred happens!

Thing.

Whither Lemons?

A fan of lemons was telling me just the other day, "There's that old song, you know, about how the interior of the lemon isn't very good to eat, & I was always puzzled by this. I always ate lemons like other kids at oranges, or even grapefruit. I'd scoop the pulp out & just eat. It never occurred to me that it wasn't supposed to be edible. So I continue eating the flesh - for lack of a better word - of lemons to this very day. You may not believe me but it's true.

"What's weirder," he continued, "is that I can't do the same with limes. I can't eat a section of a lime in the same way that I can basically 'eat up' a lemon. It doesn't taste good enough & the consistency, the texture of the lime isn't the same. Isn't that just too odd? Because you can set a lemon & a lime side-by-side & even cut them in half, & they look like basically the same fruit, only colored differently. But they are very, very different. They are - at least to my taste buds - polar opposites.

"I can also tell you," said the fan of lemons, "that I could chew on a lemon rind - did you know they also call it a 'zest'? - I could chew on a lemon zest in the same way other kids chewed gum. To me, there was nothing better, after consuming the inside of a lemon, spitting its seeds out, wiping the sticky sour juice from my face - nothing better than gnawing off a piece of lemon zest & spending the rest of the day just chew, chew, chewing it. Other children, with their Wrigley's & their Fruit Stripe & they're Double Bubble, they'd complain of losing flavor & having to keep sticking new pieces of gum in their mouths, but not me. A little lemon rind went a long way."

"I wish I could tell you," he said with a sigh, "why I am so obsessed with lemons. There's probably a moment - or moments, really, felicitous, random moments when I was young - when lemons were the only thing around to eat, & I ate them. Ate them up. & my love of lemons continues undeterred to this day. I love lemon tea, lemon-flavored soft drinks, lemon garnishes, lemon juice dripped on frying foods, lemonade of course, lemon added to any alcohol, lemon candies, lemon, lemon, lemon! The taste of lemons. It overwhelms me & is the one thing on this planet that makes me completely, totally happy."

"Well," I said, "that's good news, because my radio show, Self Help Radio, this week features nothing but talk & music about lemons!"

"Hey," said the fan of lemons, "I didn't know you did a radio show."

Preface To Lemons: I'd Rather Talk About Toast

Don't get me wrong. I'm very excited about this week's show, for which I am receiving absolutely no money from the Texas Citrus Exchange. No money, nor any of their delicious fruit, certainly not sent in lovely gift baskets directly to my door for any consideration whatsoever. Oh delicious citrus! Your sourness is the sweetest thing in my life!

Recently, though, I've begun to question the very nature of fruit. It's so, well, fruity. Can that be a good thing? Some fruitarians think that, but can we truly trust anyone who has so willfully given up cheese? I think not.

One struggles to find one's way in the shopping cart of life, & I have been a vegetarian since way before you thought I was cool, but the questions with which one grapples can be philosophical finger traps - such as this one: why worry about lemons, when all you can think about is toast?

It's true! Why does toast haunt me so? Since our toaster died, I have been forced to make toast in a "toaster oven." The toast comes out disappointed & rueful. The butter will not melt, it feels the toast's shame. I had to put this morning's toast out of its misery by throwing it into a mob of hungry beagles! What sort of death is that for bread? For toast? I may as well have shoved it up the assholes of pigeons in the park!

One doesn't have the same moral & ethical quandaries with fruit, even with citrus, whose reputation among fruits is that of scoundrels & knaves. At the very least douchebags. Fruits have nothing on toast! But you can put fruit on toast! Preferably sliced thin. If you must.

I sing a dirge of toast lost today. The citrus fruits would weep acrid tears, if weep they could, if they hadn't already been crushed into juice. Mmm, juice. Salud!

From Dynamite To Los Angeles

Suddenly I am regretting not beginning all of my blog entries with a salutation. What a dreadful miscalculation! Now my blog has no personality! It's just like me!

Followers of the stomach flu may note with sadness that I am more or less back to my usual state of health which, frankly, for most people is a bit on the sickly side. I managed to fly to Los Angeles & attend my girlfriend's sister's wedding, but couldn't take advantage of the free booze & was back in Austin before Spielberg knew I was there. He & I are just NOT on speaking terms.

Before I left Saturday morning, though, I finished the first post-radio show podcast, which is still an episode of Self Help Radio, warts & all, & is available for your listening pleasure at the regular place, cnn.com. No, that's not right. & no, Wolf Blitzer & I are also NOT on speaking terms. A situation room without a self-destruct button?! What the fuck was he thinking?

The Self Help Radio show about dynamite is available at (of course) selfhelpradio.net. Do go listen. You may be the only person who does!

One Dynamite Podcast!

The Self Help Radio non-radio pro-podcast revolution begins in just a little time, my friends. Oh yes! As we speak, smelly beagles of all ages are sniffing the butts of all kind of music - all about the subject "dynamite" - which will be gathered tenderly, like flowers or cigarette butts, & turned into a deliciously explosive podcast you'll want to tell your friend about.

Do you want me to tell you when it's posted? Send an email to this address & I'll do that. Meanwhile I'll tease you by saying that this week's podcast will featuring the likes of Sly & The Family Stone, Iggy Pop, Slim Gaillard, King Floyd & Dick & The Family Cheney. Well, maybe not the last one. But all the rest & more!

Only at selfhelpradio.net. Only with fresh fruits & veggies. Only on time, never late. Only as a last resort.

Huzzah!

In Which Our Hero Makes One Final House Call

In the big media flap that was me distancing myself from my pastor's inappropriate behavior & apparently seditious sermons - wait, that wasn't me at all - was that former French president Jaques Chirac? Wasn't I him in a previous French life? I can't remember. I know there was a big media flap involving me, Caroll Spinney, an ostrich recently "liberated" from the San Diego Zoo, & Alaskan celebrity Mike Gravell. There always is, it seems, when a season ends. It's the burden of being virtually unknown & living in an imaginary world in my own hollow head.

Due to this media flurry, it may have been lost in the shuffle that the last episode of the fine show "The House Call" (normally ably hosted by heavy drinker Justin B) was poorly subbed by me during the hour before the Self Help Radio Season Finale. That show, featuring a not-entirely-right-in-the-head co-host, Mike, is available for listening at the Self Help Radio website. It's worth your time, if only to hear Xiu Xiu's magnificent cover of "Under Pressure." That's a keeper.

Go! Listen! I've got an imaginary press conference to attend, & later I'll be doing some imaginary drugs & crashing my imaginary car into the real tree.

Whither Dynamite?

Two things are interesting to me about dynamite. Ka & boom!

Was that funny? Well, I'm not funny. I'm sickly & I can't go to Los Angeles for my girlfriend's sister's wedding. So I'm sick, I'm depressed, I'm making enemies in my girlfriend's family, & I'm not funny.

Still. Two things are interesting to me about dynamite.

One, the fact that the dude who invented it was so shaken by an accidentally published obituary ("the merchant of death is dead!" it announced) that he started the Nobel Prizes to "atone" for his great destruction. I mean, if everyone did that, Dick Cheney would be spending the rest of his life giving everyone in America fifty dollars! Imagine that!

Two, the fact that it's a weird metaphor. To call someone "dynamite" is to call them "explosive" or "catastrophically violent," right? Nope. It means "great!" I'll be discussing this at length on the podcast. It's weird to me. "Dynamite" = "great"? What's next? "Bad" = "good"?

Of course, there are lots of great songs about dynamite, too. That's the main reason I do these shows I do, you know. The great music. & also the explosions. Ka-boom!

Preface To Dynamite: A Stomach Flu For All Humankind!

I don't know about you, but I am pretty annoyed by viruses. & I'm not afraid to say so! You know what I'm talking about - viruses - sub-microscopic infectious agents that are unable to grow or reproduce outside a host cell. You feel me? No? What if I remind you that viruses consist of genetical material - DNA or RNA - within a protective protein coat called a capsid? Ah, you know what I'm talking about. Fucking viruses! They infect cellular life forms & are grouped into animal, plant & bacterial types, according to the type of host infected. & isn't that the shit?

I was minding my own business last week when some motherfucking virus decided to hang out in my stomach. Say what? You heard me! You know what followed? It wasn't beer & skittles, if that's what you mean. Unless by "beer & skittles" you mean "upchuck & the trots." In which case, then, yeah, it's been three days of beer & skittles.

I didn't go to a doctor, but I'm pretty sure I had (& may still have) this: a norovirus. I did in fact have a low grade fever Saturday night. (The grade? D+.) I scared the hell out of my girlfriend because I kept talking to her but I was responding to imaginings & dreams. Ah, fevers. Like a cheap drug when you least can afford it.

I am doing better now - I have to, I am driving to Los Angeles on Thursday. Wow, I get to transport a norovirus across the country! Someone please please please tell me Scarlet Johansson & Ryan Reynolds are in LA! Please please please.

This does mean limited blog entires for the next week. I'll warn more later. Now. Urp. I need to go visit the facilities.

Cake Request Form

I just discovered there was such a thing as a "cake request form." Ah, bureaucracy. Just tell me where to sign.

The very lastest Self Help Radio on KOOP was quite a blow-out. Hear what the critics are saying?

Nope.

Me neither.

But take my word for it, it was more fun than watching angry people trying to douse the Olympic Torch while French police on roller skates daydream of Segues! & guess what what! You can listen to it in its entirety at selfhelpradio.net! Not just now! Also later! Isn't that just freaky?

& nothing on the cake request form says anything about "one per customer." Suckers!

Last Show On KOOP!

This is it, friends. My last appearance on KOOP radio. It starts at 3:30pm when I sub the House Call one last time, & then the ninety-minute "season finale" of Self Help Radio.

But wait! Unlike most season finales, the "new" season of SHR begins right away next week as a podcast. Send an email if you want to be notified of SHR podcasts! The best is yet to come!

I hope you tune in today. It's a crazy show. Weird interviews, exclusive songs written for the show, & I will make love to a panda on the air. Well, maybe not. We'll see.

Your last chance to hear Self Help Radio on the radio in Austin is 4:30 today! Tune in!

My Last Ear Candy

I came to KOOP in late 2000 on the invite of one of the many Jennifers who have hosted the indiepop show "Ear Candy" since the late 1910s. I had been missing radio a lot but I didn't really want to have to get involved with another organization - especially one with as fearsome & intolerant a reputation as KOOP. In the end, I DID get involved, & I hope I helped change the station into a more welcoming place - but this is not the place to talk about that.

I subbed Ear Candy quite a bit over the years - I just counted - it was around twenty times - & I always loved the show. The first time I was on KOOP, actually, was an Ear Candy show. So it was very nice that Lace - the current Jennifer who handles Ear Candy - asked me to sub the show last Saturday. It was a nice way to say goodbye to a show that was like my second home on KOOP.

Want to listen to that show? You can! At selfhelpradio.net!. Please to enjoy.

& tomorrow is the last time you'll ever hear me on the air in Austin, Texas. Why hasn't the news media called? This is what I want to know.

Whither A Season Finale?

All things - good or not - must come to an end. Of course, Self Help Radio is not ending, but its place on the KOOP schedule is. It's happening at the end of the season. Ergo, Season Finale.

Where will Self Help Radio end up? Well, it comes with me wherever I go, so it'll end up in North Carolina. That's where I'll be by the end of the summer. Why, you many ask. Why Gary? Why the Deep South? You've quit smoking. You really don't want to have to explain yourself Jesse Helms. What gives?

I'll tell you. My girlfriend Magda is getting a job at Duke. Duke is a university in Durham, North Carolina. I love my girlfriend Magda in the way that a boy sometimes loves a girl & wants to be with her all the time. She's very smart & very dorky & we both have seen every episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation too many times. She can speak the language of lemurs. She eats sesame tofu as fast as I do - if not faster. She's funny-looking in a pretty kind of way. I like her!

I decided I'd rather be with my girlfriend than without her. So I follow her. She gets to teach college, I get to work the clean-up shift at Whataburger. Wait. Do they have Whataburger in North Carolina? I need to start sending resumes out!

Self Help Radio may end up on the radio in Durham, or it may just be a podcast for the next year or so. In any case, it's unstoppable! You can't stop it! It's impossible to stop Self Help Radio! Like a crazy dream, it now leaps from the confines of "regular radio" into the aether, & online, but also into the aether, where it communicates with the space demons & protects Earth from unholy meteor penetrations & extraterrestrial salads!

Preface To The Season Finale: Guestbook Weirdness!

Here's something I never thought I'd have to deal with: a weirdo trying to harass me.

A while back I decided to do something totally dorky & add a "guestbook" to my site. It's free, it's silly, it's totally 1996. There have been some nice comments & some misspellings & it seemed a harmless thing to do.

Last week, someone who really, really doesn't like Self Help Radio decided to leave a nasty comment. I figured, hey, everyone's entitled to their opinion, even if it seemed strange to me to take the time to go to some place you don't like & write something nasty about it. It seemed - well - a little douchebaggish. But whatever.

The next day someone wrote something in defense of me, referring to the nasty entry. It was sweet & I thought, all right, it's like point/counterpoint. I certainly didn't want there to be an "argument" going on - I mean, if you don't like the show, you don't like the show, how can you "convince" someone about their own opinion? - but here are two people making two points & now let's go back to the regular stuff.

Yesterday, the person who wrote the first entry - under a different name - it's a really simple guestbook, you can claim to be whomever you want - wrote another mean entry. (How do I know it's the same person? The entries came from the same IP address. The guestbook administration lets me know where the entries come from.) I decided it wasn't the place for that sort of thing, so I deleted the comments - the two nasty ones, & (I'm sorry to the nice person who wrote this!) the one in defense of the show which referenced the first "bad review."

Of course, the nasty ones keep coming, & I'll keep deleting them, since they don't make sense now in the guestbook's context. & I know the same person is writing them all, so I can't even be flattered by hordes of people hating on me. So I make a quiet plea or four:

1) If you don't like Self Help Radio, don't worry, it's leaving the Austin airways. You might not have been able to work the magic radio dial to change the station while I was on the air, but now, since I won't be there, you don't have to trouble yourself. Everything is fine. You'll be all right.

2) I will continue podcasting, & will eventually be on the radio elsewhere, but that will require you to use a computer to download the shows &/or listen online. If you don't like the show, please don't take the trouble! Put it out of your mind. Self Help Radio can't ever hurt you. Things that other people like that you find awful can't hurt you. Concentrate on the things you like. Write nice things on their web pages. It will make the people who make the things you like feel really good. That's much better than trying to make someone feel bad, isn't it?

3) If you must leave comments, leave them here on the blog. Then we can have a conversation. We can't on a guestbook.

4) If you want to have a conversation, use your real name! Don't post under fake names! It undercuts your criticism! What are you afraid of? You know my real name. There are many ways to get to know who I am. Why not tell me who you are?

That's all. I don't like being this "self-indulgent" but it's such a weird & interesting thing to have to deal with, I had to tell SOMEONE. I hope you don't mind!

One Whole Planet

Someone just said to me, "I don't have control issues." "No?" I said, because I wasn't really paying attention & wasn't sure if she had just accused me of telling her that she had "control issues," whatever that means. "No," she said. "I don't need to be in control of much." "How much do you need to be in control of?" I asked her. "One whole planet," she said.

I don't need that much. Just a couple more Self Help Radio shows on KOOP & the promise of radio in the future. & look! The next-to-the-last Self Help Radio is available for your glistening listening pleasure now at selfhelpradio.net. Please listen & enjoy.

& don't hate me for my lack of ambition!