Lyrics To Songs That May Or May Not Exist

I grew up in a medium-sized suburb called Garland, Texas. Here is the city's homepage. I knew that people paid a lot of attention to football, but myself lost interest as I grew older. I went to only a couple of games for my middle school team, since I was on the yearbook staff & had to take pictures. I never went to any of my high school's games. Actually, I might have gone to one. Yeah, I went to one. In my senior year. I remember everyone I knew being surprised to see me there. & it was chilly. & afterwards, I deejayed for the first time at the after-game dance, & I did an astonishingly bad job. The shape of things to come!

College football is another thing entirely, of course, & I never went to a single game at the University of Texas, when I was a student or later as staff. (Here is Austin's web site.) In fact, the games were very inconvenient for me since I used to spend Saturdays at KVRX, & of course campus was clogged when there were games. One time, I was walking to the station, which was away from the game, & some already drunk dudes passed me & said, "Hey, you're going to wrong way!" I said, somewhat snottily, "No, I think I'm going exactly the right way." I didn't smile or turn around or anything, but one of them said, "He's lookin' to get his ass kicked!" But I didn't get my ass kicked.

But even though Austin slowed down during UT football games, & it was generally quieter at supermarkets & the like during such times, the city never shut down the way Huntington was this afternoon. Granted, Huntington (whose web page is right here) is about a tenth the size of Austin, & less than a quarter the size of Garland, but wow! The city was quiet as if there had been an invasion this afternoon because of the football game. What football game? Er. I didn't ask. Let me check.

Ah! It was the season opener, & Marshall University beat Southern Illinois 31-28. I beat there's a lot of happy folks tonight. Good for them! I think I'm going to watch Green Acres instead. Speaking of, have I ever shown you my Green Acres fan fiction? I really should.

Manna Mania

From the Wikipedia:

As a natural food substance, manna would produce waste products; but in classical rabbinical literature, as a supernatural substance, it was held that manna produced no waste, resulting in no defecation among the Israelites until several decades later, when the manna had ceased to fall. Modern medical science suggests the lack of defecation over such a long period of time would cause severe bowel problems, especially when other food later began to be consumed again. Classical rabbinical writers say that the Israelites complained about the lack of defecation, and were concerned about potential bowel problems.

They used every part of the manna, no shit.

That's manna mania!

The Other End Of The Loop

Huzzah & hurrah! Yesterday's Self Help Radio show is up for those of you foolish enough to have missed its initial airing at selfhelpradio.net! Alert the authorities! Countermand the captain's orders! Belay that! Belie that! Bellow from the rooftips! Cut the blond from your hairtips! Cut the bland with your fingertips! & by all means tip your caddy!

Also huzzah & as well hurrah! In the same place, with a slightly more poppy feel, is the fifth non-fattening episode of Sugar Substitute. Loaded with confection, you can play it in public & it'll slightly increase your intrinsic self-worth. Psychologist-apprised & well worth its own sweet time!

Please be a dear & go listen to them. Daddy needs to have a nap now.

Game Duh

I'm on the air in about an hour on 88.1 fm WMUL Huntington. If you're not able to listen to it, I'll be archiving the show tomorrow at selfhelpradio.net. I have to go clean my shoes & shine my spats - must look spiffy for the radio crowd! Hope to hear that your heard!

Stay Of Elocution

Yeah, it turns out that there was scheduling issue today at WMUL, so I didn't get to do Self Help Radio. It'll air tomorrow on 88.1 at 3pm, & maybe again next Wednesday at that time. The new schedule will begin the week after next, so my timeslot (if I get one I hope I get one!) should be stable for a while after that. Tune in!

I probably didn't coin the pun "stay of elocution," but I did use it in a poem I wrote a million years ago. It was called "Stripper Girlfriend" & went like this:

what is light after all but the end of the denial & the rest
of the afternoon spent secretly dreaming of management games
& chests pressed sternly against sidewalk & self or did they
in half of one six dozen of the other somehow tell everybody
that subdued sadness or repressed depression manages to lift
out of sex & affection when least is likely & knowing naught
is not the right response but what i mean or what i'm trying
to say whether love or whether apple core clues or whether a
stay of elocution pumps honesty or not like i care to get at
the meat of the matter or the jism of the gist or the broken
heart of the moment need sweaty bloody teary-eyed courageous
& all i ever manage is hold on hold back hold it right there
ha eyelids make smashing sounds & perspective is a curse but
end of the tunnel faster than the thankfully schoolyard bang
bang or did i mention marriage because the shadow cross play
& play house too closely for me to pharmacy & farm community
in isolation is another dreamy dream like losing nothingness
your best friend the only one who understands you sacrifices
inlove for breakfast eugene v debs for places to go peephole
to see the never never ain't forever what with bookends here
& over here so excuse me tough time opening this jar of meat
loaf should be pandora's box it's surely not happening is it

I Was Going To Call This Particular Post "The Night Before"

But it turns out I may be moving the show around again to air on Wednesdays from 3 to 5.

So you'll just have to wait till tomorrow to find out. I have to wait the rest of the night, I think.

Whither Loops?

In high school, I came the closest to fulfilling my aspirations of being a rock & roll star (aspirations which, by the way, I never pursued with any sort of determination - so it's not like I'm heartbroken it didn't happen) when an old friend - who really could play musical instruments, &, unlike me, could also sing - had me come in & horse around with him, making stuff up while he played basic chord progressions on the guitar (in those days, this friend was more of a loner, & he would then spend days adding other stuff - drums, backing vocals, other guitars - in the privacy of his lonesome room with a four-track recorder). Thus was born such incredible songs you'll never hear like "Teenage Zombie," "Prom Night," "Battering Ram," "Officer Burrell Has Some Documents For You To Sign," & "Vandal With Me," as well as eminently forgettable covers of U2's "I Will Follow" (in which I ad-libbed the lines, "I'll follow you to your house - to you grandmother's house - I'll wait in the bathroom - I will follow!") & ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man," which I was openly mocking by perfectly enunciating the doggerel lyrics. I still fucking hate that song.

My pal Joe gave us a name - Atheists On A Mission From God - but it turned out to be ill-timed, as my loner friend was finding Jesus simultaneous to our musical adventures & would eventually stop talking to me for years because I was an infidel & he couldn't save me. You can imagine that, for a young man surreptitiously (well, he didn't tell me) finding God, it must have rankled when I'd phone up & say, "Hey, wanna do some Atheists stuff this weekend?"

Those songs are all lost, more or less. I probably have them on cassette somewhere, but the cassettes have probably melted or oxidized or whatever happens to old cassettes. I was pretty young at the time - 17 or 18 - but boy did I have fun. I wish then we had had the digital technology we have now. My friend destroyed his copies (along with a lot of his own recordings, I think, & a lot of his record collection, which had a lot of Satanic stuff in it, like Talking Heads) when he was saved by Jesus. Jesus may well have been doing the world a favor!

Of all the songs to be least proud of is "Battering Ram," a sexist ode which is a ridiculous boast from me, a boy who hadn't yet had sex, about my member's terrifying abilities to break down the walls of love (literally?) over a twelve-bar blues. Inane, but the whole point was that I was trying to crack up my musician friend (who gave the song its title - I didn't then & still don't think that way) with dumb lines like:

I dated this girl about four days
I said "Baby something's getting in the way"
No problem, battering ram!

At the end of the song, while I was singing "I'm a battering ram," my friend said, "His bedroom's an obstacle course." So I added, "Watch it jump through the hoops, do loop-de-loops, battering, battering ram." I can still both see my friend crack up & hear it in my head. He was one of those people you liked to make laugh.

That "loop" song is one, though, you won't hear on Self Help Radio this week. Or ever. If I can help it.