Self Help Radio 120514: What A Waste!

The waste of time that is Self Help Radio celebrates all kinds of waste, including but not limited to wasting time.  & guess how much time you've wasted just reading about wasted time?  Life is a recursion, it's true.

Radio show!  You have more time to waste!  You can listen to it now & whenever you want at Self Help Radio dot net.  My gosh, there are a lot of shows there.  Why not carve off a piece of your life & dedicate it to some musical time-wasting?  You can't possibly waste as much time as I did making the shows!

(Pay attention to the username/password combination.  What I wastefully played is below.)

To paraphrase Thoreau, "How can you waste time without irking eternity?"

Thanks for listening!

(part one)

"Why Do You Waste My Time?" Tiny Grimes & His Rocking Highlanders _We're Gonna Rock, We're Gonna Roll_
"Wastin' Your Time" Bob Gibson _Where I'm Bound_
"Wasted" Wanda Jackson _Right Or Wrong_

"I Just Wasted The Rest" Bobby Goldsboro & Del Reeves _Bobby Goldsboro: The Complete United Artists Records Singles_
"I'm Wasting Your Time & You're Wasting Mine" Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton _Porter Wayne & Dolly Rebecca_
"What A Waste!" Ian Dury & The Blockheads _The Stiff Records Box Set_
"Beautiful Waste" The Triffids _Australian Melodrama_

"Wasteland" Colin Hicks & The Cabin Boys _La Dee Dah_
"Wasteland" The Jam _Setting Sons_
"Wasteland" A Frames _2_
"Wasteland (In A...)" Erase Errata _Nightlife_
"Baba O'Riley" Guided By Voices _Who's Not Forgotten: FDR's Tribute To The Who_

"Wasted" Blancmange _Happy Families_

(part two)

"Wasting Away" Jim Jiminee _Welcome To Hawaii_
"Wasted" Pere Ubu _Story Of My Life_
"Go To Waste" Nothing Painted Blue _Emotional Discipline_
"A Summer Wasting" Belle & Sebastian _The Boy With The Arab Strap_

"Youth Is Wasted On The Young" Chain & The Gang _Music's Not For Everyone_
"Wasted Moments" Shermans _In Technicolor_
"Wasted Daylight" Stars _The Five Ghosts_
"Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me" The Pipettes _We Are The Pipettes_

"Wasted On You" Robert Francis & The Night Tide _Heaven_
"Another Month You've Wasted" Shy Camp _Another Month You've Wasted_
"Why Waste Time" Caramel _Punkpopgaragemods_
"Wasted Away" Dum Dum Girls _Only In Dreams_

"Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste" Galaxie 500 _Today_

Whither Waste?

I've already done a show about trash, including songs about garbage.  It's about time I tackle one of trash's synonyms (that's not garbage) & deal with waste.

But waste!  I mean, but wait!  Waste can mean so much more than trash!  It's true.  We waste time, often by getting wasted.  What a waste!  & not, as you might have suspected, what a trash!

The word comes from the French & appears to have originally been used with land that was uncultivated.  Flash forward a few centuries & hipsters in the 1950s start describing themselves as "wasted" - & maybe they meant they were too drunk to even appear cultivated.

I haven't been wasted in a long time, though I'm pretty good at wasting time, especially on the radio.  Don't believe me?  Listen tomorrow from 7 to 9am on 88.1 fm WRFL Lexington.  It'll stream online at wrfl dot fm, & I'll put it up later on self help radio on the web net.

If you're up early, I'll also be doing the 5 to 7 timeslot.  Freeform radio.  Just sayin'.

Preface To What A Waste: Wasted Days & Wasted Nights

Talking to mother, she says, "Times goes by quicker when you're old."

But she never says, "Don't waste a single moment."

It never occurs to her.

What is a life full of unwasted moments like?

It sounds exhausting.

Is life about using up all the time allotted to you?

I live in a house with eight animals, not counting me, but counting my wife.

My animals (also, not counting my wife) sleep most of the time.

Are they wasting their lives?

According to this article, "feral cats sleep less & are involved in more high-intensity activity than house cats."

But feral cats live on average four to five years, while a house cat can live three times that.

Better to live a short, meaningful life than a long, wasted one?

When I was younger, I felt bored a lot of the time.

I was keenly aware that I was wasting time by the bucketful.

As I got older, as life piled on, I found I barely had time for the things I had to do, let along the things I enjoyed.

But it seems older people need as much sleep as younger people.

I have no idea where I'm going with this.

Just scribbling thoughts out loud.

& no, I probably won't play that Freddy Fender song.

Where Does Human Waste Go After We Flush?

The show this week is about waste & wasting but probably not much about human waste.  Still, if you're as juvenile as I am, you naturally think about poop & pee when someone says the word "waste."  Here's a great vid from the cool kids at Sci Show that tells the story:



(I need to find out if our house has a septic tank!)

Holiday Season

Someone on Tumblr wrote today, "I can't believe it's already Christmas 1."

I don't really celebrate Christmas.  While I like the music, I don't exchange gifts with anyone, & as concerns my family, I don't enjoy the forced nature of the holiday.  I have a pretty large family, four brothers & two sisters, & while I am pretty close with my sisters, whom I genuinely like, I haven't spoken to any of my brothers in years.  & the reverse is true: they haven't spoken to me, or made any attempt to, in years.

I marvel at families who really seem to like each other, to be around one another.  The only thing that keeps my family sort-of together is our mother - mainly my family gathers for her birthday, for Thanksgiving, & for Christmas.  It also helps, I guess, that most everyone in my family, except for me & my oldest brother, live in the Dallas area.  Most, actually, live in the same town as my mother.  Which should say something about her apron strings.

I've told my mother that I don't imagine I'll speak to my brothers again after her funeral.  She characterizes that as me "hating" them.  I tell her, "How can I hate someone I don't really know?"

There's a scene in the wonderful movie "The Perks Of Being A Wallflower" in which the older brother of the main character comes home from college.  The older brother is a college sports hero, while the little brother is emotionally troubled.  The older brother takes the time to sit with his little brother & ask how he's doing.  They couldn't be any different from one another, but there's a love that comes from being family that's their bond.

I'm not being self-piteous when I say that that scene was utterly alien to me.  I can't imagine any member of my family - my sisters & mother included - caring that deeply, that openly about me.  I have been through some awful emotional moments, & the most sympathy I ever got was the advice to "man up."  Indeed, when one of my brothers was being what I considered emotionally abused by his spouse, & could have used counseling & a good amount of empathy, that was the advice my mother continued to give him.

It's the lack of any kind of warmth that keeps me away from family gatherings.  I feel like I did my time - I probably attended every Christmas until I was forty - but the sheer claustrophobic unpleasantness of the holiday - basically an evening spent around virtual strangers - in which, in later years, I made sure I had some whiskey to make it at all bearable - I began to excuse myself.  & of course now being hundred of miles away makes it easier for me to stay away.

I am fascinated why my family is this way.  (& by the way, I know I have much of this in me.  I don't have many friends, & I don't long for that, & I don't reach out to most of my siblings.  I also married a woman who has a distinct lack of empathy.)  I came into the family when most of my siblings had gone
through puberty, & I also arrived at the tail-end of my mother & father's marriage.  So they were there most of the time, while I was raised mostly by my mother & I was generally left alone (something for which I'm grateful).  Being a child, I wasn't really able to pay attention to what was going on, & in fact, it's taken me most of my adult life to even notice all of this.

What I'd like to do is ask my siblings - who doubtless don't dwell on the past the way I do - to maybe Skype with me for an hour & let me ask them questions.  I wonder if they'd do it.  I'd like to record the sessions & maybe make them into some sort of narrative, if only just for me.  The energy it would take might be too much, as would the possible resistance.  But if it's true, as I think it is, that I won't speak to any of them once my mother dies, this might be a good idea.

I'll let you know what I do.