Preface To Sickness: Are You Okay?

I have been looking over this slideshow of US Health Statistics 2010. The actual report is right here. It's a kind of lurid fun read. Americans seem to get less healthy the more their country falls apart around them. I highly recommend a glance at the "at a glance" pdf. It includes wonderful poetic sentences like "The proportion of American adults 20 years of age & over who were obese rose in the 1980s & 1990s. In 2007–2008, about one-third of adults were obese & about two-thirds were overweight or obese." It also has awesome graphs that will make you hungry to look at like these:



I just ate dinner & I feel like I'm starving. What a good American I am!

Don't Make Fun Of Online Gaming, Not In My Presence, Mister Ma'am

Once upon a time
There was a lonely haiku
Who died of neglect

There's a group of poets out there - they know who they are - who think they can call a poem by a defined term - like haiku, or sonnet, or villanelle - even if they're not following the rules. They think they're awful cool.

If they were really cool, they'd write (or one of them would write, proving that she or he was cooler than the rest of them) a book of poems of all the different kinds of poetry. There's probably more than what's on that list as well. Some really obscure shit. Yeah!

The reason that they don't, of course, is the same reason that they write a poem that looks like this:

Gentle evening rain in air
Washed the weary sun setting clean
Like a washed face over a basin
Getting ready to sleep

& call it a haiku - it's because they're lazy.

Lazy can be revolutionary, though. So perhaps they're cool after all.

A Joke A Day A Week, Episode Eight

The difference between a bad joke & a good joke is not something I - & I am not a comedian - or even, some would doubtless say, very funny - it's not something I feel qualified or equipped to discuss. I only focus on this A Joke A Day series because they're just so horribly unfunny that the most easily tickled must scratch their heads in befuddlement just trying to grasp these shabby attempts at humor.

But if, let's say, the difference between how good a joke is received is in the telling, the fine lackadaisical editors (let's assume they exist) must appreciate that the success or failure of their A Joke A Day jokes would benefit from their presentation. As I've mentioned before, there is no evidence - none whatsoever - that there is even the most rudimentary attempt at a basic rewrite of submitted jokes. Someone - possibly even an automated computer program, which looks for keywords like racial epithets & profanity - glosses over them, makes sure they look a little like a joke, safely sanitized, & then rubber-stamp them.

Or else how explain Saturday's A Joke A Day? I reprint it exactly as I received it:

Steve lived in Stated Island, NY and worked in Manhattan. He had to take the ferry home every night. One evening, he got sown to the ferry and found there was a wait for the next boat, so Steve decided to stop at a nearby tavern. Before long he was felling no pain. When he got back to the ferry slip, the ferryboat was just eight feet from the dock.

Steve. Afraid of missing this one and being late for dinner, took a running leap and landed right on the deck of the boat. “How did you like that jump, buddy?” said a proud Steve to a deck hand. “It was great,” said the sailor. “But why didn’t you wait? We were just pulling in!”

I'm not sure if the joke is funny or not. I couldn't get past the glaring spelling mistakes & the weird one-word sentence at the beginning of the second paragraph.

Don't the A Joke A Day people know there are recently-graduated English majors out there who would gladly take a shitty job for little pay with their company? That they could easily edit a joke like this?

Astounding.

Confusion Is Not Sexy

You know what's confusing? Doing a radio show about confusion & then returning home to put most everything you own into boxes that very same say & then, even later, watching strong men - men you've paid - put them in a giant truck & take them somewhere else.

Also, waking up the next day in a different place than where you previously woke up, & finding those selfsame boxes you packed before suddenly filled with tapioca pudding & grief. Then the yellowjackets attack!

That's pretty confusing. Self Help Radio this week confused itself, too. You can join in on the perplexity if you're so inclined. The show is available now at self help radio dot net. So as not to confuse you further, I've broken the show into two parts. Though still confusing, the parts do have certain songs played during their duration - I've listed those below. Click here: part one &/or part two. Part three is only available in outer space.

(part one)

"Confusion" Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry _Brownie McGhee & Sonny Terry Sing_
"Confused" Paul Gayten _Gettin' Funky: The Birth Of New Orleans R & B_
"Confused" Dean Martin _Memories Are Made Of This_

"My Confusion" The Elite _Fort Worth Teen Scene Vol. 2_
"Confusion" Randy & The Rest _Fuzz, Flaykes, & Shakes, Vol. 6: Come On In To My World_
"A Whole Lot Of Confusion" The Ethics _Trip In Tyme, Volume 2_
"Confusion All Day" The Petards _Electrick Loosers # 3 (The Rheingold Rampage 1964-1970)_
"Confusion" Thee Mighty Caesars _Surely They Were The Sons Of God_
"State Of Confusion" The Kinks _State Of Confusion_

"Confusion" Lee Dorsey _People Sure Act Funny_
"Ball Of Confusion" The Temptations _Emperors Of Soul_
"Confusion" Chocolate Milk _Action Speaks Louder Than Words_

(part two)

"World Of Confusion" Sylvan White _Africans Unite_

"Confusion" New Order _Substance_
"Get Confused" Fischerspooner _Odyssey_
"People, You Can Confuse" Adult. _Anxiety Always_
"Dazed & Confused" Sofia _Search & Destroy_

"Confusion Fog" Meat Puppets _Mirage_
"Confusion" Silver Apples _Contact_
"Confusion" Sparks _Big Beat_
"I'm So Confused" Jonathan Richman _I'm So Confused_

Moved into a new house today

Had a wonderful show this morning.

Will post it tomorrow.

Maybe it will prove me wrong.

Apologies but I got to see most everything I own taken from one place to another.

In boxes.

I do enjoy writing as though I am writing on postcards.

Man am I tired.

Tomorrow then.

Tomorrow.

Whither Confusion?

You know what's confusing? Spending a day packing because after your Monday Morning radio show you're moving into a brand new house!

Well, not brand new. New to you, though!

That's a lot of confusion. You forget to write in your blog & everything!

Also, you use a lot of exclamation points. When you're confused.

You're not too confused to mention that Monday morning at 7:30 sharpish you'll be on the radio doing your Self Help Radio show about confusion, though. That's at 88.1 fm on the dial in Lexington & online at WRFL dot fm.

You hope the day's not so confusing you can't put it online later at self help radio dot net. But you can't make any promises either.

Wait. Who are you? What am I saying? I'm so confused.