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.