My Boring Dreams, Part 745

God I hate listening to people talk about their dreams. I don't believe they're prophetic, or full of hidden symbols, or even that they do much except possibly express painfully obvious anxieties & concerns one has.

(I knew a dude at KOOP who heard me discussing a dumb dream with someone once & he looked distressed. I don't really remember what I was discussing, but he was grave & troubled & said to me something like, "You know, Gary, it's very serious when you dream about windows {or whatever it was}." Of course, he also believed that quantum mechanics proved human being could levitate, so I didn't take him up on his offer to give me free dream therapy.)

But dreams are on my mind because - well, let me bore you.

My family used to have a convenience store, & I worked there for a while during high school, & occasionally I have dreams about it, because I spent so much time there. My dream last night (technically, this morning, as it was the last dream I had before I woke up) involved me opening the store one morning like I did on Sundays. (By the way, in the dream, I was my current age, & the store was in an advanced state of disrepair & it was filthy. That's kind of true - the people who bought the store back in 1989 tore the building down & put up a kind of mini-mall, but I went in for the first time since the late 80's a few years ago - it must've been when I was a smoker, since I was looking for American Spirits, which they didn't have - & the place was nasty. But in my dream, it was the old store, not the new one.)

I made coffee - you did that, you know, first thing - & there was a person there that I had the sense I was holding over for possibly the police or someone to pick up. Or maybe he was hiding in the store overnight & I noticed him, but somehow expected him at the same time. Anyway, as I was getting the cash drawer ready - & it was filled with weird papers that somehow had to do with my trip to Europe a couple of years ago - he started to escape, but before he did, he attempted to pour some liquid into the glass case next to the cash register, as if to destroy evidence or something. I snatched it from him in time, & when I checked it, it was nail polish remover.

He got away, & the dream ended soon after that, & I confess it was nice to see the old store, which of course I will never see again, but what I woke up wondering about is this: where in my mind was there the knowledge that there's something you can get rid of by pouring nail polish remover on it? What could it be? Is that real? Did I see it in an episode of CSI or Law & Order? That fascinates me. It might be nonsense, but it might also be my brain showing off - look what I remembered that you don't, nyah nyah nyah.

That ends this episode of my boring dreams. Remember, I'll talk about my dreams to anyone who listens - & they're guaranteed to be completely uninteresting to anyone except me & fools who imagine they mean more than they really do. (The more I think about it, maybe that industry rose up as a way for people to at least make money when people tell them their boring dreams... Hmmm...)

Good night!

The Carousel Show Goes Round

It does! Today's dizzy show about carousels & merry-go-rounds is not available for your listening pleasantries at the Self Help Radio website. When you're listening, try to catch the brass ring! It means you win another show about carousels & merry-go-rounds!

Also there is the most recent episode of Sugar Substitute, which is a pop show & which has enjoyable music & information about homosexuality in bedbugs. I can say no more. You just have to listen.

Brrr. It's chilly in Huntington!

Harry & The Online Degree

Once upon a time my friend Harry stole an online degree which he erroneously thought belonged to my father. My father had of course gotten his degree the old-fashioned way: he purchased it with embezzled money. But Harry didn't know that. Harry could barely form three consecutive thoughts in his head - Harry was high all the time, so his thoughts were non-consecutive. Though sometimes contiguous.

Harry didn't know that my father had an online degree in Middle Eastern Fashion Photography, one of three awarded that year by the President & the Secretary Of Waste. The other two haven't been heard from since - it was that prestigious a degree. So Harry literally ran with it. In the West Bohemia marathon, in 1992. Which of course required both a time machine - he stole the degree last Thursday - & the time to organize a marathon in the non-existent country of West Bohemia, which had to be both founded, stabilized, & finally recognized by the International Marathon Cabal.

My father, bless his drunken soul, didn't notice that the degree had been stolen until it was far too late & he had finally convinced the Saudi girlies that it was perfectly fine to be photographed without their veils because he had a license.

None of this is related to the fact that in a few short hours, new episodes of Sugar Substitute & Self Help Radio will air on WMUL, 88.1 on the fm dial here in Huntington. Not in Huntington? I'll put it up on selfhelpradio.net during the day tomorrow.

If you see Harry or my father, please, tell them: all is forgiven.

Whither Carousels?

To be honest, when I was a kid, carousels kind of bored me. I liked, you know, the weird animals in creepy colors (if it wasn't one of those that just had horses) & I thought the whole going-up-&-down thing was all right, but it moved too slowly for me, took too long for a revolution, & there were always those people standing there, watching you. Maybe one of them was a parent or a family member, but I always felt like I had to be performing a little when I went around & around. Though thinking about it now, I totally loved the metal feel. I loved the raised metal cross-hatching on the floors & the barely concealed, greasy engine in the center. I saw a freaky carousel in Belgium - I might even have a picture:



There were other insects & weird half-animal, half-machine contraptions as well. I couldn't ride it, though, as I was an adult at the time. Boo! Hiss! (Other adults were on it, but with their children. All I had was my childish girlfriend.)

No, the reason to think at all about this show is because when I was a kid my single favorite thing on the playground is the now-all-but-extinct merry-go-round. I mean the kind you could push or someone could push for you. This kind:



I have a lot of happy childhood memories but among them one of the dearest is being spun on a merry-go-round that no longer exists in a park that still does in Garland, Texas. The park is called Rick Oden Park, apparently named for a kid who died from a baseball accident there. One time - maybe more than once, & they've become one memory in my head - one of my older brothers, who was probably bored stiff & looking for chicks - he deigned to spin it for us & he did, mightily, in a manly fashion, just turning & turning & turning the merry-go-round until it was going a million miles an hour & me & my little brother (& possibly some other kid or kids) just holding on for dear life - the centrifugal force pushing us away, legs flailing off the edge, lots of screams, possibly even tears - & me loving every damn second of it. My god that was so much fun. & it never seemed to last, it just never seemed to last.

It was so much more fun when someone else spun the merry-go-round for you, like it was much more fun to have someone push you on the swings. I think my brothers - & it had to be either Ralph or Steve, since I don't remember ever going to a park with my oldest brother Eddie - couldn't have understood how much I & the other kids loved it, or they would have done it all the time, every time, until we were sick of it. Because I never got sick of it (even if a couple of times I probably got physically sick), it's obvious they didn't do it enough. & of course for that I never loved them as much as I could have loved them, & they have suffered in their lives for that lack of love.

I would gladly have pushed my nephews & nieces on any merry-go-round they chose, but by the time they came along, the merry-go-rounds were gone. At least the kind I love. I am sure carousels are still available at carnivals & places like that.

Oh heavy sigh.

Preface To Carousels: Or Should It Be Preface To Merry-Go-Rounds?

I'm assuming there's not a lot of difference - I haven't really done my weekly research yet - but I've found about three times more songs about merry-go-rounds than carousels. Not only that, but the carousel songs nearly always mention merry-go-rounds - while the merry-go-round songs almost never mention carousels. But I wanted to do a show about carousels, so, if I could have found ninety minutes worth of songs just about carousels - &, you know, half of them wouldn't be covers of the Jacques Brel song - which for all the hell I know is supposed to be translated "merry-go-round" anyway - I would have eschewed any merry-go-round songs. I couldn't, so I didn't.

I'm sure this preface could have been more interesting, but Dexter's on, so that's all I got.