Going Away Again

After tomorrow, this blog will be refreshingly silent - I'll be "vacationing" again, but this time I'll be away a week.  The awesome Matt Clarke, who does "The Weekend Wave" on WRFL on Fridays in the same time period Self Help Radio is in (only on Fridays instead of on Tuesdays) will be hosting.  I'll talk a little more about that tomorrow.

What shall I talk about today?  Here's a funny story: I take a particular prescription pill every day with vitamins because I must NO I'M NOT TELLING YOU WHAT IT IS, but for reasons I don't understand, I keep in a similar bottle right next to it on the shelf a bottle of muscle relaxants which I was prescribed a while back for something I don't remember NO I'M NOT BEING COY.  Today, I accidentally took the muscle relaxant instead of the regular pill so I've been sleepy all day.

Holy Pharma!  It just occurred to me that I maybe should take a couple of those so I can sleep on the plane tomorrow!  I can't sleep on planes, you see.  I'll ask the wife if that's safe.  Or if I'll be groggy for too long.  Because I am a little groggy now, & I took the pill more than eight hours ago.  I took it on an empty stomach, too.  Hmm.

Anyway, I thought had something to say today, but as the wife pressures me to pack my bags & get my shit together, I suddenly got all queasy because it's becoming real, the long wait at the airport, the flight, the reorientation - I wish it were something I could get used to.  & I might not get any sleep tonight!

Self Help Radio 051716: Attack!

(Original image here.)

Well, that was a weird show.  Hey!  I always say that the reason that I like doing Self Help Radio, especially with the concept of organizing shows around "themes," is that it forces me out of my comfort zone, where I would probably play the same stuff over & over.  This week got diverse, I tell you what!

It's also my last Self Help Radio for two weeks, so I hope you'll tune in next week when Matt Clarke, who hosts the excellent Weekend Wave show.  He'll do a show about swimming!

Meanwhile, this week's show can be listened to by visiting the Self Help Radio web page.  Just enter username "SHR" & password "selfhelp" & you'll be ready to attack.  There are two distinct hours of the show, & the songs I play for you in each hour are listed below.

See you in a couple of weeks!

(part one)

"Attack" The Toys _The Toys Sing "A Lover's Concerto" & "Attack"_
"Love Attack" Spencer Wiggins _Goldwax Northern Soul_
"Man Attack!" The Revillos _Attack!_

"Heart Attack" Don & Dewey _Shakin' Fit_
"Broken Heart Attack" Jerry Reed _Alabama Wild Man_
"Sweet Heart Attack" Dolenz Jones Boyce & Hart _Dolenz Jones Boyce & Hart_
"Heart Attack" Classic Ruins _1+1<2_ p="">"Heart Attack" The Deltas _Boogie Disease_

"Camouflage Attack" Swell Maps _Messthetics #103 ('D.I.Y.' & Indie Postpunk From The Midlands 1978-1981, Pt. I)_
"Attack" Public Image Limited _Public Image (First Issue)_
"Anxiety Attack" Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel _Sink_
"Ready 2 Attack" Special Ed _Legal_

"An Actual Attack" Negativland _Ikebana: Merzbow's Amlux Rebuilt, Reused, & Recycled_
"Asthma Attack" The Fiery Furnaces _Gallowsbird's Bark_

(part two)

"Panic Attack" Buttersprites _Buttersprites_
"Under Attack" Scout _All Those Relays_
"Tak! Attack!" Black Affair _Pleasure Pressure Point_

"Groovy Heart Attack" The Hit Parade _More Pop Songs_
"Heart Attack" Wavves _V_
"(Like A) Heart Attack" The Briefs _Off The Charts_
"Kurt Wagner's Heart Attack" Lambchop _Treasure Chest Of The Enemy_

"Delay-Decay-Attack" Meanwhile Back In Communist Russia _Indian Ink_
"Attack Music" These New Puritans _Hidden_
"Attack" Seedling _Let's Play Boys & Girls_
"Panic Attack" Atmosphere _You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having_

"On The Attack" Langhorne Slim & The Law _The Way We Move_
"97 Heart Attack" Earlimart _System Preferences_

Whither Attack?

(I found this image here.)

Oh no, this is another one of those shows for which I have no real reason why I chose the theme.  "Attack"?  Where could that have come from?

But it turns out there is a story from this, & it turns out, it's about Halloween.  What?  Listen:

Quite often I have complained (like here) that at some point I am going to run out of scary Halloween themes.  I've covered all the big ones - vampires, mummies, zombies, etc. - what happens when there are no more?  In recent years, I've managed to find ones I thought were cool though off the beaten path: graveyards, haunted houses, clowns.  As I was gathering material for this week's show, it occurred to me that I was using up a potential Halloween theme: there were many songs with the names of classic horror films, like "Attack Of The Giant Ants" or "Shark Attack."

This has happened before.  Once, I did a show about Cupid - in July.  It would've been a great Valentine's Day show.  & once I did a show about snakes, which would've been a great Halloween show.  Well, I wasn't going to let this happen again.  I took the songs that would've fit the Halloween theme out of consideration for today's show.  They'll be part of a future Halloween show.

Will it be this year's Halloween show?  Nope!  While I was fretting about wasting a theme, I came up with another one, a good one.  You'll find out what it is in October.  I wish my mind didn't work like that but damn, it does.

Meanwhile, today's show about "attack" (whatever that means) is on from 4-6 pm on 88.1 fm in Lexington & online at WRFL web site.  Spoiler alert: lots of songs about heart attacks.  That could've been an entire other theme!

Preface To Attack: Cartoonish Violence

Have a look at this cartoon, the first part of which is this:

At some point in your adult life, you'll turn around & look at the cartoons/comics you enjoyed when you were a kid, & you'll be astonished at all the violence in them.  Sure, the violence is exaggerated - it's a cartoon, after all - but boy, is it weird from an adult perspective to, say, see Lucy constantly beat up her little brother Linus, or, as the comic above illustrates, see Homer Simpson choking out his son.

This is not an attempt to blame cartoons or comics for violence, or to suggest there's a desensitization at work, or anything like that.  When I was a kid, I was pretty aware they were not real.  But there is real violence in the world, & especially violence toward children, & boy does the cartoon violence translate badly into the non-cartoon world!

Validation! (or is it) Confirmation!

Do you remember back here when I wrote this:

My brain believes that when certain memories I have are put somewhere else - saved in a journal, or a letter, or an email, or anywhere other than my brain - it (the brain) can safely forget them, or store them someplace obscure in the dusty vaults of the mind.

It turns out that scientists have been studying this for some time now.  This article, for example, says outright that "We know we can depend on Google for information, so we don't bother remembering it."

Another study I read this weekend - which I can't find anywhere right now - basically had a group of people memorize answers to trivia questions, & were told that some of the answers could be found via search engine while some couldn't.  The subjects of the study were more likely to remember the answers they were told they couldn't find online later.

The strange thing is, a lot of these studies feel familiar to me, so think I've read these articles before.  Thus, this probably isn't "my brain theory" at all, but the results of scientific studies I once perused which correspond with my own experience.  But why can't I remember reading them in the first place?

Oh yeah - I knew they were online.