The scientifically correct guide to the first ten dimensions:
The first dimension: a dot, I guess.
The second dimension: flatland.
The third dimension: you're soaking in it,
The fourth dimension: time.
The fifth dimension: this is your four dimensions on drugs.
The sixth dimension: doubt.
The seventh dimension: what happens to you after you die.
The eighth dimension: what happens to you after what happens to you after you die.
The ninth dimension: what happens to you after you die, with commentary, deleted scenes & a gag reel.
The tenth dimension: space wars.
The next ten dimensions have not been validated scientifically but they have been color-coded. What really happens in those dimensions is just theory, although there's some guessing, too.
The eleventh dimension (the chartreuse dimension): Like standing in a long line except you're sitting & asleep.
The twelfth dimension (the off-white dimension): The feeling of being a tip jar.
The thirteenth dimension (the burnt umber dimension): In-between floors.
The fourteenth dimension (the other burnt umber dimension): Itchy.
The fifteenth dimension (the cheesecloth dimension): Inappropriate snuggling.
The sixteenth dimension (the holiday blue dimension): Cafeteria food.
The seventeenth dimension (the clear liquid dimension): What's that noise? Is that whining?
The eighteenth dimension (the bright fuchsia dimension): Lake house in a horror film. A very, very cliched horror film.
The nineteenth dimension (the evergreen dimension): No time.
The twentieth dimension (the pale red dimension): Dying FM Radio.
The other dimensions are discussed at great length in Dimension X. For those who can make it, please point your dimensional browsers there at the dimensional link now appearing in front of your computer. Please remember not to feed the computers in Dimension X. See you there.*
* & of course by "see you" I mean with my fifth eye.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Friday, August 21, 2009
Preface To Dimensions: Another Keen Observation About Those Joke Of The Day Emails
Almost exactly a year ago I talked about - on this here blog - those joke of the day emails one can subscribe to. I have one email account that I check irregularly which is kept nourished by daily infusions of that nonsense. So I read the awful humor, & the one today went something like this:
Some children are taken on a tour of the local police precinct to see what the working atmosphere of a cop is, or something like that. At one point in the tour, the cop shows them the ten most wanted criminals in the standard "wanted" poster format.
One precocious little pickle says to the cop, "Do you want to catch this one?"
Officer McTourguide replies, "Oh yes, he's a hardened criminal."
Says the tot, "Why didn't you just keep him after you took his picture?"
(Cue audience chuckling & going "awwww.")
I felt a weird shock of recognition - I realized something - as I read this, & here's what I discovered: these services are stealing jokes from children's comic books from the forties & fifties. You know, the Archie shit or Little Lotta or Richie Rich or comic versions of Looney Tunes or Walter Lantz or Terrytoons. Those are the kinds of jokes that ended up in the short six-panel one-page filler. Someone at "joke a day" has a stack of them he's had since his childhood - which are handy because he still lives at home - & he just tosses one in every three or four days.
Either that, or he's a big Bazooka Joe fan. You can just see the cop's feet in the air, with an exclamation point above his falling body, as the punchline is spat out.
It could be worse, I know - they could be dirty jokes. Stolen from Hustler magazine. From the 1970s.
Some children are taken on a tour of the local police precinct to see what the working atmosphere of a cop is, or something like that. At one point in the tour, the cop shows them the ten most wanted criminals in the standard "wanted" poster format.
One precocious little pickle says to the cop, "Do you want to catch this one?"
Officer McTourguide replies, "Oh yes, he's a hardened criminal."
Says the tot, "Why didn't you just keep him after you took his picture?"
(Cue audience chuckling & going "awwww.")
I felt a weird shock of recognition - I realized something - as I read this, & here's what I discovered: these services are stealing jokes from children's comic books from the forties & fifties. You know, the Archie shit or Little Lotta or Richie Rich or comic versions of Looney Tunes or Walter Lantz or Terrytoons. Those are the kinds of jokes that ended up in the short six-panel one-page filler. Someone at "joke a day" has a stack of them he's had since his childhood - which are handy because he still lives at home - & he just tosses one in every three or four days.
Either that, or he's a big Bazooka Joe fan. You can just see the cop's feet in the air, with an exclamation point above his falling body, as the punchline is spat out.
It could be worse, I know - they could be dirty jokes. Stolen from Hustler magazine. From the 1970s.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
Help! My pants are on fire!
Damn it! All that does is make people think I'm a liar! I'm not lying! My pants are on fire!
Let me take my burning pants off first - since no one wants to help me - there. Ooph. Great. They're ruined. & now I regret going commando today. & lest someone think that my pants caught fire because I told a lie - no. That particular canard, gleaned from a child's bit of taunting doggerel, has no basis in fact. Or else why don't the pants of every politician catch fire during every speech? Aha, you think if they believe what they say, even if it is a lie, for pants-igniting purposes, it may not be enough... Hmm.
Can I borrow your pants? Or would you happen to have a spare? I feel so naked here in the middle of your browser window - mainly because I AM naked in the middle of your browser window. Do you mind if I hide behind a bookmark or something?
Why my pants caught fire as you loaded this page I don't know. I just wanted to tell you that last night's episode of Self Help Radio, called somethingtown, is available for your aural edification at selfhelpradio.net. As an added bonus, the show Sugar Substitute finished the Indiepop Ds for me. That show is there too.
Please close this window now, or reload. I can sneak away during those times.
Let me take my burning pants off first - since no one wants to help me - there. Ooph. Great. They're ruined. & now I regret going commando today. & lest someone think that my pants caught fire because I told a lie - no. That particular canard, gleaned from a child's bit of taunting doggerel, has no basis in fact. Or else why don't the pants of every politician catch fire during every speech? Aha, you think if they believe what they say, even if it is a lie, for pants-igniting purposes, it may not be enough... Hmm.
Can I borrow your pants? Or would you happen to have a spare? I feel so naked here in the middle of your browser window - mainly because I AM naked in the middle of your browser window. Do you mind if I hide behind a bookmark or something?
Why my pants caught fire as you loaded this page I don't know. I just wanted to tell you that last night's episode of Self Help Radio, called somethingtown, is available for your aural edification at selfhelpradio.net. As an added bonus, the show Sugar Substitute finished the Indiepop Ds for me. That show is there too.
Please close this window now, or reload. I can sneak away during those times.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Gargle
I like to say the word "gargle." It's onomatopoeia. But it's not echoic - it's not the noise of gargling that made people call gargling gargling. It comes from the French word for throat.
When I was a kid, if I had to gargle something, I thought the rules were (in the absence of any adult telling me the proper way to gargle) that you had to try to say "gargle" while you gargled. So I naturally swallowed a lot of what I was gargling. I did that a lot when I was a kid - not gargled, but assumed there were certain rules that I followed which I mainly just made up. I think a lot of kids do that.
There'll be no gargling on Self Help Radio today which - you remember - is on 88.1 fm WMUL at 4pm rather than 6pm due to a soccer game being covered live at 7pm. So tune in if you can. This means you, all of Huntington. & some of Barboursville.
When I was a kid, if I had to gargle something, I thought the rules were (in the absence of any adult telling me the proper way to gargle) that you had to try to say "gargle" while you gargled. So I naturally swallowed a lot of what I was gargling. I did that a lot when I was a kid - not gargled, but assumed there were certain rules that I followed which I mainly just made up. I think a lot of kids do that.
There'll be no gargling on Self Help Radio today which - you remember - is on 88.1 fm WMUL at 4pm rather than 6pm due to a soccer game being covered live at 7pm. So tune in if you can. This means you, all of Huntington. & some of Barboursville.
Monday, August 17, 2009
Swingin' Schedules
This only affects you if you live in Huntington, but due to a soccer game being aired on 88.1 fm WMUL tomorrow, Self Help Radio will be truncated to 90 minutes & air two hours earlier, at 4pm. Sugar Substitute will air at 5:30pm, & it's kinda important that it does, as the plan was to have the show - which is an indiepop show, after all - continue the Indiepop A To Z project by finishing the Ds. I so want to finish the Ds. You know?
So if you're in town, be aware. If you're not in town, you know where they'll end up the next day.
Excuse me, I must go read more disappointing news about American politics. I can't help it, I'm a disaster junkie.
So if you're in town, be aware. If you're not in town, you know where they'll end up the next day.
Excuse me, I must go read more disappointing news about American politics. I can't help it, I'm a disaster junkie.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Whither SomethingTown?
You know how you sometimes overexert yourself, most often physically, but sometimes mentally, & then a couple of days later some muscle or some other part of your body (could be your brain or your nerves) rebels & you've got this ache or pain or other condition that causes you to completely derail whatever plans you might have had because suddenly you have to deal with the excessive thing you did that, at the time, didn't cause any apparent discomfort but now, hours & maybe days after you finished it, it completely screws everything up?
Well, yes, it happens to me a lot but it has nothing to do with this week's theme.
This week is just an exploration of some adjective or noun or god forbid an abbreviation in front of the word "town." For example, & I never heard this once in my two decades living there, but imagine it was the hipster thing to do to call Austin "A-Town." Then someone wrote a song about it. Then the song was good, so I played it on my show. That's the idea behind this week's theme.
I specifically looked for that construction - I didn't look for town's nicknames, like "The Big Apple" or "The Armpit Of The Metroplex" (that's the nickname of my hometown of Garland, Texas) (or, if it isn't, it certainly should be) (& by the way, to give credit where it's due, I totally stole that from a Howard the Duck story written by the great Steve Gerber in which he calls Cleveland "the armpit of the universe"), I just looked for descriptions of towns in some way, avoiding more generic parts of towns ("downtown" or "uptown") & also just adding the word town to a named place ("London town" or "Chicago town"). It's very simple & the culling still left me with over seventy songs that I still have to sort out.
Other than that, what's up with you?
Well, yes, it happens to me a lot but it has nothing to do with this week's theme.
This week is just an exploration of some adjective or noun or god forbid an abbreviation in front of the word "town." For example, & I never heard this once in my two decades living there, but imagine it was the hipster thing to do to call Austin "A-Town." Then someone wrote a song about it. Then the song was good, so I played it on my show. That's the idea behind this week's theme.
I specifically looked for that construction - I didn't look for town's nicknames, like "The Big Apple" or "The Armpit Of The Metroplex" (that's the nickname of my hometown of Garland, Texas) (or, if it isn't, it certainly should be) (& by the way, to give credit where it's due, I totally stole that from a Howard the Duck story written by the great Steve Gerber in which he calls Cleveland "the armpit of the universe"), I just looked for descriptions of towns in some way, avoiding more generic parts of towns ("downtown" or "uptown") & also just adding the word town to a named place ("London town" or "Chicago town"). It's very simple & the culling still left me with over seventy songs that I still have to sort out.
Other than that, what's up with you?