Nasty Storms & Sacred Animals

Putting the table of contents on the cover of the magazine instead of an airbrushed model does not increase sales, the report said. It took Tracy all of twelve minutes to make it a first amendment issue. He also suddenly began to remember all the people who had eagerly "friended" him on Facebook when he first logged on who have now, roughly six months later, apparently "unfriended" him. Instead of thinking of it as some sort of negative review of his life, Tracy just got mad.

When his alarm didn't go off, Mr. Unlucky woke up anyway. It hadn't stopped raining since the early evening, when he had watched lightning moving slowly across the horizon, not coming anywhere near him. He could tell, he counted the elapsed time between the bright bolt & the approaching rumble. Then he couldn't get to sleep for a while, wondering what happened to the birds when the sky was full of water.

Kirk was missing a riot grrl-friend he had had in the early nineties. She convinced him to get his first & only tattoo, of which he was still a little embarrassed. If it weren't below his right shoulder, on his back, where he might be able to see it most of the time, he might think of it as something by which he could remember her. Now he couldn't really place her face. He wondered if she still had her record collection, or if she still bleached her hair, the better to dye it purple or red or green.

Why would I be so uncomfortable with my brother's children - neither of which were older than three - running around the backyard naked? Gene had to look away, even when the youngest raised her arms & said something that could have been "Uncle Gene" or "gum machine." This culture sucks, he thought to himself, I am more afraid of being a suspected pedophile than I am willing to be a good uncle. Is there something I can tell my brother? What about my sister-in-law? They both seem so tired & they're letting themselves go. The kids may as well be insane or lost.

What Crawled Up Your Radio?

Self Help Radio crawled out of many radios this week (one hopes it got out before they switched them off or to another channel) while a deadly line of thunderstorms crawled toward Lexington. Amusingly, they "closed" the University in the middle of the night for a tornado warning, making students in the dorms gather in hallways for safety, but no one said a thing to the deejay in the RFL studios, where the windows were open to let in the cool night air. The EAS didn't even interrupt my show to say, "Find cover you fool!"


But I crawled along & so did the show & you can hear the results here. The show has crawled under the rock that is the Self Help Radio website. If you'd like to download the show directly, it has been cut into two parts, but survives! rather like other creepy, crawly things. Part one is here & part two is here. What's in the parts is listed below. Do not let them induce any formication in you. I felt like things were crawling all over me all the show long.

Thanks, as always, for listening!

(part one)
"Crawl" The Wedding Present _3 Songs EP_
"Crawl" Tall Dwarfs _Weeville_
"Crawl" Tiny Lights _Hot Chocolate Massage_

"Crawl Out Through The Fallout" Sheldon Allman _Atomic Platters: Cold War Music From The Golden Age_
"Crawlin'" The Clovers _Down In The Alley: The Best Of The Clovers_
"Love Bug Crawl" Jimmy Edwards _Rockin' Bones: 1950's Punk & Rockabilly_
"A Crawlin' Man" Arkay IV _For Internal Use Only_
"Crawling Back To Me" The Tell-Tale Hearts _High Tide (Big Noses & Pizza Faces): Anthology_
"Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" Bob Dylan _Biograph_

"Funky Crawl" The Detroit Sex Machines _Grazing In The Trash Vol. 2_
"You've Got To Crawl To Me" Johnny Davis _Eccentric Soul, Vol. 3 - The Bandit Label_
"Twist & Crawl" The Beat "I Just Can't Stop It_

(part two)
"Crawling To The USA" Elvis Costello _This Year's Model_
"Crawling From The Wreckage" Rockpile _Seconds Of Pleasure_
"The Incredible Crawling Eye" Nervus Rex _Nervus Rex_

"Things Have Learnt To Walk That Ought To Crawl" The Room _No Dream_
"Crawling Mantra" Red Lorry Yellow Lorry _The Singles: 1982-1987_
"Walk & Crawl" The Jesus & Mary Chain _The Power Of Negative Thinking: B-Sides & Rarities_
"Crawl Babies" The Pastels _Truckload Of Trouble_
"The Crawling" Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians _Element Of Light_

"Crawl Away" Lambchop _Thriller_
"Crawling With Idiot" Elbow _Cast Of Thousands_
"Time Will Crawl (MM Remix)" David Bowie _iSelect_

Crawl - Don't Walk - To Self Help Radio Tonight!

[Technically speaking, since the average listener need only turn his or her radio on &, at that point, need not really move except perhaps to change the channel, there is no real need to "crawl" to a radio show. However, since the Self Help Radio show tonight has as its theme "crawl," one hopes the reader will allow some latitude in expression, as opposed to the reader's usual lassitude.]

Yes, Self Help Radio slows to a crawl tonight! All ninety minutes, just crawling! Crawling all over the airwaves, crawling into your ears, crawling on top of your brain, okay I'll stop now I'm creeping myself out.

It's happening at midnight tonight on 88.1 fm WRFL in Lexington but you can listen anywhere (as long as you know what time it is when it's midnight in Kentucky & you have a computer) at the WRFL website.

I'll archive it tomorrow at the Self Help Radio website but what's the fun in that? Listen tonight! It may crawl, but what if later it turns into a butterfly??

[Okay, probably not.]

Whither Crawl?

I was listening to the Wedding Present on my iPod & the song "Crawl" came on & I remembered how much I loved it, & I thought, afterward, there should be a radio show about "crawl."

...

Was that too simple?

...

I'm sorry. Sometimes the reasons for my themes are quite straightforward. I could make something up if you'd like.

...

I was thinking of making up a story about things crawling all over me, but the insects have only just returned to Kentucky after wintering in warmer climes. The more I think about them, I think about formication, which is the medical terms for the feeling of bugs crawling on your skin, which I don't want to feel so stop it!

....

You're just going to have to be satisfied with the truth. This time.

Preface To Crawl: Themes That Are Not Nouns Make Me Uncomfortable

I often want to make them into nouns. "Crawl" becomes "crawling." For example.

Nouns seem to be more understandable. A verb as a theme seems like an imperative sentence, a command. "Crawl" becomes "crawl!" This is not my intention.

In fact, of all my themes for this year, every one has been a noun. A show in which the theme might have been "sit" became "sitting." The most recent non-noun theme was from November 16 of last year, & it was "Destroy!" which was meant to be an imperative sentence (although I did have songs about destruction therein). Right before that, on November 2, I had a rare show with an adjectival theme: "Hungry!" Which, you know, could easily have been "hunger."

Crawl can of course be a noun - "the traffic moved at a slow crawl." Or a description of how an animal moves. There's also a "crawl" in the jazz sense. It's a type of dance.

Yet when I see "crawl" as a theme, it doesn't feel like the noun version. It seems like a command. I shall leave it, however, the way it is.