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!