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!